INTRODUCTION

If ‘the material side of phenomena’ was a mere distraction, why should it be so slavishly represented on stage? Did a forest really require ten thousand leaves? Adolphe Appia suggests it might need none at all. Craig ponders how to stage a scene depicting a man in a snowstorm, and in a few brief comments questions the whole nature of theatrical representation. An actor may be superfluous; perhaps ‘movements of some intangible material’ would be more expressive. Or perhaps an actor could acquire such expressiveness, not by merely imitating someone in a snowstorm, but by seeking ‘symbolic gestures which should suggest a man fighting the elements’.