Hellerau Returned

ERA, 2011

The Festspielhaus Hellerau (1911) is recognized as the first purpose-built “studio “performance space. Scenographer Adolphe Appia and architect Heinrich Tessenow’s architectural legacy is once again an active site of experimentation following a2006 renovation. Moreover, the current artistic residency of William Forsythe’s dance company has continued Appia’s vision for afuture performance practice through an intermedial approach. Importantly, the body, within the work of Forsythe and Appia, remains alocus of artistic convergence as it encompasses the “open “architecture at Hellerau.

Envisaged as a ‘cathedral of the future’, the Swiss scenographer Adolphe Appia (1842—1928) advised German architect Heinrich Tessenow (1876—1950) in the realisation of anew approach to performance architecture. Completed in 1911, the Festspielhaus Hellerau [see FIGURE 1] had only abrief history as aperformance and educational venue, closing in 1914 due to World War One. Located within Tessenow’s ‘garden city’of Hellerau, asuburb of Dresden, this festival theatre was intended as the new town’s cultural and spiritual centre. Symptomatic of the political landscape, for most of the twentieth century the building was used as abarracks and its artistic past was only brought to the fore following the reunification Germany in 1990. Nevertheless, Appia and Tessenow’s rejection of the proscenium format, in favour of aunified stage and auditorium, has informed the structure and function of post-dramatic architecture in the last century and beyond. Intended as asite of experimentation, the comparatively ‘open’environment of Hellerau’s great hall allowed Appia …