The Frenchman François Delsarte laid stress on a connection between mental attitude and physical posture and discovered that one’s emotional state is communicated through one’s physical appearance. Eventually Delsarte codified his observations in a chart of gestures, which was used as a guide for expression and characterization by many amateur theatre companies in the middle years of the 20th century. The further elaborated discipline of reflexology, which seeks to analyze mind–body interaction, was developed by a variety of philosophers and psychologists and was very influential in the early years of the Soviet Union (see below Developments in Russia and the Soviet Union).

Another theorist of movement, the American-born dancer Isadora Duncan, was the daughter of a disciple of Delsarte, and reflexology was at the heart of Duncan’s dancing. It is not surprising that, in addition to Dalcroze’s eurythmics, Duncan should have inspired the development of educational dance. Reflexology is also the root from which spring the contemporary areas of drama therapy and the use of games and improvisation in actor training.

Duncan rejected the narrow and inhibiting classicism of the Russian ballet and returned to the Greeks for inspiration. Her dances were realizations of “soul-states,” which she regarded as emanating from the solar plexus. By using her feelings and physical responses to the music as the impulse for movement, she removed dance from the domain of the highly trained ballet dancer and demonstrated its wider potential.

Duncan’s work was important to those searching for answers to the problems posed for the actor by non-Naturalist theatre, since it showed a way to gain direct access to deep feelings without resorting to psychological analysis. Unfortunately, though, Duncan offered no systematic prescription for accomplishing this. Duncan herself was a sufficiently disciplined artist to impress Edward Gordon Craig as a solo performer. What her approach lacked, however, was a disciplined framework by which other performers could be trained and an extension of the movement vocabulary that might widen the range of theatrical purposes to which it could be put.

Development of stage equipment

From a technical point of view, the harnessing of electric power exerted a greater influence on stage design and production techniques than any other single invention. Stage lighting, as opposed to mere stage illumination, became raised to the status of an art form and revolutionized stage decoration, stage design, and stage form in that order. For the first time since the theatre moved indoors during the Renaissance, adequate and safe illumination became possible. But beyond mere function and safety there was inherent in the medium a flexibility and subtlety that has allowed it to become an integral part of scenic effect and to heighten visual expression for artistic purposes.

Beyond the development of stage lighting and the theories and techniques pioneered by Appia and Craig, electricity provided the solution to many of the problems that were arising with respect to scene changing. The demand for rapid changes of cumbersome naturalistic sets coincided with demands for a dematerialized stage that could flow smoothly from one symbolic vision to another. In addition, those seeking to “retheatricalize the theatre” wanted an open stage on which scene changes could be accomplished simply and rapidly. New inventions and instrumentation made practical many of the theoretician’s ideas, and these were adapted by designers, directors, and stage engineers on both sides of the Atlantic, with the greatest centre of innovation being Germany.

In 1896 Karl Lautenschläger introduced a revolving stage at the Residenz Theater in Munich. Elevator stages permitted new settings to be assembled below stage and then lifted to the height of the stage as the existing setting was withdrawn to the rear and dropped to below-stage level. Slip stages allowed large trucks to be stored in the wings or rear stage and then slid into view. New systems for flying were developed. Hydraulic stages made it possible to raise sections of the stage, tilt them or even rock them to simulate, for example, the motion of a ship. All of these mechanisms required larger backstage facilities, higher flying towers, greater depth and width of stages, and increased understage space.

German theatres began as early as 1890 to incorporate mechanized orchestra pit apron lifts, which provided a means for altering the point of contact between stage and auditorium (actor and spectator). Confrontations between actor and audience were the prime concern of Georg Fuchs, who founded the Künstler Theatre in Munich in 1907. He held that, in order to be relevant, the theatre must reject the picture-frame stage and the Italianate auditorium. He proposed an indoor amphitheatre in which, on a projecting stage, the action could be thrown forward into the audience space. According to Fuchs, the stage designer should not try to produce an illusion of depth since depth is part of the theatre architecture and cannot be added by scenery. Fuchs’s view was the culmination of the search for three-dimensionality that had passed through five essential stages since the 18th century. At first, an illusion of depth was achieved by painting perspective scenery on canvas; then the ground plan of the set was rearranged to envelop the actor with the set. The third phase was the introduction of objects for the actor to touch. With Appia and Craig there came the realization that an actor’s movement manifests itself in contrast to inanimate objects, such as platforms and other masses. Fuchs introduced the final phase joining the playing space to the area in which the audience is situated. In Fuchs’s theatre, designed by Max Littman, the acting area could be extended forward by covering the orchestra pit, and the size of the stage opening could be changed by adjusting the inner proscenium, which had a door at stage level and a balcony above. The floor of the stage was divided into sections, each of which was mounted on an elevator so that it could easily become a platform. Four cycloramas, surrounding the stage, could be changed electrically.