METAPHOR AND IRONY 2 - Divadlo.cz

Tröster worked also with other non-material elements of stage design such
as movement, time, rhythm and light. He conceived light not in any way as a
mood-maker, but chiefly as an element shaping material on the surface of the
set and on the architectural forms of the stage. The groundplan of the acting
space was made rhythmical by a system of angled lines and backcloths. He
determined the space of the stage by a composition of three-dimensional
objects, varying in confrontation with the actor's movement. He felt not only
architecturally but sculpturally.
“First it is necessary for the director and the designer to find a shared
attitude towards the subject. Another approach resembles sculptural work. The
weight of the play is laid bare up to certain firm points which create the future
skeleton of the dramatic creation.” 5
This comparison is something of a metaphor, but it applies both vicariously
and to concrete work. Tröster worked on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
(National Theatre Prague, 1936) with the director Jiří Frejka, originally an
initiator of the small avant-garde theatre of the 1920s. The larger-than-life
sculptures (a bust of the Emperor and the lower fragment of an equestrian
statue, one horse's hoof stepping forward) were installed on a massive inclined
plinth and, in that way, they were presented like “shots” from a worm's eye
František Tröster: The Inspector General, Nikolai V. Gogol; 1936
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