Project_muse_476812czechoslovak Theatre Technology Under Communism Ambassador to the West (1)

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Every four years during the cold war millions of people in western Europeand the United States cheered (or at least expressed profound respect for)Olympic athletes from the Soviet Union and its east European satellitestates. Throughout the Soviet period, smaller crowds enjoyed outstandingdancers and musicians from the region. Everyone knew that the govern-ments invested millions in training in the arts and sports, “unfairly” morethan organizations in the West could afford, but few denied the pleasure of watching or listening to these outstanding individuals, ensembles, andteams. Most Westerners did not, however, associate technological achieve-ment with the Soviet Bloc, with the dramatic exception of Sputnik (1957)and the space race. They typically assumed that a system that could notprovide decent consumer goods to its peoples must be a technologicalbackwater.1 Even specialists rarely knew of “reverse technology transfer”from East to West.2

This article was originally prepared for the 40th Annual Convention of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in Philadelphia, 20–23November 2008. Editor’s note: Although the original presentation came with wonderfulimages, we were not able to reproduce them here due to copyright restrictions.

©2012 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.0040-165X/12/5302-0008/442–60

1. Before 1989 only a few scholars presented evidence to the contrary: see Loren R.Graham’s many works, including Science in Russia and the Soviet Union and What HaveWe Learned about Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? For works by economists, see J. Wilczynski, Technology in Comecon; Friedrich Levcik and Jirí Skolka,East–West Technology Transfer ; Helgard Wienert and John A. Slater, East–West Technology Transfer ; and Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, Technology, Competition, and the Soviet Bloc in theWorld Market and “The Environment for Technological Change in Centrally PlannedEconomies.” Jan Monkiewicz and Jan Maciejewicz, in Technology Exports from the So-cialist Countries, analyze the licensing activity of several Soviet Bloc countries; they sug-gest that sales of Czechoslovak technology were far too low, given the amount of researchand development taking place in the country.

2. Typical of general works on technology transfer is N. Mohan Reddy and Liming

Czechoslovak Theater Technology

under CommunismAmbassador to the West

K A R E N J . F R E E Z E


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Yet technology was a core part of communist ideology and played acentral role in building socialism in both the Soviet Union and its satellitestates. As such, innovative technology, usually displayed only at trade fairs,world’s fairs, and other special venues, served as an ambassador to the West

for these countries, a way of proclaiming that despite evidence to the con-trary, these countries could achieve world-class contributions to a numberof technological fields. Current scholarship on the Soviet Bloc countriesindeed reveals that despite their relative isolation from the West, scientistsand engineers from the USSR and eastern Europe led the world in certainfields.3 Some of their achievements had no competition in the West, at leastat first; if their value was compelling, western companies invested in themthrough either the outright purchase of product or patent, licensing, or theexchange of expertise. Such activity generated reverse technology transfersfrom East to West, a flow of exports that provided hard currency to the Eastand new technology to the West; it also enabled technicians, engineers, andscientists to travel both ways through the Iron Curtain, resulting in a cir-culation of ideas and artifacts throughout Europe and beyond.

I first discovered this to be the case as early as 1983, in my research ontechnological innovation in the Czechoslovak textile-machine industry during the 1960s.4 Much later, when working with the Tensions of Europenetwork, I found researchers from these countries and young scholars inthe United States who were exploring the hidden achievements of thesecountries and in the process rewriting what we thought we knew about

technology transfer.5 As I turned my research focus toward the interface of

Zhao’s “International Technology Transfer”; of the 216 works they cite, not a single onehas to do with transfer from the Soviet Bloc to the West. Few people had seen the reportsby John W. Kiser, “Report on the Potential for Technology Transfer from the SovietUnion to the United States” and “Commercial Technology Transfer from Eastern Europeto the United States and Western Europe.” Kiser also tracked Czech innovations in softcontact lenses and plastic explosives, but he does not include theater technology, such aslighting devices. In a later book, Communist Entrepreneurs, he focused on rule-breakinginnovators. See also Karen J. Freeze, “Snapshots of Přestavba,” 173.

3. Until the 1990s systematic study of technological innovation in the former SovietBloc was hindered by the lack of archival access. The work edited by Johannes Bähr andDietmar Petzin, Innovationsverhalten und Entscheidungsstrukturen, which focuses on thetwo Germanys in the 1960s, and Constructing Socialism by Raymond G. Stokes were pio-neering efforts. Sociologist Ivan Tchalakov has examined several Bulgarian innovations,including computer memory storage; see his “Innovating in Bulgaria” and “Technologi-cal Innovations and Non-Exchange Economy,” the latter a report for the European Com-mission Phare program. Valentina Fava has studied the Škoda automobile company inCzechoslovakia in “Socialismo e Taylorism.”

4. See Freeze, “Innovation and Technology Transfer during the Cold War.”5. “Tensions of Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe” is an open intellec-

tual network of some 200 scholars working on a transnational history of Europe thatfocuses on technology in society and culture as an agent of change. Although the AAASS2008 panel took a broader view of technology (beyond achievement and transfer), itsparticipants—Katherine Lebow, Dolores Augustine, Malgorzata Mazurek, and Eagle


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technology and the arts, I discovered anew Laterna Magika, the multime-dia magic-lantern show from the late 1950s that was still playing in Prague.What was it all about? In the course of answering this question I discoveredseveral breakthrough technologies in the service of theater production that

had emerged from Czechoslovakia in the twentieth century.As I homed in on the post–World War II period I found that many of these technologies were associated with Josef Svoboda (1920–2002), aCzech scenographer known worldwide for his lighting and projection in-novations.6 As I looked to western sources for responses to these innova-tions I found that as in many other scientific and cultural fields, theatertechnology seemed to fly below their radar. Just as the state invested in cer-tain scientists, performers, and athletes, allowing them to represent thecountry abroad, it also invested in theater technology, which in the handsof certain Czech scenographers and directors captured the imagination of their western colleagues (and captured some of their production purses aswell). As in the case of textile machines, theater technology did not seem tomiss a beat, despite the traumatic events of August 1968 (which ended thePrague Spring) and the prolonged “normalization” that followed. Svobodaand other so-called ambassadors freely traveled abroad, demonstratingtheir creative technical abilities to Europeans and Americans in the besttheaters in the world.

My objective is not to introduce and describe in detail these many in-ventions and innovations and their originators, but to highlight only a few

and then address the following questions:

1. How could these innovations come from a country that lagged farbehind the West in computer technology, and, moreover, seemedto imprison its most creative theater workers?

2. What was the government’s strategic purpose in supporting inno-vation in theater technology and its export abroad, especially con-sidering that it considered theater itself—namely, its playwrightsand directors—so subversive?

3. What was the significance (and legacy) of this activity for East–

West relations and technology transfer? And what does it matter,considering that communism and the cold war are now history?

Glassheim—all represent younger scholars who have a passion for understanding therole of technology in culture and society in cold war Europe.Another example is the pro-

ject based at the University of Helsinki: “Knowledge Through the Iron Curtain—Trans-ferring Knowledge and Technology in Cold War Europe.”

6. “Scenography” includes everything that creates theatrical space: for example, sets,props, lighting, costumes, and sound. Selected works in English on Svoboda include:

Jarka Burian, The Scenography of Josef Svoboda and Leading Creators of Twentieth-Cen-tury Czech Theatre, especially chapter 7; Christopher Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology , especially chapter 5; and Josef Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space.


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Czechoslovak Theater Technology Abroad

At the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair (Expo 1958) the Czechoslovak Pavil-ion stunned visitors with its high cultural level. One visitor said that Later-

na Magika was “a technical and artistic chef-d’oeuvre.”7

With high-quality exhibits from machine tools to glass, agriculture to food, puppets to wood-carvers, the pavilion won more medals than any other and received the theprize as best in the fair. It also won the popularity contest: 66.5 percent of visitors surveyed placed the Czechoslovak Pavilion first, followed by thoseof the United States (58.2 percent), France (55 percent), and the USSR (51percent). Asked to comment on the experience, one interviewee said that “itwas a discovery: I had thought that Czechoslovakia was a poor country.”The government and its supporters rushed to point out that “the fantasticsuccess of this small country cannot be separated from the system thatundertook it. For this reason, it seems to us that the Czechoslovak Pavilionis the shop window of Communism.”8

But by all accounts it was the apolitical technological innovations intheater and cinema that people remembered. The Czechoslovak Pavilion’sPolyekran (“many screens”) featured projections from eight automatic slideprojectors and seven film projectors on eight fixed screens of differentshapes and sizes. The resulting collage was set to a musical score evokingthe annual Prague Spring International Music Festival. The pièce de résis-tance was Laterna Magika—a combination of film and live stage perform-

ances developed by Svoboda, director Alfred Radok, and young filmmakerMiloš Forman—that charmed audiences with scenes of everyday life inCzechoslovakia and laced with folklore and humor.

For the next few years Svoboda continued to experiment with Laterna Magika and Polyekran techniques.9 Most dramatic and controversial washis 1965 production for the Boston Opera Company of Intolleranza, anopera by the Italian communist composer Luigi Nono. An extraordinarily complex and confrontational production in which Svoboda applied all of

7. See the public opinion surveys conducted by G. Jacquemyns and E. Jacquemyns,

“L’Exposition de 1958.”8. Jaroslav Halada, “Czechoslovaks at World Expositions.”9. On Svoboda’s work, see especially Burian, The Scenography of Josef Svoboda, 77–

107, on the innovations associated with Brussels and Montreal and their offshoots. Moreeasily available are Burian’s broader works, Modern Czech Theatre and Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre; see also Burian’s article “Josef Svoboda.” On Laterna Magika, see “‘Magic Lantern’ Opens in London” (n.a.); and Allen Hughes, “Theater.” Seealso a collection of texts by Svoboda, program notes from Laterna Magika, and othershort pieces, translated from the French by Kelly Morris: Svoboda, Morris, and ErikaMunk, “Laterna Magika”; and Burian, “Josef Svoboda and Laterna Magika’s Latest Pro-ductions”(in TD&T , which was officially called Theatre Design & Technology until the late

1980s) and “Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre and Film.” Svoboda left Laterna Magika in the 1960s and returned as director in 1973, serving there until his death in2002.


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his lighting technology and projections plus live, closed-circuit television(courtesy of MIT and PBS Channel 2), it was an indictment of the intoler-ance that led to the atrocities of the twentieth century.10 Directed and con-ducted by Sarah Caldwell and featuring Beverly Sills, the production en-

gaged, willy-nilly, the audience and others through television cameras. Forexample, during a concentration camp scene a camera projected images of the audience behind the barbed-wire fence; in another, when an AfricanAmerican sings a protest song, the projected image of the mostly white au-dience reverted to a negative image, thus suddenly rendering the audiencemembers themselves as black. The production also employed a horizontalcurtain of light to suggest a river, in which the players drown in the finalscene.11 Although there were only two actual performances, Intolleranza be-came an iconic example of what Svoboda’s techniques could achieve.12

Two years later (nine years after the Brussels World’s Fair) the Czecho-slovak Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal once again delivered extraordinar-ily favorable propaganda to millions of visitors. The Czechs, largely thesame team as that in Brussels, outdid themselves with further technicalwonders in the service of theater and cinema, along with elegant displays of arts, crafts, industry, and the complete Třebechovický Betlém.13 Laterna Magika was back, along with two new projection systems, Polyvision andDiapolyekran. “Polyvision,” implying multiple ways of seeing, was the nameoriginally applied to four different projection systems in the exhibit, butsoon became associated with one of the two most popular—a system of

projections onto cubes, prisms, and rotating bodies that could move verti-cally and horizontally, flanked by mirrors. The show was set to a musicalcollage called Symphony . Diapolyekran consisted of 112 cubes, each of which contained two projectors with eighty slides each. The cubes couldslide forward or backward a half or whole meter so that the relief surfacecould be up to two meters; it is easy to imagine hundreds of possible con-figurations. This scenario, directed by Emil Radok, was called “The Birth of

10. Svoboda explains in his memoirs that American technology was critical to thisproduction; see The Secret of Theatrical Space, 78–79.

11. Strips of low-voltage lamps on either side of the stage projected narrow, intensebeams of light across to one another; as the strips were raised the light wall appeared,like rising waters, to “drown” the crowd onstage.

12. In the fall of 2005 when I interviewed theater scholars in the Faculty of Philos-ophy at Charles University in Prague, they suggested that I take a look at the Intolleranzaproduction, which, of course, I did not know. For full accounts, see Dean Wilcox,“Polit-ical Allegory or Multimedia Extravaganza?” and Harold C. Schonberg, “Opera: LuigiNono’s ‘Intollerenza [sic ] 1960.’”

13. For reviews of the exhibit, see Robert Alden,“Soviet Pavilion at Expo 67 is Over-whelming”; and Bosley Crowther, “Expo 67 and the Exploding Syntax of Cinema.” Forlater commentaries, see Eva-Marie Kröller, “Expo ’67”; and Dane Lanken, “Remember

the Magic of Expo 67.” For Svoboda’s description, see The Secret of Theatrical Space, 105–6. The century-old wooden Betlém (crèche) from Třebechovice, in northeastern Bohe-mia, carved by Josef Probošt, is a complex, room-sized, mechanical tour de force.


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the World.” Finally, Kinoautomat was an interactive film, during whichviewers, at six crossroads in the plot, had a chance to select (via computer-ized buttons on their armrests) what happened next.14

None of this seems so remarkable in the computerized and digitized

present day, but more than fifty years ago, in 1958, and even in 1967, it wasextraordinary. Six million visitors had visited the Czechoslovak Pavilion atBrussels, and eight million did in Montreal.15 (Perhaps the latter, having be-come acquainted with the technological wonders of what probably hadbeen an unknown or little-known country, undoubtedly was interested inthe news a year later of the real Prague Spring and its subsequent suppres-sion.) In contrast to a country’s presentations at world’s fairs, its culturalofferings elsewhere of live theater—plays, operas, ballets, and so on—usu-ally reach much smaller audiences. Yet in this sphere also technological in-novations from communist eastern Europe (including Soviet Russia)reached the West, both during Khrushchev’s thaw (1956–64) and Brezh-nev’s subsequent repression (1968–82).

Svoboda applied both the Brussels and Montreal technologies, in addi-tion to numerous other inventions and innovations, to some 700 produc-tions during his lifetime, many of them in the 1970s—the country’s dark period after the August 1968 suppression of the Prague Spring. Dozens of these productions were in collaboration with West European and Americantheaters and directors.16 Known mostly for lighting innovations, projections,and stage machinery, Svoboda became synonymous internationally with the

term “scenographer,” which was applied to those who, like him, were respon-sible for every aspect involved in creating “theatrical space.”17 He also

14. Kinoautomat was, of course, a film rather than theater innovation. According toJonathan Randal, in “Czechs Want Film Techniques,” the Czechoslovak state filmexporter had sold two Kinoautomat s to Canada, and two were “planned” for the UnitedStates, in San Antonio and New York. (Perhaps the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslo-vakia aborted these plans?) The article cited the disappointment of the Czechs that they could not see what the Kinoautomat was for themselves. Svoboda, in The Secret of Theat-rical Space’s chapter titled “The Exhibition as World Outlook,” 104–9, discusses espe-cially Brussels and Montreal; Laterna Magika is treated in the following chapter, 110–20.

For more on Laterna Magika, see Burian, “Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre andFilm,” reflecting early pessimism about the future of the system.

15. Czechoslovakia also won the top prize in 1959 in São Paulo, Brazil, for an exhibiton the development of Czechoslovak stagecraft since 1914, featuring 294 paintings andsketches of sets, costumes, and theater models. The competition, held in conjunctionwith the Fifth Biennial of Modern Art, also awarded Czech architect František Troster aprize of $1,000 (which was a lot of money for a Soviet Bloc person in those days!) as thebest foreign stage designer; see Tad Szulc, “Czechoslovak Theatrical Exhibit Wins Prizeat Sao Paulo Biennial.” In 1970, at the world’s fair in Osaka, Japan, the Czechoslovak Pavilion (which included Laterna Magika once again) was visited by 10.5 million peopleand won several prizes; see Halada and Milan Hlavacka, World Expositions.

16. Full lists of Svoboda’s productions are given in The Secret of Theatrical Space,127–41.

17. The best introduction to Svoboda’s technology and his philosophy of technology


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became associated with the concept of a “kinetic stage,” in which motion,supplied by machines and light, accompanied the action, in time. In this hebuilt upon the ideas of British scenographer, producer, and actor EdwardGordon Craig (1872–1966) and Swiss scenographer Adophe Appia (1862–

1928), the latter envisioning entire lighting systems as huge instruments thatcould be “played,” like a piano, to the action of the play.18 Another way of putting it was that the stage setting itself became one of the actors.

Svoboda used the projection technologies introduced in Brussels andMontreal and subsequently developed in other areas like theater, opera, andballet. Critical in his view were innovative project surfaces: why did they have to be solid, smooth, and flat?19 As an architect and therefore alwaysthinking three-dimensionally, he often built new realities, in collaborationwith directors’ visions, that involved big machinery (which was evident ornot to audiences). Nevertheless, he insisted that he did not believe in usingtechnology for its own sake, but only to serve the production,20 which couldmean that it was hardly evident at all: “What is the source of the conflictingattitudes regarding technology and its function in theatre? Most people seetechnology only in terms of machinery. I went through this phase myself. Inits essence, however, theatre technology is active and capable of dramaticaction, even when that technology is ‘non-technical.’ In fact . . . technology can even be intangible.”21 Sometimes he dreamed up something quite sim-ple, such as the upside-down cutouts for a production of Swan Lake.

Svoboda’s primary passion, however, was with lighting—lighting as an

and art is in Burian, “Josef Svoboda.” Burian updates his views thirty years later in Modern Czech Theatre. See also Svoboda’s memoirs The Secret of Theatrical Space, 12–31.Projections are actually part of lighting technology, but they were such a major part of Svoboda’s oeuvre that I consider them to be a separate category.

18. Baugh explains this well in Theatre, Performance and Technology , chapter 7, 143.Svoboda used the piano metaphor for the entire production: “Production space shouldbe a kind of piano, on which it is possible to improvise, to test out any idea whatever, orto experiment with the relationship among various components” (The Secret of Theatri-cal Space, 20). For a fascinating take on the issue of theatrical space, see Denis Bablet,“Problems of Contemporary Theatre Space.” (Bablet has also written a biography of

Svoboda.)19. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 29–30.20. This was in response to criticism from Czech and Slovak theater colleagues who

did not share his enthusiasm for technological innovation; for accounts of many other,mostly late-twentieth-century Czech theater designers and scenographers, see Joseph E.Brandesky Jr., ed., Czech Theatre Design in the Twentieth Century , which is a collection of essays based on two exhibits: “Metaphor and Irony: Czech Scenic and Costume Design,1920–1999,” and “Metaphor and Irony 2: František Tröster and Contemporary CzechTheatre Design,” both organized by Ohio State University at Lima. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM of some 140 images, although only somewhat more than a quarter of theseare from earlier than 1989; of these, only two depict Svoboda’s work and thirteen depict

Tröster’s. Twenty-seven designers are represented altogether, with biographies of each.21. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 27.


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24. On the Theatergraph, see František Černý, “Lighting that Creates the Scene andLighting as an Actor”; and Burian, Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre,chapters 3 and 8.

25. On Piscator, see Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology , chapter 7.26. Věra Ptáčková, Josef Svoboda.27. Ibid., 171n23.28. The Czechoslovak Technical College is now the Czech Technical University,

Prague.29. UMPRU° M (Vysoká škola Umělecko-pru°myslová), now called, in English, the

Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design.

before and after World War I. For the Czechs, who were regional leaders inmany fields of engineering, interest in film, lighting, and stage machinery came naturally.

Although to most viewers Laterna Magika seemed to be entirely novel,

it developed from a historical tradition within theater and film in Prague,with most sources identifying the “Theatergraph,” a Czech innovation of the 1930s by Emil František Burian (1904–59) and Miroslav Kouril (1911–84), as a precursor. This was a system that used film and still projections ontwo scrims, front and rear, against which (or between which) the actorsplayed.24 Burian and Kouril, in turn, had been influenced by German direc-tor Erwin Piscator, whose intentions for slide and film projections wereapparently to enhance, rather than to challenge, naturalism onstage.25 VěraPtáčková, in her biography of Svoboda, cites an earlier example of Laterna Magika’s basic trick—that of the live actor seemingly stepping out of thefilm—from 1917.26 Called “Z ceských hradu° a zámku°” (From Czech castlesand palaces), it followed an actor running across rooftops from Karlstejn toPrague to the Varieté Theater then magically appearing live on the stage.27

Thus theater arts, including scenography, had a long and rich tradition inCzechoslovakia; the critical point here is that apart from the late-Stalinistperiod (1948–56) and, to some extent, the 1970s, stage design and the tech-nical aspects of theater production were allowed to flourish.

TECHNOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN RELEVANT DISCIPLINES

Having secondary and higher technical education established in Bohe-mia by the eighteenth century, the Czechs had an elaborate technologicalinfrastructure upon which to build in many fields. As machine builders atleast as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, Czechs trained engineersand technicians in several disciplines at the Czechoslovak Technical Collegeand high-level secondary technical schools; in some of these disciplines thecountry became a leader in twentieth-century Europe.28 Moreover, early onthe Czechs (as in other central European countries) combined technology and arts in the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Prague, where not only

industrial design and its predecessors were taught, but also architecture,sculpture, and fine arts.29 Thus when an architect like Svoboda designed a


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30. Baugh confirms this in chapter 5 of Theatre, Performance and Technology .31. The Czechoslovak government, which was one of the most hard line in the Sovi-

et Bloc, did not welcome Gorbachev, and for good reason—they may have regarded himas the beginning of the end for their regime.

32. As it was, very few people in any of these categories actually defected to theWest—a certain tennis player notwithstanding.

33. These four stages are: Národní divadlo (National Theater), Smetanovo divadlo

(now the independent Státní opera Praha [State Opera Prague]), Tylovo divadlo (onceagain, the Estates Theater), and the New Stage of the Národní divadlo, housing Laterna Magika, which is now independent.

machine or device, he could be sure that talent and experience was avail-able to build it for him.30

IMMEDIATE HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC CONTEXTS

In the centrally planned economies of the Soviet Bloc, nothing of any scope (short of revolutions) happened without the support and impri-matur of the Communist Party and government structures. Although poli-cies were not uniform throughout the communist period (1948–89 inCzechoslovakia), they did reflect, with delays, the changes in Moscow. ThusKhrushchev’s thawing of relations and détente with the West, whichabruptly ended when he was booted out of power in 1964, in Czechoslo-vakia carried over into 1968 and culminated in the Prague Spring. Brezh-nev’s crackdown began to take effect in the early 1970s, which supported

the Czechoslovak Communist Party’s firm control, until after Gorbachev had been in power for several years (around 1986–87).31 Throughout theperiod, however, science and technology, along with elite sports and artsorganizations, flourished, seemingly without government control—or per-haps they were well within such control, but their contributions to the statein both prestige and hard currency were worth the potential political risksinvolved.32 In the case of Laterna Magika, which was a major tourist attrac-tion in Prague after 1958, theater technology not only impressed visitors,but it brought in substantial revenues as ticket sales.

Of major importance to theater technology and scenographers likeSvododa was the government’s financial support of theaters in these coun-tries. To be sure, that support was most evident in the major state theaters,such as the Czech National Theater’s four stages.33 But given generous bud-gets far above those in the United States and also much more than moststate-supported theaters in Europe, the Czech theaters enjoyed the advan-tages of the command economy. Because the entire state economy was ver-tically integrated, any enterprise having the blessing of the state had allneeded resources at its disposal. Moreover, since everyone must be em-ployed in the communist state, theaters often had many times the number

of workers than did their counterparts in the West. British scenographerChristopher Baugh, who visited Prague in 1975, observed “a highly skilled


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34. Baugh, personal communication with author. On his observations on lighting,see note 23 above. See also Glenn M. Loney, “Behind the Soviet Scenes.”

35. See the articles from Theatre Design & Technology , “Teaching Stage Design in the

United States, Canada, and Czechoslovakia, 1976” (n.a.); “PQ ’75” (n.a.); and “OISTTReports on Theatre Training” (n.a.).

team of optical and technological experts of a kind who would rarely, if ever, be found in a Western house.” With what appeared to be the equiva-lent of do-it-yourself, amateur tools, Baugh noted, these teams achievedeffects that relied on large numbers of people and therefore could not be

duplicated in the West.34

But all this would have been for naught, of course, had Czechoslovakianot produced brilliant directors and scenographers. This can be attributed,in part, to its educational system, which during this period offered a broad,cross-disciplinary education. Most Czech scenographers had backgroundsin architecture, rather than painting or one of the other fine arts. Unliketheir American counterparts, for example, they did not specialize in one as-pect of theater or stage design; in Czechoslovakia it was assumed that ascenographer would be responsible for everything—sets, lighting, cos-tumes, and so on.35 Moreover, during this period the universities and othereducational institutions were highly selective as to whom was admitted totheir programs. Certainly, politics played a part in this: talented offspringof political dissidents or bourgeois remnants were not allowed even toapply to institutions of higher learning and the mediocre children of topCommunist Party officials may have been admitted, but for the most partdemonstrated talent was essential for admission.

In this context, also, it may be that theater technology provided an out-let for talented architects and other designers who might otherwise havebeen employed in large state firms and making technical drawings of drab

buildings—even after Stalin died. For those with technical inclinations andan interest in artistic expression, scenography was an attractive career, be-cause here one could work with writers and directors while being less sus-ceptible to political censure. And being able to travel abroad was the ulti-mate benefit of choosing such a career. Svoboda asserts in his memoirs thathe had not dreamed of being able to travel as much as he did; his first tripto the West was in 1958 (to Brussels) when he was age 38. Even though heclaims that he did not get to see much beyond the neighborhood of the the-aters, he must have contributed, at the very least, to the circulation of ideas

within Europe and even the United States concerning scenography.At some point the Czechoslovak government decided to further sup-port theater technology by allowing Czech professionals to sponsor thefounding of an international organization in the field. After an abortiveattempt in 1966 that included mainly socialist countries, in June 1968, atthe height of the Prague Spring, the International Organization of Scenog-


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36. For a history of the organization, see Joel E. Rubin,“The International Organiza-tion of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians.”

37. OISTT was superseded by OISTAT, which describes its mission as follows: “Tostimulate the exchange of ideas and innovations, and to promote international collabo-ration in professions which support live performance”; “To promote the formation of centres in each country in order to achieve these aims”; “To encourage life-long learningamong live performance practitioners”; and “To respect the integrity of all cultures and

celebrate the diversity as well as the similarities of those who work in support of live per-formance.” OISTAT has centers, associate members, and individual members in forty-seven countries, with a total of over 20,000 members. The organization in now based inTaiwan. See www.oistat.org (accessed 28 February 2012).

38. Again, Baugh confirms the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration amongpeople from different disciplines: “I think that this is absolutely crucial to an understand-ing of [the Czechs’] ability to both effectively ‘invent’ the word scenography , and to be soinnovative in creating such a complex 20th-century stage language. And again, it focusesupon people and people working together rather than simply spending a lot of money buying up expensive technologies”(personal communication with author). He goes on torecall that in the early 1990s in London it was easier to raise money for a theater to pur-

chase expensive lighting boards and other equipment, but nearly impossible to raise amuch lesser amount of money to employ skilled personnel to operate them.

raphers and Theatre Technicians (OISTT) was founded.36 Its charter mem-bers were all European countries except for three: Israel, Canada, and theUnited States. OISTT’s purpose was “to spread the knowledge of all kindsin the subject of theatre techniques, to support every initiative and research

concerning the free development of theatre in the world, to maximally pro-tect the exchange of works, documentation or persons, and finally to pub-lish all documentation for facilitating its activities.”37 The first congress of the OISTT met in Prague in June 1969, less than a year after the end of thePrague Spring, perhaps because the government wished to show how sup-portive it was of this endeavor. The organization’s general secretariat wasestablished in Prague, with Czech leadership. In 1972, after a colleague re-signed, Svoboda became general-secretary.

Finally, cross-disciplinary teamwork is evident in the management of Czech theater productions, though this is not always the case elsewhere. Forexample, Czech visitors to the United States noted in Theatre Design & Technology in 1976 that such teamwork was not apparent to them. It wasobvious that in theater various disciplines must work together; in Czechtheater tradition, to be sure, the scenographer was responsible for, at least,both the stage design and lighting, thus rendering such collaboration eas-ier.38 Svoboda himself discussed his team in his memoirs, pointing out that“it is necessary for the entire theatrical team to have a collective perceptionof space, movement, rhythm, and time during the work’s preparation,” andthat “[t]his union of art and science is essential and vitally necessary for our

time. . . . If I need a cylinder of light on stage with a dispersion of less thanone degree at its base, I need to gather an entire scientific and technical


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39. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 14–15.40. Theater production as an example of “cross-disciplinary product development,”

where all the disciplines meet from the beginning to coordinate their visions and possi-bilities, does not seem to be (or have been) typical in the United States, but this needsverification through research. Accounts of the Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Polish

scenographers’ visit to the United States in 1972 are in Burian, “Josef Svoboda’s Amer-ican University Tour, 1972”; and Zenobiusz Strzelecki, Ladislav Vychodil, and IvanSzabo-Jilek, “Impressions of the U.S.A.”

41. Meyerhold was executed in 1940; see Burian, Leading Creators of Twentieth-Cen-tury Czech Theatre, 54–55.

42. Lawrence and Lee were the authors of Inherit the Wind , the dramatization of theScopes Monkey Trial, a popular play in the USSR; see Loney,“Behind the Soviet Scenes.”

43. They pointed out that lighting was so vital because, in part, Russian theater was“much lighter, structurally. With eight performances a week—and sometimes eight different productions to set up and strike in one week—they have to design for economy,simplicity, flexibility, durability” (ibid., 15). Beyond the scope of this article are their fas-

cinating remarks comparing American theaters with Soviet theaters. For more on Soviettheater design, see Vitaly Gankovsky, “New Directions (Scenographic Quests) in SovietTheatre”; and V. Krasilnikov, “A Universal Dramatic Theatre in the City of Tula.”

team to construct such a cylinder.”39 Moreover, the director–scenographerrelationship was also close, enhancing both the artistic vision and technicalpossibilities.40

SOVIET INTEREST IN THEATER TECHNOLOGY

Soviet directors and scenographers had put the early USSR on the cul-tural map during the 1920s when they overturned bourgeois theaterassumptions and designs and developed revolutionary new concepts of the-ater space. Not until the mid-1930s did Soviet theater succumb to Stalinist-style socialist realism, its earlier creators and practitioners purged. The mostfamous of these director/scenographers was Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940), who even before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had been reactingagainst traditional theater conventions, along with his peers in western

Europe and elsewhere. He and Czech scenographer E. F. Burian were friendsduring the 1930s, and when Meyerhold fell victim to the purges Burian(who was then ideologically sympathetic to communism) supported him.41

After 1956, during the post-Stalinist period, the Soviet government en-couraged technological innovation even while suppressing dramatic inno-vation. Beginning in 1971 Soviet scenographers attended the second andlater congresses of the OISTT in Prague and other east and west Europeancities. They also participated in the second (1971) and subsequent PragueQuadrennials, which are massive exhibits of scenic design and theatrearchitecture. At the end of 1971 two American playwrights, Jerome Law-rence and Robert E. Lee, visited the USSR at the invitation of the SovietMinister of Culture.42 In an interview published in the May 1973 issue of Theatre Design & Technology , Lawrence and Lee marveled at the technicalwork in Soviet theaters, especially lighting.43 All this is to make clear that


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44. Reports on East European theater technology can be found throughout Theatre

Design & Technology and other theater journals during the 1970s. Contemporary reviewsof productions seen by Westerners both in those countries and in the West attest to theinterest that scenographers like Svoboda elicited.

even during Brezhnev’s era theater technology was well supported by thestate, with Soviet satellites following suit.

WESTERN RESPONSES

Truly, Czech stage designers, working within what could be considereda rather narrow field (unlike the mass medium of film), brought significantprestige to the country. As they became known in the theater world of theWest they established reputations that served, at least to some extent, asprotection against pressures from their own government. This, of course,applied to many artists within the Soviet Bloc who were highly regarded inthe West, since it was harder to silence and lock them away than those many unknown others. Theater scholars, reviewers, and practitioners in the Westall commented on the outstanding work done in Czechoslovakia and other

Soviet Bloc countries throughout this period. Collectively, they provideevidence of the degree of innovation accomplished by the Czech scenogra-phers and other theater workers.44

Conclusion: The Significance of This Case Study ofthe Permeable Iron Curtain

For over forty years Europe was divided, and for most people this meantsevere isolation, with one half of the continent being severed from the other.

In the West school children of the first postwar generation no longer learnedabout the individual countries behind the Iron Curtain, because they soonwere anonymously melded together in a single homogeneous bloc run by Moscow. Even twenty years after that curtain fell, knowledge about theregion was still burdened with assumptions about backwardness—increas-ing tourism in Prague, Krakow, and Budapest notwithstanding. All this wasfrustrating to professionals and academics from these newly democraticstates. As a German colleague from the former East Germany said, with ref-erence to her colleagues from the former West Germany: “We read different

books, we went through a different educational system, we saw differentmovies. Even after fifteen years, it’s difficult to assume a common culture.”Moreover, for over seventy years Russia was cut off from the European cul-ture to which it had aspired, at various points in its history, since Peter theGreat. And yet discussed in this article is the “permeable Iron Curtain.”

Today, the European Union (EU) has raised complex questions aboutEuropean identity—for example, should Russia and Turkey be included?—but without waiting for absolute answers, it has extended its borders to in-


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45. For example, the Tensions of Europe network, originally established by the Euro-pean Science Foundation (www.histech.nl/tensions); CLIOHRES, a European Commis-sion Network of Excellence (www.cliohres.net); the project at the University of Helsinki,“Knowledge Through the Iron Curtain—Transferring Knowledge and Technology inCold War Europe” (www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/kic/project.htm); and the EuropeanScience Foundation’s EUROCORES program, “Inventing Europe: Technology and theMaking of Europe, 1850 to the Present” (www.esf.org/inventingeurope).

46. The role of theater in the cultures of the Soviet Bloc countries is another, if related topic. In their visit to the USSR (see note 42 above), Lawrence and Lee marveledat the numbers of theaters in Russia and their popularity,“as opposed to the relative lack of interest in the U.S.” Lee said that “[t]hey are hungry for theatre in the Soviet Union. I

think it’s because their TV is lousier than ours. And their newspapers aren’t nearly so in-teresting. Only four pages in Pravda. . . . Seriously, theatre is a kind of substitute for reli-gion. It’s also a reward after a hard day’s work.” Moreover, Lawrence noted why Russians

clude a much broader Europe. Many research programs now considerEurope as a whole, which comprises all of the EU countries and often theaspirants to membership in the union as well. In the area of “technology andthe making of Europe,” pioneered by the Tensions of Europe network, other

pan-European projects are emerging.45

Most of these incorporate a histori-cal perspective, even if they welcome multidisciplinary participation. His-torians and sympathizers believe that one cannot understand the presentwithout first understanding the past; therefore anything we can do to fill thegaps and correct misunderstandings in accounts of the cold war period,whatever our respective focuses and interests, will enhance our understand-ing of the present and assist our strategic approach to the future.

Technology is a critical component of this larger project of understand-ing the cold war period, especially when considering the role of science andtechnology in Soviet Bloc countries. Technology and the arts is simply a lessobvious example. Artifacts of the theater embody technology, whether sim-ple or complex; an ordinary chair, platform, turntable, or lighting, or a hugemachine with hundreds of parts and dozens of controls, depends on tech-nology of some kind to produce and maintain it. In the theater, however—in contrast to, say, a factory or a textile machine, a warehouse or a forklift—these artifacts are made explicitly to express an idea. On the surface they are just things or machines, but they have been constructed in the service of cre-ating theatrical space, which, in turn, serves the artistic vision of the direc-tor and playwright. Ideas themselves are not confined by boundaries, but

they need carriers, vehicles of expression—namely, media or actors, usually both. In this case the scenographic artifact is a medium that conveys an ideawith potentially universal, even transcendent value. Without the actors (andperhaps the audience as well) it is incomplete, but the same can be said forthe reverse. If the work of east European scenographers helped carry actorsand audiences into new realities—new theatrical spaces where they were ex-posed to new journeys, new ideas, or new perspectives on old truths—thenperhaps their mission was fulfilled.46 And if their artifacts, and the ideas and


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say they prefer theater to television or film: “The latter are like a kiss through glass.

Theatre is the real thing!”47. Steven McElroy, “Illusory Characters with Startling Stage Presence”; Patricia

Cohen, “A Lost ‘Boris Godunov’ Is Found and Staged.”

perspectives embodied in those artifacts, traveled westward and perhapsfound homes there, then we may conclude that the Iron Curtain was morepermeable than previously thought.

Epilogue: The Legacy, Two Examples

In April 2007 the New York Times published two articles related to thelegacy of theater technology in eastern Europe. The first, on 2 April 2007and titled “Illusory Characters with Startling Stage Presence,” describes mul-timedia with life performers at the 3LD Art & Technology Center I in LowerManhattan. Neither the article’s author nor the interviewees appeared to beaware of Laterna Magika and other Czech innovations of half-a-century ago.The second, “A Lost ‘Boris Godunov’ Is Found and Staged” (11 April 2007)

is about the recent staging of a lost, never-before-staged 1936 production by composer Sergei Prokofiev and “visionary stage director” Vsevolod Meyer-hold, who had to abandon the project when he fell out of Stalin’s favor (hewas executed three years later). Princeton University professor Simon Mor-rison discovered Meyerhold’s detailed notes and Prokofiev’s score for twen-ty-four instruments in a Moscow archive. This recent production is thespiritual heir to Meyerhold, drawing upon his ideas yet making it fit natu-rally into the twenty-first century as Meyerhold (like Svoboda) would surely have wished.47

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Documents

Project_muse_476812czechoslovak Theatre Technology Under Communism Ambassador to the West (1)