Utopias of the Imagination
The Total Theatre was designed by Erwin Piscator and Walter Gropius. This immersive theatre concept aimed to abolish the separation between actors and audience, challenging the spectator to actively participate in what was happening on stage.
For lack of imagination, most people do not even experience their own lives, let alone their world. Otherwise, the reading of a single newspaper should be enough to throw humanity into turmoil. So stronger means are needed. One of these is the theatre. (Q98765, 5)
Aged 21, Erwin Piscator (Q72) went to war. The First World War was, in Piscator’s words, a ‘gigantic hoover’ that would force a generation to start all over again. It is not surprising then, that although theatrical utopias accompany the entire history of the performing arts, the conflict was an excellent breeding ground for them to flourish.
The war politicised Piscator, who came into contact with Dadaist circles and the Spartacist League in Berlin. Art was no longer an expression of feelings, but a means of protest and intervention; an instrument of the class struggle: propagandist, educational, effective. It must arouse enthusiasm; it must help people to take a stand. During those years, he founded the Proletarian Theatre in Berlin.
Piscator proposed that the use of the technical and expressive innovations of the theatrical avant-garde should not be an end in itself, but a means to achieve a social and political end. He advocated transforming the spectator/spectacle relationship by creating a theatre that does not seek to affect feelings, but reason.
In this way, he created Trotz Allem (In Spite of Everything) as a political document on the occasion of the congress of the KPD (the communist party in Germany): a gigantic montage of authentic speeches, writings, press cuttings, proclamations, photographs, films. New and diverse languages corresponded to a new form of staging, for which the traditional Italian-style space was inappropriate. On 12 July 1925, the work premiered in the Grosses Schauspielhaus, designed by the architect Hans Poelzig. The architecture of the theatre was particularly suited to creating a sense of coming together – of assembly. Max Reinhardt had already experimented with this in Georg Büchner's The Death of Danton, when he turned the space into an immense parliament.
But Erwin Piscator needed a new venue for his Political Theatre. He needed a theatre machine that had the technical perfection of a typewriter. He needed a new theatre, and in 1926 he commissioned the architect Walter Gropius (Q21731), founder and director of the avant-garde Bauhaus art academy. The Total Theatre (Q30524) was intended to finally achieve the modern theatre’s quest to invent new technical and spatial means to introduce the spectator into the dramatic action, to a greater extent than ever before.
The design for the Total Theatre drew on the history of the performing arts: the Greek theatre, the circus, the Italian theatre, and at the same time made new innovations, such as the corridors at the back of the hall, where the dramatic action can take place or images can be projected. The dome of the hall itself was to contribute to the creation of an enveloping atmosphere. The Total Theatre is the triumph of spectacle. In it, the stage space imposes itself absolutely on the spectator. Technology becomes an instrument of persuasion.
Bertolt Brecht (Q69), who had a deep respect for Piscator's work, criticised him: ‘He found it easier to achieve a critical approach to great themes through ingenious and imposing stage effects than through the work of the actor.’ Vsevolod Meyerhold’s (Q71) project to build a new theatrical form to meet his dramaturgical needs were also shaped by Piscator’s radical questioning of the dominant theatrical typology, albeit with different aims and proposals. And we would say the same for the utopian and never-built projects for circular theatres of:
- Oskar Strnad’s Ringtheater (1915-1920, Q30639),
- Jacob Levy Moreno’s Theater ohne Zuschauer (1920-1923, Q30642),
- Friedrich Kiesler’s Raumbühne and Endless Theatre (1923-1925, Q30553)
- or in fascist Italy the proposals of Filippo Tomasso Marinetti’s TeatroTotale Futurista (1933, Q30643)
- and Gaetano Ciocca’s Teatro di Massa (1933, Q30644).
As for Piscator’s monumental Total Theatre project itself, planned for the Mehringplatz in Berlin, no financial sponsor was found, and it remained unbuilt; equally, the intended immediate identity of stage and audience has remained an unfinished theatrical vision of Piscator.