Reimagining Xanti Schawinsky’s Spectodrama: Play, Life, Illusion (1936)

Over the last twelve months, Camberwell BA Fine Art students and staff have produced a series of performances, sets, costumes and soundscapes that have reimagined Schawinsky’s “total experience” theatre work, Play, Life, Illusion (1936). This paper will give an account of these performances which featured; London cheese toast, red and blue visors, clocks, musicians caught in a trance - listening to rocks and trees, thought clouds, paintings made with skateboards, the construction of new worlds, colour wheel dances, monsters with many many feet and protests. The Camberwell group staged these performances at the new Bauhaus Museum, Dessau as part of the Festival Stage TOTAL, one of the highlights of the centenary celebrations. Some of these performances will be restaged in the Bauhaus SIGNS Party from 6pm in the Camberwell Canteen and at the SIGNS Afterparty.