Bauhaus Theatre

 

Der Gelbe Klang (The Yellow Sound) - Spectra Ensemble

The Bauhaus began under utopian Expressionist auspices and so, naturally, their theatre was grounded in the Expressionist style and values of the time. Lothar Schreyer came from Der Sturm circle of Herwarth Walden. Schreyer was Director of the Sturmbühne in 1918. From 1911 to 1918 it was the Deutsches Schauspielhaus and from 1919 to 1921 the Kampfbühne. Schreyer’s view of the purpose of theatre was pretty much the same as Kandinsky’s on art: it should evoke sympathetic spiritual vibrations in the audience through expression of the artist’s inner spiritual necessity. The arts are synthesized but without compromise to the individual components. This aesthetic is in keeping with the Bauhaus idea of embracing the arts and crafts under the guidance of architecture. But although the Bauhaus is utopian in concept the architect and leader Walter Gropius is not impractical enough to pretend that it fully embraces literature or music. In the theatre it could use them more genuinely in its mix of arts aspiring to a semi-religious experience. Although it must be said that Expressionist theatre tends to emphasise the visual and abstract forms, like dance, where words play a reduced role to sound and vision eg. The Yellow Sound. The priorities of Bauhaus theatre are the solutions for co-ordinating space, bodies and movement, forms, light, colour and sound into a primarily spiritual aspiration as being a show for the gods (or at least the slightly mesmerized students).

Schlemmer leans towards the formal problems, in accordance with the emerging values of the Bauhaus, but still works firmly in an Expressionist aesthetic. He was invited to the Bauhaus as a painter and sculptor though he had produced modern dance in Stuttgart.  The reduced role of the actor and of words in the Bauhaus and Expressionist theatre can be seen to be vaguely analogous to the development of abstraction in painting. Character, plot and dialogue  are abandoned in the same way as figurative and historical or narrative content for the more formal and spiritual values of pure shape, colour and movement. Also depth and space are created in the theatre by the play of coloured lights on the human form rather than by scenic and illusionistic backdrops of interiors or landscapes. The other element of abstraction is in the treatment of the human form. Schlemmer’s paintings and sculptures (and the  course he taught which he entitled Man) relate directly to the stage both in style and in the common problem of placing a human-type form in spatial relation to other forms and environment.  He would treat the human figure as an abstract element in the solution of painterly problems which lead to stylized mechanical puppet-like figures. In fact puppet and shadow theatre enjoyed a revival in early 20^th Century Germany because it represented a break from the slavish dependence on natural appearance. The idea of a theatre of marionettes was current, for example Gordon Craig said, ‘The actor must go and in his place comes the inanimate figure – the Ûber-Marionette’ taking up Heinrich von Kleists’s earlier 1810 essay Ûber das Marionetten theater and Frank Wedekind;s plays in which characters speak, move and behave in a jerky, mechanical way. This fused some ideas of Nietzsche in a part-formal, part-material ballet mechanique such as the work of Kurt Schmidt and Schlemmer’s Figural Cabinet.

 

Chronology

1910                     Ûber das Marionetten theater – Heinrich von Kleist published.

1812                     The Birth of Tragedy – Friedrich Nietzsche published.

1895                     La Mise en scene du drame Wagnerien – Adolphe Appia published.

 1907                    Composition of Oskar Kokoschka’s Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen.

1909                     Composition of Wassily Kandinsky’s Der gelbe Klang, Schwarzweiss and Der grüne Klang.

1910                     Kokoschka’s Mörde, Hoffnung der Frauen, published in Der Sturm April 1914.

1911-18               Lothar Schreyer Dramaturg of the Deutsches Schauspielhuas.

1912                     Ûber das Geistige in der kunst and Der Blauae Reiter including Kandinsky’s Uber Buhnenkomposition and Der gelbe Klang published.

1917                     First full production of Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen.

Picasso’s ‘cubist‘ figures for the Ballet Russes‘ Parade.

1918                     Schreyer becomes Director of the Sturmbühne.

1919                     Program of the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar published in April.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Weine.

1919-21               Schreyer is Director of the Kampfbühne.

1920-29               Oskar Schlemmer taught at the Bauhas.

1921                     Foundation of the Bauhaus Stage Workshop under Schreyer.

1922                     Die Bauhausbbühne published.

First performance of Schlemmer’s Figural Cabinet at a Bauhaus party.

First performance of Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet at the Landestheater, Stuttgart, in September.

1922-33               Kandinsky taught at the Bauhaus.

1923                     Schreyer’s resignation and Schlemmer’s appointment. Bauhaus week in August included the Figural Cabinet at the Jena Municipal Theatre, the Triadic Ballet at the National Theatre in Weimar and Kurt Schmidt’s Mechanical Ballet at the Jena Municipal Theatre.

1923-28               Laszlo Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus.

1924                     Schlemmer’s Meta or Pantomime of Scenes.

Schmidt’s The Adventures of the Little Hunchback.

Alexander Schawinsky’s Circus.

1925                     First performance of Schlemmer’s Treppenwitz.

Die Bühne im Bauhaus published das Volume 4 of the Bauhausbücher including Mensch und Kunstggur by Schlemmer; Theater, Zirkus, Varieté by Moholy-Nagy; U-Theater by Farkas Molnár. Molnár’s design for U-Theater. Joost Schmidt’s design for a mechanical stage. Andreas Weininger’s design for a Spherical Theatre. Private publication of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack’s Reflected Light Compositions.

1925-27               Schlemmer’s Space Dance.

1926                     Stage Workshop and Experimental Stage built into new building at Dessau.

First version of Schlemmer’s Musical Clown.

1926-27               Schlemmer’s Dance of Gestures.

1927                     Walter Gropius’ design of Total Theatre for Erwin Pisscator.

Schlemmer’s Dance of Hoops, Dance of Slats, Equilibristics. Xanti Schawinsky’s Olga-Olga.

1928                     Kandinsky’s adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition at the Friedrich Theatre in April.

Bauhaus stage at the Second German Congress of Dance in Essen in June.

1928->                 Moholy-Nagy’s stage designs for Piscator and for the State Opera.

1929                     Bauhaus Stage Tour including Berlin Volksbühne, Breslau Stadttheater, Frankfurt on Main Schauspielhaus, Stuttgart Landestheater and Basel Stadttheater. Performance included Dance in Space, Dance of Forms, Dance of Gestures, Dance of the Stage Wings, Box Play, Dance of Slats, Dane in Metal, Dance with Glass, Dance of Hoops, The Wives’ Dance, Company of Masks, House Py and Three Against One.

                              Schlemmer left to accept a professorship at Breslau Academy. His position at the Stage Workshop was left vacant and despite some students attempt at operating a Junge Bühne am Bauhaus the Workshop collapsed.

 Ade Annabel copyright 1980