ABSTRACT
As Craig had noted in 1909, his ideal theater, which would "strive towards the condition of music," existed "only in the imagination." Its final form was never realized on the stage, and indeed - as had happened with the Moscow Hamlet - it effectively distracted Craig from practical work. But from 1906 on, an increasing number of jottings and scenarios in his notebooks, designs and models, and interviews and articles, culminating with the text of Scene in 1922, allow a fairly complete reconstruction of his visonary art form. The way these ideas are expressed is fragmentary, and their final shape evolved only gradually. So there are many contradictory elements, some of which were never fully resolved. On one hand, the thrust is away from actors to puppets and finally to abstract movement. On the other, Craig stresses the value of his concept as a context for human figures. Similarly, he claimed that his "invention" was not a mechanism, yet he realized that it would require all the resources of complex machinery; he spoke of outdoor performances lit by the sun, because the sun had become an important thematic symbol, when all his descriptions and designs presuppose artificial lighting and a roofed-in theater.
