| | PAGE |
| Prefatory Note | [vii] |
| CHAPTER | | |
| I. | Beyond Realism | [3] |
| Some dull definitions. Realism of the flesh vs. Realism of the
spirit. In The Cherry Orchard Tchehoff and the Moscow Art
Theater reach reality. A mystic picture of life beyond our
Realism. | |
| II. | The Living Stage | [17] |
| The art that lies closest to life. Because its materials are living
men and women, it should not seek the illusion of reality. Its
object is to achieve the Form of life. | |
| III. | The Path of the Play | [27] |
| From Realism through Expressionism. The attempts of Ibsen,
Tchehoff, Wedekind, and Strindberg to reflect the Form of life.
The expressionist movement in the German theater; its violence,
morbidity and failure. Its arresting significance. Some
examples of its vitality. Expressionism and the unconscious
Through Form to beauty. | |
| IV. | Black Curtains | [40] |
| The place of Germany in the theater. Its pioneering past and
its natural virtues and failings. A beaten and bruised people
that still makes a fine audience. Berlin becomes Broadway-ized
and morbid. Economy breeds simplicity. A new day dawns on
a black-curtained stage. | |
| V. | The Twilight of the Machines | [54] |
| Relics of the past which was once the future. The abdication
of the designers, Stern and Roller. Reinhardt seeks a new
way out. Linnebach, apostle of the machine, turns apostate.
“Einfach” and “Podium” the catch-words. Stage machinery
sinks into its place. The designer replaces the mechanician. | |
| VI. | Light as Setting | [68] |
| From Appia’s theories of the ’nineties to the day of projected
scenery. Lamps of six thousand candle-power. Color comes
under control. The dome no longer a sky; a neutral boundary
in Jessner’s Othello, a void in Masse-Mensch, a wall to be
painted with light in a Stockholm ballet. Settings projected by
Linnebach and Hasait. Light as a dramatic motif. | |
| VII. | The German Actor | [81] |
| The effect of the war on the German players. The break-up
of Reinhardt’s exceptional company under the pressure of war
and the motion picture. The Festspiel brings them together
again. Ensemble persists in Vienna and Munich. The S. S.
Tenacity as played at the Burgtheater in Vienna and at the
Vieux-Colombier. The players of the Munich State theaters.
Teutonic vitality and intensity which often become violence. | |
| VIII. | New Acting for Old | [91] |
| Four styles of acting: Impersonation by wigs and spirit, as
practiced by the Moscow Art Theater. Impersonation by type-casting.
The exploitation of personality by great actors.
Presentational acting, and the expository performances of the
Vieux-Colombier. | |
| IX. | The Reinhardt Tradition | [106] |
| In the search for the director who can fuse the new acting
and the new play we come first upon Max Reinhardt. His past
and his present. His virtues and his faults. Powerful theatricalism
in the best sense possible in the old theater. His influence
and his followers. His future. | |
| X. | The Artist as Director | [118] |
| The advent of the artist in the theater, a functionary unknown
to Molière or Shakespeare. The designer as an originator of
directional ideas. The inevitable union of director and artist,
in the sceneryless theater of the future. | |
| XI. | A New Adventure in Direction | [130] |
| The methods of the director of the State Theater in Berlin.
The steps and levels upon which he moves his players in three-dimensional
compositions. How he creates effective pictures
and significant groupings in Richard III, Othello and Napoleon.
Distortion of natural action to make points. The
motionless actor. Arbitrary lighting. A. B. C. conceptions
and limited vision. | |
| XII. | Masse-Mensch—Mob-Man | [144] |
| Jürgen Fehling of the Volksbühne adds understanding to Jessner’s
freedom and vigor. A drama of industrial revolution
produced in abstract terms and made immensely moving.
Scenery almost disappears and a workmen’s hall becomes a
flight of steps surrounded by blackness. Arbitrary light and a
chorus that speaks as one. Audience, players and play pass
through the black purgatory of revolutionary Germany. | |
| XIII. | “The Theater of the Five Thousand” | [157] |
| Reinhardt’s Grosses Schauspielhaus, the gigantic compromise between
the Greek Theater, the circus and the realistic stage,
in which he made his last effort towards a new type of production.
The failures of the building architecturally. Its
virtues and its possibilities, which the withdrawal of Reinhardt
has left unrealized. | |
| XIV. | The Theater of the Three Hundred | [171] |
| Jacques Copeau’s Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris. The
naked stone stage with permanent setting which Copeau and
Jouvet created in their search for a playhouse that should
give the actor full freedom. Three productions: Les Frères
Karamazov, Le Paquebot Tenacity, Twelfth Night. The
quality of writer or expositor in Copeau’s performances. The
future of this theater. | |
| XV. | The Redoutensaal—A Playhouse of Permanence | [184] |
| The Redoutensaal of Marie Theresa converted by the Austrian
government into a theater without proscenium, machinery or
scenery. Audience and actors lit by crystal chandeliers and
surrounded by Gobelins and a permanent setting of baroque
architecture. Mozart and Reinhardt bring to it an old and a
new theatricalism. The principle applied to the stage and the
plays of to-day. | |
| XVI. | The Cirque Medrano | [198] |
| The little circus on Montmartre as a presage of a theater in
which the audience will surround the players and gain a new
relationship with the play. The attempts of Reinhardt and
Gémier at the circus-theater. Hamlet or Masse-Mensch in the
Medrano. | |
| XVII. | The Old Spirit—The New Theater | [213] |
| Seeking both the new theater and the old spirit, Reinhardt invades
the church. The Cuckoo Theater. Religion in the
terms of the theater a thing of vital and creative spirit in Greek
times and in the Middle Ages. Can the artist of the theater
bring it out of our material age? | |