In a manner of staging

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Josef Svoboda

Lanterna Magika, Expo 58 (Brussels), 1958 

Multi-genre Theatre Performance

Directors: Alfred Radok, Vladimir Svitacek, Jan Rohac Starring: Zdeňka Prochazkova, Sylva Danickova , Valentina Thielova Dancers: Jarmila Mansingrova, Naďa Blazzickova, Yvetta Peskova, Eva Poslusna, Miroslav Kura, Vlastimil Jilek and others Co-screenwriter: Milo Forman

Premiere: 9th of May, 1958, the World Exhibition EXPO ‘58, Brussels, Belgium Premiere in Czechoslovakia: 9th of May, 1959, Adria Palace, Prague

Laterna Magika was originally created for the World Exhibition EXPO ‘58 (also known as the Brussels World’s Fair - first major World’s Fair after World War II). The theatrical project combined dance, film and black light theatre. The official goal of the project was to introduce life in Czechoslovakia from the 1950s in an approachable and attractive way. The performance became a smash hit at the World Exhibition. Before the exhibition was over, 14 states had asked for the license to it, for at least a guest performance. The program consisted of several different parts, which helped to develop a relationship between the projected film and the live acting. 

In the first performance there were thirteen short scenes: Konference (Conference), Cimbalovy koncert (Cymbalo Concert), Tanecni intermezzo (Dance intermezzo), Inspirace (Inspiration), Žive sklo (Live glass), Praha (Prague), Symfonieta (Symphony), Československo (Czechoslovakia), Slovenske lidove pisne (Slovak Folk Songs), SĽUK - Slovensky ľudovy umelecky kolektiv (Slovak Artistic Folk Group), Deti (Children), Jan Amos Komensky (Jan Amos Komensky), and Finale (Finale). The program characterized life in Czechoslovakia with a focus on the nation’s unique qualities, and related to Czechoslovak history. To make the performance entertaining and educational at the same time, the informative parts were followed by the creative ones. The film was not merely projected but was mixed with action of the theatrical scene. Laterna Magika deserved all of its success at the World Exhibition.

Polyekran, 1958

10 min multimedia show, Pavillion of Czechoslovakia, Brussels, Belgium

Josef Svoboda devised this 10 minute show for the 1958 World Fair (Expo) in Brussels with Emil Radok. It was what we would now call a multimedia show or even a video installation because of it's simulaneous showing of multiple images on multiple screens with syncronised sound. The word is a compound word of the Greek poly (more) and the French ecran (screen).Allegedly 8 automated slide projectors and 7 filmprojectors where used to cover the screens of various sizes, and which were angled in various ways.It involved no actors thus it cannot be called theater, but it was a remarkable achievement in both technological terms and in terms of live entertainment as it was a completly new format.

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The exposition "One Day in Czechoslovakia" was designed by Jindřich Santar who cooperated with artists Jiří Trnka, Antonín Kybal, Stanislav Libenský and Jan Kotík. The team's artistic freedom, so rare in the hard-line communist regime of the 1950s, was ensured by the government committee for exhibitions chairman František Kahuda. He supported the famous Laterna Magika show, as well as Josef Svoboda's technically unique Polyekran. The Czechoslovak pavilion was visited by 6 million people and was officially awarded the best pavilion of the Expo 58.

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Josef Svoboda (1920-2002), Czech scenographer, was a precursor to on-stage use of leading techniques in lighting, electronics, image projection and scene mechanics, but always giving priority to artistic expression. He considered light as a fundamental element of scenography and invented a system of low-voltage footlights for the stage, called "Svoboda".

Trained in carpentry and interior architecture, he completed his first scenography in 1943 and in 1945 he was working in the Prague Opera house. In 1958 he collaborated with the producer Alfred Radok on the show Lanterna Magika, for which he developed the polyekran and won the grand prize and the Universal Exposition in Brussels. This show would give his name to the famous Prague theatre which he became artistic director of and which was integrated into the National Theatre in 1970.

Josef Svoboda created nearly 700 scenographies throughout the world and received several prizes and distinctions. His work synthesized art and the most advanced technologies and scientific research of his time. During his career, Svoboda introduced a number of technological innovations in lighting and stage kinetics and promoted the use of special materials and techniques. He ceaselessly worked on combining audiovisual technologies and theatre.

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Alexandra Exter

Salome, 1917

Costume design for Two Jews, Salome, 1917

Costume design for Three Slaves, Salome, 1917

Set design for opening scene

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Vladimir Tatlin

Zangezi, 1923

Vladimir Tatlin designed, directed and starred in a performance of Velimir Khlebnikov's play-poem Zangezi which uses the "trans-rational" language zaum, invented by the Russian Futurists. Zangezi premiered in 1923 at the GINCHuK Museum of Art and Culture in Petrograd – where, from 1928 on, Khlebnikov’s successors, the literary absurdists of the OBERIU group (a Russian acronym for ‘The Union of Real Art’), were active. The group’s leader Daniil Kharms developed a theory of the object connected to the idea of free will, writing: ‘Such an object “LEVITATES”.’ Tatlin illustrated Kharms’s absurdist fairytale First, Second (1928). 

Khlebnikov had died of malnutrition earlier in the year, and the performance was to be a memorial to Tatlin's favorite poet. To Khlebnikov's construction of words, where sound was the principle building element, Tatlin attempted to find a counterpart in tangible construction, built with a variety of materials in different surfaces and shapes. According to the artist's conception, certain combinations of colours and forms corresponded to certain sounds; light and costumes also played an important role in the production.

Zangezi was an isolated production among Tatlin's post revolutionary works, and curiously it was staged when Constructivism had already made inroads into the theater, thanks to the convergence of the ideals of such plasticians  as Popova, Stepanova, and Meyerhold.

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Kazimir Malevich

Victory over the Sun, 1913

The opera was performed in 1913 on a double bill with Mayakovsky's play Vladimir Mayakovsky. A Tragedy at Luna Park Theatre in St. Petersburg.

In 1913 Kazimir Malevich was asked to produce a series of costumes and set designs for the "first Cubo-Futurist opera," entitled Victory over the Sun. The music was by Mikhail Matiushin, and the main text was written by the poet Alexei Kruchenykh in the invented Futurist "transrational" language of zaum. This new language relied on neologisms, puns, and the free association of sounds and images that divested words of all predictable meaning, attempting to communicate the internal state of the speaker directly. Dissonant music combined with sound effects accompanied the actor's movement speech. There was also a prologue written by Velimir Khlebnikov.

Malevich's non-objective black-and-white sets made from cloth sheets painted with conical, spiral, and geometric forms were equally unconventional, as were his costumes - ingenious constructions of brightly coloured cardboard cylinders, cones, and cubes. In addition to reshaping the human figure, the costumes dictated specific movement patterns. The Futurist Strongmen, for example, could only flex their arms upward. 

Malevich had originally planned for a three-dimensional stage set, but the lack of resources on the part of the producing organisation forced him to use backdrops that he painted himself. In spite of this limitation, he achieved a three-dimensional, volumetric design through the distribution of freestanding geometric forms onstage and the use of mobile lighting. The poet Benedikt Livshits, who saw the production recalled:

Painterly stereometry was created within the confines of the scenic         box for the first time, and a strict system of volumes was established, one   that reduced the element of chance (which the movements of the human figure might have introduced) to a minimum. These figures were cut up by the blades of light and were deprived alternately of hands, legs, head, etc., because for Malevich, they were merely geometric bodies subject not only to disintegration into their component parts, but also to total dissolution in painterly space.

This description supports Malevich's belief, formed in accordance with futurist principles, that "all matter disintegrates into a large number of component parts which are fully independent."