Georg Fuchs, dans « Die Révolution des Theaters », qui date

de 1909, n'est pas moins ennemi de l'illusion. Sa devise est :

« Rethéâtralisons le théâtre ». Comment faire apparaître des per-
sonnages de la fiction dont le poète a tracé l'image en traits
essentiels, accentués, grossis ? Il faut suggérer ce qu'on n'arrive-
rait jamais à représenter convenablement. 11 faut choisir ce qui
est caractéristique. Les peintres, de leur côté, ne devront pas
chercher à « donner l'illusion de la profondeur, à rendre les trois
dimensions; ils s'attacheront au problèmes des lignes et des
plans. » Georg Fuchs préconise la scène en relief au lieu de
la scène en profondeur, l'acteur étant naturellement tenté de
s'approcher de la rampe, obligeant ainsi le metteur en scène
de combler l'espace derrière lui, de détails inutiles ou « de figu-
rants qui s'ennuient, au détriment de l'unité d'impression. »

Deviza lui Georg Fuchs, în Revoluția teatrului, era „să reteatralizăm teatrul” să apelăm la
marcajul sugestiei dacă altfel nu putem reprezenta trăsăturile din scriitură ale unui personaj.
Trebuie să alegem ceea ce este carcteristic. Fuchs proiectează scena în relief în locul scenei în
profunzime, actorul fiind tentat în mod natural „să iasă la rampă”obligând în acest fel
regizorul să umple spațiul din spatele lui cu elemente inutile de decor sau cu artiști din
figurație.

Georg Fuchs in Die Revolution des Theaters (1909) was the first to advocate a re-
theatricalization of theatre (retheatraliser le theatre; Retheatralisierung des Theaters) and he
insisted on considering theatre as a specific art form. His aim was to identify clear criteria by
which theatre may be distinguished from other art forms. It also interprets theatricality as the
sum total of materials or sign systems used in a theatrical performance beyond the literary text
of the drama which define the theatrical performance as such: movements, voice, sounds,
music, light, colour, and so on. Nikolai Evreinov's formulation in his article Apologija
teatral'nost(3) (1908; Apologia of Theatricality) embraces a broad concept of theatre which
defines theatricality outside the frame and scope of theatre as an art form or even theatre as a
social institution. In order to be able to construct a precise and comprehensive definition,
Evreinov explored highly diverse disciplines such as sociology, ethology, history of criminal
justice, political and cultural history and psychology. His aim was to reveal the workings and
basic function of theatricality in each of these fields and in this respect, he might be regarded
as a precursor to today's scholars of cultural studies. Evreinov's efforts led him to define
theatricality as a pre-aesthetic instinct. Although this definition appears too broad and too
general to allow any useful application - just as Fuchs' definition seems too narrow - it must
be emphasized that Evreinov was the first to recognize and pose the problem of how, in what
respect, and to what extent the concept of theatre can be identified and applied as a cultural
model beyond a purely metaphorical use of the term.
First of all, then, Fuchs’s famous “retheatricalization of the theatre” joined in a current refrain
of artistic liberation, especially from the bounds of literature. Indeed, the very name of the
Munich Artists’ Theatre proclaims the specific art of the theatre.
Second, the “deep stage” of naturalism, “overburdened” withthree-dimensional reality, was to
collapse for an overtly unnatural use of the pic-torial plane. Rather than “lost in the
unfathomable depths of an opera stage,”voices and figures would emerge in a relief that Fuchs
boasts could fully satisfy“even foreigners.”
Third, and against “the literary theorists [who] separated stage and auditorium,” it was not on
stage but “in the audience that the dramatic work of art is actually born.”
If the theatre, in Fuchs’s ur-narrative, arose from these two experiential elements being
“assembled in one place,” then “the drama [was] possible without word or tone, without
scenery or costume, simplyas rhythmic movement of the human body” in space.
To make his case – apart from literalizing a theory of relief sculpture – Fuchs was
entertainingly at pains to prove the pertinence of his shallow stage, not in pictorial terms, but
as arising from the very nature of acting, drama, and the aesthetic experience. Thus he deems
it “a discovery as old as the theatre itself” thatperformers “involuntarily press forward” at
important moments, an “instinctive[dramatic] urge” just “sweeping them down” to “assume
positions similar to the arrangement of figures in a relief. Apparently undaunted, Fuchs edited
his essays into a new volume that presented his workas a success –Revolution in the
Theatrewas widely read throughout Europe, notleast for its catchy French
motto,Rethéâtraliser le théâtre! – but still his Germanfailure would have been a blow.
According to an early friend’s testimony whenhe was tried for treason in 1923, Fuchs’s
boyhood dream had been of “the Ger-man people erecting a Festspielhaus for him and
performing his dramas.”

Hence one final sense of Fuchs’s retheatricalization: the “strange intoxication which
overcomes us when, as part of a crowd, we feel ourselves [--] united inan overwhelming
passion.” In its Nietzschean modality, the function of theatre would have been to satisfy this
“atavistic urge” for “intensification of life” or“primitive enchantment”: “The more this
excitement is intensified, the more specifically theatrical this art will be.”
The other modality was well kept by the executive committee of the Artists’ Theatre, but
plainly to be seen in Fuchs’sanonymous Kaiser, Culture, and Art
of 1904, with chapter titles such as “Raceand Rhythm,” or “Culture and the Position of
World Power.” In 1933, having served five years in prison for his separatist ambitions in the
1920s, Fuchs em-braced the affective theatricality of Nationalist Socialism. In 1944, the
Munich Artists’ Theatre was reduced to rubble in an Allied bombing raid.