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under Communism
Ambassador to the West

KAREN J. FREEZE

Every four years during the cold war millions of people in western Europe
and the United States cheered (or at least expressed profound respect for)
Olympic athletes from the Soviet Union and its east European satellite
states. Throughout the Soviet period, smaller crowds enjoyed outstanding
dancers and musicians from the region. Everyone knew that the governments invested millions in training in the arts and sports, unfairly more
than organizations in the West could afford, but few denied the pleasure of
watching or listening to these outstanding individuals, ensembles, and
teams. Most Westerners did not, however, associate technological achievement with the Soviet Bloc, with the dramatic exception of Sputnik (1957)
and the space race. They typically assumed that a system that could not
provide decent consumer goods to its peoples must be a technological
backwater.1 Even specialists rarely knew of reverse technology transfer
from East to West.2
This article was originally prepared for the 40th Annual Convention of the American
Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in Philadelphia, 2023
November 2008. Editors note: Although the original presentation came with wonderful
images, we were not able to reproduce them here due to copyright restrictions.
2012 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040-165X/12/5302-0008/44260
1. Before 1989 only a few scholars presented evidence to the contrary: see Loren R.
Grahams many works, including Science in Russia and the Soviet Union and What Have
We Learned about Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? For works by
economists, see J. Wilczynski, Technology in Comecon; Friedrich Levcik and Jir Skolka,
EastWest Technology Transfer; Helgard Wienert and John A. Slater, EastWest Technology
Transfer; and Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, Technology, Competition, and the Soviet Bloc in the
World Market and The Environment for Technological Change in Centrally Planned
Economies. Jan Monkiewicz and Jan Maciejewicz, in Technology Exports from the Socialist Countries, analyze the licensing activity of several Soviet Bloc countries; they suggest that sales of Czechoslovak technology were far too low, given the amount of research
and development taking place in the country.
2. Typical of general works on technology transfer is N. Mohan Reddy and Liming

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Yet technology was a core part of communist ideology and played a

central role in building socialism in both the Soviet Union and its satellite
states. As such, innovative technology, usually displayed only at trade fairs,
worlds fairs, and other special venues, served as an ambassador to the West
for these countries, a way of proclaiming that despite evidence to the contrary, these countries could achieve world-class contributions to a number
of technological fields. Current scholarship on the Soviet Bloc countries
indeed reveals that despite their relative isolation from the West, scientists
and engineers from the USSR and eastern Europe led the world in certain
fields.3 Some of their achievements had no competition in the West, at least
at first; if their value was compelling, western companies invested in them
through either the outright purchase of product or patent, licensing, or the
exchange of expertise. Such activity generated reverse technology transfers
from East to West, a flow of exports that provided hard currency to the East
and new technology to the West; it also enabled technicians, engineers, and
scientists to travel both ways through the Iron Curtain, resulting in a circulation of ideas and artifacts throughout Europe and beyond.
I first discovered this to be the case as early as 1983, in my research on
technological innovation in the Czechoslovak textile-machine industry
during the 1960s.4 Much later, when working with the Tensions of Europe
network, I found researchers from these countries and young scholars in
the United States who were exploring the hidden achievements of these
countries and in the process rewriting what we thought we knew about
technology transfer.5 As I turned my research focus toward the interface of
Zhaos International Technology Transfer; of the 216 works they cite, not a single one
has to do with transfer from the Soviet Bloc to the West. Few people had seen the reports
by John W. Kiser, Report on the Potential for Technology Transfer from the Soviet
Union to the United States and Commercial Technology Transfer from Eastern Europe
to the United States and Western Europe. Kiser also tracked Czech innovations in soft
contact lenses and plastic explosives, but he does not include theater technology, such as
lighting devices. In a later book, Communist Entrepreneurs, he focused on rule-breaking
innovators. See also Karen J. Freeze, Snapshots of Prestavba, 173.
3. Until the 1990s systematic study of technological innovation in the former Soviet
Bloc was hindered by the lack of archival access. The work edited by Johannes Bhr and
Dietmar Petzin, Innovationsverhalten und Entscheidungsstrukturen, which focuses on the
two Germanys in the 1960s, and Constructing Socialism by Raymond G. Stokes were pioneering efforts. Sociologist Ivan Tchalakov has examined several Bulgarian innovations,
including computer memory storage; see his Innovating in Bulgaria and Technological Innovations and Non-Exchange Economy, the latter a report for the European Commission Phare program. Valentina Fava has studied the koda automobile company in
Czechoslovakia in Socialismo e Taylorism.
4. See Freeze, Innovation and Technology Transfer during the Cold War.
5. Tensions of Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe is an open intellectual network of some 200 scholars working on a transnational history of Europe that
focuses on technology in society and culture as an agent of change. Although the AAASS
2008 panel took a broader view of technology (beyond achievement and transfer), its
participantsKatherine Lebow, Dolores Augustine, Malgorzata Mazurek, and Eagle

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technology and the arts, I discovered anew Laterna Magika, the multimedia magic-lantern show from the late 1950s that was still playing in Prague.
What was it all about? In the course of answering this question I discovered
several breakthrough technologies in the service of theater production that
had emerged from Czechoslovakia in the twentieth century.
As I homed in on the postWorld War II period I found that many of
these technologies were associated with Josef Svoboda (19202002), a
Czech scenographer known worldwide for his lighting and projection innovations.6 As I looked to western sources for responses to these innovations I found that as in many other scientific and cultural fields, theater
technology seemed to fly below their radar. Just as the state invested in certain scientists, performers, and athletes, allowing them to represent the
country abroad, it also invested in theater technology, which in the hands
of certain Czech scenographers and directors captured the imagination of
their western colleagues (and captured some of their production purses as
well). As in the case of textile machines, theater technology did not seem to
miss a beat, despite the traumatic events of August 1968 (which ended the
Prague Spring) and the prolonged normalization that followed. Svoboda
and other so-called ambassadors freely traveled abroad, demonstrating
their creative technical abilities to Europeans and Americans in the best
theaters in the world.
My objective is not to introduce and describe in detail these many inventions and innovations and their originators, but to highlight only a few
and then address the following questions:
1. How could these innovations come from a country that lagged far
behind the West in computer technology, and, moreover, seemed
to imprison its most creative theater workers?
2. What was the governments strategic purpose in supporting innovation in theater technology and its export abroad, especially considering that it considered theater itselfnamely, its playwrights
and directorsso subversive?
3. What was the significance (and legacy) of this activity for East
West relations and technology transfer? And what does it matter,
considering that communism and the cold war are now history?

Glassheimall represent younger scholars who have a passion for understanding the
role of technology in culture and society in cold war Europe. Another example is the project based at the University of Helsinki: Knowledge Through the Iron CurtainTransferring Knowledge and Technology in Cold War Europe.
6. Scenography includes everything that creates theatrical space: for example, sets,
props, lighting, costumes, and sound. Selected works in English on Svoboda include:
Jarka Burian, The Scenography of Josef Svoboda and Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre, especially chapter 7; Christopher Baugh, Theatre, Performance and
Technology, especially chapter 5; and Josef Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space.

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Czechoslovak Theater Technology Abroad

At the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair (Expo 1958) the Czechoslovak Pavilion stunned visitors with its high cultural level. One visitor said that Laterna Magika was a technical and artistic chef-doeuvre.7 With high-quality
exhibits from machine tools to glass, agriculture to food, puppets to woodcarvers, the pavilion won more medals than any other and received the the
prize as best in the fair. It also won the popularity contest: 66.5 percent of
visitors surveyed placed the Czechoslovak Pavilion first, followed by those
of the United States (58.2 percent), France (55 percent), and the USSR (51
percent). Asked to comment on the experience, one interviewee said that it
was a discovery: I had thought that Czechoslovakia was a poor country.
The government and its supporters rushed to point out that the fantastic
success of this small country cannot be separated from the system that
undertook it. For this reason, it seems to us that the Czechoslovak Pavilion
is the shop window of Communism.8
But by all accounts it was the apolitical technological innovations in
theater and cinema that people remembered. The Czechoslovak Pavilions
Polyekran (many screens) featured projections from eight automatic slide
projectors and seven film projectors on eight fixed screens of different
shapes and sizes. The resulting collage was set to a musical score evoking
the annual Prague Spring International Music Festival. The pice de rsistance was Laterna Magikaa combination of film and live stage performances developed by Svoboda, director Alfred Radok, and young filmmaker
Milo Formanthat charmed audiences with scenes of everyday life in
Czechoslovakia and laced with folklore and humor.
For the next few years Svoboda continued to experiment with Laterna
Magika and Polyekran techniques.9 Most dramatic and controversial was
his 1965 production for the Boston Opera Company of Intolleranza, an
opera by the Italian communist composer Luigi Nono. An extraordinarily
complex and confrontational production in which Svoboda applied all of
7. See the public opinion surveys conducted by G. Jacquemyns and E. Jacquemyns,
LExposition de 1958.
8. Jaroslav Halada, Czechoslovaks at World Expositions.
9. On Svobodas work, see especially Burian, The Scenography of Josef Svoboda, 77
107, on the innovations associated with Brussels and Montreal and their offshoots. More
easily available are Burians broader works, Modern Czech Theatre and Leading Creators of
Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre; see also Burians article Josef Svoboda. On Laterna
Magika, see Magic Lantern Opens in London (n.a.); and Allen Hughes, Theater. See
also a collection of texts by Svoboda, program notes from Laterna Magika, and other
short pieces, translated from the French by Kelly Morris: Svoboda, Morris, and Erika
Munk, Laterna Magika; and Burian, Josef Svoboda and Laterna Magikas Latest Productions (in TD&T, which was officially called Theatre Design & Technology until the late
1980s) and Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre and Film. Svoboda left Laterna
Magika in the 1960s and returned as director in 1973, serving there until his death in
2002.

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his lighting technology and projections plus live, closed-circuit television

(courtesy of MIT and PBS Channel 2), it was an indictment of the intolerance that led to the atrocities of the twentieth century.10 Directed and conducted by Sarah Caldwell and featuring Beverly Sills, the production engaged, willy-nilly, the audience and others through television cameras. For
example, during a concentration camp scene a camera projected images of
the audience behind the barbed-wire fence; in another, when an African
American sings a protest song, the projected image of the mostly white audience reverted to a negative image, thus suddenly rendering the audience
members themselves as black. The production also employed a horizontal
curtain of light to suggest a river, in which the players drown in the final
scene.11 Although there were only two actual performances, Intolleranza became an iconic example of what Svobodas techniques could achieve.12
Two years later (nine years after the Brussels Worlds Fair) the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal once again delivered extraordinarily favorable propaganda to millions of visitors. The Czechs, largely the
same team as that in Brussels, outdid themselves with further technical
wonders in the service of theater and cinema, along with elegant displays of
arts, crafts, industry, and the complete Trebechovick Betlm.13 Laterna
Magika was back, along with two new projection systems, Polyvision and
Diapolyekran. Polyvision, implying multiple ways of seeing, was the name
originally applied to four different projection systems in the exhibit, but
soon became associated with one of the two most populara system of
projections onto cubes, prisms, and rotating bodies that could move vertically and horizontally, flanked by mirrors. The show was set to a musical
collage called Symphony. Diapolyekran consisted of 112 cubes, each of
which contained two projectors with eighty slides each. The cubes could
slide forward or backward a half or whole meter so that the relief surface
could be up to two meters; it is easy to imagine hundreds of possible configurations. This scenario, directed by Emil Radok, was called The Birth of
10. Svoboda explains in his memoirs that American technology was critical to this
production; see The Secret of Theatrical Space, 7879.
11. Strips of low-voltage lamps on either side of the stage projected narrow, intense
beams of light across to one another; as the strips were raised the light wall appeared,
like rising waters, to drown the crowd onstage.
12. In the fall of 2005 when I interviewed theater scholars in the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, they suggested that I take a look at the Intolleranza
production, which, of course, I did not know. For full accounts, see Dean Wilcox, Political Allegory or Multimedia Extravaganza? and Harold C. Schonberg, Opera: Luigi
Nonos Intollerenza [sic] 1960.
13. For reviews of the exhibit, see Robert Alden, Soviet Pavilion at Expo 67 is Overwhelming; and Bosley Crowther, Expo 67 and the Exploding Syntax of Cinema. For
later commentaries, see Eva-Marie Krller, Expo 67; and Dane Lanken, Remember
the Magic of Expo 67. For Svobodas description, see The Secret of Theatrical Space, 105
6. The century-old wooden Betlm (crche) from Trebechovice, in northeastern Bohemia, carved by Josef Probot, is a complex, room-sized, mechanical tour de force.

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the World. Finally, Kinoautomat was an interactive film, during which

viewers, at six crossroads in the plot, had a chance to select (via computerized buttons on their armrests) what happened next.14
None of this seems so remarkable in the computerized and digitized
present day, but more than fifty years ago, in 1958, and even in 1967, it was
extraordinary. Six million visitors had visited the Czechoslovak Pavilion at
Brussels, and eight million did in Montreal.15 (Perhaps the latter, having become acquainted with the technological wonders of what probably had
been an unknown or little-known country, undoubtedly was interested in
the news a year later of the real Prague Spring and its subsequent suppression.) In contrast to a countrys presentations at worlds fairs, its cultural
offerings elsewhere of live theaterplays, operas, ballets, and so onusually reach much smaller audiences. Yet in this sphere also technological innovations from communist eastern Europe (including Soviet Russia)
reached the West, both during Khrushchevs thaw (195664) and Brezhnevs subsequent repression (196882).
Svoboda applied both the Brussels and Montreal technologies, in addition to numerous other inventions and innovations, to some 700 productions during his lifetime, many of them in the 1970sthe countrys dark
period after the August 1968 suppression of the Prague Spring. Dozens of
these productions were in collaboration with West European and American
theaters and directors.16 Known mostly for lighting innovations, projections,
and stage machinery, Svoboda became synonymous internationally with the
term scenographer, which was applied to those who, like him, were responsible for every aspect involved in creating theatrical space.17 He also
14. Kinoautomat was, of course, a film rather than theater innovation. According to
Jonathan Randal, in Czechs Want Film Techniques, the Czechoslovak state film
exporter had sold two Kinoautomats to Canada, and two were planned for the United
States, in San Antonio and New York. (Perhaps the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia aborted these plans?) The article cited the disappointment of the Czechs that they
could not see what the Kinoautomat was for themselves. Svoboda, in The Secret of Theatrical Spaces chapter titled The Exhibition as World Outlook, 1049, discusses especially Brussels and Montreal; Laterna Magika is treated in the following chapter, 11020.
For more on Laterna Magika, see Burian, Laterna Magika as a Synthesis of Theatre and
Film, reflecting early pessimism about the future of the system.
15. Czechoslovakia also won the top prize in 1959 in So Paulo, Brazil, for an exhibit
on the development of Czechoslovak stagecraft since 1914, featuring 294 paintings and
sketches of sets, costumes, and theater models. The competition, held in conjunction
with the Fifth Biennial of Modern Art, also awarded Czech architect Frantiek Troster a
prize of $1,000 (which was a lot of money for a Soviet Bloc person in those days!) as the
best foreign stage designer; see Tad Szulc, Czechoslovak Theatrical Exhibit Wins Prize
at Sao Paulo Biennial. In 1970, at the worlds fair in Osaka, Japan, the Czechoslovak
Pavilion (which included Laterna Magika once again) was visited by 10.5 million people
and won several prizes; see Halada and Milan Hlavacka, World Expositions.
16. Full lists of Svobodas productions are given in The Secret of Theatrical Space,
12741.
17. The best introduction to Svobodas technology and his philosophy of technology

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became associated with the concept of a kinetic stage, in which motion,

supplied by machines and light, accompanied the action, in time. In this he
built upon the ideas of British scenographer, producer, and actor Edward
Gordon Craig (18721966) and Swiss scenographer Adophe Appia (1862
1928), the latter envisioning entire lighting systems as huge instruments that
could be played, like a piano, to the action of the play.18 Another way of
putting it was that the stage setting itself became one of the actors.
Svoboda used the projection technologies introduced in Brussels and
Montreal and subsequently developed in other areas like theater, opera, and
ballet. Critical in his view were innovative project surfaces: why did they
have to be solid, smooth, and flat?19 As an architect and therefore always
thinking three-dimensionally, he often built new realities, in collaboration
with directors visions, that involved big machinery (which was evident or
not to audiences). Nevertheless, he insisted that he did not believe in using
technology for its own sake, but only to serve the production,20 which could
mean that it was hardly evident at all: What is the source of the conflicting
attitudes regarding technology and its function in theatre? Most people see
technology only in terms of machinery. I went through this phase myself. In
its essence, however, theatre technology is active and capable of dramatic
action, even when that technology is non-technical. In fact . . . technology
can even be intangible.21 Sometimes he dreamed up something quite simple, such as the upside-down cutouts for a production of Swan Lake.
Svobodas primary passion, however, was with lightinglighting as an
and art is in Burian, Josef Svoboda. Burian updates his views thirty years later in
Modern Czech Theatre. See also Svobodas memoirs The Secret of Theatrical Space, 1231.
Projections are actually part of lighting technology, but they were such a major part of
Svobodas oeuvre that I consider them to be a separate category.
18. Baugh explains this well in Theatre, Performance and Technology, chapter 7, 143.
Svoboda used the piano metaphor for the entire production: Production space should
be a kind of piano, on which it is possible to improvise, to test out any idea whatever, or
to experiment with the relationship among various components (The Secret of Theatrical Space, 20). For a fascinating take on the issue of theatrical space, see Denis Bablet,
Problems of Contemporary Theatre Space. (Bablet has also written a biography of
Svoboda.)
19. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 2930.
20. This was in response to criticism from Czech and Slovak theater colleagues who
did not share his enthusiasm for technological innovation; for accounts of many other,
mostly late-twentieth-century Czech theater designers and scenographers, see Joseph E.
Brandesky Jr., ed., Czech Theatre Design in the Twentieth Century, which is a collection of
essays based on two exhibits: Metaphor and Irony: Czech Scenic and Costume Design,
19201999, and Metaphor and Irony 2: Frantiek Trster and Contemporary Czech
Theatre Design, both organized by Ohio State University at Lima. It is accompanied by
a CD-ROM of some 140 images, although only somewhat more than a quarter of these
are from earlier than 1989; of these, only two depict Svobodas work and thirteen depict
Trsters. Twenty-seven designers are represented altogether, with biographies of each.
21. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 27.

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actor in its own right, lighting as a material substance creating theatrical

space. In this he continued the work of early-twentieth-century scenographers like Craig and Appia, who, of course, did not have the technical resources that were available to Svoboda decades later. To utilize light as a
material substance he and his technical team invented the low-voltage
lighting ramps whose twelve-volt units emitted very intense and focused
white light that appeared as a three-dimensional pillar of light. In early versions the curtain was made more visible by ambient dust or smoke, but as
theaters became cleaner Svoboda and colleagues devised a way to spray an
aerosol mixture of ionized water droplets, which revealed low-voltage
luminaries.22 These lighting units were proprietary and eventually sold
throughout the world.23
Czechoslovakia: A Hotbed of Innovative Theater Technology?

Czechoslovakias success in the field of theatre can be explained by the

following: historical tradition; technological infrastructure in relevant disciplines; immediate historical, political, and economic contexts; Soviet
interest in theater technology; and Western responses to these.
HISTORICAL TRADITION

Czechoslovak scenographers and their teams were part of a tradition

dating back to at least the beginning of the twentieth century, both in
Czech lands and the rest of Europe. Innovative theater arts were part of
central European culture, with Germans, Austrians, Swiss, Czechs, and
Hungarians being among the great theater directors and designers both
22. They obviously could not simply spray dust into the air, but had to use a substance friendly to the lungs and voices of actors and singers. Svoboda explains how a
German engineer in Wiesbaden came to the rescue, with electrostatically charged water
vapor; see ibid., 5960.
23. I do not know whether these devices were patented by Svoboda, the Czechoslovak state, or someone else. Commenting on Svobodas lighting innovations in the 1970s,
Baugh states that [m]uch of our admiration of Svobodas use of light and projected
material stemmed from his ability to produce images of tremendous power and visual
integrity. By comparison (at least in the UK in the mid-1970s), our effects had the
appearance of watching TV in the daylight! This was not just due to technology: [W]e
found out that they had on their staff a large number of extremely well-trained followspot operators. . . . But instead of the bright crudeness of the Western equivalent, the
spots were softly focused and carefully colored. . . . [The dancers] danced all over the
stage and were beautifully lit wherever they went. This allowed the projections to achieve
a visual power and dominance that we had never seen before. . . . This was only possible
because of the high staffing levels and the permanence of that staff who could be trained.
In the West follow-spot operators were (and still are) casual staff employed on a contract
basis. See Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology (note: the editors were unable to
locate the page number for this reference).

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before and after World War I. For the Czechs, who were regional leaders in
many fields of engineering, interest in film, lighting, and stage machinery
came naturally.
Although to most viewers Laterna Magika seemed to be entirely novel,
it developed from a historical tradition within theater and film in Prague,
with most sources identifying the Theatergraph, a Czech innovation of
the 1930s by Emil Frantiek Burian (190459) and Miroslav Kouril (1911
84), as a precursor. This was a system that used film and still projections on
two scrims, front and rear, against which (or between which) the actors
played.24 Burian and Kouril, in turn, had been influenced by German director Erwin Piscator, whose intentions for slide and film projections were
apparently to enhance, rather than to challenge, naturalism onstage.25 Vera
Ptckov, in her biography of Svoboda, cites an earlier example of Laterna
Magikas basic trickthat of the live actor seemingly stepping out of the
filmfrom 1917.26 Called Z ceskch hradu a zmku (From Czech castles
and palaces), it followed an actor running across rooftops from Karlstejn to
Prague to the Variet Theater then magically appearing live on the stage.27
Thus theater arts, including scenography, had a long and rich tradition in
Czechoslovakia; the critical point here is that apart from the late-Stalinist
period (194856) and, to some extent, the 1970s, stage design and the technical aspects of theater production were allowed to flourish.
TECHNOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN RELEVANT DISCIPLINES

Having secondary and higher technical education established in Bohemia by the eighteenth century, the Czechs had an elaborate technological
infrastructure upon which to build in many fields. As machine builders at
least as far back as the mid-nineteenth century, Czechs trained engineers
and technicians in several disciplines at the Czechoslovak Technical College
and high-level secondary technical schools; in some of these disciplines the
country became a leader in twentieth-century Europe.28 Moreover, early on
the Czechs (as in other central European countries) combined technology
and arts in the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Prague, where not only
industrial design and its predecessors were taught, but also architecture,
sculpture, and fine arts.29 Thus when an architect like Svoboda designed a
24. On the Theatergraph, see Frantiek Cern, Lighting that Creates the Scene and
Lighting as an Actor; and Burian, Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre,
chapters 3 and 8.
25. On Piscator, see Baugh, Theatre, Performance and Technology, chapter 7.
26. Vera Ptckov, Josef Svoboda.
27. Ibid., 171n23.
28. The Czechoslovak Technical College is now the Czech Technical University,
Prague.
29. UMPRU M (Vysok kola Umelecko-pru myslov), now called, in English, the
Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design.

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machine or device, he could be sure that talent and experience was available to build it for him.30
IMMEDIATE HISTORICAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC CONTEXTS

In the centrally planned economies of the Soviet Bloc, nothing of any

scope (short of revolutions) happened without the support and imprimatur of the Communist Party and government structures. Although policies were not uniform throughout the communist period (194889 in
Czechoslovakia), they did reflect, with delays, the changes in Moscow. Thus
Khrushchevs thawing of relations and dtente with the West, which
abruptly ended when he was booted out of power in 1964, in Czechoslovakia carried over into 1968 and culminated in the Prague Spring. Brezhnevs crackdown began to take effect in the early 1970s, which supported
the Czechoslovak Communist Partys firm control, until after Gorbachev
had been in power for several years (around 198687).31 Throughout the
period, however, science and technology, along with elite sports and arts
organizations, flourished, seemingly without government controlor perhaps they were well within such control, but their contributions to the state
in both prestige and hard currency were worth the potential political risks
involved.32 In the case of Laterna Magika, which was a major tourist attraction in Prague after 1958, theater technology not only impressed visitors,
but it brought in substantial revenues as ticket sales.
Of major importance to theater technology and scenographers like
Svododa was the governments financial support of theaters in these countries. To be sure, that support was most evident in the major state theaters,
such as the Czech National Theaters four stages.33 But given generous budgets far above those in the United States and also much more than most
state-supported theaters in Europe, the Czech theaters enjoyed the advantages of the command economy. Because the entire state economy was vertically integrated, any enterprise having the blessing of the state had all
needed resources at its disposal. Moreover, since everyone must be employed in the communist state, theaters often had many times the number
of workers than did their counterparts in the West. British scenographer
Christopher Baugh, who visited Prague in 1975, observed a highly skilled
30. Baugh confirms this in chapter 5 of Theatre, Performance and Technology.
31. The Czechoslovak government, which was one of the most hard line in the Soviet Bloc, did not welcome Gorbachev, and for good reasonthey may have regarded him
as the beginning of the end for their regime.
32. As it was, very few people in any of these categories actually defected to the
Westa certain tennis player notwithstanding.
33. These four stages are: Nrodn divadlo (National Theater), Smetanovo divadlo
(now the independent Sttn opera Praha [State Opera Prague]), Tylovo divadlo (once
again, the Estates Theater), and the New Stage of the Nrodn divadlo, housing Laterna
Magika, which is now independent.

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team of optical and technological experts of a kind who would rarely, if

ever, be found in a Western house. With what appeared to be the equivalent of do-it-yourself, amateur tools, Baugh noted, these teams achieved
effects that relied on large numbers of people and therefore could not be
duplicated in the West.34
But all this would have been for naught, of course, had Czechoslovakia
not produced brilliant directors and scenographers. This can be attributed,
in part, to its educational system, which during this period offered a broad,
cross-disciplinary education. Most Czech scenographers had backgrounds
in architecture, rather than painting or one of the other fine arts. Unlike
their American counterparts, for example, they did not specialize in one aspect of theater or stage design; in Czechoslovakia it was assumed that a
scenographer would be responsible for everythingsets, lighting, costumes, and so on.35 Moreover, during this period the universities and other
educational institutions were highly selective as to whom was admitted to
their programs. Certainly, politics played a part in this: talented offspring
of political dissidents or bourgeois remnants were not allowed even to
apply to institutions of higher learning and the mediocre children of top
Communist Party officials may have been admitted, but for the most part
demonstrated talent was essential for admission.
In this context, also, it may be that theater technology provided an outlet for talented architects and other designers who might otherwise have
been employed in large state firms and making technical drawings of drab
buildingseven after Stalin died. For those with technical inclinations and
an interest in artistic expression, scenography was an attractive career, because here one could work with writers and directors while being less susceptible to political censure. And being able to travel abroad was the ultimate benefit of choosing such a career. Svoboda asserts in his memoirs that
he had not dreamed of being able to travel as much as he did; his first trip
to the West was in 1958 (to Brussels) when he was age 38. Even though he
claims that he did not get to see much beyond the neighborhood of the theaters, he must have contributed, at the very least, to the circulation of ideas
within Europe and even the United States concerning scenography.
At some point the Czechoslovak government decided to further support theater technology by allowing Czech professionals to sponsor the
founding of an international organization in the field. After an abortive
attempt in 1966 that included mainly socialist countries, in June 1968, at
the height of the Prague Spring, the International Organization of Scenog34. Baugh, personal communication with author. On his observations on lighting,
see note 23 above. See also Glenn M. Loney, Behind the Soviet Scenes.
35. See the articles from Theatre Design & Technology, Teaching Stage Design in the
United States, Canada, and Czechoslovakia, 1976 (n.a.); PQ 75 (n.a.); and OISTT
Reports on Theatre Training (n.a.).

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raphers and Theatre Technicians (OISTT) was founded.36 Its charter members were all European countries except for three: Israel, Canada, and the
United States. OISTTs purpose was to spread the knowledge of all kinds
in the subject of theatre techniques, to support every initiative and research
concerning the free development of theatre in the world, to maximally protect the exchange of works, documentation or persons, and finally to publish all documentation for facilitating its activities.37 The first congress of
the OISTT met in Prague in June 1969, less than a year after the end of the
Prague Spring, perhaps because the government wished to show how supportive it was of this endeavor. The organizations general secretariat was
established in Prague, with Czech leadership. In 1972, after a colleague resigned, Svoboda became general-secretary.
Finally, cross-disciplinary teamwork is evident in the management of
Czech theater productions, though this is not always the case elsewhere. For
example, Czech visitors to the United States noted in Theatre Design &
Technology in 1976 that such teamwork was not apparent to them. It was
obvious that in theater various disciplines must work together; in Czech
theater tradition, to be sure, the scenographer was responsible for, at least,
both the stage design and lighting, thus rendering such collaboration easier.38 Svoboda himself discussed his team in his memoirs, pointing out that
it is necessary for the entire theatrical team to have a collective perception
of space, movement, rhythm, and time during the works preparation, and
that [t]his union of art and science is essential and vitally necessary for our
time. . . . If I need a cylinder of light on stage with a dispersion of less than
one degree at its base, I need to gather an entire scientific and technical
36. For a history of the organization, see Joel E. Rubin, The International Organization of Scenographers and Theatre Technicians.
37. OISTT was superseded by OISTAT, which describes its mission as follows: To
stimulate the exchange of ideas and innovations, and to promote international collaboration in professions which support live performance; To promote the formation of
centres in each country in order to achieve these aims; To encourage life-long learning
among live performance practitioners; and To respect the integrity of all cultures and
celebrate the diversity as well as the similarities of those who work in support of live performance. OISTAT has centers, associate members, and individual members in fortyseven countries, with a total of over 20,000 members. The organization in now based in
Taiwan. See www.oistat.org (accessed 28 February 2012).
38. Again, Baugh confirms the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration among
people from different disciplines: I think that this is absolutely crucial to an understanding of [the Czechs] ability to both effectively invent the word scenography, and to be so
innovative in creating such a complex 20th-century stage language. And again, it focuses
upon people and people working together rather than simply spending a lot of money
buying up expensive technologies (personal communication with author). He goes on to
recall that in the early 1990s in London it was easier to raise money for a theater to purchase expensive lighting boards and other equipment, but nearly impossible to raise a
much lesser amount of money to employ skilled personnel to operate them.

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team to construct such a cylinder.39 Moreover, the directorscenographer

relationship was also close, enhancing both the artistic vision and technical
possibilities.40
SOVIET INTEREST IN THEATER TECHNOLOGY
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Soviet directors and scenographers had put the early USSR on the cultural map during the 1920s when they overturned bourgeois theater
assumptions and designs and developed revolutionary new concepts of theater space. Not until the mid-1930s did Soviet theater succumb to Staliniststyle socialist realism, its earlier creators and practitioners purged. The most
famous of these director/scenographers was Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874
1940), who even before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had been reacting
against traditional theater conventions, along with his peers in western
Europe and elsewhere. He and Czech scenographer E. F. Burian were friends
during the 1930s, and when Meyerhold fell victim to the purges Burian
(who was then ideologically sympathetic to communism) supported him.41
After 1956, during the post-Stalinist period, the Soviet government encouraged technological innovation even while suppressing dramatic innovation. Beginning in 1971 Soviet scenographers attended the second and
later congresses of the OISTT in Prague and other east and west European
cities. They also participated in the second (1971) and subsequent Prague
Quadrennials, which are massive exhibits of scenic design and theatre
architecture. At the end of 1971 two American playwrights, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, visited the USSR at the invitation of the Soviet
Minister of Culture.42 In an interview published in the May 1973 issue of
Theatre Design & Technology, Lawrence and Lee marveled at the technical
work in Soviet theaters, especially lighting.43 All this is to make clear that
39. Svoboda, The Secret of Theatrical Space, 1415.
40. Theater production as an example of cross-disciplinary product development,
where all the disciplines meet from the beginning to coordinate their visions and possibilities, does not seem to be (or have been) typical in the United States, but this needs
verification through research. Accounts of the Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Polish
scenographers visit to the United States in 1972 are in Burian, Josef Svobodas American University Tour, 1972; and Zenobiusz Strzelecki, Ladislav Vychodil, and Ivan
Szabo-Jilek, Impressions of the U.S.A.
41. Meyerhold was executed in 1940; see Burian, Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre, 5455.
42. Lawrence and Lee were the authors of Inherit the Wind, the dramatization of the
Scopes Monkey Trial, a popular play in the USSR; see Loney, Behind the Soviet Scenes.
43. They pointed out that lighting was so vital because, in part, Russian theater was
much lighter, structurally. With eight performances a weekand sometimes eight different productions to set up and strike in one weekthey have to design for economy,
simplicity, flexibility, durability (ibid., 15). Beyond the scope of this article are their fascinating remarks comparing American theaters with Soviet theaters. For more on Soviet
theater design, see Vitaly Gankovsky, New Directions (Scenographic Quests) in Soviet
Theatre; and V. Krasilnikov, A Universal Dramatic Theatre in the City of Tula.

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even during Brezhnevs era theater technology was well supported by the
state, with Soviet satellites following suit.
WESTERN RESPONSES

Truly, Czech stage designers, working within what could be considered

a rather narrow field (unlike the mass medium of film), brought significant
prestige to the country. As they became known in the theater world of the
West they established reputations that served, at least to some extent, as
protection against pressures from their own government. This, of course,
applied to many artists within the Soviet Bloc who were highly regarded in
the West, since it was harder to silence and lock them away than those many
unknown others. Theater scholars, reviewers, and practitioners in the West
all commented on the outstanding work done in Czechoslovakia and other
Soviet Bloc countries throughout this period. Collectively, they provide
evidence of the degree of innovation accomplished by the Czech scenographers and other theater workers.44
Conclusion: The Significance of This Case Study of
the Permeable Iron Curtain

For over forty years Europe was divided, and for most people this meant
severe isolation, with one half of the continent being severed from the other.
In the West school children of the first postwar generation no longer learned
about the individual countries behind the Iron Curtain, because they soon
were anonymously melded together in a single homogeneous bloc run by
Moscow. Even twenty years after that curtain fell, knowledge about the
region was still burdened with assumptions about backwardnessincreasing tourism in Prague, Krakow, and Budapest notwithstanding. All this was
frustrating to professionals and academics from these newly democratic
states. As a German colleague from the former East Germany said, with reference to her colleagues from the former West Germany: We read different
books, we went through a different educational system, we saw different
movies. Even after fifteen years, its difficult to assume a common culture.
Moreover, for over seventy years Russia was cut off from the European culture to which it had aspired, at various points in its history, since Peter the
Great. And yet discussed in this article is the permeable Iron Curtain.
Today, the European Union (EU) has raised complex questions about
European identityfor example, should Russia and Turkey be included?
but without waiting for absolute answers, it has extended its borders to in44. Reports on East European theater technology can be found throughout Theatre
Design & Technology and other theater journals during the 1970s. Contemporary reviews
of productions seen by Westerners both in those countries and in the West attest to the
interest that scenographers like Svoboda elicited.

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clude a much broader Europe. Many research programs now consider

Europe as a whole, which comprises all of the EU countries and often the
aspirants to membership in the union as well. In the area of technology and
the making of Europe, pioneered by the Tensions of Europe network, other
pan-European projects are emerging.45 Most of these incorporate a historical perspective, even if they welcome multidisciplinary participation. Historians and sympathizers believe that one cannot understand the present
without first understanding the past; therefore anything we can do to fill the
gaps and correct misunderstandings in accounts of the cold war period,
whatever our respective focuses and interests, will enhance our understanding of the present and assist our strategic approach to the future.
Technology is a critical component of this larger project of understanding the cold war period, especially when considering the role of science and
technology in Soviet Bloc countries. Technology and the arts is simply a less
obvious example. Artifacts of the theater embody technology, whether simple or complex; an ordinary chair, platform, turntable, or lighting, or a huge
machine with hundreds of parts and dozens of controls, depends on technology of some kind to produce and maintain it. In the theater, however
in contrast to, say, a factory or a textile machine, a warehouse or a forklift
these artifacts are made explicitly to express an idea. On the surface they are
just things or machines, but they have been constructed in the service of creating theatrical space, which, in turn, serves the artistic vision of the director and playwright. Ideas themselves are not confined by boundaries, but
they need carriers, vehicles of expressionnamely, media or actors, usually
both. In this case the scenographic artifact is a medium that conveys an idea
with potentially universal, even transcendent value. Without the actors (and
perhaps the audience as well) it is incomplete, but the same can be said for
the reverse. If the work of east European scenographers helped carry actors
and audiences into new realitiesnew theatrical spaces where they were exposed to new journeys, new ideas, or new perspectives on old truthsthen
perhaps their mission was fulfilled.46 And if their artifacts, and the ideas and
45. For example, the Tensions of Europe network, originally established by the European Science Foundation (www.histech.nl/tensions); CLIOHRES, a European Commission Network of Excellence (www.cliohres.net); the project at the University of Helsinki,
Knowledge Through the Iron CurtainTransferring Knowledge and Technology in
Cold War Europe (www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/kic/project.htm); and the European
Science Foundations EUROCORES program, Inventing Europe: Technology and the
Making of Europe, 1850 to the Present (www.esf.org/inventingeurope).
46. The role of theater in the cultures of the Soviet Bloc countries is another, if
related topic. In their visit to the USSR (see note 42 above), Lawrence and Lee marveled
at the numbers of theaters in Russia and their popularity, as opposed to the relative lack
of interest in the U.S. Lee said that [t]hey are hungry for theatre in the Soviet Union. I
think its because their TV is lousier than ours. And their newspapers arent nearly so interesting. Only four pages in Pravda. . . . Seriously, theatre is a kind of substitute for religion. Its also a reward after a hard days work. Moreover, Lawrence noted why Russians

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perspectives embodied in those artifacts, traveled westward and perhaps

found homes there, then we may conclude that the Iron Curtain was more
permeable than previously thought.
Epilogue: The Legacy, Two Examples

In April 2007 the New York Times published two articles related to the
legacy of theater technology in eastern Europe. The first, on 2 April 2007
and titled Illusory Characters with Startling Stage Presence, describes multimedia with life performers at the 3LD Art & Technology Center I in Lower
Manhattan. Neither the articles author nor the interviewees appeared to be
aware of Laterna Magika and other Czech innovations of half-a-century ago.
The second, A Lost Boris Godunov Is Found and Staged (11 April 2007)
is about the recent staging of a lost, never-before-staged 1936 production by
composer Sergei Prokofiev and visionary stage director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who had to abandon the project when he fell out of Stalins favor (he
was executed three years later). Princeton University professor Simon Morrison discovered Meyerholds detailed notes and Prokofievs score for twenty-four instruments in a Moscow archive. This recent production is the
spiritual heir to Meyerhold, drawing upon his ideas yet making it fit naturally into the twenty-first century as Meyerhold (like Svoboda) would surely
have wished.47
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