CHAPTER VI.
STAGE MACHINERY AND SETTINGS
I havemade mention earlier of the ingenuity so often demanded of the little theatre stage director. The limitations of his stage often compel him to an inventiveness different only in scale from that displayed by the great German technicians of the theatre. No Harvard student who ever shifted scenery for the Dramatic Club in Brattle Hall can outgrow his enthusiasm for the feats achieved on that absurd stage. At the Artists’ Guild in St. Louis, it gave us unbounded glee to set the massive chamber ofThe Queen’s Enemieson the cramped stage there. To be confronted with deficiencies of one sort or another—mechanical or fiscal—which must be overcome, is unquestionably a spur to ambition. To struggle with material barriers, space, time, physical means, and accomplish results in spite of them; to wring beauty out of meagre cheesecloth and tinsel when there is no money for silk and gold galloon, is a victory of sorts; and without the fighting and winning of such battles as these, half our little theatres might never have been, and much of their best work might not have been done.[5]Practically all modernstage machinery has been devised to heighten effects of nature, and therein it differs from the machinery of the theatre of the greatest eras, which was devised to produce effectsbeyondnature. The Greeks and Elizabethans left Nature strictly to herself, but had a fairly elaborate mechanical system by which they exhibited gods, demons, ghosts, and visions.
[5]Note.—I wish to qualify fundamentally my admiration for the ingenuity of the mechanical features of the modern stage. In fact, I do not believe they can advance the theatre one jot. They are marvelously ingenious in denying the limitations of the stage and in part triumphing over them. Yet I have a persistent feeling that the recognition of the limitations and the acceptance of them is more fundamental in the development of an art or craft than the denial of them and the triumphing over them. Even such a triumph has its ultimate boundaries, and when they have been reached, there is little to do but acknowledge defeat. When matter has been twisted and beaten into the cunningest perversions of its first form, the craftsman is still not satisfied; for his spirit can soar to further reaches where none of the elements can follow. This is truer of the theatre artist, perhaps, than of any other, save the musician (who is, after all, a theatre artist). The theatre has been, these many centuries, the theatrebecauseof the limitations that encompass it, not in spite of them. Likewise is the church (as a field of art) limited, and it is by merit of its limitations that the church has been great. Utterchurchlinessowes little to the style of architecture of any specific church edifice. And the transcendent theatre art of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin or of the Art Theatre in Moscow does not hang upon the skill with which the one has used a revolving stage or with which the other has devised its scenery. The German theatres have to a remarkable degree increased natural illusion in scenery and lighting; but in spite of that there is about as much bad theatre art in Germany as good. Where greatness is found, where the artist has most truly realized the function of the theatre, it will be seen that his spirit has transcended utterly the possibilities of his physical stage; and, like as not, he has made no effort to strain the capacities of his medium, but has worked utterly within them. One of the remarkable facts about the stage technique of Robert Edmond Jones is that he demands nothing impossible to achieve. His designs are easy to execute, and his scenery easy to handle.Here, again, is the dilemma which we faced in the discussion of the approach to the stage lighting problem. There are limits to our ability to reproduce on the stage the light effects of nature. But there are practically no limits to the theatrical expressiveness of light, regarded as a medium,per se. There are limits beyond which mechanical skill or inventive genius cannot alter the obdurate confines of the physical stage. But there are no heights to which a human spirit, set in public upon a platform, however narrow and close-walled, cannot rise. In view of this great spiritual fact, I would solemnly warn any little theatre or community house that has money to spend for modernity, not to spend it on the kind of advance stage machinery discussed in this chapter, but to spend it on artists.
[5]Note.—I wish to qualify fundamentally my admiration for the ingenuity of the mechanical features of the modern stage. In fact, I do not believe they can advance the theatre one jot. They are marvelously ingenious in denying the limitations of the stage and in part triumphing over them. Yet I have a persistent feeling that the recognition of the limitations and the acceptance of them is more fundamental in the development of an art or craft than the denial of them and the triumphing over them. Even such a triumph has its ultimate boundaries, and when they have been reached, there is little to do but acknowledge defeat. When matter has been twisted and beaten into the cunningest perversions of its first form, the craftsman is still not satisfied; for his spirit can soar to further reaches where none of the elements can follow. This is truer of the theatre artist, perhaps, than of any other, save the musician (who is, after all, a theatre artist). The theatre has been, these many centuries, the theatrebecauseof the limitations that encompass it, not in spite of them. Likewise is the church (as a field of art) limited, and it is by merit of its limitations that the church has been great. Utterchurchlinessowes little to the style of architecture of any specific church edifice. And the transcendent theatre art of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin or of the Art Theatre in Moscow does not hang upon the skill with which the one has used a revolving stage or with which the other has devised its scenery. The German theatres have to a remarkable degree increased natural illusion in scenery and lighting; but in spite of that there is about as much bad theatre art in Germany as good. Where greatness is found, where the artist has most truly realized the function of the theatre, it will be seen that his spirit has transcended utterly the possibilities of his physical stage; and, like as not, he has made no effort to strain the capacities of his medium, but has worked utterly within them. One of the remarkable facts about the stage technique of Robert Edmond Jones is that he demands nothing impossible to achieve. His designs are easy to execute, and his scenery easy to handle.
Here, again, is the dilemma which we faced in the discussion of the approach to the stage lighting problem. There are limits to our ability to reproduce on the stage the light effects of nature. But there are practically no limits to the theatrical expressiveness of light, regarded as a medium,per se. There are limits beyond which mechanical skill or inventive genius cannot alter the obdurate confines of the physical stage. But there are no heights to which a human spirit, set in public upon a platform, however narrow and close-walled, cannot rise. In view of this great spiritual fact, I would solemnly warn any little theatre or community house that has money to spend for modernity, not to spend it on the kind of advance stage machinery discussed in this chapter, but to spend it on artists.
One of the first mechanical improvements of our present-day stage was thedrehbühne, or revolving stage, invented by Herr Lautenschlager. Its purpose is to move, without inordinate intermissions between acts, scenery far heavier than men can handle. The cult for realism demanded a greater plasticity in scenery, and consequent increase in mass and structural complexity. The revolving stage is a great turntable on which as many as six or seven scenes can be set at one time, and revealed successively to an audience by revolving the table. The scenery for the entire play is set up on the day of the performance, and no shifting of scenes need be done during the progress of the play.
The designing of scenery to fit the revolving stage, developed to its highest point by Reinhardt, is so little understood in this country that our few revolving stages are seldom used. The Century Theatre stage in New York has a turntable, but I do not know of any instance in which the scenery for an entire performance was set upon it. Mr. Winthrop Ames had a revolving stage installed in his Little Theatre in New York; but, as this stage is only thirty-five feet in diameter, he found it inadequate for the setting of many of the scenes. Mr. Harry Bishop, inbuilding the Liberty and Fulton Theatres in Oakland, California, constructed revolving stages of adequate size, but evaded the problem of devising scenery especially for them by installing a revolving gridiron also, so that the old-fashioned sky and foliage borders could ride around the stage with the set to which they belong. A little labor is saved in shifting scenes during performances, but I doubt whether the saving equalizes the cost of installation of these expensive devices.
A device of similar intent is the sliding stage, a great wagon the size of the stage opening—or, rather, two or three of them—run, as desired, before the proscenium opening, and capable of being pushed off, after being used, into houses at either side of the stage or lowered to the basement, there to be reset for another scene. This device avoids some of the limitations of the revolving stage, in that scenes need not be made to articulate closely as they must in order to fit the circular bounds of the turntable; but it is tremendously costly, and requires a great stage space.
There are other devices of like intent, such as the Asphalia stage, built in transverse sections that can be raised and lowered on hydraulic plungers, and Steele MacKaye’s elevator stage installed in the old Madison Square Theatre, New York. None of these devices can serve either the little theatre movement or the art of the theatre. They are deadening, and divert effort from the true end of all experiment and advance in the theatre. There is no doubt in my mind that the sort of theatre that wants to be built is one in which the machinery is reduced to a minimum,—efficient, controllable, but never controlling the sort of work that must be done on the stage. In order to have a modern, well-equipped stage, none of these innovations is needed.
Of far more purpose, for the modern theatre, are certain tendencies now manifest that appear at first glance like reversions to an older type of stage. I refer chiefly to such a stage as that built by M. Jacques Copeau for hisThéâtre du Vieux Colombier, which, for two seasons, was a strange intruder among the more literal stages of New York. Indeed, save for the use M. Copeau made of modern mechanical flexibility, his stage was a first cousin to the Elizabethan stage, though his arrival at its particular form was not a case of atavism but a philosophic realization of the true limitations of the theatre. His stage consisted of three parts: a fore-stage, reached from the rear stage, or from the main floor of the auditorium by steps upward, orfrom doors high in the walls flanking the proscenium, whence steps led down to the stage level; second, the stage proper; and third, an upper stage, or balcony, engirdling the main stage. This balcony and the space below it might be variously shut off from the main portion of the stage, by tapestries, lattices, screens, or sections of scenery, flat or pierced with windows or doors. Steps could be variously placed to give access to the balcony.
Thus, without the use of strictly representative scenery, Copeau had a stage which provided every facility for the presentation of a play,—entrances, exits, and elevations. It gave scope to the necessities of action and the agility of the actor. Such a construction may be said to be as much scenic reform as reform in mechanics, except that it largely renders the latter unnecessary.
I should not deem it part of the purpose of this paper to mention scenic matters at all, were it not that, very often, a certain amount of scenery, like a certain amount of lighting equipment, “goes with the building”. The contract for the building and its rigging often specifies also a “garden”, “plain chamber number one”, and “fancy parlor number three”, or the like. Whether they are thrown in or not, without extra charge, they should be courteously but firmly refused. They stunt the timid imagination, and somehow, perhaps because they are “real” scenery, never get thrown away.
For the scenic equipment of the stage I can do nothing better than refer the reader to the permanent setting devised by Sam Hume for the Detroit Arts and Crafts Theatre, of which he was for two seasons the director. This setting consists of a certain number of interchangeable units, flats, door pieces, window pieces, arches, and pylons.[6]Its initial cost is low, far lower than that of several sets out of the scene painter’s catalogue, and its usefulness infinitely greater. In addition to this it has beauty.
[6]Mr. Sheldon Cheney in hisThe Art Theatrehas fully described and illustrated this set, showing the multiple variations it is capable of.
[6]Mr. Sheldon Cheney in hisThe Art Theatrehas fully described and illustrated this set, showing the multiple variations it is capable of.
It may be that the stage of the future is to be something quite different than that we now have. As a theatre of truth supplants the theatre of illusion, it may be found that the stage of to-day does not answer at all. The theatre is undoubtedly in a transitional period and artists are striving for new forms and new methods of presentation. What directions these tendencies may take it is not the purpose of this paper to forecast. Nor would it do to advise the adoption of a type of stage not yet tested orof widespread use. Where there is an experimental and creative attitude toward the theatre such types will be evolved without any such rudimentary manual as this. Where a manual is wanted, a stage should be built that can be used easily, by everybody who wishes to use it, and which will give readily, in return for effort spent upon it, a revenue of beauty. These pages will achieve enough if they go a little way toward eliminating the usual inept, difficult constructions that for these many years have cumbered the way of folks, young and old, who wish to entertain themselves in the theatre. More and more, they seek such entertainment at their own hands. More and more, their efforts are being fostered by educational bodies and organizations allied with the theatre. Such aid as this pamphlet may bring them is hopefully dedicated to their service.