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Le Cocu magnifique is a Belgian play by Fernand Crommelynck. It was first published in 1921.
The play was performed in the Netherlands for the first time on November 15, 1956 by the Utrecht Student Theatre Association (Utrechtse Studenten Toneel Vereniging). The translation was by Krijn Prince, and the play was directed by professional director Jack Dixon.
Bruno, the village scribe, is married to a beautiful and devoted young woman named Stella. He makes a good living composing love letters for the uneducated villagers, many of which are addressed to his wife. Bruno's eloquence can lift him off into rhapsodies of brilliant exaggeration. As a character verging on the manic, his paranoia is easily excited. He convinces himself that his fear of being cuckolded can be appeased only by the certainty of knowing he is a cuckold. Therefore, he offers his wife first to his best friend and then, when that fails to appease him, to all the young men of the village. This demented decision disrupts village life: the town turns violently against him, and the women of the village threaten Stella with torture, degradation and expulsion.
Vsevolod Meyerhold's production (1922), with set and props based on the designs of Lyubov Popova, broke away from the “conventional framing of the acting area” by eliminating the wings and proscenium arch from the scenery. [1] He believed that the scenery should just represent the setting in its most basic form rather than “illusionistic settings”. [1] Due to the nature of theatre, Theatrical Constructivism is somewhat of an oxymoron. Its use in theatrical productions is not strictly utilitarian like many constructivists desired. Theatre requires a certain amount of subjectivity and use of imagination on the audience's end. [2] Meyerhold's production, despite being vastly different from what people were accustomed to, was received very well. The set for The Magnanimous Cuckold consisted of framework, rotating wheels in the background to signify machinery, and a windmill to indicate the play's location. The intention of the simplified scenery was to “organize a scenic space in the way most convenient for the actors”. [2]
In addition to facilitating the actors, the scenery was also designed with the expectation that it could be presented outside as well, due to the closing of Meyerhold's theater. This resulted in the set being easily deconstructed and reconstructed, a strong indication of constructivist influence on the production.
Another indication of this influence comes from a large, black, rotating disc in the background. On this disc the letters 'CR-ML-NCK' were painted in white, which made it far more visible when the disc rotated (along with the two wheels) which coincided with the changing passions of the characters. [2] There was not a subjective meaning to the letters on the disc; they referenced the writer (Crommelynck), and made the rotation of the disc more obvious than a purely black disc would be.
The simplified scenery in constructivist theatre was simply meant to inform the idea of the play, not to take on a more important or formal position. [3]
The Magnanimous Cuckold stage by Meyerhold "unveiled a new Constructivist and biomechanical theatre, entirely based on movement and a mastery of the stage space and time". [4]
The Magnificent Cuckold or Il magnifico cornuto is a 1965 Italian film directed by Antonio Pietrangeli and adapted from the original play.
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was a seminal Soviet Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor, and the many productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique.
A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. The director thereby collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff to coordinate research and work on all the aspects of the production which includes the Technical and the Performance aspects. The technical aspects include: stagecraft, costume design, theatrical properties (props), lighting design, set design, and sound design for the production. The performance aspects include: acting, dance, orchestra, chants, and stage combat.
Stagecraft is a technical aspect of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes constructing and rigging scenery; hanging and focusing of lighting; design and procurement of costumes; make-up; stage management; audio engineering; and procurement of props. Stagecraft is distinct from the wider umbrella term of scenography. Considered a technical rather than an artistic field, it is primarily the practical implementation of a scenic designer's artistic vision.
Theatrical scenery is that which is used as a setting for a theatrical production. Scenery may be just about anything, from a single chair to an elaborately re-created street, no matter how large or how small, whether the item was custom-made or is the genuine item, appropriated for theatrical use.
Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer of German descent. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.
Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova was a Russian-Soviet avant-garde artist, painter and designer.
Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov was a Soviet Russian constructivist writer, playwright, poet, and special correspondent for Pravda.
A revolving stage is a mechanically controlled platform within a theatre that can be rotated in order to speed up the changing of a scene within a show. A fully revolving set was an innovation constructed by the hydraulics engineer Tommaso Francini for an elaborately produced pageant, Le ballet de la délivrance de Renaud, which was presented for Marie de Medici in January 1617 at the Palais du Louvre and noted with admiration by contemporaries. Such a stage is also commonly referred to as a turntable.
Igor Vladimirovich Ilyinsky was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor, director and comedian. Hero of Socialist Labour (1974) and People's Artist of the USSR (1949).
The Moscow Art Theatre was a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to regularly put on shows implementing Stanislavski's system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre and drama.
Twentieth-century theatre describes a period of great change within the theatrical culture of the 20th century, mainly in Europe and North America. There was a widespread challenge to long-established rules surrounding theatrical representation; resulting in the development of many new forms of theatre, including modernism, expressionism, impressionism, political theatre and other forms of Experimental theatre, as well as the continuing development of already established theatrical forms like naturalism and realism.
Alexander Yakovlevich Tairov was a leading innovator and theatre director in Russia before and during the Soviet era.
The Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull in 1898, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, was a crucial milestone for the fledgling theatre company that has been described as "one of the greatest events in the history of Russian theatre and one of the greatest new developments in the history of world drama." It was the first production in Moscow of Anton Chekhov's 1896 play The Seagull, though it had been performed with only moderate success in St. Petersburg two years earlier. Nemirovich, who was a friend of Chekhov's, overcame the writer's refusal to allow the play to appear in Moscow after its earlier lacklustre reception and convinced Stanislavski to direct the play for their innovative and newly founded Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). The production opened on 29 December [O.S. 17 December] 1898. The MAT's success was due to the fidelity of its delicate representation of everyday life, its intimate, ensemble playing, and the resonance of its mood of despondent uncertainty with the psychological disposition of the Russian intelligentsia of the time. To commemorate this historic production, which gave the MAT its sense of identity, the company to this day bears the seagull as its emblem.
Maria Ivanovna Babanova was a Soviet and Russian actress and pedagogue. She has been described as Vsevolod Meyerhold's greatest actress and was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1954.
Biomechanics was a system of actor training developed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. Its purpose was to widen the emotional potential of a theater piece and express thoughts and ideas that could not be easily presented through the naturalistic theater of the period.
Konstantin Arkadyevich Raikin is a Russian actor and theatre director, the head of the Moscow Satyricon Theatre. Konstantin Raikin has been honoured with the titles Meritorious Artist of Russia (1985) and the People's Artist of Russia (1993). Among his accolades are the Russian State Prize (1995), the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" and the Golden Mask award. He is the son of Arkady Raikin, the legendary Soviet actor and stand-up comedian.
Theatre in the nineteenth century was noted for its changing philosophy from the Romanticism and Neoclassicism that dominated Europe since the late 18th century to Realism and Naturalism in the latter half of the 19th century before it eventually gave way to the rise of Modernism in the 20th century. Scenery in theater at the time closely mirrored these changes, and with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and technological advancement throughout the century, dramatically changed the aesthetics of the theater.
ZRELISHCHA was a Russian language Soviet illustrated weekly theatre journal. It was originallyublished in Moscow from May to August 1922 under the name "Hermitage" ; from August 1922 to June 1924 it was known as Zrelishch. The journal published a chronicle of cultural events in Moscow with a focus on theatre, dance, opera, circus and music-hall. The journal regularly featured critical reviews, correspondence and discussion on avant-garde cultural activities in the Soviet Union and abroad. Edited by theatre critic Lev Kolpakchi, the journal was associated with the work of V. Ardov, B. Bebutov, O. Brik, P. Markov, V. Meyerhold, S. Yutkevich, A. Fevralsky, B. Arvatov, S, Tretyakov, and others. Many writers of the journal published under pseudonyms. The journal editors expressed affiliation to the Left Front of the Arts and the journal served as forum for the discussion and critique of Constructivist theatre, Formalism and the methods of dialectical materialism. The journal's position in regards to revolutionary cultural production, as set out in one of the first issues, was the "study the material characteristics and methods for its organization, the creation of a science of art, the transformation of art into a scientifically-organized mode of production."
Georgy Bogdanovich Yakulov, (Armenian Յակուլյան Գևորգ Բոգդանի Georges Yakulov - Russian and soviet artist of Armenian origin, painter, graphic artist, decorator, set designer, art theorist. Close to the circle of avant-garde innovators, he actively interacted with various artistic movements, but was not a member of any of the art groups, was looking for his own visual method, combining the culture of the East and the culture of the West. The ideas put forward by him "the theory of light and the origin of styles in art", called the "theory of multi-colored suns", developed by the French artist Robert Delaunay.