Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013 - 77

book

review

Stage Designers in Early Twentieth-Century America
Artists, Activists, Cultural Critics
By Christin Essin; New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. 264
pp. Cloth, $85.
Reviewed by Andrea Bilkey
Christin Essin, a theatre historian at Vanderbilt University, has
been a storyteller, lighting designer, and theatre technician,
so it comes as no surprise that her Stage Designers in Early
Twentieth-Century America: Artists, Activists, Cultural Critics contains a balance of scholarly formality, practical understanding, and a softer, more wandering storyteller's cadence.
She looks at prominent practitioners and theorists of the New
Stagecraft movement under the rubrics of what she calls the
designer as Author, Cultural Critic, Activist, Entrepreneur, and
Global Cartographer. This is a lofty goal, as design is often seen
as naturally encompassing many (or all) of these. After all, can
a design exist without being considered a form of authorship?
Does any scenographic design exist that does not make a comment on culture in some capacity? And how many designers
today also work as entrepreneurs? In her introduction, Essin
writes, "This project starts from an assumption that designers are legitimate artists whose visual and interpretative contributions complete a theatrical production, and from there
it examines their increasingly expansive cultural influence."
She emphasizes "a historical understanding of designers as respected theatre professionals and influential citizen-artists during years between 1912 and 1964."
In her first chapter, The Designer as Author, Essin analyzes the writings of the New Stagecraft designers of the early
twentieth century "as an ancillary production activity, not only
connected to but also separate from stage artistry." She argues
that it was through their publications that the designers "gained
legitimacy as modern theatre artists." At first glance, this may
appear to mean that designers are not considered legitimate
theatre artists until they theorize about their work in books and
magazines for the general public. But Essin has a more expansive
understanding of the many ways in which design can be published: from text to renderings to production photos, from realized designs to unrealized proposals, and even paper dolls.
In The Designer as Cultural Critic, she argues that "to recognize designers as respected artistic collaborators with a wide
range of representational strategies is also to recognize their
capacity for embedding cultural commentary within a production." She illustrates her point with comparisons among David Belasco's famous setting for Act 3 of The Governor's Lady
(1912), a detailed reproduction of a Childs restaurant; Robert
Edmund Jones's groundbreaking New Stagecraft setting for The
Man Who Married a Dumb Wife (1915); Norman Bel Geddes's

Dead End (1935); Howard Bay's OneThird of a Nation (1938); Mordecai Gorelik's All My Sons (1947); and Jo Mielziner's
indelible Death of a Salesman (1949).
In The Designer as Activist, Essin observes that "modern design, as enacted by
many theatre artists during the early twentieth century, not only visually interpreted
dramatic texts and critiqued cultural landscapes but also promoted concrete social
agendas." Her case studies examine the
ways in which designers engaged with politically driven organizations - theatre companies, trade unions,
and government agencies: Robert Edmund Jones with the Paterson Strike Pageant; Aline Bernstein, the first female designer
in the USAA, at the Neighborhood Playhouse and with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; and Howard Bay's
work on Power (1937), a Federal Theatre Project for the Living
Newspaper unit.

Entrepreneur	 and	 Global	 Cartographer
Essin defines scenographic entrepreneurship as "a process of
dramaturgical interpretation, visual representation, and material practices employed by designers; but rather than supporting
the actions and objectives of social movements and organizations, its practices benefit the interests of corporations and
commercial industries." Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes are the two designers who are analyzed under this rubric.
She focuses on Urban's work with Florenz Ziegfeld's annual
Follies productions and his expansion into department stores
and hotels. For Bel Geddes, she observes how his design for Max
Reinhardt's The Miracle (1924) caught the attention of industry
leaders and paved the way for Bel Geddes to take industrial design by storm, culminating in his Futurama exhibition for General Motors at the 1939 World's Fair.
Essin makes her greatest leap when she takes the terms
"cartographer" and "cartography" to define design "as a type of
orienting activity, one that simultaneously conjures notions of territory and the territorialized, touring and the tourist, belonging
and the desire to belong." Maps, she notes, are "as discriminating in their interpretations as other art objects." The map artist
chooses color and observation points; omits some elements in favor of others; adapts, modifies, or exaggerates other components
to further his agenda. "Scenographic cartography," she says, "assumes the stage as a canvas for orienting and territorializing; the
scenographic cartographer, by extension, affects an imperial influence by means of the arrangement of space and representation

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