Plan for cinema (1936)

66 PLAN FOR CINEMA sort as any stylized performance does. I am referring here to realistic decor. A stylized interpretation — actors in semi-realistic (historically accurate) costumes — and a realistic background contradict one another. A scenically suggestive background does likewise. Better to use the downright Elizabethan announcement, ca castle/ than to have a couple of property battlements in curtains, which is merely a step towards realism. And by removing the battlements, and playing against curtains alone, we have reduced theatre to the category of histrionism pure and simple. We are back again at the original problem : the synthesizing of the static and the temporal. There can be no compromise in decor such as the use of impressionism to stimulate mood. It still remains static, and stylized interpretation projects out of it, as it were; no more than that. The scene must play a part, and its part is as important as the play itself and its histrionic interpretation. It must be capable of change relative to what the actors are saying and doing. As the actors progress through the thematic content and the emotional situations expressing it, so must the scene progress too, and be augmentative to the progression. The scenic artist is set his subject by the play; his concept, and its transference into visual terms, is as important as the actor's conception of a part. If I am not much mistaken, Gordon Craig has been saying these things for some years past. Being one of the very few genuine men of the theatre alive, nobody, of course, has taken the slightest notice of him. We must always remember