Cradle Will Rock set design sketch portal 2

Scenic design sketch of one of the three great velour portals created for the 1937 Federal Theatre Project 891 production The Cradle Will Rock at Maxine Elliott's Theatre * Producer John Houseman, Run-through (1972): For America's first proletarian musical, Orson Welles had devised an extravagant scenic scheme that called for a triple row of three-dimensional velour portals between which narrow glass-bottomed fluorescent platforms, loaded with scenery and props, slid smoothly past each other as the scene shifted back and forth from the night court to a street corner, a church, a drugstore, a hotel lobby, a faculty room, a doctor's office and the front lawn of the finest house in Steeltown U.S.A. page 248 By the end of May our three great portals were in place and our illuminated glass-bottomed floats were cruising across the stage, pursued by panting players, trailing yards of black writhing cable in their wake. page 254

Date

1937

Photographer / author

Federal Theatre Project * "Ed Schruers" is written on the reverse side. Edwin J. Schreurs (1903–1994) was credited for costume and set design for this production and others presented by the Federal Th

Archive

Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons)

Type

drawing

Original size

8,656 × 6,539 pixels

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