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Abstract
Counsell offers a number of lucid connections between historical advancements and theatre practice, thoroughly
situating each individual within his (the book deals exclusively with male subjects until the final chapter) own
cultural milieu. With the exception of the book's final chapter, which doesn't pack the analytical punch or lead to
the cultural conclusions that the other six chapters do, the text offers a good, concise reading of this century's
theatre practice.
Full Text
The Theater of the Bauhaus. Edited by Walter Gropius and Arthur S. Wensinger. Translated by Arthur S.
Wensinger. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996; pp. 109. $14.95 paper.
Signs of Performance: An Introduction to TwentiethCentury Theatre. By Colin Counsell. New York: Routledge,
1996; pp. vii + 242. $59.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.
In 1961 Wesleyan University Press published a translation of Die Bühne im Bauhaus and offered the theatre
historian, critic, and practitioner an accessible English translation of the landmark study of Bauhaus stagecraft.
Sadly, this volume went out of print in 1995, but, thanks to the foresight of Bonnie Marranca and Gautam
Dasgupta, PAJ Books has reprinted the text in its original format, with only the exclusion of a foldout diagram
by MoholyNagy. Despite the loss of this unique drawing the PAJ publication is a valuable addition to theatre
scholarship. Although the name "Bauhaus" primarily connotes advances in architecture, this present volume
reinforces how much Bauhaus experimentation in stage design and theory prefigured the advances of twentieth
century theatre.
The text is a loose collection of essays by Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo MoholyNagy, and Farkas Molnár (who in an
illustrated essay shares his vision of a total theatre space), with an introduction by Bauhaus leader Walter
Gropius. While each essay develops specific ideas about theatre practice, it is the common themes of form and
space that tie this volume together. So dominant are these themes that scarcely a page goes by without
reference to one or the other. While this is a subject that has been explored by theatre visionaries like Adolphe
Appia, the stage work at the Bauhaus framed the question of spatial relationships in an extremely unique
manner. In Appia's world, humans may be the measure of all things, but at the Bauhaus the human form
relinquished its Appian centrality to be placed on equal footing with all elements of theatre: light, sound,
movement, form, color, and shape.
Emerging as the central focus of The Theater of the Bauhaus is the work of Oskar Schlemmer, whose concerns
about form and space became the subject of a variety of Bauhaus experiments. Schlemmer's essay "Man and
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Art Figure" offers a clear and concise description of his critical and practical vision. The essay begins with a
statement that perfectly summarizes the questions that are addressed in this text: "The history of the theatre is
the history of the transfiguration of the human form" (17). From this viewpoint Schlemmer analyzes the manner
in which traditional narrativebased theatre utilizes the human figure as purely representational; where the
formative artist (painter, sculptor, architect), by focusing on form and color, has the potential to use the human
figure as an abstract element. Schlemmer clearly illuminates these issues when he points out that the human
organism stands in the abstract space of the stage, each with its own laws of order, and asks: "Whose shall
prevail?" (22). Wrestling with this question, Schlemmer describes a number of performances and experiments,
most notably his "Triadic Ballet," each complete with photographs of performance or a photomontage depicting
the possible outcome.
MoholyNagy's 1925 essay "Theatre, Circus, Variety" picks up where Schlemmer leaves off. MoholyNagy
wrestles with similar issues of form and space, but develops his ideas in deference to his avantgarde
predecessors: dada, futurism, and surrealism. While MoholyNagy responds to the anarchy of these movements,
he is critical of the fact that the human figure dominated many of their performances. Like Schlemmer, he is
calling for a theatre that will unseat the human being as the central component to create a "new theatre of
totality" in which the performer will use the "spiritual and physical means at his disposal productively and from
his own initiative submit to the overall action process" (58).
Concluding the text is the transcript of a 1927 lecturedemonstration by Schlemmer that offers a brief history of
the Bauhaus stage workshop as well as where (at the time) it was headed. While his discussion of the theatre as
a spatial art offers little beyond the premise of his first essay, the practical applications of his theories, brought
forth in lucid description and linked to distinctive photographs, enable the reader to comprehend fully the scope
of Schlemmer's vision. What this volume clearly illuminates is how much of Bauhaus philosophy has been
absorbed into contemporary theatre practice, and how much still needs to be absorbed. As translator and co
editor Arthur Wensinger points out, the intent of this document was to capture and explore the very essence of
theatre, allowing "its potential as an experimental medium to be revealed in a new way" (105). Hopefully, the
accessibility of this new publication will allow another generation of theatre artists to continue to plumb this
Bauhausian essence for new revelations.
When using a semiotic frame in order to write an introduction to a specific era of theatre history, it is generally
best to incorporate a broader base of knowledge than that which is enclosed in one text, even if that text is Keir
Elam's The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. To be fair, Colin Counsell's Signs of Performance also draws on the
work of French semiotician Patrice Pavis, but only in a limited way, utilizing just one of Pavis's many articles on
theatre semiotics. Perhaps the most glaring problem is how the book, in acknowledging that we need "a theory
of signs" (9) in order to understand how "objects on the stage signify," takes too narrow a view of C. S. Peirce's
semiotic system. Counsell's comment that Peirce focused on "the relationship between the single image and its
sole referent" (10) completely misses the Peircean concept of the interpretant. Counsell opts for the streamlined
Saussurean model of the relationship between the signifier and the signified as a means of addressing the
twentiethcentury stage. While there is no overt problem with committing to such a model, his exclusion of
semioticians other than Pavis and Elam limits his analytical viewpoint.
But while sidestepping the issue of adequately introducing the subject of semiotics does little justice to the
field, it does allow Counsell to focus on another issue which is really the heart of the book. He commits to the
Saussurean model primarily because it details symbolic conventions established by communal agreement. This
view of signification opens his analysis up to the wealth of cultural information that surrounds theatre practice.
The point that Counsell continually makes is that culture is inescapable, even when faced with the manipulation
of signs by such theatre luminaries as Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, and Bertolt Brecht.
In order to reinforce this position the author places all theatrically generated signs under the umbrella concept:
"law of the text." Loosely defined as "the area of potential meaning," the law of the text is the logic "drawn from
the pool of social meanings" that governs audience interpretation (14). This idea allows Counsell to limit the play
of signification inherent in the work of people like Wilson, while helping to unify all theatrical elements into what
he refers to as a "Pavisian coherence."
Deferring to this overriding logic, Counsell's readings of his topics (which include Stanislavsky, Strasberg,
Beckett, and Performance Art in addition to the above mentioned directors) at times border on deconstruction.
By situating artists like Stanislavsky in the cultural atmosphere that surrounds their work, Counsell is able to
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make some wonderfully astute observations. Each chapter moves inexorably toward a semiotically informed
conclusion, challenging and building on assumptions about and critiques of each practitioner's work. Counsell is
able to conclude the chapter on Stanislavsky by stating that "Stanislavskian acting presents a particular
ideological construction of the human subject," while simultaneously informing us that "this is not 'constructed'
at all," eliminating "all signs of the stage's meaning making process" (45).
It is ironic, however, that in a book that seeks to illuminate the ideological underpinnings of canonical figures,
the author's own ideological position is left unexplored. While the use of theorists like Louis Althusser and
Raymond Williams seem to reveal his approach, Counsell shies away from acknowledging his own project, which
is ultimately a materialist reading of theatre practice. Each chapter, except for the final one on "Postmodernism
and Performance Art," concludes with an excellent historical frame that uses politics, sociology, major events,
and scientific developments to historicize the work of individual artists. This, rather than the semiotic
framework, is the strength of the book. Counsell offers a number of lucid connections between historical
advancements and theatre practice, thoroughly situating each individual within his (the book deals exclusively
with male subjects until the final chapter) own cultural milieu. Counsell furthers his own projects with this
approach by concluding every chapter with nearly the same observation that frames Brook's work: "By focusing
on the immaterial . . . Brook effectively obscures the real forces which determine life today," namely "material
power" (178).
Using the frame of power relations and ideology to encode meaning, Counsell is able to cull some perceptive
observations about theatre practice from his analysis. With the exception of the book's final chapter, which
doesn't pack the analytical punch or lead to the cultural conclusions that the other six chapters do, the text
offers a good, concise reading of this century's theatre practice. Unfortunately, there is a finite quality to the
semiotic analysis in that it tends to present a reading as the reading, a stance that undergraduates not familiar
with semiotic theory might find difficult to overcome. While Signs of Performance does not offer as
comprehensive an introduction to theatre semiotics as do other introductory volumes, it is ideal for providing the
undergraduate an accessible cultural analysis of major contributors to twentiethcentury performance.
AuthorAffiliation
Dean Wilcox
Texas Tech University
Copyright Johns Hopkins University Press Oct 1998
Details
Subject Books;
Human subjects;
Artists;
Architecture;
Essays;
Performance art
Company Bauhaus
Title The Theater of the Bauhaus/Signs of Performance: An
Introduction to TwentithCentury Theatre
Author Wilcox, Dean
Publication title Theatre Journal
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Volume 50
Issue 3
Supplement Special Issue: (II) Legitimate Theatres
Pages 405407
Number of pages 3
Publication year 1998
Publication date Oct 1998
Year 1998
Section Book Review
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Place of publication Baltimore
Country of publication United States
Publication subject Theater, Education
ISSN 01922882
Source type Scholarly Journals
Language of publication English
Document type Book ReviewComparative
Accession number 04112549
ProQuest document ID 216055128
Document URL http://Ezproxy.uncsa.edu/login?
url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/216055128?
accountid=12722
Copyright Copyright Johns Hopkins University Press Oct 1998
Last updated 20151107
Database ProQuest Central
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