Adolphe Appia

	Portrait of Adolphe Appia

In the last decade of the 19th century, Adolphe Appia, working virtually in isolation, laid out both the theoretical and practical foundations for a fundamental and permanent change in theatrical art. Through his extensive commentary, detailed scenarios, and unprecedented designs - all inspired by his analysis of Wagnerian opera - Appia first provided a complete and devastating critique of the disastrous state of theatre practice, and then, with quite astonishing foresight, suggested the solutions which, in time and frequently at the hands of others, would re- establish it upon an entirely different basis.

In his revolutionary work, Die Musik und die Inscenierung (Music and the Art of the Theatre), Appia suggested that essentially music was the measure of all things. The score itself should dictate not only the duration of the performance, but also all movement and gestures of the actors, and by extension, the physical area itself, the scenic space in which the performance took place. Appia built upon this radical concept what became known as the "New Art" of the theatre. He called for three-dimensional scenery, for the use of creative form-revealing light (developing the concept of the "lighting plot"), and for settings, the overall conception of which would be expressive of the inner reality as art of works of musical drama. Through music all the arts of the theatre could be integrated into an hierarchically ordered, balanced, conceptually coherent, and uniquely expressive new form of art.

Appia demanded that the actor be set free from the mockery of flat painted settings, in order to practice a purified craft within a supportive and responsive setting. Light, symbolic colouring, and a dynamic sculptured space would be used to evoke for the first time atmosphere and psychological nuance, with all these expressive elements harmoniously correlated by the new theatrical artist, whom Appia termed the 'designer-director', whose work of art would be the production itself. The audience, benefiting in turn from such reforms, should no longer be thought of as mere passive spectators, for Appia believed that experiments along the lines he suggested could more fully involve them in the theatrical act in order to both experience and determine it more directly.

The second phase of Appia's creative career arose from his involvement with the system of eurhythmics devised by his fellow-countryman Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. This was designed to enhance performers' perception of musical nuance and sensitivity to musical rhythm and tempo through the responsive movement of their own bodies in space. In 1906 Appia encountered it for the first time and perceived at once that it provided the key to realising his earlier theoretical principle that the actor must be motivated by music and through his movement determine the nature of the scenic environment. He began to prepare for Dalcroze's use a series of designs, termed "rhythmic spaces", which were destined to revolutionise future scenic practice still further. These were essentially abstract arrangements of solid stairs, platforms, podia, and the like, whose rigidity, sharp lines and angles, and immobility, when confronted by the softness, subtlety, and movement of the body, would by opposition, take on a kind of borrowed life. Settings were no longer to be thought of as illustrations of fictive environments, but as particular spaces for a performance to take place, simultaneously themselves evoking the inner meaning of the drama.

Together with Dalcroze, Appia helped to plan and present a series of extraordinary demonstrations highlighting the potential of eurhythmics both for performance and design, at Dalcroze's institute in Hellerau, near Dresden in Germany. The proscenium arch was abolished and the lighting, operated from a central "organ", was carefully coordinated with the music and movement as well as the emotional flow of the performance. Attended by the leading theatrical artists of the day, the festivals at Hellerau in 1912 and 1913 caused astonishment and admiration and exercised a profound influence upon later scenic practice, as well as directly and indirectly upon the development of modem dance.

In the last decade of his life, Appia added to his earlier work even more radical ideas for the future evolution of what he now termed "living art". He realised that what he had begun as an analysis and critique of the state of the theatre must end in a fundamental attack on contemporary culture itself and, crucially, on the role which art was forced to play within it. People observed art passively and if it moved them at all it did so artificially, having lost its power to activate emotionally and spiritually an audience that could now only contemplate but no longer enter into it. It was necessary to return to the well-spring of all art, the living experience of the human body, and from there to express and share both the reality of oneself and simultaneously, one's communal relationship with the rest of society, from which one would no longer be isolated, but reintegrated into living contact. The theatre of the future would no longer confine itself to enacting stories, but would instead use in their purest form the primary expressive elements that Appia had identified earlier - light, movement, music, and space, all in the service of the human body - to create less "literary" and representational forms of art, analogous to abstract painting, sculpture, and indeed, music.

In his book L'Oeuvre d'art vivant (The Work of Living Art), a collection of essays, Appia detailed the social implications of this new collaborative art. These speculative treatments tend inevitably to be less concrete than his earlier writings but provide a programme and descriptions of many of the developments and expressions that have characterized theatrical art in the latter part of the 20th century. Appia himself was a shy and reclusive person, who despite the eminently practical basis of most of his ideas, found collaborative work extremely difficult and frustrating (early in his life he twice attempted suicide, in 1888 and 1890). His realised productions were very few as his radical ideas brought him into conflict with traditionalists and his contribution has been inadequately recognised. Appia was a pioneering genius who, arguably more than any other individual, may justly be termed not just the "prophet" but the "father" of the modem theatre.