Renderings for the Stage
Robert Edmond Jones is known for creating stunning renderings for his designs. He worked mainly in black and white and used a loose style with ink and brushes to create evocative stage settings. His plates are still used as the cornerstone of many stage rendering and fine art classes taught today due to his creative use of materials and gesture to show dramatic light and space. Below are a few examples of his more well-known stage renderings and costume designs taken from The Theatre of Robert Edmond Jones by Ralph Pendleton.
The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife by Anatole France, 1915
This work is often cited as the first instance of New Satgecraft in the United States, and was one of the first professional works Jones created. The level of detail in this drawing is uncharacteristic to many of his later works, but this was also just a preliminary drawing. The actual production had a greatly altered design.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare, 1921
His renderings for Macbeth are probably Jones' most famous. The design itself was criticized by theatre-goers at the time, but it has come to be very well-regarded today. Items of note include the three abstract masks at the top of the first drawing, which are meant to represent the three witches in the play. Some have speculated that this use of symbols was inspired by his studies of psychoanalysis, a fascination that eventually culminated in him traveling to Switzerland to undergo it at the hands of Carl Jung.
The Kingdom of Sancho Panza by Melchior Lengyel, 1923
Jones often designed the costumes for the shows he created sets for, and would usually begin the design process with the costumes, before even beginning to think about the setting. His costumes designs were less abstract than his backgrounds, which stems from his theory that the actors were supposed to be the main focus of the show, the "conscious," while the set would need to compliment and even amplify them, but also be less apparent, acting as the "subconscious." Few of his designated costume sketches remain in public hands, but his stage renderings are good resources for this as he often dressed the figures in clothing he had designed for the show.
At the Gateway by Luigi Pirandello, 1924
The few set pieces in this work show the simplicity so valued by purveyors of New Stagecraft. Even though the stage is nearly empty, the two hanging pieces of cloth and squat building behind them sufficiently place the characters in a scene. The stage picture is very evocative and presents an engaging backdrop for the characters that can mirror and project their emotions through lighting and other effects, but still keep the people as the main focus. This is an example of the actors and a simple setting working in harmony.
Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill, 1924
Robert Edmond Jones designed the original sets for some of Eugene O'Neill's plays, and this is an example of one of them. It is a very small plate, and one of the few that contains actual nature objects (trees) instead of symbols as representation of nature. An interesting thing of note is to see that the emotion in this sketch is not reflected in the lighting, where Jones usually portrays it, but rather concentrated in the two figures in the foreground. Jones also worked as a director on this piece, which he did on-and-off with the Provincetown Players and other theatre productions for most of his career.
The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly, 1930
These two plates show two different but equally effective ways Jones utilized lighting and new technology to create his settings. The first is a dramatic wash on the background cyclorama, which was the New Stagecraft alternative to the elaborately detailed painted backdrop. The second is a dramatic single light source which lights up a practically barren stage, only the actor and a portion of a stone wall with their projected shadow on it can be seen. Both of these lighting methods used less light, or more concentrated sources of light, to create more emotional depth and more interesting stage picture than a traditional, realistic box set would.
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill, 1946
Another example of a design for Eugene O'Neill, this is about as close to a box set as one would ever get from Jones. How it is unique from others is mostly visible in the lighting: the two windows on opposite sides of the room are the only two sources in the drawing, and contract each other as one is very strong while the other is weak. If one looks closely at he drawing it is also apparent that there is no ceiling, the walls simply drift up into blackness, creating a spooky endlessness to the room.