Edward Gordon Craig

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) was an important actor, designer, director, and theoretician of the early 20th century European stage.

Edward Gordon Craig was born in 1872. He was the son of Edward Godwin, an architect who also did stage designs, and Ellen Terry, one of the most revered actresses of the English stage. Craig's own stage career began at the age of 12 when he appeared as a gardener's boy with his mother at Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre. At 17 he was accepted into the Irving company, and for the next ten years Craig's primary interest was in acting.

Despite Craig's successes as an actor, he ended that career at the age of 25. Part of the reason for this early retirement was Craig's belief that his idol, Henry Irving, personified the best in acting and that he, Craig, could contribute nothing more to the stage than a copy of Irving's style. From his mentor Craig had learned valuable theater lessons such as strict discipline in rehearsal; thorough rehearsal for a production including the actors, the lighting, and the technical elements; and attention to detail. Although these things seem standard today, they were innovations to early 20th-century theater.

Another reason that Craig left acting was his distaste for realism—the imitation of life—which was the predominant style of the period. As early as 1893 Craig had begun to experiment with music and woodcuts retaining only dominant forms and masses. He believed that art was not an imitation of life but rather an expression of the inexpressible.

Surprisingly, Craig's first work as a director, No Trifling with Love (1893), at the Uxbridge Town Hall, was executed in the style of historical realism. However, by 1899 he had developed his own form of theater which he displayed in his first major work, a production of Dido and Aeneas. This innovative production took eight months of rehearsal, included a cast of 80, introduced totally new lighting techniques, and completely broke from the realistic tradition. Designed, directed, and choreographed by Craig, the production evoked atmosphere and emotion rather than simply revealing time and place.

In Craig's next production, The Masque of Love (1901), he continued to develop his style, using three large cloths as the basis of the entire set and sacks stitched together for the costumes—again simplicity and mass created the entire illusion.

Edward Gordon Craig's practical work was not extensive, yet it helped to revolutionize the theater's growth in this century. In 1902 he directed and designed Handel's Acis and Galatea; in 1903 he presented Bethlehem and two productions which his mother acted in and produced, The Vikings and Much Ado about Nothing.

For several years Craig collaborated with other theater innovators, including Otto Brahm, Max Reinhardt, and Eleanora Duse. One of his most famous projects was a co-production with Stanislavsky (perhaps the most influential theater director/actor of the 20th century) of Hamlet (1912). This production, known primarily for its revolutionary setting of large moving panels, perhaps reveals the reasons that Craig left the practical theater world.

Aside from his difficulties with personality conflicts (Craig was known as an eccentric), his ideas were far ahead of his time. He believed in the director as the ultimate creator, one who must initiate all ideas and bring unity to a production. He created the idea of the actor as "ubermarionette," whose movement was not psychologically motivated or naturalistic, but rather symbolic. The actor should be like a mask for the audience to interpret. Finally, he introduced a new stagecraft—one based on the magic of imagination rather than on everyday details.

If Craig's actual work was limited, and sometimes impractical because of technical limitations, his writing was prolific. In 1898 he launched the theater journal The Page; in 1908 The Mask (until 1929); and from 1918 to 1919 he wrote The Marionette. He also published The Art of the Theatre (1905), On the Art of the Stage, Towards a New Theatre, Scene, The Theatre Advancing, and Books and Theatres, as well as biographies of Henry Irving and his mother.

Craig's work in the theater and his writings have influenced many of the 20th century's innovators, including Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, and Brecht. He continued to be a source of inspiration for many years—many of the ideas that he developed in the early part of the 20th century were not realized on the stage until the 1980s. Edward Gordon Craig died at the age of 94 in 1966.

Further Reading

The most important and inclusive of Craig's own works are On the Art of the Theatre (1911) and Index to the Story of My Days (1957). For thorough examinations of Craig's life and his work, including illustrations, see Denis Bablet's Edward Gordon Craig (1981); Edward Craig, Gordon Craig: The Story of His Life (1968); J. Michael Walton, Craig on Theatre (1983), which includes selections from Craig's writings; and Laurence Senelick, Gordon Craig's Moscow Hamlet: A Reconstruction (1982).

Additional Sources

Carrick, Edward, Gordon Craig: the story of his life, New York: Limelight Editions, 1968, 1985.

Craig, Edward Gordon, Gordon Craig's Paris diary, 1932-1933, North Hills, Pa.: Bird & Bull Press, 1982.

Craig, Ellen Gordon, Edward Gordon Craig: the last eight years, 1958-1966: letters from Ellen Gordon Craig, Andoversford, Gloucestershire: Whittington Press, 1983. □

Craig, Gordon (1872–1966). British theatrical designer and graphic artist, born at Stevenage, the illegitimate son of the actress Ellen Terry and the architect and theatre critic E. W. Godwin (‘Craig’ was a stage name he adopted in his early days as an actor, later formalized by deed poll). Tall and good-looking, with the theatre in his veins, Craig became a successful leading man (his roles included Hamlet and Romeo), but in 1897 he gave up acting to concentrate on design and directing. His approach was highly unconventional, aiming for simplicity and unity in place of Victorian elaboration, and his productions tended to be admired by the avant-garde but fail at the box-office. In 1904 he visited Berlin (where he began an affair—one of his many romances—with the dancer Isadora Duncan), and from 1907 he lived on the Continent, first in Italy and then from 1931 in France. In 1913 he founded a theatre school in Florence at which he made experiments with moving lights and scenery that give him a claim to be regarded as a pioneer of Kinetic and Light art (he conceived of a theatre without actors or words in which the elements of spectacle alone would engender the emotional response). The only production in which he managed to use moving screens was Konstantin Stanislavsky's Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912, and after Craig's theatre school closed in 1915 because of the First World War he concentrated more on writing, notably in his quarterly periodical The Mask (1908–29), which he produced virtually single-handedly, using dozens of pseudonyms for his articles. He also developed his talent as a printmaker (he had learnt wood engraving from his friends William Nicholson and James Pryde). In this field, Craig is best known for his strikingly bold illustrations to the Cranach Press edition of Hamlet (1927). By the time of his death at the age of 94 he had ‘seen the best of his former revolutionary ideas pass into general theatre practice’ (DNB).

Craig had many children, legitimate and illegitimate; one of them, Edward Anthony Craig (1905–1998), was a painter, book illustrator, and designer for the stage and cinema. He sometimes worked under the name Edward Carrick. His son John Craig (1931– ) and daughter Helen Craig (1934– ) continue the family tradition as illustrators.

Craig, Gordon (b Stevenage, 16 Jan. 1872; d Vence, 29 July 1966). British theatrical designer and graphic artist, the illegitimate son of the actress Ellen Terry and the architect and theatre critic E. W. Godwin (‘Craig’ was a stage name he adopted in his early days as an actor, later formalized by deed poll). Tall and handsome, with the theatre in his veins, he became a successful leading man, but in 1897 he gave up acting to concentrate on design and directing. His approach was highly unconventional, aiming for simplicity and unity in place of Victorian elaboration. From 1907 he lived on the Continent, first in Italy and then from 1931 in France. In 1913 he founded a theatre school in Florence at which he made experiments with moving lights and scenery that give him a claim to be regarded as a pioneer of Kinetic and Light art. After his theatre school closed in 1915 because of the First World War he concentrated more on writing, notably in his quarterly periodical the Mask (1908–29). He also developed his talent as a printmaker (he had learnt wood engraving from his friends William Nicholson and James Pryde). In this field, Craig is best known for his strikingly bold illustrations to the Cranach Press (see private press) edition of Hamlet (1927). By the time of his death at the age of 94 he had ‘seen the best of his former revolutionary ideas pass into general theatre practice’ (DNB).

Craig had many children, legitimate and illegitimate; one of them, Edward Anthony Craig (1905–98), was a painter, book illustrator, and designer for the stage and cinema. He sometimes worked under the name Edward Carrick. His son John Craig (1931– ) and daughter Helen Craig (1934– ) continue the family tradition as illustrators.

Craig, (Edward Henry) Gordon (1872–1966), English scene designer and theorist. The son of Ellen Terry and E. W. Godwin, he was for a time an actor. In 1903 he prepared some interesting sets for Fred Terry's production of Calvert's For Sword or Song and for his mother's productions of Much Ado about Nothing and Ibsen's The Vikings. He was also responsible for the designs for Otway's Venice Preserv'd (Das gerettete Venedig) in Berlin (1905) and Ibsen's Rosmersholm for Duse (1906). In 1908 he settled in Florence, where he founded and edited the Mask, a journal devoted to the art of the theatre, and also ran a school of acting. In 1911 he designed the costumes for Yeats's The Hour Glass at the Abbey Theatre, where his invention of screens as a background for lights to play on, which he used in his production of Hamlet for the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912, was seen in public for the first time. He designed and produced Ibsen's The Pretenders in Copenhagen (1926), and his last designs for the theatre were for a New York production of Macbeth (1928). His theories on acting and stage settings are described under scenery and amplified in his numerous publications, especially On the Art of the Theatre (1911). They had an immense influence on the theatre in Europe and the USA. Shortly before his death his vast theatrical library was bought by the French government.

His sister, Edith Craig (1869–1947), was an actress and director. From 1911 to 1921 she directed the Pioneer Players in some 150 plays, including Claudel's L'Ôtage as The Hostage (1919). She also inaugurated and ran until her death the annual Shakespeare matinée held on the anniversary of her mother's death in the barn at Small Hythe, where Ellen Terry spent her last years (now a museum).

Edward Gordon Craig 1872–1966, English scene designer, producer, and actor. The son of Ellen Terry , Gordon Craig began acting with Henry Irving 's Lyceum company (1885–97). Feeling that the realism in vogue was too limiting, he turned to scene design and developed new theories. He strove for the poetic and suggestive in his designs in order to capture the essential spirit of the play. His ideas gave new freedom to scene design, although many were impractical in execution. Among his notable productions were The Vikings and Much Ado about Nothing (both in 1903 for Ellen Terry) and Hamlet (with the Moscow Art Theatre in 1912). At Florence, Italy, he founded (1913) the Gordon Craig School for the Art of the Theatre; he also edited a magazine, The Mask (1908–29). He wrote On the Art of the Theatre (1911, rev. ed. 1957), The Theatre Advancing (1921), Scene (1923), and biographies of Henry Irving (1930) and Ellen Terry (1931).

Bibliography: See his memoirs (1957); biographies by his son Edward Craig (1968) and by C. Innes (1983); I. Eynat-Confino, Beyond the Mask: Edward Gordon Craig, Movement, and the Actor (1987); M. Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History (2009).

Craig, (Edward Henry) Gordon (1872–1966), artist, actor, wood-engraver, writer, and stage-designer, the son of Edward William Godwin and Ellen Terry. He began his career as an actor. His first book, The Art of the Theatre (1905), which was further expanded as On the Art of the Theatre (1911), was followed by several other works on the same subject including Towards a New Theatre (1913). In 1908 in Florence he founded a theatre magazine, The Mask, which he edited (with a wartime interlude) until 1929. His radical ideas on design and stagecraft had considerable influence in both Europe and America.