Edward Gordon Craig

Edward Henry Gordon CraigCHOBE(bornEdward Godwin; 16 January 1872 – 29 July 1966), sometimes known asGordon Craig, was an Englishmodernisttheatre practitioner; he worked as an actor,directorandscenic designer, as well as developing an influential body of theoretical writings.  Craig was the son of actress DameEllen Terry.
TheGordon Craig Theatre, built in Stevenage (the town of his birth), was named in his honour in 1975.
Theillegitimateson of the architectEdward Godwinand the actressEllen Terry,Craig was born Edward Godwin on 16 January 1872 in Railway Street,Stevenage, inHertfordshire, England, andbaptisedat age 16 as Edward Henry Gordon. He attended Bradfield College in Berkshire from May 1886 to July 1887. He took thesurnameCraig bydeed pollat age 21.
Craig spent much of his childhood backstage at theLyceum Theatre, where his mother was the leading lady to actorSir Henry Irving. Craig later wrote a vivid, book-length tribute to Irving. Craig's sister wasEdith Craig.
In 1893 Craig married Helen Mary (May) Gibson, with whom he had five children: Philip Carlisle (born 1894), Rosemary Nell (born 1894), Henry Edward Robin (born 1895), John (born 1896) and Peter (born 1897).
He met Elena Meo, a violinist, daughter of artistGaetano Meo, in 1900, and they had three children together: Ellen (1903–1904), Nell (1904–1975), andEdward(1905–1998). Craig lived with Elena Meo and their two surviving children on and off, in England and Italy. May Craig would not consent to a divorce until 1932, after Craig and Elena Meo had permanently separated. Craig fathered other illegitimate children: a daughter with actress Jess Dorynne, Kitty; a daughter with dancerIsadora Duncan, Deirdre Beatrice (1906–1913), who drowned at the age of seven with another of Duncan's children, Patrick Augustus, and their nanny; a son, Davidino Lees (1916–2004), with poet Dorothy Nevile Lees, and a daughter, Daphne 'Two Two' (1935-1995) with his secretary/translatorDaphne Woodward.
Craig lived in straitened circumstancesin France for much of his life and was interned by German Occupation forces in 1942. He died atVence, France, in 1966, aged 94.
Craig asserted that the director was "the true artist of the theatre" and, controversially, suggested viewing actors as no more important thanmarionettes. He designed and built elaborately symbolic sets; for instance, a set composed of his patented movable screens for theMoscow Art Theatre production ofHamlet. He was also the editor and chief writer for the first international theatre magazine,The Mask.
He worked as an actor in the company ofSir Henry Irving, but became more interested inart, learning to carve wood under the tutelage ofJames PrydeandWilliam Nicholson. His acting career ended in 1897, when he went intotheatrical design.
Craig's first productions,Purcell'sDido and Aeneas,Handel'sAcis and Galatea(both inspired and conducted by his lifelong friendMartin Shaw, who founded thePurcell Operatic Societywith him to produce them), andIbsen'sThe Vikings at Helgeland,were produced inLondon. The production ofDido and Aeneaswas a considerable success and highly influential in reviving interest in the music of Purcell, then so little known that three copies ofThe Timesreview were delivered to the theatre: one addressed to Mr Shaw, one to Mr Craig, and one to Mr Purcell. Craig concentrated on keeping his designs simple, so as to set-off the movements of the actors and of light, and introduced the idea of a "unified stage picture" that covered all the elements of design.
After finding little financial success in Britain, Craig set out for Germany in 1904. While there, he wrote one of his most famous works, theessayThe Art of the Theatre(later reprinted with the titleOn the Art of the Theatre). In 1908, Isadora Duncan introduced Craig toKonstantin Stanislavski, the founder of theMoscow Art Theatre, who invited him to directtheir famous production ofHamletwith the company, which opened in December 1911. After settling inItaly, Craig created a school of theatrical design with support fromLord Howard de Walden, the Arena Goldoni in Florence. During World War I, he wrote a cycle ofpuppetplays, theDrama for Foolsand published a little theatre magazine,The Marionnette(1918).
Craig was considered extremely difficult to work with and ultimately refused to direct or design any project over which he did not have complete artistic control. This led to his withdrawal from practical theatre production.His later career is remarkable for how little he achieved after the age of forty, during a long period of over fifty years.  In 1929, Craig produced a remarkable series of woodcuts as illustrations for a special edition ofHamletpublished by CountHarry Kesslerin a German translation byGerhardt Hauptmann, an English edition of which appeared the following year.
He was appointed anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire(OBE) and in 1958 was made aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour(CH).
While often working under his own name, Craig also signed work with a large number of other names, including Oliver Bath, Julius Oliver, Giulio Pirro, Samuel Prim, and Stanislas Lodochowskowski.
The Art Recordnoted in 1901 that Oliver Bath was "a gentleman who is believed to subsist on an exclusive diet of the famous Bath Oliver Biscuit".
Craig's idea of using neutral, mobile, non-representational screens as a staging device is probably his most famous scenographic concept. In 1910 Craig filed apatentwhich described in considerable technical detail a system of hinged and fixed flats that could be quickly arranged to cater for both internal and external scenes. He presented a set toWilliam Butler Yeatsfor use at theAbbey Theatrein Ireland, who shared hissymbolistaesthetic.
Craig's second innovation was instage lighting. Doing away with traditionalfootlights, Craig lit the stage from above, placing lights in the ceiling of the theatre. Colour and light also became central to Craig's stage conceptualizations.
The third remarkable aspect of Craig's experiments in theatrical form were his attempts to integrate design elements with his work with actors. Hismise en scènesought to articulate the relationships in space between movement, sound, line, and colour. Craig promoted a theatre focused on the craft of the director – a theatre where action, words, colour and rhythm combine in dynamic dramatic form.All of his life, Craig sought to capture "pure emotion" or "arrested development" in the plays on which he worked. Even during the years when he was not producing plays, Craig continued to make models, to conceive stage designs and to work on directorial plans that were never to reach performance. He believed that a director should approach a play with no preconceptions and he embraced this in his fading up from the minimum or blank canvas approach.
As an engraver and a classical artist, Craig found inspiration inpuppetsandmasks. In his 1910 article "A Note on Masks," Craig expounds the virtue of using masks as a mechanism for capturing the audience's attention, imagination and soul. "There is only one actor – nay one man who has the soul of the dramatic poet, and who has ever served as the true and loyal interpreter of the poet," he proclaimed, and "this is the marionette."
On the Art of the Theatre(1911) is written as a dialogue between a Playgoer and a Stage Director, who examine the problems of the nature of stage directing. Craig argues that it was not dramatists, but rather performers who made the first works ofdrama, using action, words, line, colour and rhythm. Craig goes on to contend that only the director who seeks to interpret drama truly, and commits to training in all aspects of dramatic art, can restore the "Art of the Theatre."Maintaining that the director should seek a faithful interpretation of the text, Craig argues that audiences go to the theatre to see, rather than to hear, plays. The design elements may transcend reality and function as symbols, he thought, thereby communicating a deeper meaning, rather than simply reflecting the real world.
On 29 June 1908 the Polish theater director, playwright, and theoretician of dramaLeon Schillerinitiated a correspondence with Craig.  Together with his letter Schiller sent Craig, inFlorence, his essay, "Dwa teatry" ("Two Theaters"), translated into English by Madeline Meager.  Craig responded immediately, accepting the essay for his magazine,The Mask.This was the beginning of a productive collaboration between the two prominent theater directors, who introduced each other's theoretical writings to foreign readers.
Craig's archive was purchased byHans Posseon instructions fromAdolf Hitler, for Hitler's plannedFührermuseumin Linz, Austria. The purchase price was nearly 2.4 million French francs.
One of the largest collections of Edward Gordon Craig's papers is held at theHarry Ransom Centerat theUniversity of Texas at Austin. The 32-box collection includes Craig's diaries, essays, reviews, notes, manuscripts, financial records, and correspondence.Over 130 personal photographs are present in the archive.The Ransom Center's art holdings including some of Craig's woodblocks from the Cranach PressHamletas well as proof prints made during production of the book. The center's library holds over 300 books from Craig's personal collection.In addition to the archive of Edward Gordon Craig, the Ransom Center holds important holdings relating to Craig's motherEllen Terry, as well as the archive of his sonEdward Carrick.
A play byDavid Hare, to premiere in 2025 and starringRalph Fiennesas Henry Irving,Grace Pervades, explores the life of Irving, Terry, Craig and his sister Edith.
The Society of Theatre Researchoffers the annual Edward Gordon Craig lecture in conjunction with The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Source:Edward Gordon Craig: A Bibliography(Society For Theatre Research) 1967.