Shadowland (Jan-May 1922)

Suadqwland The Theater As It Is Imagined A Review of the Notable “International Theatrical Exhibition’1 at Amsterdam By Sheldon Cheney THERE has just opened in Amsterdam, Holland, the most important exhibition of stagecraft which has been organized since the war, if not the most important held at any time or place. The city put at the disposal of the society called “Art for the People” seven large rooms in the Municipal Museum; and with financial aid from both State and City (imagine such a thing in America), as well as individual and official co-operation in eight foreign countries, the Exhibition Committee has gathered together what is in effect a summary of the progress of the modern theater. From Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia to the strange strivings of the German Expressionists, there is ranged here graphically the story of the stage as a quarter-century of revolution and reaction against nineteenth century romanticism, and how naturalism has affected it. Beyond that, beyond the actual changes accomplished, there are as many more demonstrations of imaginative conceptions of the theater of the future. It was this imaginative approach that was wisely stressed in the invitations to artists to join in the exhibition. The particular object is to show forth the theater “as it is in the imagination,” was the wording of the original announcement. Because of this intention on the part of the organizers, and because the exhibits largely live up to the idealistic and wildly speculative suggestions of the phrase, I wish to concern myself rather narrowly in this review with “the theater as it is imagined,” instead of enumerating faithfully the many interesting and novel ways in which artists the world over are draping the current drama. Certainly it is not unimportant that the work-a-day theater should have its conservati ve-p rogressive productions clothed in the brighter, more honest garments of the “new stagecraft,” but the more interesting question seems : How are the theater artists conceiving the future theater ? Italy answers in one way. Gordon Craig is credited to Italy in the official list, and he adds authority to the designation because he never tires of talking about Italian acting as the finest in the world. Italy, then, imagines the new theater in one way, soundly, structurally, theatrically. With Craig lost to her, England seems to do precious little imagining about any other stage than the one it has ; and, outside of Norman-Bel Geddes’ “Dante” series, there is little in the American section to suggest seeking for new forms. But the Russians literally shriek that the new theater is color — shriek so loud that one wonders whether they have not lost sight of the stage altogether under a sea of brilliant decorative elements. France is, unless her exhibit is incomplete, satisfied to let Jacques Copeait and the Vieux Colombier group do all its serious experimenting, on a stage which is indeed a step toward the future. But the Dutch exhibit picks up the thread, with notable conceptions in the field of a new theater architecture ; and Germany caps the climax in two rooms which are so full of experiments and speculation that one often receives the sense of a nightmare of strange forms — a nightmare which is dispelled only as one begins to separate the very important, soundly imaginative items from the incomprehensible ones. Yes, the exhibition fulfills its imaginative purpose, diversely, quietly and wildly, thru theaters planned to he theaters, and thru theaters planned for everything that is untheatrical, thru everything from sublimated versions of Johnny Jones’ peepshow to Max Reinhardt’s “circus-theaters.” In many senses the pivotal room of the exhibition is that in which the work of Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia is hung. Jt is at once the most soundly imaginative, the quietest, and the most consistently forward-looking groupexhibit in the show. Appia’s eleven drawings indicate less “sense of the theater” than Craig’s ; but they are beautifully sensitive in themselves, they cast loose entirely from the artificialities of the nineteenth century stage settings, and in the later examples they tend toward an abstract use of line and mass, independent of the actuality of time and place, that is suggestive of a differing if somewhat delicately effect ive stage. And yet one wonders a little, in looking at them, if Appia does not retain primarily the decorator’s viewpoint ; whether, i f he were given a theater, he would be able to compass complete productions. For in all ( Cont’d on page 62) CONSTANCE BINNEY The latest portrait of the film star, by the Moffett Studios, Chicago Page Forty-One