3rd Arts & Humanities Conference, Barcelona

UTOPIC THEATRES.

SOFIA QUIROGA

Abstract:

The theatre concepts developed by the avant-garde were a promotion key element of space experimentation. It is possible to emphasise the evolution of the theatre principles established in the teaching field of the Bauhaus, where the stage was always considered as an architectural space unit. The theatre workshops were conceived as an integral tool for the spatial sensibility education, developing the students’ perceptual ability as well as their aptitude for spatial organisation. In this creative environment, new theatre models appeared, looking for a new way of understanding the stage and the theatre. The spatial research gave rise to utopic projects that never came to be built despite some developed the necessary technical documents to be constructed. The projects were technically equipped to get an immersive space, seeking the dissolution of the stage limits through the resolution of the union between public and scene. Among the most outstanding proposals, we would like to point out the Total Theatre (1927) from Walter Gropius, and the influence of earlier proposals developed into Bauhaus on it. We can find multiple formal, conceptual and volumetric similarities in relation to the Total Theatre. In this paper we will highlight examples as the Tanztheater (1926), a proposal for a dancing theatre from Stefan Sebök; the Weininger’s Spherical Theater (1927), which was designed to represent the Schemer’s performance; the U-theater (1924) from Farkas Molnar, the Theater of the Totality (1925) from László Moholy-Nagy, or the ideas of Xanti Schawinsky for a Traveling theatre (1925) and a constructive stage space(1926), proposals that never came build.

Keywords: Utopic, theatre,Bauhaus, space, movement, audience, unbuilt

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