• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Sections
    • Art
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts
  • Archive
  • Print Edition

The New Stagecraft Movement

In the Galleries: Norman Bel Geddes’s Costume Designs for "The Miracle"

September 20, 2012 - Alexandra Wetegrove

Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Gypsy Woman in "The Miracle," ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.

Perhaps best known as the innovative designer of the Futurama exhibition in the General Motors pavilion at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair, Norman Bel Geddes was also a noted theater designer, fabricating costumes, sets, lighting, and theaters.

After beginning his career in Los Angeles, Bel Geddes moved to New York City in 1917 where his creative ambitions manifested in producing dynamic theater experiences. Using principles of the European New Stagecraft movement, Bel Geddes brought German director Max Reinhardt’s The Miracle to the American stage. The New Stagecraft movement, which divorced theater from the structures of bourgeois realism, aligned with Bel Geddes’s vision of simplified details and abstract settings and costumes.

Bel Geddes’s work on the 1924 production of The Miracle reveals his talents as a theatrical polymath. The play, a medieval legend about a nun, relied on Bel Geddes’s mechanized scenery and single switchboard. The technical modifications allowed a single electrician to control the focus, direction, and color of the lighting. Audience members sat on pews to watch the play, as Bel Geddes transformed the interior of the theater into a Gothic cathedral, complete with light trickling through stained glass windows and incense wafting through the air. The Miracle fused theater and architecture, creating a participatory environment that immersed audience members in the drama that surrounded them.

Highlighted here is a series of four costume designs for The Miracle, including “Oriental Gentleman,” “Chief Gypsy or Jester,” “Noble Gentleman,” and “Gypsy Woman.” The watercolors showcase Bel Geddes’s dexterity as an artist.

The innovations of Bel Geddes’s early theatrical career inform his later work as an industrial designer. Indeed, the same mechanical track system used to move scenery in The Miracle also guided model cars along the highway system of Futurama.

Materials from The Miracle and other theatrical works by Bel Geddes are on view in the exhibition I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, which runs through January 6, 2013.

Please click on the thumbnails to view larger images.

 

Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Gypsy Woman in "The Miracle," ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Gypsy Woman in “The Miracle,” ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Noble Gentleman in "The Miracle," ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Noble Gentleman in “The Miracle,” ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Chief Gypsy or Jester in "The Miracle," ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Chief Gypsy or Jester in “The Miracle,” ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes working on costume sketch for "The Miracle," c. 1924. Photo by Jessie Tarbox Beals. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes working on costume sketch for “The Miracle,” c. 1924. Photo by Jessie Tarbox Beals. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Oriental Gentleman in "The Miracle," ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.
Norman Bel Geddes costume design for Oriental Gentleman in “The Miracle,” ca. 1924. Image courtesy of the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation.

Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, Theatre + Performing Arts Tagged With: Futurama, I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, Norman Bel Geddes, The Miracle, The New Stagecraft Movement

Primary Sidebar

Archive

Tags

acquisition Alice's Adventures in Wonderland archive archives Art Books Cataloging Conservation Council on Library and Information Resources David Foster Wallace David O. Selznick digitization exhibition Exhibitions Fellows Find Fellowships Film Frank Reaugh Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive Gone with the Wind I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Lewis Carroll literature Magnum Photos Manuscripts Meet the Staff Nobel Prize Norman Bel Geddes Norman Mailer Performing Arts Photography poetry preservation Publishing Research Robert De Niro Shakespeare theater The King James Bible: Its History and Influence The Making of Gone With The Wind Undergraduate What is Research? World War I

Recent Posts

  • Finding Henry Street: the Broadway Revival of Funny Girl and New York City Dramaturgy
  • Summer Intern: Malachi McMahon
  • Collaborating To Conserve
  • Michael Gilmore’s Life in Objects
  • Archive of Poet James Fenton Acquired

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews

Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.

Connect With Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

About

Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

Copyright © 2023 Harry Ransom Center

Web Accessibility · Web Privacy