The Stage is a Dangerous Machine: the Designs of George Tyspin

The theater can be dangerous aesthetically as well as practically. George Tyspin, classically trained in architecture in Moscow and then as a designer at New York University, is among one of the foremost modern designers.
Style:
- Steel is Tyspin’s favorite material for it’s “sleek beauty and strength”, it is used in many of his designs and sculptures.
-“I’m not interested in periods; I feel incredible freedom. I was never indoctrinated in the sense of ‘this is from this period and that is from that period’. I have total freedom t use whatever I like.” This freedom is most often connected with the postmodern movement, with historical and contemporary elements juxtaposed together.
-Tyspin insists that his approach is organic, “I’m more interested in the essence of things, the textures, the shapes, the space, the historical elements as long as they serve the meaning”
-Influenced by David Mitchell, in his ease with mechanical transformations.
-employs the vertical to achieve a “spiritual dimension” as well as adding additional focal points.
-Islamic architecture in how it makes an understanding of how a building is put together impossible, as well as how it seems to melt into the air.

Shows:
1)The Screens by Genet.
- Created a sand y dessert of stage
-Tyspin designed a net that hangs above the stage to represent the land of the dead. He called in a German engineering firm to help design the net to hold up to 40 bodies as well as appear light and airy.
2)The Electrification of the Soviet Union
-set inside of a train car that was flexible
-his work on this set exemplifies his collaborative nature where he and director Peter Sellers formed the idea of the malleable train car.
3)The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez
-this was the first film that Tyspin worked on, it was a remake.
-the original had been black and white and tyspin wanted to carry that feeling by having intense colors. “to really go to essentials in color where every color becomes a state of mind”
-Played with the loneliness of new york “whatever is not onstage is just as important as what is”

4)The Ring of the Nibelungs - Wagner
- In this design Tyspin wanted to design with all the elements, and create a space where “the audience and the stage were intertwined”
-“the first note of the opera sounds in the darkness, and then there was an explosion of glass and metal. The platforms begin moving and action immediately becomes spatial”
-The design for this set took over the Netherlands Opera, with set changes waiting in the lobby and coming out into the street.

Sculptures:
-Tyspin has held gallery shows for his sculptures
-They are created after the show has been designed and act as monuments to the shows.
-They are not quite stage models, but more conceptual of how Tyspin would have designed in an ideal world with no limitations of floor space for actors.
-These monuments set Tyspin apart from almost all other American designers who keep almost no record of their work and just design shows back to back. Tyspin remain the artist instead of making a career out of designing.

The Danger:
-in later years, Tyspin did very little work in the United States as his designs were too dangerous.
-His design for War and Peace had been performed in many other cities without fault, it wasn’t until New York did a mishap occur. But Tyspin felt the sage itself was safe but that “there was something getting into people’s subconscious. There was a perceived danger in the design.”
-Tyspin is dismayed at all the new safety regulations on what he can and can not do in the theater space.