ABSTRACT
The New Stagecraft was a scenographic movement that adapted European modernist practices for the American theatre. Its adherents were stage decorators and architects, who would only later call themselves scenic designers. The New Stagecraft rejected conventionalism and the detailed realism of the previous generation, instead valuing simplification, suggestion, and unity of the stage picture. It also supported the professionalization of designing and, as a result, New Stagecraft tenets undergird much twentieth-century American scenic practice. Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Simonson, Jo Mielziner, Norman Bel Geddes, and Joseph Urban were practitioners of the New Stagecraft, and their designs have become touchstones for the movement. The New Stagecraft was a uniquely American movement; it adapted European style for a commercially-oriented theatrical ecosystem that emphasized individual artistic contributions, reliance on the market, and heightened realism.
