DAVID POWNALL'S MASTER CLASS -SET UNSEEN?

TREVOR COBAIN

This study of the set designs for the Canadian productions of David Pownall's play Master Class attempts to gauge the contribution of the design to the overall effect of the play. The study is based upon the designs themselves, personal interviews with the author and designers, and contemporary newspaper reviews.

Cette étude des desseins de la scène pour les réalisations canadiennes de Master Class de David Pownall cherche à évaluer la contribution du dessein à 1'effet total de la pièce. L'étude est fondée sur les desseins eux-mêmes, des entrevues personnelles avec I'auteur et les décorateurs, et sur des critiques parsues dans les journaux contemporains.

In 335 B.C. Aristotle wrote in Chapter VI of the Poetics, 'The spectacle has, indeed an emotional attraction of its own, but of all the parts [of drama] it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry.' Perhaps part of the reason for Aristotle's view is reflected in the remark of the distinguished American designer, David Mitchell: 'Basically it's [designing] an interpretive and derivative art rather than a truly original or seminal one.'¹

In 1989 A.D. while the importance of the visual element in a production has long been recognized by critics, discussion of it often remains peripheral. By examining the design for Master Class, I hope to show how important Gi contribution of the designer is to the overall theatrical effect. To do this first read the play, spoke to all the Canadian designers (all specially chosen their production), and the actor Graham Harley. Additional material came ow the working playscript, sketches, plans and pictures which were kindly provided and from newspaper reviews. Before discussing its design, let us look at the play.

Master Class deals with a meeting in January 1948 between Joseph Stalin and Russia's two leading composers, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. Also present is Andrei Zhdanov, to whom Stalin has given the task of overseeing Soviet cultural policy. Although the action which Pownall involves these historical characters in never actually took place, there was a real meeting and the events leading up to the clash depicted in the play are only too depressingly real. Through the meeting Pownall explores, among other themes, the role of the artist in society, and raises some disturbing questions about the relationship between art and politics. Post-war Soviet society is the backdrop, but the themes explored are universally relevant. They are particularly interesting for Canadians to reflect upon. No nation which has witnessed government attempts to change the traditional 'arm's length' policy towards arts funding can be complacent about the play's content.

Perhaps its controversial nature is one reason why this play has been so popular with directors. Besides its premiere in Britain and performances there, it has been performed all over Western Europe and as far away as Australia. To date it has had five Canadian productions.²

As for the design of the play, the script's major demands include: a gramophone, record storage, records, broken records, a Bix Beiderbecke recording of 'Old Man River,' a grand piano, a piano stool, a concealed liquor cabinet, glasses, bottles, an icon, a letter, a mantle shelf, chairs (number unspecified), a telephone, a large mirror, and some tables to hold drinks. All these items are to be found in:

a richly decorated reception room in the Old Kremlin with a grand piano. A washroom and toilet stand adjacent Right. The walls of both rooms are open. The entrance to the sitting room is from Upstage. The door adjoining it with the washroom is from the Right.

Stage directions may vary, but this is the basic plan contained in Pownall's ³ revised New York playing script (February 1984). How then did Canadian designers take these elements and shape them to the play?

Phillip Silver was the first Canadian designer to work on Master Class. His design was used for the Canadian premiere, directed by Gordon McDougall, on the thrust stage at the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton. After reading the script and having long discussions with the director, Silver researched the background of the play. He read biographies and looked at pictures and newsreels of the period. After he had located a book showing Kremlin interiors, he worked on the floor plan. The thrust stage meant that even more attention than usual had to be given to sight lines and the placing of such items as the liquor cabinet, the gramophone and the washroom.

As Stalin was the centre of the Russian world, Phillip Silver decided to make him the centre of the world of the play. He carefully worked out it;~ measurements that would place Stalin's chair at the focus of the whole weiii. In doing so he ignored the relationship between actor and audience concentrated instead on the relationship between the actors. This was a TMIMOTM and therefore the actors playing the two composers had to be Stalin, but with tension between them. That is why Silver placed the ip.iw for the two composers downstage left and right, facing Stalin's chair. lifi, triangular arrangement reflects two aspects of Silver's approach to stage

o. First, he feels that if the style and placement of the furniture are right,

a4i blocking often takes care of itself. Second, he describes his approach

t design as 'geometrical' and this is visible not only in the arrangement the chairs, but also in the floor design which, on a thrust stage, is given prominence. Here, the floor was divided up into a grid of black slate upim. over which the players move. Such a setting is appropriate to the wi;~ which Stalin plays with the two composers.

As for the room itself, the director had asked for an old room, one which i., now put to 'special' use. Phillip Silver saw it as cool in colour, sparsely but neatly furnished, and bearing witness to the military precision with which Zhdanov had arranged things for this confrontation. The one wall which the thrust stage permitted was textured like stucco and decorated with faded religious frescos evocative of a different past. The wall was pierced with a central doorway. The solid-seeming doors when opened appeared to lead to an endless corridor, which was suggested by a small light in the surrounding blackness. Silver was anxious to use the opportunity of the open door to point to a world outside the room which, he felt, the audience should sense is there.

Silver believed this reception room probably would not have had the tiled washroom originally. It would probably have been added in czarist times. While the washroom interior was visible to the audience, there were two doors into it. The first was a secret one through which Stalin made his first entrance, apparently heard but not seen by the others in the main room. The second was a regular door from the main room into the bathroom. Silver had this one padded to suggest the need to muffle sound and remind the audience of padded cells. This door is necessary to sustain the illusion that while the audience may see the characters when they enter the bathroom area and switch on the light, those who are in the reception room do not.

Apart from the chairs, of which only Stalin's had arms, the furniture consisted of the following items, the presence of which, if not the style, was called for in the text: a cabinet gramophone, small tables, crates containing records, a liquor cabinet (hidden within a religiously decorated chest), and a grand piano at centre stage.

Because the actors are flesh and blood, Silver considered it very important that when they came near set elements or props, these should be of convincing quality. The three identical drinks tables, the icon and the bar hidden in the religious cabinet were all specially made for the production.

Generally, the set was lit with a cool northern palette-cold white, rather than the blue which the lighting designer had initially called for. The only visible light was from the washroom. Silver's designs for the costumes matched the set in coolness: grey, blue and brown. Only Stalin had a splash of colour with red and gold on his khaki uniform.

Where the set was noticed by critics, it received mixed reactions. The Globe and Mail's Ray Conlogue felt that for the play to convince, the actors had to produce a believable impersonation of their historical characters. This he felt the director, Gordon McDougall, 'managed to do (in spite of a fairly silly Moscow-by-night set by Phillip Silver). ⁴ To the Calgary Herald critic, however, what lingered in his mind besides Len Cariou's Stalin was, 'Phil Silver's marvellously Byzantine setting.'⁵

The second Canadian production of Master Class was begun by Maurice 91TIlijiW, artistic director of the Centaur Theatre, Montreal. He chose designer

Onew, Matis to do set and costumes. She, as Silver before her, read the script
researched Kremlin interiors, Russian furniture and architecture. Barbra SM16, saw the play as a confrontation between Stalin and Zhdanov on the one IT "11 and the two composers on the other: a cat and mouse game where the are in the cat's lair and have only their wits and genius to help them. a designer she wanted to show a physically deceptive room: a room as ii as the apparent bonhomie which Stalin shows his 'guests.'

After conversation with Podbrey, who was to direct the play, Matis got (t work on the design. Her study of Kremlin rooms convinced her that a 0 Moo or Italian look would be inappropriate to this play. What was wanted, w, thought, was a very old, very Russian look. What she came up with for wi regular proscenium of the Centaur involved three panels like the icon 17% Stalin is given (he says) as a gift in Act One. These three panels were against 'blacks'-one panel for each of the main visual elements in the i: washroom, main doors, liquor cabinet.

The three panels-washroom, doors, and liquor cabinets-were set around the edge of the floor area. The panels were toned with cool greens and blues, suggesting fading through age and use. The washroom panel was tiled in white and fully visible to the audience, although lit only when someone the washroom. Again, as in Edmonton, a secret panel allowed for Stalin's first entrance and a washroom door opening into the set supported the illusion of a separate space. Upstage centre was the door panel. The doors were large and double, massive and imposing, and closed with a satisfactory thud. The third, stage left, panel contained the liquor cabinet. The many shelves held a large array of bottles which were hidden behind mirror doors on a spring release.

When a suitable Stalin could not be found, Maurice Podbrey stepped into the part and was replaced as director by Gordon McDougall, who had done the Canadian premiere production at the Citadel. More discussion took place between the new director and Barbra Matis, but the design was little changed. The first design for the space was altered to make the roof seem lower. This was accomplished by attaching a narrow frieze to the three separate wall panels and above that a wide cornice. In the vault formed by these changes she proposed hanging six heavy-looking chandeliers (in fact only four were used in production). The portraits shown in Matis' design were also left out. The effect of these adjustments was to increase the sense of confinement: a space in which confrontation could take place and from which the players could not escape. The floor design with its border and squared pattern echoed this idea.

As for the rest of the important stage furniture, the piano, originally a scrolled red one, was replaced by a battered black grand. This looked right in the grey set and more appropriate to the hasty introduction of a not-verygood piano into the room specifically for this 'interview.' The gramophone was in an old-fashioned upright cabinet with a lid. There were three chairs in addition to the piano stool. Two of the chairs were sidechairs and the third was specially upholstered with grey armrests for Stalin. The records were in boxes. Small tables for drinks and a coffer to conceal a telephone completed the scene.

Matis was concerned with details. While she did not opt for a 'real roorn,' realistic set, she nevertheless felt that it was important that the 'real elements should convince and support these historical characters.' Without that conviction how was the audience to 'believe in the importance of what they were saying?' So attention to detail was very important. For example, the faucets and the sink in the bathroom had to work. 'After all, these are the things that the audience could see. And in this theatre, sight lines were good enough that the audience could see everything.'

The costumes were designed with two main principles in mind: to be historically accurate and to look good on the actors in the set. Stalin was simply dressed. 'Not overdone, as he didn't have to impress anyone,' was her comment. He wore a tailored grey military jacket, grey jodhpur-like pants over black boots. The only touches of colour were a single Hero of Russia medal, red tabs on the collar, stripes on the pants. Zhdanov wore khaki pants and a slightly unkempt military-style jacket. Prokofiev was in a beautifully tailored grey suit, Shostakovich in a brown suit, slightly rumpled. So effective was the latter's costume and general appearance that a friend of Shostakovich on seeing Douglas Keir play the role remarked to the designer, 'It was like seeing a ghost on stage.'

The room, shabby but retaining something of its former splendour under a different cultural czar, parallels the pressure put on the composers to subvert

141 own artistic vision to the expression of state propaganda. Similarly, the

Wo set of Matis harks back to a different belief system, symbol of an

N culture, now drawn up into the service of a state where, if it cannot

ON absorbed, it can be destroyed. Pat Donnelly noticed in his review the

sit between the icon in the play and its reflection in the set: 'The siliFlo, Kremlin walls of Barbara [sic] Matis' set echo the triptych of the icon , which Stalin receives as a gift ...⁶

The vivid contrast and clash between two philosophies must have been

it Pownall's mind from his earliest thinking about this play. One of the

I images he recalls was that of the piano and the toilet. ⁷ The contrast

e,,voie these images was exploited by the designers of Master Class. Much

what happens with the grand piano is provided for in the dialogue by

OF Me. 1. indeed the music-making episode of the Second Act is at once the

orsiairt highlight and saddest low point of the play. It is possible that all the

aq has to do here is make sure that the piano is of the right type and

it the right place to enable the audience to see what is going on. However,

iwiae here the designers carefully thought through the best kind of setting for

M piano.

With the toilet or washroom part of Pownall's original image, there is

i that the designer can do and did. By showing Stalin's secret entrance

w. designer visually confirms his orchestration of the events. The washroom

t. serves, as Edward Kotenen, designer for the Vancouver Playhouse pro-

Ugiroji. pointed out, 'as a useful place to send people so they can be talked

MM.' Additionally, it is a place where both composers can go and be seen

privately to the tension of the situation. It is a place that provides

cei asides and soliloquies, even if they are non-verbal.

As his predecessors had done, Edward Kotenen researched the background

t the play. He wanted in his design to avoid the 'Frenchness' of the later

X"

is be. He wanted an atmosphere suggestive of 'Mother Russia' or a vir-ii Orthodox Church.' The result was a 'liver-coloured' set in which en. walls were painted with figures of saints and royal persons. It was

to make the most of the wide Playhouse stage. In consultation with Im Learning, the director, Kotenen decided to move the set downstage, behind the shallow apron. This meant placing a black curtain in the jism6o4moo arch, in front of the usual stage curtain. The new curtain was Edward Kotenen, Master Class, Vancouver Playhouse

used for the opening and entr'acte change. The stage floor was painted masonite, polished and patterned to look like tiles.

As the illustration makes plain, the set was angled. This was partly in response to the width of the stage and also to allow for sight lines. It is also clear that this was the most realistic set design of the three we have considered so far. Only when the washroom was illuminated (behind the scrim, stage left) was the realistic illusion broken. The enclosing walls of this wide boxset do confine the players, but it is obvious from the dispersal of the furniture throughout the floor area that the potential for tension and confrontation was diminished as the space was simply too large. The potential for tension was further reduced with the addition of a large couch at centre stage. Edward Kotenen found the washroom a problem too, for to have it seen by the audience as a whole it had to be larger than normal. One additional feature in the set was that of a small window above the door. Kotenen wanted to suggest by its size and position high on the wall that there was no escape from this room. He also used it as the source of a cold blue light which shone through into the otherwise darkened room at the beginning of the play to emphasize the inhospitable world outside. He further used it to lighten the area where Stalin is left, at the end of the play, asleep on the couch.

Kotenen also felt that the costumes had to support the illusion. Again, cool colours: blue, brown and khaki (beige and green) were used. As before, a contrast was made between the military cut of Stalin and Zhdanov's costumes and the suits: one elegant, for Prokofiev; the other rumpled, for Shostakovich. Kotenen summed up his attitude to the design and the costumes when he said, 'it was important to make the actors feel like these people; otherwise, the argument and situation lose the power and ability to convince.'

The set was not mentioned in reviews.

Shortly after the Vancouver Playhouse production closed, another production of Master Class opened at the Belfry Theatre, Victoria, B. C. This one used the wooden icon and the costumes of the Playhouse production, but the setting had to be completely redesigned for the peculiar stage of the Belfry. Of course, every designer has to take account of the physical space and budget given and then attempt to realise his or her vision of the setting most suitable for the play. For the Belfry designer, Ross Nichol, this meant designing for a space in which the stage was only 15' deep, had no wings, no flying space, and only one entrance space from upstage right. The space was further restricted by the presence of a wraparound balcony (the theatre was a converted church) which reduced the stage area visible to most of the audience to a triangular space.

Nichol returned to the selective realism of the earlier designers in his design for Master Class. The dominating feature of the set was the massive (7' square) column rising centre stage to a full 12' and then spreading out to form a vault. A visible staircase came from upper stage right, behind the column, and connected with a doorway into the room at stage left. The front of the column was covered with a scrim which when lit showed the washroom in its interior. Below the washroom floor level and concealed in the column's base was a rolling unit containing the liquor cabinet. The placement of the furniture-the chairs and piano in particular-was dictated by the positioning of the column at centre stage. Colours were warm: burgundy and gold, overlaid with stencils suggesting religious murals on the column and the door mantel. The murals on the column were obscured by flags. The warmth of the set colours was heightened by the use of warm amber light.

10

z

Ross Nichol, Master Class, Belfry Theatre, Victoria

The main difficulty with the set was the washroom. Stalin's 'secret' entrance was accomplished without difficulty from backstage, although it appears he was visible to the audience as he entered at upper stage right. The surprise effect of this entrance is somewhat diminished by this procedure. The effect is lessened for the rest of the actors by the fact that Stalin then had to leave the washroom by a regular washroom door and enter the reception room i yet another door. Another effect of this construction was to strain iwsr;o credibility further when the actors overhear Stalin in the washroom i what had appeared a very solid looking column. Naturally, allowing

other actors to leave the room to enter the washroom lowers the tension sense of confinement. The designer would have preferred to keep the im, in the room, without escape, but the director balked at the idea of a door in the column area. The overall effect was to drain tension from the space which Ross Nichol had hoped to make opulent, yet M, e4diel9v by the size of the room and the use of height.

Nichol agreed that the actors' costumes and the setting had to convince the

traorwo of the reality of the situation; moreover, he felt that in Master Class

ic was more need than usual for the audience to have some background to te play in order to fully appreciate the seriousness and threat in the situation icy were witnessing.

I was unable to find any newspaper review of this production; however, oss Nichol refers in a letter to 'James Kennedy, music critic [music critic!] f Monday magazine, who described [the] ... set as a "used furniture store evocation of the post-war Kremlin. . . ."' ⁸

It was the juxtaposition of the piano and the toilet which first caught the magination of Brian Perchaluk, the designer of Master Class for Theatre Plus t the St. Lawrence Centre, Toronto. To him, the juxtaposition suggested the conflict and incongruity between the artist and the politician. He felt an effective visual contrast could underline this.

Perchaluk, as other designers before him, turned to the 'Old Kremlin' as inspiration for the room which he felt would symbolize the old music. Specifically, he used rooms in the Terem palace of the Kremlin as the main source for his design. He first thought of the setting as a comfortable music room with an individual character stamped on it. Later, after discussion, he altered it to make it less personal and more formal. He made the grand piano the centre piece. He retained the former imperial splendour in the faded colours of red, oxblood and gold overlaid with tracery. He kept the large but unused Romanoff chandelier and the blue, cream and turquoise tiled Russian stove which he had introduced instead of the mantle shelf. He removed the comfortable armchairs, harp, cabinet, mirror and paintings. He added, apart from the piano bench, only three chairs, all in faded red with the Romanoff crest on them, but only one with armrests for Stalin. Perchaluk took the middle arch, which is fully visible in the preliminary design, made it more robust in width and sent it soaring up 21', out of sight above the proscenium. 'Leaving spaces unseen, just as there are listeners unseen in this room,' was his comment. By making the room less cluttered, he helped solve a major challenge of the design which was to create movement. The arrangement did this, although he acknowledged that blocking was sometimes strained as the chairs of the two composers were so far downstage left and right, respectively, that conversation involved awkward straining over the shoulder for the actor.

Brian Perchaluk, Master Class, Jane Mallett Theatre, St Lawrence Centre, Toronto

The other main set element, the washroom, was downstage left. Treated again as a late addition to the room, it was tiled, shabby and because of its position, visible throughout the performance, although there was a door into it (apart from the secret door in the wall) to maintain the illusion of separateness for the actors.

Perchaluk kept the centre doors within the arch shown in the original sketch flanked by translucent red and blue stained glass windows. The doors in performance, however, while they appeared massive, did not have an authentic swing and heaviness to them. Nevertheless, 'Brian Perchaluk's styrofoam confection of a Kremlin room, complete with tiled stove, is wonderful,' thought Ray Conlogue of The Globe and Mail.⁹

Five productions then of Master Class and five designs, yet there are elements common to all which are worth noting and which reflect the accuracy and the sensibility of the designers. In each case designers went back to czarist times for the basic room used in the play. Such a setting calls for a special kind of treatment. Arnold Aronson recognized it in the work of Ralph Funicello who:

ReWs 1, that many directors place plays in the pre-World War I milieu, necessitating

MV he calls 'realistic motivation' in scenery ... The set and props will have to r-. a justification and motivation for those actions. In order to create

IMM, IV motivated' sets without slavish adherence to naturalism, Funicello

im, on carefully selected detail. He refers to the result as 'non-box-set realism.'¹⁰

I of the designers could be said to have followed this approach.

There are other influences discernible too. Ming Cho Lee, perhaps the

eitim celebrated contemporary American designer, is noted for his reaction (t the pictorial style of Joe Mielziner. He was 'generally uncomfortable with w; scrims popularized by Mielziner,' which two designers of this production He tried to replace Mielziner's representational approach with a preone. For the staging of Electra, a landmark in American theatre

he said, 'I had panels because I wanted to present panels. I didn't in them becoming walls.'¹¹ The influence of this kind of thinking can be

q4i most clearly in the panels of Barbra Matis' set, but also in the thrust ;i setting of Phillip Silver. The more traditional pictorial style appeared iirswi clearly in the work of the other three designers. But even here there k, no 'slavish adherence to naturalism.' All the designers, through their M selection of detail and stylized elements, worked through what may

v7W be termed 'selective realism' to achieve their effects.

A play like Master Class is a challenge to designers. It is four talking

Mow one simply could line them up on a row of chairs and let them go to . Radio would seem a natural medium for such a play. To lend life to this Flits situation in which almost everything is accomplished by dialogue, the im has to provide a set in which the interest of the spectator is held and

i[;, maximum motivated movement of the actors can be made. All five of loi designers did this. All of them generated movement by the distribution the furniture, although some maintained tension by the placement and the em of pieces available, particularly the chairs.

Graham Harley, who appeared in all of the Canadian productions except

Boo Belfry's, had an interesting comment to make on the chairs. He was ,T,,M,T=- 1, by the fact that in all the productions there had been only three. r, he pointed out, 'Zhdanov arranged the room for the meeting. He suffers wim a heart complaint. He would not have left himself without a chair, yet i all these productions he remains standing most of the time.' We might ro that given Zhdanov's military attention to detail it is indeed strange that

w; should overlook this. Harley suggested, and the text supports him, that it re, be better to have the restless, unsettled Shostakovich without a chair.

Wi; would also add to the tension,' he added. The obvious answer to the

emQer6i.- of a fourth chair seems to be the need felt on the part of the director and designer to stimulate movement.

As a chamber play it is better suited to a small stage in a proscenium theatre. Phillip Silver, the first designer, recognized this when he suggested to Malcolm Black, artistic director of Theatre Plus at the St. Lawrence Centre, that Master Class would work better in the Jane Mallett Theatre, an intimate proscenium theatre. 'It was a good space-like an operating theatre-to present a play which showed people being operated on,' was Silver's comment. The conversational nature of the piece is well served by this kind of space; moreover, the proscenium stage better serves to confine the actors and create and maintain the illusion necessary, as critics and designers alike have pointed out, to this historically -based play. By the use of colour, decoration, texture, shape, scale and lighting, each designer, to varying degrees, held the eye of the spectator. Edward Kotenen pointed out that even in plays like no's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, where the characters are confined to a sofa and chairs, there is still lots of scenery. He felt this was needed to allow the audience and the actors to escape from the 'claustrophobic' effect these plays generate. One could argue that the washroom also served as an exit when the tension became too much for the composers.

Apart from movement and visual interest, there is the issue of the extent to which the design supported the play's text. All of the designers recognized the confrontational nature of the play and the tension between the outlooks expressed by Stalin and Zhdanov on the one hand, and Prokofiev and Shostakovich on the other. All, I feel, attempted to portray this division visually in the old Kremlin room subverted, as Stalin would the musicians and their music, to a different purpose; and in the washroom-shabby, functional, cold, ugly and without privacy.

Of the five settings discussed, only three were mentioned in reviews. True, sometimes sets (and plays) do not merit much space either in a review or in our memory. But no first-year theatre student is left in any doubt as to the importance of the contribution that Joe Mielziner, through his design for Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, made to the play and to American scene design. That is why, here in Canada, we need critics and reviewers who are visually literate.

Perhaps the last word on the design should go to the person who has probably seen more productions of this play than anyone else, and thought longest and deepest about it: David Pownall. In a letter he wrote:

Regarding the set-I would like to see a very small set-a drab back room, an old, battered upright piano-some forgotten corner of the Kremlin as functional, grey

and brutal as the architecture and art of the times in some of its expression. Just a notion of mine ... ¹²

Notes

1. ARNOLD ARONSON, American Set Design (New York: Theatre Communications Group 1985) p 21
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2. These productions were:

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3. DAVID POWNALL, Master Class playscript. This script, marked 'original, Revised-New York, February 1984,' and annotated 'corrected playing script 9/9/84,' is the basis for all five Canadian productions
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4. 20 Nov 1985: D7
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5. 1 Nov 1985: F1
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6. Montreal Gazette, 15 Mar 1986: 5
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7. DAVID POWNALL, personal interview 6 Dec 1986
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8. ROSS NICHOL, letter to the author, 7 June 1987
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9. 24 Apr 1987: C8
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10. ARONSON, 45
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11. ARONSON, 87
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12. DAVID POWNALL, letter to the author, 16 June 1987
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