It is generally assumed that great artists, after listening to their inner murmurs and callings, reach a certain point in their work / career / life, in which they attain a specific approach and signature distinguishing them from other artists. Georgia O’Keefe is distinct and different from Robert Rauschenberg; Fellini is clearly different from his fellow Italian filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni or Vittorio De Sica; and then, in turn, the Italians are quite different from the other international directors such as Stanley Kubrick or Abbas Kiarostami. The secret to such masters is that they develop an aesthetic and poetics which can easily be accepted as universal “language” and which, in turn, can be attributed to them as their style and signature.

Most artists have, at best, developed one or two signatures before they reach their grand opus. The first signature refers to their early years - the years of search and experimentation -  and the second refers to their later aesthetics. In some rare exceptions, such as the filmmaker Federico Fellini, there are more than three distinct signatures; his Nights of Cabria (1957), a heart-wrenching black and white neorealist work, is quite different from his early autobiographical film, 8 ½ (1963), which is clearly distinct from his most critically acclaimed film, Amarcord (1973). The concept of signatures can also be seen in the world of theatre, opera, and stage design. The postmodern designs and staging of Robert Wilson – ultimately tied to his theatrical mise-en-scene – have come to gain their visual aesthetic for each text he works with: be it a Shakespeare play, an opera, or a self-generated play. On the other end of postmodern design, Erich Wonder creates a well defined space/room and light to create a self contained unit called Raum – the German word for room/space. The Raum is a self-contained world which can host and inhabit a section, a part, or a full production. While understanding the poetics and signature of an artist and their work, few designers opt not to be categorized under different terms, but rather remain in dialogue and exchange with their discoveries and growth.

Such is the case with George Tsypin. 

George Tsypin, the Russian born sculptor, urban architect, and scenic designer continues to be one of the most distinguished and applauded designers of the 21st century. For a producer or director to approach Tsypin to create a scenic design for a production would be similar to walking into an enigmatic labyrinth, with different wonders and surprises at each turn, and with little or no idea where it will end. The good news is: the process comes to an end and not only so, it ends with a spectacular outcome. In designing his sets, Tsypin defies a single signature by using his skill as an architect and sculptor to address and create different worlds on stage. Consider his last two productions in New York: Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre and Prokofiev’s War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera.

The Little Mermaid
For anyone looking to find an ocean on stage, this production would not be let down. The ocean is there - in the theatre. But beyond the ocean, the sky too is there in the theatre. The depths of the sea and the blue sky meet. How, one may ask, did Tsypin bring the sky and ocean to the theatre and to the theatre stage? On one level, the answer is: “Go see the show” as no words can do justice to the design. But if you insist, then it must be said that the set was not exactly a conventional set. It was a set composed of moving three-dimensional sculptures, with a wavy-like fabric from the stage floor to the ceiling. Furthermore, the side wings were also covered with blue fabric. What was once an equivalent of a proscenium “black box,” now had been transformed into and become a sea and a sky reality. Tsypin’s set, short of creating a Raum had created a spectacular triple Raum: the world of the sea, the world of the land, and the world of the royal palace with its elegant and precisely calculated perspective and columns, where the court chef served his meals, and the two enamored lovers – the prince and the little mermaid could dance together. Throughout the production, Tsypin’s sculptures shifted or rotated to signal a new place and a new space. For anyone looking to find a single unit set on the stage, they would have been disappointed as Tsypin, rather than designing a set or scenic design opted to design a space were the story could take place, where mermaids and other sea creatures, would have not been let down with Tsypin’s solution: Tsypin had indeed brought over the ocean and the sky.

War and Peace 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace adapted into an opera by Sergie Prokofiev is a radical departure from The Little Mermaid. It’s opera. It’s epic. It can be long (4hours and 15minutes). It’s sweet and bitter. This said, as with all great productions, the story was a gem. Even though Prokofiev cut the story down to its basics, the essence of Tolstoy’s novel came through. Napoleon Bonaparte and his army decide to attack Russia. The Russians, under the guidance of General Kutuzov, decide to save themselves and their country from Napoleon’s hands by setting Moscow on fire. Unheard of throughout the history of man, this act of love or “self-sacrifice,” towards their country and themselves, defeats Napoleon and his army. The design question is: how to portray Moscow on fire?  Other scenes of war were depicted naturally, with movement and soft blue light, where the movement of the peasants and army through the cold fields and grounds conveyed bitter cold and much difficulty. This small detail of the staging recalled Dante’s Inferno, where the last level in the inferno is the bitter freezing cold.

Between the bitter infernal cold and the infernal fire and flames of Moscow burning, Tsypin had divided the stage in two parts for each activity. The center stage was a mound where all theatrical motion and activities took place - including the presence of a horse -  in the farthest part of the stage the burning Moscow had its special Raum. Tsypin the architect, sculpture, scenic designer had created Moscow’s buildings with the help of James Ingalls lighting. A scrim created a hyperreal installation: Moscow on fire. The hyperreal effect was even more accentuated for the audience as the placement of Tsypin’s Moscow was quite at a distant, thereby helping the hyperreal (non)illusion even more believable.   

With Moscow burning in the farthest point of the theatre stage, Tsypin’s usage of a mound on center stage, acted as a field or a hill for attackers and defenders to come and go, to fight or to fall. And with the music of Prokofiev, the burning Moscow became a three dimensional film - reminiscent of Eisenstein’s films - but this time in color and live. Using a cinematic theatre device, Tsypin had carefully carved out the farthest end of the theatre space into a room/space, a Raum,with a vast screen enclosing it, in which Moscow’s buildings were recreated, seen and subsequently destroyed by fire, all the while with Prokofiev’s music and Ingalls’ lighting, allowing the audience to witness a hyperreal and cinematic version of Moscow burning down. At once we knew it was artificial and theatre, but at once we also new that it was Moscow on flames. With Tsypin, who is a poet-architect there are no limits of breaking down the limits: with one wall taken down another may follow too. If one production is a 19th century fire, the other is a 21st century underwater world.

© Electronic Communications from the International Brecht Society: ECIBS 36.1 (Winter 2008)