Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1975 - 29

setting for The Burian ballet has fresh gaiety and child-like
juxtaposition of disproportionate elements, a fresh sense
of stage reality. Its spatial distribution of large, threedimensional objects backed by a curved row of vertical
stems with regularly attached artificial flowers precisely
captures the eccentric, artificial, spirit of the piece. The
spatial configuration of the architectural elements in
Three Musketeers has an interesting recurrence of forms
with sufficient variation to create an overall composition
with grace and inner tension.
With the arrival of Frantisek Trester (Figure 42)
(1 904-1 968) in the 1930's the Czech stage received a new
surge of creative energy and experienced a sign ificant
expansion of its limits. Troster was a sceneographer, not
only a designer: he consciously worked with the stage as a
stage, as an instrument, which is to say that he was aware
of its unique principles and laws of spatial scale and
proportion, of its potential for dramatic, theatrical
expression by means of movement (materially or by
means of lighting and projections), and most fundamentally by means of alterations of space. As he said in the late
1930's, "The foundation of stage action is space. The
stage itself is a hollow cube into which it is necessary to
place artificial space, dramatic space. "17

What shall we call today's form? Perhaps something like
hyperbolic realism. It steps before the spectators from the
darkness of absolute space. It relates to external reality but its
speech IS hyperbolic: it abbreviates and condenses. 18

What are the differences between Troster and Hofman?
The painter in Troster added a more poetic, lyrical quality
to the essentially architectonic nature of some of his
settings, whereas in Hofman the painter found expression
by more literal means: scene painting. Troster was,
moreover, of a later generation, and more attuned to the
possibilities of new technology: kinetics, new materials,
lighting, projections. Perhaps of even greater importance
was that Troster was so closely associated with a director
of Frejka's stamp: a sensitive, lyrically endowed, essentially lighter and more pliant sensibility than Hofman's
co-creator, K. H. Hilar. That may help to explain Trester's
higher degree of poetic expression, liveliness, at times
fancifulness. To return to fundamentals, both Troster and
Hofman a re marked by a great creative vital ity that seeks
expression in powerful stage images organized in space.
Like Hofman, Troster also consistently transgressed
"appropriate limits" to achieve artistic truth.
Writing in retrospect, Troster provided another
comment on "hyperbolic realism" as he defined his own
brand of stage space and suggested his relation to Hofman.
He speaks of his experience as an urban architect-engineer
in Algeria in the 1920's, where particular aspects of the
terrain led to architectural plans based on ramps and
podiums, with foundation and superstructure conceived as
interpenetrating bodies. Troster transferred some of these
concepts to the stage and says he regards them as his
contribution to the Czech theatre. He then adds,
I believe thai I embodied this objective as precisely as
Hofman. before me. organized architectonic matter and, by
editing it. arrived at his definitive form of functional stairs that
were capable of dramatic action. But between the "internal
function" of interpenetrating bodies on the one hand and a
staircase on the other is an essential difference. Hofman
organized matter according to an architectonic order on stage,
a classical order. He organized active matter within passive
space negated by darkness. On the other hand, my interpenetrallng ramps and slabe were essentially but a skin that
enclosed space. which was primary, active, and changeable, as
if it were made of elastic material. Into this "envelope" is
pressed dramatic space, and I would say that there muct be a
precise amount more of it than of actual space, a degree of
overpressure that this "envelope" can still contain but that
reveals itself in the composition and abnormal structure of the
"Envelope.' 19

Fig. 42. Frantisek Troster.

In many respects Troster was a successor to Hofman.
Like Hofman, Troster was trained as both painter and
architect, but of the two it was architecture that
dominated his vision of the stage. Like Hofman, Troster
devoted virtually all of his creative energy to theatre. Like
Hofman, too, Troster was at his core an expressionist, a
designer with a degree of creative fantasy that needed to
transform surface reality radically in order to express
itself. The director with whom Troster worked most
often, Jiri Frejka (a leader of the Czech avant-garde of the
1920's who subsequently joined the National Theatre),
referred to the special form of staging that he and Troster
evolved as "hyperbolic realism," and explained it this
way:

USITT

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

FALL.1975

A sampling of Troster's work in the 1930's illustrates
several variations of his sense of dramatic space.
An early production, shortly before he began work in
Prague, was I. Stodola's King Svatopluk (Figure 43),
Bratislava 1935. The model of the setting reveals a severe
economy of architectonic expression as well as an
effective use of lighting to enhance the concentrated
strength held by the plastic forms in space.
Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna (Figure 44), Prague
1935, was Troster's first production in Prague. The
intention was to capture the harsh reality of a troubled
land, not a picture postcard vision. The set was placed on
a turntable , which had a significant dramatic function
beyond merely mechanical movement to indicate a change
of scene. Instead, the movement was intended to bring the
actors closer to the audience, or distance them when that
was appropriate. It was an attempt to approximate the
film technique of a close-up. Troster expressed another
aspect of the production and thereby indicated his view of
stage reality:

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