One of the great advantages that performance mediums have over the plastic arts is their immediacy. The work exists in real time and consists of a direct energetic exchange between performer and audience. The immediacy of the performance experience is typically mirrored by a design style that has direct aesthetic resonance with the contemporary world. When dealing with classics, like the Greeks or Shakespeare, the visual style is often updated in such a way that there are two parallel stories occurring for the audience. There is the story of the dialogue and the story of the visual world. Handling contemporary works and classics are often quite clear. There is a middle ground, however, that can be nebulous and murky; the revival.
Revivals, as I am discussing them, are shows anywhere from about ten to a hundred years old. They are old enough that they have already had a successful life as a contemporary work but new enough that they land within, albeit near the edges of, contemporary aesthetics. Revivals are very common in the three major disciplines of dramatic performance; theater, dance and opera.
Last week I posted Antony Tudor’s notes on the design for Lilac Garden, a revival of which I lit several years ago. With that piece we had the dual job of remaining faithful to the spirit of the original and at the same time making the work visually accessible to a contemporary audience.
Finding the balance between the aesthetic spirit of the original and the contemporary eye can be quite difficult when reviving a work. We are ultimately concerned with creating relevant and challenging work for our audience and as such make decisions that at times run counter to how the work was originally presented. Were our interest merely to recreate the work exactly as it was originally seen it would fail dramatically in terms of creating an experience fully embodying the immediacy of now.
When I worked at San Francisco Opera we would run into this problem regularly. Pieces that had been sitting on shelves and in warehouses, literally for decades, would be dusted off and presented on stage. Sometimes the sheer force of history would be compelling like the Tosca which was a recreation of the original design that had opened up the Opera house in the 1930′s or the Traviata designed by John Conklin before his deconstructionist phase.
Many times the works would not stand up on their own and would need to be reconsidered. Colors might get updated from the greenish blues of the 1980′s to the cleaner blues used today. Heavy ambers, once quite compelling, would be exchanged for crisper warm tones. Intensities would be brought up to more accurately match an eye that is now used to brighter stages.
In each of these cases a balance must be struck between the design as it originally was and the production as it reads today. Similarly, these issues come in to play with new productions of older plays all the time. The South Pacific I am currently assisting on is one such example. The designs by Michael Yeargan and Don Holder at once contain the spirit of the show as it was written and pay homage to an older aesthetic viewpoint. At the same time their designs land firmly within the contemporary visual language we speak today.
This balance with the visual language is a significant contributor to the success of the show on Broadway. Creating a design that is not just a contemporary look backwards but rather a fusion of styles gives the piece its power and allows it to neither fall into the trap of museum curiosity nor pure commentary. Some aspects of the show which, given what we know about the world today, sound foolishly naive become accessible. The design at once frames the piece and gives the audience a way in to a different world. It is true to itself and is true to that historical world on its own terms.
This world into which the work gives us access is not the “world of the play” so often discussed by theater makers. It is the world in which the play was written. The visual style orients the audience towards the work in such a way that it can see through the gloss of time and access it as the deeply critical and risque work that it was when it opened.
Variations on this theme exist in all works that were created in a different time. Being sensitive to not only the work and text itself but the orientation of the audience to that work is what makes a design successful. We create the visual framing devices that allow the audience to see the work for what it is and give them access to a text that may land far afield of their own native experience. Our work as designers opens wide the doors through which an audience may directly engage with the energy of the performance. Our work constructs the conduit through which that energetic exchange exists.
Great post.
I think your earlier post about dance reconstruction is interesting in this context. In a pre-video era, you could have a dance formally notated and/or have it transferred directly from dancer to dancer – in much the same way that original paperwork and the associate or assistant from the original production can recreate the lighting. It’s the combination of the objective accuracy of the paperwork with the human input that makes this work. The original dancer and the original assistant were present at the creation, and understand (hopefully) the intent and goals of the original choreography / design.
The real question, at some point, becomes – why are we doing this? Is that 80 year old production at the Opera House artistically relevant anymore? Is it a historical/academic exercise rather than a living performance? I actually wonder how Conklin feels about remounts of his work, especially in cases where he is unable to participate in the remount.
I have also lately been wondering if modern lighting might actually be “better” (and I’m being intentionally vague there) than lighting from, say, pre-1976 (Chorus Line). And I ask this simply because our tools have gotten more supple. We can do more now. And while we often shouldn’t be do more, there are times where 300 computer controlled dimmers and 100 moving lights are going to create a richer experience than 60 2k lekos being controlled by 4 electricians. In a way, it’s like Renaissance painters (re)discovering perspective. Once perspective became a tool and not the point of the painting, suddenly we have a new richness and depth in their work. I know we talk about Appia and Craig, and Jones and Svobada and the new scenography, etc, etc, but really, doesn’t feel like the first 50 years of modern stage lighting was either washed out frontlight or stark dimly lit pools?
Dan,
That’s an interesting point. I think it gets at a good part of this issue. Certainly the greater control we have available to us now allows for richer, or at least more complex, compositions. There is a passage in McCandless’ A Method for Lighting the Stage in which he theorizes about the future of lighting wherein a single lamp could provide controlled light indoors comparable to the sun. In short, he is theorizing about the 4k or 10k HMI Fresnel. Seen in that light what he was doing was making the best out of the tools he had available to him. I think this is true of any designer.
Related to that is the shifting sophistication of the audience’s eye. We live in a visual world composed of short bursts of information, jump cuts from moment to moment and myriad other developments that simply did not exist 30, 50, or 100 years ago. More is possible not only in terms of technology, but more is possible in terms of aesthetic acceptance. The success, visually, of the film version of Chicago was made possible by the pioneering work in Moulin Rouge. The latter opened up certain aesthetic avenues in film that quite simply did not exist prior to it.
This all ties back into what you are saying when you talk about Renaissance painters and perspective. It is a curious development in art that as soon as something has been done once it becomes merely part of the potential palette for future artists. Innovation can only happen once. If we are truly concerned with moving work forwards artistically we must theorize beyond what is possible now and strive towards that invisible future. I’m not entirely sure what that is, but part of why I am so interested in history is that it gives me a foundation from which to move forwards.