Gordon Craig’s Dream Comes True

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 490, 20 October 1928, Page 22

Gordon Craig’s Dream Comes True

Genius to be Exploited in Presentation of “ Macbeth"

THE MAGIC OF SHAKESPEARE Gordon Craig, son of the late Dame Ellen Terry, is generally recognised throughout Europe as a leading theatrical scenographer. In fifty-six years dedicated entirely to the stage, he has been in the vanguard of the movement tending to create the “new theatre." Though some of his theories are too advanced to gain universal acceptance, his influence over European methods of stage production has been most pronounced. Yet it is America that has first given Gordon Craig’s genius a free hand, permitting him to carry out his novel scenic effects untrammeled by interference from the management or by financial considerations. George C. Tyler, who will produce Shakespeare’s "Macbeth” in New York in a couple of months’ time, has secured Gordon Craig’s collaboration and has given him carte blanche, sending the producer, Douglas Ross, over to Italy to work out all the details of staging together with Craig. Gordon Craig promises that Mr. Tyler’s production of “Macbeth” will be such as has never been seen before. Asked to give the principles which are guiding him in his production, he said: “The secret of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth,’ which is spiritual and even spiritualistic, is that the pivotal figures are supernatural beings. Macbeth and his lady are merely their instruments—just puppets. Though they are not always visible on the stage, Shakespeare made the witches and spirits the centre of his vast dreams. Far from being extraneous parts of the drama, they are the key of the whole proceedings.

Stage Managers’ Despair “It is by their magic, by the introduction of influences felt even when unseen, such as the three witches, impalpable as the shadow of a shadow, and for that reason the despair of all stage managers, as dominant forces, that Shakespeare achieves results which, though they cannot escape the intelligent reader, often escape the theatrical audience. “When, for instance Shakespeare wrote in ’Macbeth,' ‘Enter the ghost of Bauquo,’ he had not in mind merely the player dressed in a piece of gauze coming up through a trapdoor. For spirits in his plays are not the inventions of a pantomime manager, but are the lofty achievements of a lofty poet, and carry v.s to the clearest statements we can ever receive as to Shakespeare's thoughts about the stage.”

Gordon Craig has already completed the designs for many of the scenes. They aim to portray the psychology which he conceives the actors should express, rather than to be a mere true-to-life background for acting. “Lurking and hiding, dodging and entrenchment in hidden places is the psychology that accompanies murder,” said Gordon Craig, showing a design of a marvellous maze in blue and green cubes and squares. “It represents the_ palace precincts where Lady Macbeth wanders, communing in the ‘secret places of the heart.’ ” For the famous sleep-walking scene Gordon Craig has designed a marvellous staircase, spiraling round a central column. “It is a veritable extraverted vortex,” he explained. “It is a setting containing the essence of the psychology of Lady Macbeth at that moment.” Gets Close to His Ideal Explaining his general theories about the theatre, Gordon Craig said: “Scenes in themselves are merely designs. They are not dramatic. Only stage management can make them so. Nobody will look only at scenes, and I am careful to design only such scenes as are subservient to the actors. In every scene I have asked Douglas Ross what he wished to do. Then I tried one thing and another till I found what 1 hope may fit in with his conception. I hold the view that it is indispensable for a complete rendering of a work of art that an artistproducer be In control. Every actor should be selected by him, the rehearsals should be conducted by him, and the costumes be designed by him. The ideas of production should be his and these ideas should be clear, not a mere jumble of notions.

“The statement of my friend, Dr. Alexander Hevesi, that Shakespeare’s dramas are poetic creations and must be presented in the theatre as such, seems to me to be true, and doubly applicable to plays such as ‘Macbeth,’ permeated by the supernatural element. Yet nobody ever presents a drama of Shakespeare as a poetic creation.

“If you fail to touch its heart, the public resents the introduction of the supernatural. What might be described as an intense embarrassment, amounting almost to a panic, is often the sensation produced by the appearance of a ghost on the stage. Intense relief and a sense of surmounted shame accompanies its exit. But this is because disbelieving in them, we know nothing about the spirits. We think a bogie will do. Yet what gives ‘Macbeth’ its supreme mystery and terror, what raises it above a mere tragedy of blood and ambition, is just that supernatural element, dominating the action from first to last. We all must believe in this or we cannot accept the play at all. “If it. is the tone that makes music, it is the mood that makes the theatre. This has been realised in the new theatre movement in America; it has been realised in Germany and Russia, but so far it has failed to be realised in England.”