A Young Belgian Decorator

ALDOUS HUXLEY

THE oases in that vast Sahara of the spirit, the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts at Paris, were few and far between. But here and there, from among the prevailing dulness, affectation and horror, there emerged a work of art that was as welcome to the parched soul as palm trees and a well of water. The theatrical designs of M. Rene Moulaeit constituted one of these oases. Perhaps the most arresting of these was a design for The Tempest.

The scene of The Tempest is laid on an island, and the idea of remote and magical insularity runs through the whole poem. Alone among stage designers, M. Moulaert has tried to interpret and make visible in his projects this insular idea. In the centre of his stage he has built up, out of carefully designed prisms and surfaces, a little island capable of being turned on a pivot, and of which the different faces are intended to serve as settings for the various scenes.

Those who know Brussels have been familiar for two or three years past with M. Moulaert's work. The Theatre du Marais, a Belgian counterpart of the now, alas, defunct Vieux Colombier at Paris, has been rejnarkable for the sober originality of its settings, for which (at any rate during the first two years of its existence) M. Moulaert was responsible. The Marais is a repertory theatre requiring constant changes of set— changes which are very expensive to make, if the producer aspires to anything more elaborate than the povertystricken simplicity of the ordinary repertory theatre. M. Moulaert solved this economic-artistic difficulty by building into his scene a fixed architectural framework, consisting of wooden columns, judiciously disposed at different depths of the stage. By partitions which can be lowered from above and standardized panels which can he fitted into the spaces between the columns, the stage can be limited and divided in any way desired; and thus, out of a limited number of simple elements, an endless variety of scenes can be created.

A designer of what may be called architectural stages, in the style of the Marais, M. Moulaert is equally at home among the wings and hackdrops of an ordinary stage; an interpreter of Shakespeare and Wagner, he has also devised a set of admirably amusing settings for music hall turns. One of these, designed so as to emphasize the delirious motion of the trapezist, is reproduced above.