1. Adolphe Appia
Adolphe Appia (born 1 September 1862 in Geneva; died 29 February 1928 in Nyon), son of Red Cross co-founder Louis Appia, was a Swiss architect and theorist of stage lighting and décor.
Appia is best known for his many scenic designs for Wagner’s operas. He rejected painted two-dimensional sets for three-dimensional "living" sets because he believed that shade was as necessary as light to form a connection between the actor and the setting of the performance in time and space. Through the use of control of light intensity, colour and manipulation, Appia created a new perspective of scene design and stage lighting.
Directors and designers have both taken great inspiration from the work of Adolphe Appia, whose design theories and conceptualizations of Wagner’s opera’s have helped to shape modern perceptions of the relationship between the performance space and lighting. One of the reasons for the influence of Appia’s work and theories, is that he was working at time when electrical lighting was just evolving. Another is that he was a man of great vision who was able to conceptualize and philosophize about many of his practices and theories.
The central principle underpinning much of Appia’s work is that artistic unity is the primary function of the director and the designer. Appia maintained that two dimensional set painting and the performance dynamics it created, was the major cause of production disunity in his time. He advocated three elements as fundamental to creating a unified and effective mise en scene:
- Dynamic and three dimensional movements by actors
- Perpendicular scenery
- Using depth and the horizontal dynamics of the performance space
Appia saw light, space and the human body as malleable commodities which should be integrated to create a unified mise en scene. He advocated synchronicity of sound, light and movement in his productions of Wagner’s operas and he tried to integrate corps of actors with the rhythms and moods of the music. Ultimately however, Appia considered light as the primary element which fused together all aspects of a production and he consistently attempted to unify musical and movement elements of the text and score to the more mystical and symbolic aspects of light. He often tried to have actors, singers and dancers start with a strong symbolic gesture or movement and end with another strong symbolic pose or gesture. In his productions, light was ever changing, manipulated from moment to moment, from action to action. Ultimately, Appia sought to unify stage movement and the use of space, stage rhythm and the mise en scene.
Appia was one of the first designers to understand the potential of stage lighting to do more than merely illuminate actors and painted scenery. His ideas about the staging of "word-tone drama", together with his own stagings of Tristan und Isolde (Milan 1923) and parts of the Ring (Basle 1924-25) have influenced later stagings, especially those of the second half of the twentieth century.
For Appia and for his productions, the mise en scene and the totality or unity of the performance experience was primary and he believed that these elements drove movement and initiated action more than any thing else (Johnston 1972). Appia’s designs and theories went on to inspire many other theatre creators such as Edward Gordon Craig, Jacques Copeau and Wieland Wagner.
2. Edward Gordon Craig
Edward Gordon Craig (16 January 1872 – 29 July 1966), sometimes known as Gordon Craig, was an English modernist theatre practitioner; he worked as an actor, producer, director and scenic designer, as well as developing an influential body of theoretical writings. Craig was the son of revered actress Dame Ellen Terry. The illegitimate son of the architect Edward Godwin and actress Ellen Terry,[1] Craig was born Edward Godwin on 16 January 1872 in Railway Street, Stevenage, in Hertfordshire, England, and baptized at age 16 as Edward Henry Gordon. He took the surname Craig by deed poll at age 21.
Craig spent much of his childhood, from the age of 8 in 1889 to 1897, backstage at the Lyceum Theatre where his mother was the much-beloved leading lady to actor Sir Henry Irving. Craig later wrote an especially vivid, book-length tribute to the unique, haunting, autocratic charisma that was Henry Irving. Whether Irving's spectacularly successful relationship with Ellen Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much historical speculation. (Most of their correspondence was burned by her descendants). According to Michael Holroyd's book about Irving and Terry, A Strange Eventful History: "Years later, when Irving was dead, Marguerite Steen asked Ellen whether she really had been Irving's lover, and she promptly answered: 'Of course I was. We were terribly in love for a while.' But at earlier periods in her life, when there were more people around to be offended, she said contradictory things."
Whatever the nature of Terry's personal relationship with Irving, it never marred their work or, astonishingly, their reputation. Even before the Lyceum years, when Ellen Terry ran off with bohemian artist Godwin and bore him two illegitimate children, Teddy (Craig himself) and Edith 'Edy' Craig, Ellen's charm triumphed over Victorian disdain. She was somehow able to maintain an exalted position in the hearts of her Victorian audiences, regardless of how much and how often her behavior defied their strict moralities. Irresistible charm was her special gift, as well, perhaps, as her legacy to her son. It is nonetheless likely, even in the protective environment of the theatre, that Craig felt what Victorians thought of a child born out of wedlock.
In 1893 Craig married May Gibson, with whom he had four children: Rosemary, Robin, Peter and Philip. With his lover Elena Meo he had two children, Nelly (1904–1975) and Edward Carrick (1905–1998), art director of British motion pictures. With his lover, dancer Isadora Duncan, Craig had a daughter, Deirdre (1906–13), who drowned at the age of seven. Craig died in Venice in France in 1966 at the age of 94.
He worked as an actor in the company of Sir Henry Irving, but became more interested in art, learning to carve wood under the tutelage of James Pryde and William Nicholson. His acting career ended in 1897, when he went into theatrical design.
Craig's first productions, Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, Handel's opera Acis and Galatea - both inspired and conducted by his life-long friend Martin Shaw who founded the Purcell Operatic Society with him to produce them - and Ibsen's The Vikings were produced in London. The production of Dido and Aeneas was a considerable success and highly influential in reviving interest in the music of Purcell, then so little known that three copies of the Times review were delivered to the theatre, one addressed to Mr Shaw, one to Mr Craig ... and one to Mr Purcell. Craig had begun to develop his style. He concentrated on keeping the designs simple so as to set off the movements of the actors and of light, and introduced the idea of a "unified stage picture" that covered all the elements of design.
After finding little financial success in Britain, Craig set out for Germany in 1904. While there, he wrote one of his most famous works, the essay The Art of the Theater (later reprinted with the title On the Art of the Theatre). In 1908, Isadora Duncan introduced Craig to Constantin Stanislavsky, who invited him to direct their famous production of Hamlet with the Moscow Arts Theater, which opened in December 1911. After settling in Italy, Craig created a school of theatrical design with support from Lord Howard de Walden.
Craig was considered extremely difficult to work with and ultimately refused to direct or design any project over which he did not have complete artistic control. This led to his withdrawal from the practical theatre production. He received the OBE and in 1958 was made a Companion of Honour.
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Craig's 1908 design for Hamlet at Moscow Art Theatre, 1911-12
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