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p The stage design for a production is
another major problem the director encounters in his work on a production. Since I cannot possibly give this question exhaustive treatment here, I should like to examine a few individual aspects which I regard as being of fundamental importance.

p In the complex process of producing a play, a director has to deal with various artistic ingredients and mix them so that they interact. Just as a composer orchestrating a work writes a different part for each instrument and accords it a certain place in the whole, so the director must treat the ingredients of each piece of a play symphonically. Scenery does not exist as an extraneous element in a production but as an organic part of the general conception, and in relationship to people acting on the stage.

p Although both directors and designers understand this perfectly well in theory, all too often in practice the design is not properly combined with the other elements and fails to interact with them, having as though a parallel existence to what is created by the director and the actors. Yet the main thing is to ensure that the design occupies its proper place, serving its own function in the general artistic solution of the production.

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p When the designer, beginning his work before rehearsals have started, devotes his attention to the solution of the specific tasks of design without reference to the total visual entity of the production, giving free play to his imagination, sometimes alone, sometimes in co- operation with the director, in choosing the colours, lighting and other visual elements, the result is likely to be a work of art in its own right, which may be interesting and successful in itself but bears no relation to the production since the live actor has been ignored and is somehow expected to fit in with a ready-made “picture”. This approach (a vivid example of which is provided by many of the designs for opera, including those by such an outstanding artist as Fedorovsky) is inadmissable for a dramatic production in my opinion, as indeed I suspect it to be for opera too.

p It is necessary to determine precisely the function and place of visual elements in creating the artistic statement of a production. Design that fails to take into account the actor and the scenic process of the given work may or may not be valid as an independent work of art. In any case the design must be in perfect harmony with the general conception, the scenic solution of the work, its atmosphere and the live people who will be acting on the stage. Only thus is a complete, integral work of scenic art possible, in which the stage designer will be playing one of the roles, an important, responsible and essential role, but only in the context of a compound artistic entity where all the ingredients serve the aim of illuminating the meaning of the play.

p Yet only too often stage designs are no more than a picturesque background, more or less well-organised artistically, existing separate from, and parallel to, the dramatic action. On receiving the play, the designer paints a picture on the theme, the composer writes a symphony or a few separate numbers, the director devises the scenic action, and all these elements exist on parallel lines, as it were, which, as we know, never meet. The actor acts in the “picture” produced on the theme of the play and the action is accompanied with music inspired by the play, but they do not form a compound entity for they are simply a collection of separate art forms between which there is no interaction, whereas what is required is the fusion of various art forms so that each of them is transformed and acquires a new quality in the new compound entity that is produced. This is what true synthesis means: that each of the artistic elements that goes to make up the total entity is transformed and becomes different from what it was in its original “pure” form. Moreover, this transformation must take place as the result of subordination to the main factors-the actor and the scenic action.

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p I. Fedotov’s designs for Popov’s production of Long, Long Agodynamic curtain arrangements combined with fragments of different scenes of action-may not have been valid as a work of art outside the context of the play, but it represented a fine visual solution expressing the ideas and content of the play. Being subordinate to the scenic action, to the conception of the production, this solution acquired a decisive role in the realisation of the general conception.

p When a designer produces a flat on the theme of a given play the result is a picturesque two-dimensional solution, whereas the third dimension of space is absolutely essential in the theatre.

p The existing system of training stage designers is largely responsible for this. We have schools that turn out designers extremely proficient in stage machinery and the technical side of stage design. At the same time designers also come to the theatre from art colleges where the only difference between their course and those of other future painters is that they are required to take their subjects from plays. As a result, these colleges are turning out ordinary painters and not stage designers with an understanding of the special requirements of our art.

p We have already seen how the director’s solution involves determining the author’s view of life, the standpoint from which he observes the life reflected in the play, and determining the extent to which all the ingredients of the production should be formalised, the degree of convention to be adopted.

p This degree of convention, this means of presenting life, must also be determined by the designer when he embarks on his search for a solution. No machines can tell him what will be more suitable-an illusionistic set, with black indicating endless space and various fragments suggesting the necessary atmosphere, or an ordinary box set, whether he will need to employ the methods of graphic art or easel painting. Only his ability to feel the author and the work, on the one hand, and his artistic, visual sense, on the other, will enable him to determine the degree and quality of convention and formalisation appropriate to the work in question. This extremely important sphere of work on a production will only be successful provided the degree of convention appropriate to the existence of the actors on the stage is found.

p The correspondence between man and ambiance involves creating an intimate, indissoluble relationship between the two. It is not, I repeat, not a question of making the material environment a background for the action. Very often a fine production is marred by the fact that the actor is completely unrelated to his material environment, so that truth on the stage is impossible.

p The Sovremennik Theatre did a production of Five Evenings in which everything on the stage was painted light blue, a solution that 255 bore absolutely no relation to the intrinsic life of the play or even of this particular production. Not a single detail of the scenery was appropriate to the authentic life the director and the actors had created. It was simply an attempt to be “modern” at all costs. It is significant that when the theatre revived this production they rejected these formalised sets in favour of a box set.

p On the other hand, imagine Hamlet produced by Peter Brook with illusionistic scenery. All truth would be lost and it would ring false, for its effect derives from the highly formalised ambiance in which the action takes place.

p Whatever it is that accounts for the correspondence between actor and ambiance-sometimes the designer succeeds in expressing the author better than the director or the actors-the important thing is to achieve genuine fusion between the actor and the material environment.

p I tend to regard “complete” sketches which have their own independent artistic value as a danger for the director, since it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make them an element in the general solution. I am not suggesting that the sketches should have no intrinsic artistic merit, for it would be absurd to expect the designer not to give full expression to his conception, but I do feel that all the ingredients of a production, including the design, should be in a process of development and not “ready-made”.

p V. V. Dmitriyev was a superb painter, but his sketches were simply a point of departure for the creative process during which his designs underwent changes and alterations as he came to understand the artistic structure of the work and all its details better. Dmitriyev never regarded his sketches as blueprints that must be strictly adhered to.

p Dmitriyev’s design for The Three Sisters, the combination of conventional leg drops and naturalistic birch trees with extremely authentic falling leaves created just the right atmosphere for the play. The sets were by no means illusionistic. They were more conventional than those in the first Art Theatre production of the play. But they represented a perfect correspondence between the actor and the material environment, an ideal solution of the plastic image as part of the artistic solution of the production as a whole.

p When speaking of the degree of convention, it must be borne in mind that absolutely everything in the scenery plays an important rolcthe felicitous plastic image, individual details, the nature of the materials used-and also that one and the same detail produces an entirely different effect, acquiring a different quality, in every individual case. The mud, damp earth and clay that became synonymous with naturalism in the Art Theatre production of The Power of Darkness many years ago, represented genuine realism in Tallin’s sets for Deep Re- 256 tonnaissance, producing the degree of authenticity necessary for this production, as did the use of unpainted, unworked wood.

p Properties and materials are not inherently formal or naturalistic. The same chair can be used as a symbol, an authentic detail, or an unnoticeable but essential element of the set. The important thing is to link the environment and the properties with the play, on the one hand, and the actors, on the other. At the junction, like a traffic- controller, stands the director, whose task is to achieve a counterpoint from the various elements of the production and subdue them to one idea, one solution.

p The scenery plays an enormous part in creating the scenic atmosphere. But here, too, it is essential to understand exactly what this involves, for the designer usually endeavours to create a “unison” embodiment of the atmosphere.

p I remember seeing a production of West Side Story in England where a love scene took place on an attic staircase with washing hanging nearby, not exactly a poetic setting-and yet the scene, far from suffering from this solution, acquired a special poignancy and expressiveness.

p The kind of solution where all the expressive means are in unison, as it were, is rather more suitable for ballet than for the dramatic theatre. It is far more difficult to create an atmosphere by a combination of various, often contrasting, elements, but it is worth the effort for the achievement of a genuinely artistic result.

p In creating the decorative side of a production we must remember that it is necessary to arouse the imagination of the audience. We should offer to the imagination something that will stimulate it in the right direction for a particular play and a particular scene.

p It seems to me that the way our work is organised, whereby the designer embarks on his job before rehearsals have begun, is not always conducive to the creation of a correct plastic and artistic image. Only when the details as well as the general solution have become clear can the appropriate setting be determined accurately and the designer assigned the necessary tasks.

p The designer should not be assigned his task by the director: he should be there in the melting-pot of rehearsals in order to be able to create the setting which will enable the actor to express himself to the fullest extent.

p At the initial stage of work on Unequal Battle at the Gorky Theatre, we felt that the play required an illusionistic setting, loaded with genre details, and only when we had achieved the final solution did we realise our mistake. Thus overloaded with authentic real-life details, our production was going to be earth-bound and practically 257 devoid of poetry and didacticism. We realised this, and so did the designer, but unfortunately too late, for the sets had already been completed.

p An attempt at a systematic, logical account of the various stages of collaboration between the director, myself, and the designer, A. F. Bosulayev, on The Optimistic Tragedy would probably run roughly as follows.

p Vishnevsky’s The Optimistic Tragedy is an impassionated account by a participant in the civil war of how the Party organised and rallied the masses for the struggle against the Whiteguards and the interventionist forces and forged the defensive might of the young Soviet Republic.

p The Optimistic Tragedy is an epic, a forward-looking epic, directed from the past to the present in the name of the future.

p For the people of today, “for our descendants, our future, for which, you remember, we once longed on ships”, the author tells the story of a naval regiment which “followed its road to the end”.

p The regiment’s road, the gradual transformation of a motley anarchist band into a powerful, disciplined unit of the regular Red Army of the young Soviet state comprises the essence of the through action of the play. We pursued this idea further....

p The regiment’s road was to be the leitmotif of the plastic-decorative solution of the production. The regiment’s road in absolutely everything-the road of ideological reorientation under the influence of the Commissar, the Party’s envoy, the road of battles and feats of arms from Kronstadt to the streets of Petrograd, across the expanses of the Ukraine to the Taurian steppes where the Commissar meets her end, the road from the confined, stuffy cabins of warships to the unrestricted freedom of open native fields, the regiment’s road reflected in changes in the sailors’ clothing from the colourful anarchist masquerade to the austere military uniforms, torn to shreds in battle by the end of the last scene, the road of courage and daring, and the road of immortality.

p Thus the “inner” course of the play gave birth to the appropriate dynamic solution of the production as inexorable advance.

p For a road implies movement. And in The Optimistic Tragedy it is the uninterrupted march of the sailors-both outward, physical ( Kronstadt-thc Ukrainc-Tauria) and inward, ideological (from anarchy to discipline).

p Thus, the primary element of the designer’s solution was a “road”- curving round the scenic area.

p This constructional solution was strictly logical and justified and at the same time provided a complete vivid, almost symbolic visual statement, expressing the essence of the ideas and events of the play.

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p Vishnevsky called his play a tragedy. Let us take a look at his stage directions, full of highly emotive imagery. Thus, at the beginning: “A scorching, cloudless day. Its radiance is unbearable for the northerner’s eyes. The whole surface of the land is shining. The regiment is marching along an ancient road. The brightness is increased by the fact that the regiment is dressed in white. It comes down to stand like a vast choir facing the audience”. Or again: “An anxious, uneasy silence. Hardly discernible horizon. Storm clouds”. And, finally, at the end of the play: “Rhythms of the regiment! They sound as a call to battle, powerful and insistent, admitting no hesitation, a naked rending burst and jubilant six-gun salvoes flying over the plains, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Everything is alive. Dust shines in the morning sunlight. A countless number of living creatures. Everywhere there is the movement, throb, hum and bustle of inexhaustible life. Delight wells up in the breast at the sight of a world that has given birth to people who spit in the face of the old lie of fear of death. The arteries pulse. Like the flow of mighty rivers bathed in light, like the overwhelming, aweinspiring forces of nature, terrifying in their growth, raw, coarse, colossal sounds are heard, purged of all mclody-thc roar of cataclysms and the torrents of life”.

p Vishnevsky insistently and methodically repeats the same motive— “A scorching, cloudless day”, “Hardly discernible horizon. Storm clouds”, “Dust shines in the morning sunlight”, “Their eyes reflect the sun”.

p The cosmic scale of the stage directions, and the whole image structure of the work-everything is calculated to evoke a clear, vivid, precise artistic association-the sky as a grandiose background to the action of the tragedy.

p This suggested to Bosulayev the second element of his solution-the horizon, changing throughout the scenic action, the sky now fathomless blue with fluffy white clouds, now with menacing storm clouds tinged blood-red from the light of fires, now leaden-grey and close to the ground, now bright with the blinding radiance of a sunny day.

p In the finale, the two elements, the road and the sky, were combined in the magnificent image of the Milky Way, the boundless star- spangled heavens spread above the captive sailors as a symbol of their road to immortality.

p Naturally the genre nature of the play, its sweep and the entire emotive image structure, dictated a conventionalised solution, free of realistic details, in order to focus the audience’s attention on the actors and bring out the characters to the fullest extent.

p However, closer analysis of the dramatic structure of the work, its language and stylistic features, revealed that it was really an organic 259 compound of two genres. On the one hand, there was the heroic-epic layer, most fully expressed in the elevated style of the Narrators and seme of Vishnevsky’s stage directions (quoted above). On the other hand, the play abounds in authentic period details of naval life in those days, expressed in the almost slangy speech of some of the characters (especially Siply and the leader of the anarchist reinforcements) and to be found scattered throughout the play in the form of extremely neat turns of speech and spicy sailor’s humour.

p The third basic element of the designer’s solution arose from collation of these two genre layers. This third element was combination of a conventionalised solution of the general scenic area with authentic details accurately characterising the scene of action and sparingly inscribed on the basic formalised background.

p Such details were: the machine-gun cart in the Commissar’s camp scene; the gaudy carpet and cushions with kissing doves, clearly “ requisitioned” from the local inhabitants, in Vozhak’s camp, the polished-up samovar where a strange brew was made of moonshine and expensive wines “acquired” somewhere, in the same scene; the telegraph poles of the temporary telephone line stretching into the distance; the great stone mass of ancient ruins, overgrown with moss and blackened with age, where the group of sailors under the Commissar fought a fierce battle in encirclement; the mirage-like silhouettes of proud poolars and Ukrainian peasant cottages arising amid spurting fire during the night battle, the familiar Admiralty spire rising into the grey Petrograd sky and the lion with its paw on a cast iron cannonball in the scene where the naval regiment leaves for the front.

p The principle of combining a formalised stage area with authentic details-whether weapons, costumes or various other theatrical accessories required in the course of the action-became the basis of the decorative-plastic solution of the production.

p Another important question to be solved in the course of co- operation between the designer and the director was that of how to embody in the concrete visual form of plastic imagery the “relay of generations” theme that is such an essential aspect of the work, how to give scenic embodiment to the appeal “from the past to the present in the name of the future”.

p Once more the answer was suggested by Vishnevsky’s stage directions, in accordance with the ideological objectives we had set ourselves, in the spirit of the elements of the solution which the designer had already found-the road, the sky and the combination of conventional organisation of the stage area with absolutely authentic details.

p At the very beginning of the play Vishnevsky refers to the sailors of the regiment who “followed their road to the end” as “a vast choir”, 260 “dressed in white”. At the end he says “The sailors stand their nerves and strength taut and alert-full of courage. Their eyes reflect the sun. The gold names on the ships glitter”.

p It was the collation of these two passages from the stage directions that produced the “full circle” solution of the beginning and the end, the prologue and the epilogue of the tragedy.

p In the prologue the sailors stand in perfect order all dressed in white like a symbol of a dream of a bright, happy future, with the red banner of proletarian revolution fluttering above them. This compact mass on the road curving round and upwards, with a boundless blue sky with fluffy white clouds in the background, is an image of the past in the present. These people imagined the present as cloudless, radiant happiness, and they fought for this dream without sparing themselves and died for it, washing with their blood the sacred banner of revolution now fluttering above them. The Narrators address the auditorium, the present, in their name, in the name of the legions of nameless warriors who lay down their lives during the civil war.

p In the epilogue, when the Commissar dies, the sailors, their clothing seared by the flames of heroic battle, pay homage to her in exactly the same mise-en-scene as in the prologue-on the same road curving round and upwards, against the same fathomless azure sky, beneath the same blood-red banner. The Commissar’s dying words “Keep up the good reputation of the navy” sound as an appeal to posterity, to us, the people of today, to keep pure and undefiled the revolutionary cause for which our fathers and grandfathers gave their lives.

p A. F. Bosulayev embodied all these elements in his sets. The road became the main element of the permanent set, built on the revolving stage. By turning the stage and showing it from different angles with the odd concrete detail precisely indicating the scene of action, we made the spiral of the road serve now as the lower deck of the warship, now as part of the seafront from which the regiment sets out on its long journey from Kronstadt to Tauria, now as a dusty country trail in the wide-open spaces of the Ukraine, by the side of which stood the miserable hovel where the Commissar had her headquarters, now as an ancient burial mound somewhere in the Taurian steppes surmounted by a Scythian stone statue standing as it had stood for over two thousand years.

p For the sky, we had a cyclorama onto which different “skies” were projected from the gridiron as required, according to the tempo/rhythm and emotional tone of the scene in progress.

p The fact that the play is simply divided into three acts in which the .action flows on uninterruptedly except for the occasional Narrators’ monologues and protracted, emotional stage directions which are too 261 general to provide an indication of the scene of action meant that a great deal of work had to be done to divide the play into scenes and episodes and determine the exact scene of action in each case on the basis of the actual content. Moreover, the stage area had to be organised in such a way as to provide some permanent place for the Narrators so that scene changes could be carried out smoothly while they were addressing the audience. Our solution was to give the Narrators the forestage and the orchestra pit with narrow “aprons” specially thrown across it, with steps leading down to the auditorium. For the major scene changes the curtain was brought down on the permanent set.

p The production owed a great deal to Bosulayev’s bold, original ideas and his ability to organise the scenic area, his flair for technical inventions and genuine artistic talent.

p For our production of The Ocean we invited designer S. S. Mandel to come and work for us, on what was an extremely difficult task. My requirements were as follows. No ships or ships’ cabins, houses or streets on the stage. A solution must be found which would ensure unbroken action, since the slightest interruptions would spoil the rhythm of the play. The most important scenes being those in which the characters think, it was necessary to find ways of bringing them as close as possible to the audience. The theatre could not be expected to build ships on the stage and even if it could Stein’s play does not require them, for it is not only about the navy. Illusionistic sets would tie the play down to the navy. Besides which they tend to be bulky and unwieldy. Cabins on naval vessels are low and confined.

p Designer: But we have the right to alter and tamper with the real dimensions of a cabin. After all, this is the stage.

p Director: Yes, but there is a special charm in a small cramped cabin. A conventionalised theatrical cabin will be false, just as peasant hovels in opera tend to be false, big enough to contain a two-storey house.

p Designer: A cabin can be small, as in life, or big, as in the theatre. What is needed in The Ocean?

p Director: Both at the same time. I and the actors must not be cramped, while the audience must see a small cabin as in life.

p Designer: How can we combine the two?

p Director: I suggest we depict the cabin instead of building it: not by painting or projecting it, but by having a photograph, a real photograph of the scene of action.

p Designer: That’s an interesting idea. We could have the photograph depict not the whole cabin or room, but only a part.

p Director: That’s right. And depict it from whatever angle we require. Just the ceiling for example. Have you noticed that one of the 262 major differences between a cabin and an ordinary room is the ceiling?

p Thus, in conversations with the designer, in the designer’s studio, in arguments and experiments, the conception of the stage design for The Ocean was born. We reached agreement on the general principles of the solution fairly quickly. These were laconicism and rejection of naturalistic authenticity and illusionistic effects. All the time the designer, director M. Rekhels and myself were strongly tempted to suggest naturalistic details such as falling snow, waves and so on. We even introduced fines for every suggestion calculated to produce a spectacular or picturesque visual effect.

p In view of the need to focus attention on the characters and their complicated relationships we were compelled to reduce the scenic area. This we did by having two pairs of leg drops, sailcloth stretched over metal frames, which just about halved the width of the stage. These tapering sail-leg drops served to focus the audience’s attention on the action proceeding in the remaining scenic area. The designer and I worked together, sorting through photographs of cabins and rooms, ships and piers, choosing suitable ones, cutting them, and deciding on their position and size. Some of the photographs were blown up to eight or ten metres in length, others to three or four.

p For Masha’s room at Kilometre Eight we chose a photograph of an enormous lampshade, for the pier, a photograph of a lifeboat being lowered from an enormous ship. For Zub’s cabin we used two photographs, one of warship’s gun-tower (upstage right) and the other of a corner of the stateroom (downstage centre). For the street scene we simply had a photograph of a large cloud. All the photographs were hanging free against a black background, a rhythmic extension of the tapering leg drops.

p The black-and-white photographs of different shape and size indicated the scene of action in an authentic and at the same time conventional manner. On the one hand, what can be more authentic than a photograph? On the other hand, what could be more conventional than a flat black-and-white photograph suspended between sail-leg drops.

p The photographs depicted everything, and furniture placed below or in front of them made the stage big and small at the same time. The problem of furniture was solved, but there still remained the problem of ensuring unbroken action. How should the scene changes be done? Well, the photographs could be raised and lowered, and better still, one could be raised and another lowered simultaneously. But what about the furniture? To close the curtain or darken the stage would mean interrupting the action. Was there not some way of changing the furniture without lowering the lights or having property people 263 coming on, without the actors leaving the stage? Something like an escalator in the Underground?

p This apparently insoluble problem gave the whole company most interesting food for thought. One thing was clear: it could not be done using the old familiar stage machinery. A new piece of machinery, something like a conveyer belt, was needed. So the designer and the theatre’s engineer got to work and produced just what we needed-a two by fifteen metre conveyer belt, on which the furniture could be placed and transported to the centre of the stage together with the actors, “carrying off” the preceding scene simultaneously. We simply had the lights lowered slightly and subdued music playing during these rapid changes. This conveyer, placed immediately behind the curtain and stretching the whole width of the stage, apart from ensuring effortless transposition from one scene to another keeping the action flowing uninterruptedly, brought the actors as close as possible to the audience, forcing them to act “close-up” as it were.

p Since the photographs depicted the fountains in the gardens of the Peterhof Palace, cabins, rooms, and numerous other scenes of action, we needed to reduce the furniture to a minimum. Thus, we had only a bunk and a chair in Chasovnikov’s cabin, a table and two armchairs in Zub’s cabin, a beer and mineral water stand in the park and so on.

We are not always sufficiently bold or consistent in realising our conceptions. In The Idiot we chose to base the stage design on the principle of fragmentation, but during work with the designer I had riot the courage to take this principle to its logical conclusion, to a more laconic and conventionalised approach. As a result, the production was somewhat overloaded with superfluous representational details which inclined it towards that “illusionistic realism” that ruled the stage in the Soviet theatre for so many years, where directors and designers strove to achieve outward verisimilitude rather than visualimaginative expression of the idea to the extent and quality of conventionality a work required. Only in our second, revised version of the production did we manage to “unload” the stage as far as possible, leaving only those items necessary to reveal the idea and basic conflict to the fullest extent. Realism is not illustration and representation of real life, but the expression in terms of images of the idea the work was written to put across. Illustration is the greatest enemy of imagery.