[BA (Hons) Theatre Arts 2019-20]

Student Name: Flávia Ramos Dias

Student Number: M00661287

Academic Year: 2nd Year

Module Name and Number: THE2100 Theatre Arts 2

Module Tutor: Dr Antje Diedrich

Assignment brief / Essay question or topic:

2) How are design and visual elements conceived of and explored in the work

of Josef Svoboda.

I confirm that this essay/project is entirely my own work and that all
sources used in its preparation and writing are properly acknowledged.

Signature: Flávia Ramos Dias

Date: 19/04/2020

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This research is about the design and visual elements conceived of and

explored in the work of Josef Svoboda, using some plays that he was involved in as

an example and reference.

Josef Svoboda was born in Czech Republic on May 5, 1920. During his career

he worked for the Grand Opera and the National Theatre (1948), but where he

actually started to have more name was with his participation on Laterna Magika, a

theatre production where the actors perform and interact with film while on stage.

“Svoboda’s name is chiefly associated with a full-scale artistic, exploitation of

the latest mechanical, electronic and optional devices” (Burian, 1974, p.xix). His

stages are familiar with the use of sophisticated lighting and projection techniques,

making what we can call kinetic stages.

On this paper, firstly I’m going to develop and understand the concept and

meaning behind his work. Secondly, I’m going to analyse his design techniques,

mentioning his innovations on the area of scenography, following his work on

Laterna Magika to better represent his inventions applied to the theatre. I’m also

going to mention the three systems created by him (Polyekran, Polyvision and

Diapolyekran) also using the play Their Day by Josef Topol’s to explain the use of

Polyekran, the main technique. To conclude, I will mention his last project that wasn’t

finish and summarize his ideas and career.

The purpose of Svoboda’s stage kinetics is to form a three-dimensional,

transformable space, which is responsible for the representation of the psychic pulse

of the dramatic action, making the theatre space dynamic as it should be.

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To him, drama means responsiveness, change and movement, believing that

a set should always be capable of changing his form and adapt to the play.

Comparing it to the stream of life, everything is always changing and happening in

different places, making theatre unrealistic when having a scenery fixed through the

entire progression of the play: “I don’t want a static picture, but something that

evolves, that has movement […] a setting that is dynamic, capable of expressing

changing relationships, feelings, moods, perhaps only by lighting, during the course

of the action” (Svoboda, 1974, p. 27).

In order to accomplish this concept, all of the scenographic elements must be

flexible and adaptable enough to act in union with any of the others, either to

contrast or fuse with each other.

Although, Josef Svoboda seeks a scenographic effect that is suggestive, that

would prompt the audience imagination, believing that a scenery should not reveal

the essence of the play, but involve with it, working as a whole. To do this, he uses a

lot of instruments and materials, mastering them through the years, in order to follow

his point of view and beliefs.

Josef Svoboda’s work rely a lot on the experimentation and the technical. It’s

easy to appreciate the work that lies behind Laterna Magika or the related Polyekran,

but we can also see his beauty on artless productions such as The Sea Gull or The

Entertainer. For these plays to use big techniques or materials, it required patient,

precision and truly scientific work in advance.

With this being said, to reach big results, Svoboda needed to find a solution

for his space work in order to experiment his ideas. He used the National Theatre as

an experimental laboratory or workshop in order to have more support and

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effectiveness on his experiments, instead of doing it on a marginal, semi-amateur

studio, in this way he would have better equipment and qualified staff.

Another avenue of experiment would be exhibitions, due to the fact that they

provide larger budgets that the ones given to theatre productions. In this way the

ideas and materials that are approved before the public would have bigger chances

to be used on their productions, even though it might go off budget.

Before analysing Svoboda’s techniques and materials, it’s important to have in

mind that he always conceives this elements as instruments, which means that they

are not use as final products, but instead are ways to serve the play in order to find

it’s essence and as Otomar Krejca (a director that worked with Josef Svoboda for

over ten years) quotes: “…He does not use the stage to propagate a technicized

religion; his basic value is always the relation of man to man, the human equation…”

(1974, p. 26).

One of Svoboda’s most important scenography work is his use of low-voltage

unit, which he used it to light many of his productions. Since each light instrument

has its own transformer, it makes it more intense, “whiter” and more controllable than

the traditional units. These lights are set in an angle from high at the rear of the

stage aiming down towards the front and in this way, it crosses a great distance of

air creating the maximum effect of light-as-substance.

Film and slide projections are another biggest innovation of Svoboda’s work.

Although before he could accomplish this, he needed to perfect it, coming across

with problems such as how to project a clear image while providing enough light to

the actor or scenery in front of the projection screen. Through the years he though

that the solution was on increasing the intensity of the projected, but later on he

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realized that the answer was on the projection screen, its colour and reflectibility,

where he started developing special screens with maximum reflection and minimum

diffusion.

He used pneumatic mirrors, particularly in plays such as Insect Comedy and

the Brussels Hamlet. This consists on the reflective surfaces of the mirror to be

bonded to a flexible material that when remotely controlled the images seen by the

audience are radically reshaped.

One of the latest innovations that Svoboda wanted to use involves laser

beams and holograms, which means creating shapes or images completely

independent from screens that can be walked through. Unfortunately, this technique

was not perfected in time.

Svoboda always tried to use contemporary materials and techniques to keep

theatre demonstrative of the time he was on; he even says that “Stage technology

has always dragged behind the general technical advances of the time… we’re still

at the luna park and merry-go-round stage as far as I’m concerned.” (Svoboda,

1974, p. 25).

To illustrate this idea, I’m going to develop his concept mentioning two live

performances that he was apart on. These two performances are called Laterna

Magika and Polyekran.

These two plays are very important for Svoboda’s work because it was here

that he got the chance to put in practise some of his boldest scenographic

techniques, making it one of his most important projects of his career.

Laterna Magika was created for the Brussels Fair of 1958, this show is known

by its combination of panoramic film and projection with multi-exposure on several

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screen at once with live performance, including a diversity of styles, such as, actors,

dancers, singers and even musicians. One of the particulars aspects of Laterna

Magika is that everything works in perfect harmony, which means that de actors

can’t exist without the film and vice-versa.

This makes Laterna Magika, a true hybrid energy, like Marshall McLuhan

wrote “The hybrid or the meeting of two media is a moment of truth and revelation

from which new form is born… The moment of the meeting of media is a moment of

freedom and release from the ordinary trance and numbness imposed on them by

our senses.” (1964, p.55).

This play, consists of three films and two slide projections, these are played

on a moving screen having a devise that helps controlling and moving the projection.

When it comes to the stage space it has eight types of mobile screens with reflecting

surfaces which allows it to move, change or even disappear conforming the willing of

the show. The stage itself had a moving belt to accommodate virtual live action to

correspond with the film, it even had curtains that allowed to reshape the screens,

depending on what would suite the moment. All of this was boosted with a multi-

speaker stereophonic sound.

This makes Laterna Magika more intense and contrasting experience,

providing the density and dynamics of the world around us.

Even with its huge success, the show misses the most important part of a

theatre piece, the freedom of being on stage. With all the technology used and the

ensemble of the live and the virtual, it needed to be choreographed and adjust in

rehearsals always depending on the footage, losing the magic part of every night

performances.

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Polyekran is another contribution to the Brussels World’s Fair, the piece has

ten minutes and the whole project is pure projection form. The intention of this

project is to eliminate the perception of screen, involving the audience in a way that

they would think they are part of it. “Polyekran offers the possibility of free

composition, a free shaping and creation on several screens. Real objects and

people are projected, but the relationships among them are not realistic, but rather

super-realistic, perhaps surrealistic.” (Svoboda, 1974, p.81)

This production consists of eight screens suspended from different angles in

front of a black background. All of the screens have different sizes and shapes and

what give image to these screens are eight automatic slide projectors and seven film

projectors. The sound they use is stereophonic sound.

Within a year Polyekran became a principle and started to be a part of shows,

like Their Day by Josef Topol’s. On this play, they used this new principle and added

mobile screens that would appear or disappear, always depending on the pace of

the scenes (this technique came from Laterna Magika.).

Since the play presents a mosaic of city life, Polyekran seemed to be the right

solution, since Svoboda tries to avoid simultaneous scenarios, due the fact that it

needs to stay on stage even when it’s not being used and projection would fix the

problem easily.

On this show they used projection combined with mobile wagons to create a

pleasant kinetic scene. They would vary from wide range projection to small ones,

especially to give the perspective of travelling, caring alongside with the actor.

They would represent the inside with domestic elements, but this would be

distorted or fragmented to avoid naturalist elements. When comes to communicating

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points, we can use a scene to demonstrate how effective it is, for example, the scene

where a man is hit by a car, on stage the last steps of the man are followed with two

film projections, these two are in opposite directions and in full speed one of them

crashes with the other, meantime the man falls and with the help of sound its creates

the effect desired. It’s a perfect harmony.

Even though Polyekran is the most well known creation, he has also develop

other multimedia systems, like Polyvision, a spatial installation with three

dimensional objects being project on screens creating different audio-visual

compositions and the Diapolyekran system, it first appeared at the Montreal Expo

67, it has ten minutes and it’s call Creation of the World. The piece was about an

expression of the miracle of creation, and the mystery of evolution and civilization.

It consists in one hundred and twelve small independent rotation screens that

creates images, mosaics and pastiches, they are capable of flashing five images per

second and each cube was capable of sliding back and forward, a total of thirty

thousand slides were used.

The base technique used was montage which gives the piece a really big

range of visual effects, having in mind that an image can be a whole through all the

projectors or different small ones having their respective cube, creating in this way a

cubistic fashion or a surrealist collage.

What’s interesting about all of the three techniques is that all of them combine

separate elements that using our imagination creates a new sense of reality.

It’s important to also reflect on the final project that Josef Svoboda wanted to

concrete, in order to have a deepest insight to fully understand his perspective of

theatre that was ahead of his time.

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In order to fulfil and make justice to his design, Svoboda wanted to take the

theatre space to the next level, constructing a place where there wouldn’t be any

architectural division of stage space and auditorium space, facilitating him a space

where he could control and manipulated fully, calling it the “production space”. In this

way he would make fully justice to the play in question, adapting even the space to

its reality, not depending of any circumstance – “the concept of a psycho-plastic

space applied to the theatre as a whole.” (Burian, 1974, p.33).

Even with this in mind, Svoboda still respects the idea of a proscenium theatre

space, adapting his ideas to it, making it happily, because he knew that this method

still approaches today’s production sufficiently more than alternative choices,

creating a profoundly dilemma to him.

To conclude, Josef Svoboda provide a more emotive experience through his

greater technical sophistication, although the combination of film and stage can

relate to the work of Piscator, he took it further, making this idea more complex by

combining the actor and screened image.

“To a marked degree his career has been built on a series of inner, dialectical

tensions: the new and the old, the radical and the conservative, technical bravura

and poetic humanism.” (Burian, 1974, p.xx), he doesn’t commit to any single

production or design theory and respects the traditional forms and simple that limit

him, but always tries to overcome it and improve.

Josef Svoboda had won many awards including honorary doctorates from the

Royal College of Arts in London, Western Michigan University, United Institute for

Theatre Technology, the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Letters and the

Chevalier de la Legio Honneur in France, according to his official website.

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We can consider him an artist, a scientist and a professional theatre worker,

where his work outstands the theories and practical experiments of modern stage

design and production.

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Bibliography

(c) 2011 Martin Novák (http://www.u2cms.cz), T., 2020. Home | Josef Svoboda -

Scénograf A Architekt. [online] [TR#Josef Svoboda]. Available at:

<http://www.svoboda-scenograph.cz/en/> [Accessed 19 April 2020].

(c) 2011 Martin Novák (http://www.u2cms.cz), 2020)

Burian, J., 1974. The Scenography Of Josef Svoboda. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan

University Press.

McLuhan, M., 1964. Understanding Media. New York: Scarborough, Ont., p.55.

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