The Gas Heart is, out of the modernist plays I have studied, the one that has the most variety in production design. With characters named after body parts but with no actual advice within the text as to how these characters should be costumed and performed, there is a huge variety in design choices between various productions of The Gas Heart.
Sonia Delaunay’s costumes for The Gas Heart are the most infamous, unfortunately due to the events that transpired at the performance where the costumes were worn rather than the costumes themselves. These costumes were worn at The Gas Heart‘s second performance as part of the show Le Cœur à barbe (The Bearded Heart). In the run up to this show there had been conflict between Tristan Tzara, the author of the play, and Andre Breton, a fellow modernist author. During the performance Breton climbed on the stage and started to attack the actors, and due to Delaunay’s large, stiff cardboard costumes the actors were hampered in their escape from Breton. Breton’s actions sparked a riot within the theatre which has overshadowed the performance ever since. The impracticality of the costumes followed the ideas of Dadaism where the absurd was celebrated and there was no need for practicality in the costumes, instead the design was prioritised. The angular costumes are similar to Delaunay’s art work and also to the abstract style that was becoming popular. Delaunay’s costumes have been remembered in popular culture, with David Bowie wearing a costume based on Delaunay’s design while performing on Saturday Night Live in 1979.
This performance of The Gas Heart that I found on Youtube is what I consider a brilliant production. The characters are differentiated by having the various body parts marked on the mask, with literally representing the characters as the body parts they are named after being a popular staging choice. It represents everything that modernist theatre is about- there is a rejection of traditional realist sets and the minimal effort put in to make the viewing uncomfortable and confusing with the use of the floor as the backdrop and the cutting between scenes is a brilliant use of the advantages of modern technology in using the effects of a recorded performance to enhance it. The absurdity of the mask swapping and the covering up and changing of the actor follows Dadaist principles where they reject the establishment of the theatre, which is shown within the play itself as it mocks the tradition three act play with its inclusion of three acts that are so short it would be expected to be a one act play.
Modernist Adaptations 