Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)
Judit Galácz: Avant-Garde Experiments Committed to Paper - the MA “Music and Theatre Special Issue” (1924)
about a systematic permutation with which serial, that is, musical variations could be multiplied to form a series-based system. The text by Hauer presented a variation of this system. FRIEDRICH KIESLER AND JACOB LEVY MORENO It is clear that the “Music and Theatre Special issue” edited by Kassák systematically summarised all the theatrical ideas of the time which preoccupied the MA circle during the Vienna years. Following on from this overview of the special issue’s contents, it is clear that there is a similarity between Kassák’s publication and Kiesler’s theoretical and practical work putting together the Viennese exhibition, and thus the absence of Kiesler in the issue is even more striking. Kiesler's activities in the 1920s crucially featured works that concentrated on a new transformation of stage space. His works demolished the wings of the stage, hitherto considered indestructible, and reformed the entire construction of stage space. In some of his designs, only the set was moved by mechanical elements, such as in Karel Capek’s R. U. R. [Rossum’s Universal Robots], while for Eugene O’Neill’s play The Emperor Jones,25 26 27 the foundations of the stage were rebuilt on a spiral, two-level construction, thus creating what he called Raumbühne [Space Stage], Kiesler further developed this direction over many years, such as in the design for the Infinite Theatre, which did away with the walls and dividers that break up inner space, creating a unified spectacle and spatial experience that flow into one another, thus representing an experiment in transforming the relationship between stage and audience. I n the MA “Music and Theatre Specia I issue”, Kassák also used Kiesler’s phrase Raumbühne, and also took into account the opportunities for the transformation of space. Kiesler’s name, however, is mentioned only once in the entire issue, in an essay by the Wroclaw architect Günter Hirschel-Protsch, which lists the artists who had undertaken significant research in the field of movement in theatre.28 Research on this subject has located the reason for this in the above-mentioned ideological and personal conflict between Kassák and 25 Karel Capek, R. U. R., Theater für Kurfürstendamm, Berlin, 1923. 26 Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones, Lustspielhaus in der Friedrichstraße, Berlin, 1924. 27 Friedrich Kiesler introduced his first design for the universal or infinite theatre at the 1926 International Theatre Exhibition in New York. He regularly returned to this utopian notion throughout his life, preparing ever more draft designs for the idea. 28 Günter Hirschel-Protsch, Das Bewegungsdrama [The movement drama], MA, ‘‘Music and Theatre Special issue", 9/8-9., 1924, [15.] 196
