Friday, July 12, 2013

Modernism and Acis and Galatea

In 1902 an extraordinary theatrical performance took place at the Great Queen Street Theatre in London. Spectators used to ubiquitous theatre footlights were confronted with a completely new lighting system that sought to explore new solutions of suggestiveness in light, shade and dark in the creation of mood. Footlights were eliminated and a whole system of projectors and spotlights replaced them.
This theatrical innovation, made possible by the advancement of electricity, was no mere exhibition of technological conquest. It was a part of a precise conception whose aim was to create unity in scenery, costume and movement on the stage. Spectators were not only astonished by new lighting techniques, they were also confronted by that which was lit, an entirely revolutionary method of conceptualizing theatre where actions, words, colour and rhythm combine in dynamic but unified dramatic form.
The work that was represented was Handel's Acis and Galatea, the product of a creative partnership between Martin Shaw, conductor and founder of the Purcell Operatic Society, and Edward Gordon Craig, known to his peers and posterity as a modernist theatre artist and responsible for the technical and aesthetic innovations that still today characterize contemporary theatre. 


Acis and Galatea was produced and directed by Craig in 1902, with Martin Shaw, who directed the music. This scarce souvenir program for opening night, March 10th, contains excerpts and music from the play and is illustrated with plates of Craig’s costuming. 

Edward Gordon Craig, the son of the revered actress Dame Ellen Terry, spent his childhood in the theatre. He developed a dislike for the fussiness and sentimentality of the Victorian stage and was early on influenced by the French Symbolist and Post-Impressionist movements. Like Gauguin, his aesthetic choices were guided by two constants: the tendency to simplification and the aversion to naturalism in favour of techniques that led to the suggestion of mood and feeling.


Craig's costume design for Galatea

Craig used the synesthetic Symbolist approach in his mis en scène, and each sparsely used detail had to reflect, evoke or enhance the creative concept. In Acis and Galatea he chose the geometric form of the square that he used to permeate all the elements of the production. The actors were thus called to abandon all movements and postures that recalled curves and elaborate a language of movement that was made up of straight lines and 90° angles, with clear references to the world of puppets. The costumes, visionary and at least twenty years ahead of their time, combined square patterns with long strips that were also used in the sets, where at the slightest of movement, they swayed together creating automatically a unity between set and costume.


Image, from an original at Eton College Archives: 1902 – 
the chorus of Acis and Galatea. 
Craig's designs were decades ahead of their time, 
and look more 1920s than 1900s.


The 1902 programme book shows that the work was divided into four scenes; the original first act was scene 1, while the second was divided into three parts. Entitled 'The White Tent', 'The Shadow', 'The Giant', and 'The Grey Tent', the symmetry is intentional. The two tents represent Galatea's feelings, white in the first scene when she is happy and in love, and grey in the last scene when she is mourning for the death of her Acis. The Shadow represents the approach of the monster Polyphemus and The Giant, Polyphemus' arrival. The drama critic Max Beerbohm who attended the performance wrote of it:

. ...the simplicity of that pale, one-coloured background, rising sheer beyond our range of vision, uninterrupted by 'flies' or ceiling; the fluttering grace of those many-ribanded costumes, so simple yet so various - every one of them a true invention; the cunning distribution and commingling of the figures and colours; the cunning adjustment of shadows over light, making of Polyphemus in 'Acis and Galatea' a real giant - the one and only real and impressive giant ever seen on any stage ...


and further:

... you feel the actual sensation of a pastoral scene, of country joy, of the spring and the open air, as no trickle of water in a trough, no sheaves of real corn among painted tress, no imitation of a flushed sky on canvas, could trick you into feeling it. 



Sadly, Craig and Shaw's Acis and Galatea did not achieve the hoped-for run of performances. They were unable to raise the necessary funds to keep the show open, and it closed after only six evenings. 



Craig went on to design and direct productions whose hallmarks can still be identified in contemporary prose and opera theatre. 


The final scene from Craig's production of Hamlet 

Moscow Art Theatre 1911-12

Lucian's Dialogue of the Gods: Doris and Galatea

The amusing and witty repartee between Galatea and a girlfriend. Further considerations for her relationship with Polyphemus.


DIALOGUES OF THE SEA GODS, TRANSLATED BY H. W. & F. G. FOWLER

1. DORIS AND GALATEA

DORIS
A handsome lover, Galatea, this Sicilian shepherd who they say is so mad for you!
GALATEA
Don't be sarcastic, Doris; he is Poseidon's son, after all.
DORIS
Well, and if he were Zeus's, and still such a wild shaggy creature, with only one eye (there is nothing uglier than to have only one eye), do you think his birth would improve his beauty?
GALATEA
Shagginess and wildness, as you call them, are not ugly in a man; and his eye looks very well in the middle of his forehead, and sees just as well as if it were two.
DORIS
Why, my dear, from your raptures about him one would think it was you that were in love, not he.
GALATEA
Oh no, I am not in love; but it is too bad, your all running him down as you do. It is my belief you are jealous, Do you remember? we were playing on the shore at the foot of Etna, where the long strip of beach comes between the mountain and the sea; he was feeding his sheep, and spied us from above; yes, but he never so much as glanced at the rest of you; I was the pretty one; he was all eyes—eye, I mean—for me. That is what makes you spiteful, because it showed I was better than you, good enough to be loved, while you were taken no notice of.
DORIS
Hoity-toity! jealous indeed! because a one-eyed shepherd thinks you pretty! Why, what could he see in you but your white skin? and he only cared for that because it reminded him of cheese and milk; he thinks everything pretty that is like them. If you want to know any more than that about your looks, sit on a rock when it is calm, and lean over the water; just a bit of white skin, that is all; and who cares for that, if it is not picked out with some red?
GALATEA
Well, if I am all white, I have got a lover of some sort; there is not a shepherd or a sailor or a boatman to care for any of you. Besides, Polyphemus is very musical.
DORIS
Take care, dear; we heard him singing the other day when he serenaded you. Heavens! one would have taken him for an ass braying. And his lyre! what a thing! A stag's skull, with its horns for the uprights; he put a bar across, and fastened on the strings without any tuning-pegs! then came the performance, all harsh and out of tune; he shouted something himself, and the lyre played something else, and the love ditty sent us into fits of laughter. Why, Echo, chatterbox that she is, would not answer him; she was ashamed to be caught mimicking such a rough ridiculous song. Oh, and the pet that your beau brought you in his arms!—a bear cub nearly as shaggy as himself. Now then, Galatea, do you still think we envy you your lover?
GALATEA
Well, Doris, only show us your own; no doubt he is much handsomer, and sings and plays far better.
DORIS
Oh, I have not got one; I do not set up to be lovely. But one like the Cyclops—faugh, he might be one of his own goats!—he eats raw meat, they say, and feeds on travellers—one like him, dear, you may keep; I wish you nothing worse than to return his love.