Opera Bhutan: 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.