Oscar Wilde ve E. Gordon Craig: Tiyatro Sanatı Üstüne

Year 2002, Issue: 1, 39 - 53, 28.12.2011

Dikmen Gürün

Abstract

Summary:

From Oscar Wilde's point of view, art could not be subjected to any external limitations. It presented various imaginative forms, and through these forms  influenced life.  Life, according to him, was dependent on art; thus it offered to life beautiful forms of expression, yet life lacked artistic temperament.

Since beauty and mental image were the basic requirements of art, it was crucial  that life, if handled as the “rough material” of the artist, should be freed from its “monstrous worship of facts,” in other words, from realistic traits. 

Wilde was of the opinion that practicing realism in drama as well as in other art forms constituted a complete deterioration of art. He also defined acting as an effort of the actor to convert his own disposition on an imaginative level which was beyond the reach of the hampering elements and demands of real life.

Indirectly, Wilde's views were later given special emphasis by some artists such as Edward Gordon Craig who contributed  significantly to the development of modern theatre.  Gordon Craig treated theatre as an independent form of art and his admiration of the ancient civilizations developed from the same roots as did Wilde's.  His concept of a “new” theatre sprang,  among others,  from the idea of übermarionette and movement. He emphasized graceful movement as one of the significant requisites of modern theatre. Movement was also worthy of study in the area of directing. Wilde too emphasized the importance of  movement in the same field.  One of the main arguments of Edward Gordon Craig in relation to movement was that the movement of three-dimensional forms could interpret ideas in time and space. Both Gordon Craig and Oscar Wilde stressed the fact that on stage one could create through movement not only the sense of the visible but also the sense of the invisible. Furthermore, Gordon Craig refused using two-dimensional scenery because he believed that a three- dimensional being (the actor) had to perform within a three-dimensional surrounding.  That concept led to his “screens” which were to find its reflections in contemporary  theatre.     

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