VIEWPOINTS: Exploring the Intersection of Visual and Performing Arts (Part III)

By drediman
March 13, 2014
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In this final installment, I celebrate stage designers whose works have transcended conventional stage designs to establish themselves as standalone works of visual art. Many of these stage designers are also themselves directors, which is not surprising given the seamless nature of their oftentimes visionary productions. Although nothing can replace the excitement of experiencing these works in the context of live performance, the following stage designs (by no means a comprehensive list) in my mind deserve places in the world’s major museums alongside works by established visual arts masters.

1. Love him or hate him (some find his lack of point of view lazy), one thing is for sure: Director and designer Franco Zeffirelli’s meticulously crafted opera productions boast some of the most lavish and detailed designs ever created. Watching a Zeffirelli production is like watching a whole movie in long shot unfold before one’s eyes. The effect, especially with live music, is thrilling and incomparably grand. You can catch his opulent productions of Puccini’s “La Boheme” and “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera, where they are regularly revived.

2. Famed avant-garde theater director and designer Robert Wilson has developed a striking visual and directorial style all his own. His cleanly directed productions are unmistakable for their obsessive level of precision and formality. Visually, the most striking aspect of Mr. Wilson’s shows is the intense, careful lighting design, which is instrumental in creating his signature stark kabuki-like images that are at once jarring, emotionally-charged, and wholly unforgettable. I’ve had the great opportunity to catch his productions of Philip Glass’s revolutionary opera “Einstein on the Beach” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” (which he conceived, directed, and designed) at the Park Avenue Armory.

3. Very much like Zeffirelli’s productions, the level of detail in Punchdrunk’s popular immersive productions is breathtaking. One way to describe their shows is that they are giant art installations. Indeed, the physical worlds that the company has conjured are immensely impressive. But their shows are much more than simply art installations. The stroke of brilliance is the added element of lives being led in these environments (the audience wears masks and are voyeurs to the dramatic proceedings, which occur in timed cycles). I’ve caught their hit New York show, “Sleep No More” (loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”) a few times, but it is their current London production, “The Drowned Man” (based on Buchner’s hallucinatory play, “Woyzeck”), that perfectly calibrates their aesthetic and approach to theater-making.

4. I almost got teary-eyed when the audience applauded Jo Mielziner’s original set design in the most recent Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”, directed by the legendary Mike Nichols and starring the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. This was an instance in which an iconic theater design boldly resurrected itself and was recognized simply as art.

5. Robert Lepage’s recent Ring Cycle for the Metropolitan Opera, which suffered well-documented technical setbacks, was unfairly savaged by the critics when it premiered. However, my belief is that Lepage’s interpretation of Wagner’s masterwork will eventually be remembered as a visionary piece of stagecraft and theater design. I will particularly and fondly remember the way the ever-shifting set (insiders referred to it as “The Machine”) miraculously “danced” to Wagner’s epic score. Unforgettable. I hope the Met keeps and continues to refine this awe-inspiring production.