Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 93
Shakespeare’s plays can be staged in any number of ways, from the realistic to the
metaphoric. The latter technique became world-famous when Sally Jacobs designed
Peter Brook’s 1970 production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (above)
for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company. Employing a plain white set with rectangular
angles and doors, clothing from all eras and of all styles, actors who were hoisted on
cables when they fell asleep, and a circus-like atmosphere overall, the play proved an
extraordinary success and toured throughout the world for nearly a decade, changing
the way classical plays were seen almost everywhere. In Sean Graham’s 2015 London
production of Othello, (below) however, produced by the Frantic Assembly, director Sean
Graham and designer Laura Hopkins had Desdemona (Kirsty Oswald, sitting) and Emilia
(Leila Crerar, standing) discuss their views about men and their “peevish jealousies”
wearing modern clothes while they conversed in a shabby and totally realistic toilet
room of the present day. Above: © Royal Shakespeare Company; Below: © Geraint Lewis
architectural theory of theatre—that it
should represent life exactly as it is normally
lived, but with one wall removed so the
audience could look in upon it.
Metaphoric scenic design, in contrast,
tends to be more conceptual than literal,
more kinetic than stable, more theatrical
than photographic. The use of scenic metaphor
is hardly new. In the 4,500-year-old
Abydos Passion Play, two maces represent
Set’s testicles and a red stone indicates the
Eye of Horus. In his prologue to Henry V,
Shakespeare apologizes for the “unworthy
scaffold” of his stage and begs his audience
to use their “imaginary forces” to complete
his scenic illusion—which during that play
probably included a door opening under
the stage balcony where the audience could
imagine the English army storming “unto
the breach” of a castle wall in France. These
are scenic “abstractions” in the most elemental
sense: they present reality by a sign—or
simply an invitation to imagine—rather than
by trompe l’oeil (“eye-deceiving”) realism.
The modern sense of metaphoric scenery
began with the theoretical (and occasionally
practical) works of designers
Adolphe Appia (1862–1928) and Edward
Gordon Craig (1872–1966), both of whom
urged the fluid use of space, form, and
light as the fundamental principles of dramatic
design. Today, aided by technological
advances in automated computer-controlled
lighting and scene-shifting, the shift toward
a more conceptual, abstract, and kinetic
scenography has inspired impressive stylizations
around the world. Shafts and walls
of light, transparent backdrops, sculptural
configurations, wall-size photo and video
projections, mirrored and burlapped surfaces,
“floating” walls and rising staircases,
and “found” or “surreal” environments
have all become major elements of scenic
media over the past fifty years. Sometimes
these scenic designs go far beyond the
stage itself. Christopher Barecca, the set
designer for the 2014 Broadway play Rocky
the Musical, had the climactic final scene
occur on a boxing ring that floated into the
audience—and that invited spectators to
climb on board to be ringside onlookers.