Robert Edmond Jones

Robert Edmond Jones ‘Art in the Theatre’ Yale Review, October 1927
A good scene should be, not a picture, but an image. . . . Every-thing that is actual must undergo a strange metamorphosis, a kind of sea-change, before it can become truth in the theatre. There is a curious mystery in this. You will remember the quotation from Hamlet:
My father! - methinks I see my father. O where, my lord? In my mind’s eye, Horatio.
Stage-designing should be addressed to this eye of the mind. There is an outer eye that observes, and there is an inner eye that sees…
The designer must always be on his guard against being too explicit. A good scene, I repeat, is not a picture. It is something seen, but it is something conveyed as well; a feeling, an evocation. Plato says somewhere: It is beauty I seek, not beautiful things. That is what I mean. A setting is not just a beautiful thing, a collection of beautiful things. It is a presence, a mood, a symphonic accompaniment to the drama, a great wind fanning the drama to flame. It echoes, it enhances, it animates. It is an expectancy, a foreboding, a tension. It says nothing, but it gives everything.
Quoted in Gorelik pp179-180.

好的布景不應是一幅畫，而是一種想象‥‥‥每一件真實的事物都必須經過一次奇異的變形，一種明明顯的變化，才能在戲劇中形成真實，這其中存在著一種難以捉摸的神秘性。你會記起《哈姆萊特》中的一段對話吧：

我的父親，我仿佛看見我的父親。
啊，在什麼地方，殿下？
在我心靈的眼睛裡，霍拉旭。

舞台設計要訴之於心靈的眼睛可以見到‥‥‥。設計者必須經常注意避免過於外露。我要重複一遍：好的布景並非一幅畫。它可以眼見，但它又要意會，它是一種感受，也是一種喚。柏拉圖曾說過：“我追求美，而非美的東西。”這正是我的意思。一組布景不僅是美的東西，或許多美的東西的集合。它是一種風度，一種情調，一種對戲劇的交響樂伴奏，一陣吹旺戲劇的火焰的風。它共嗚、它加強、它鼓舞，它是一種期望、一種預不示、一種張力。它無言，但顯示一切

羅伯特‧埃德蒙‧琼斯：《舞台設計圖集》，紐約1965年版，第21頁