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The theatre is dead. We are not working for new directions…new literature…new lighting systems…new masks…new stages…new costumes…new actors…new theatres. We are working for the theatre that has survived the theatre…[and] for the sound body of a new society. Kiesler’s words introduced the catalogue of the International Theatre Exposition staged at New York’s Steinway Building in spring 1926. This massive exhibition (74 exhibitors; 224 works; 17 countries), organized by Kiesler and Jane Heap (1883–1964), coeditor of The Little Review, was a variant of Kiesler’s groundbreaking Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exhibition of New Theater Techniques) that had been shown in Vienna in fall 1924 (95 contributors). On display at both exhibitions were radical theatrical experiments from across Europe, the United States, and—most prominently—Soviet Russia. Distinct, physically engaging catalogues were published on both occasions and special issues of the periodicals Ma and The Little Review were devoted to each show. The New York exhibition brought Kiesler to the United States, where he would spend the rest of his career. For a discussion of one of Kiesler’s early projects in the United States, see “Frederick Kiesler, Plan for a Department Store (interior perspective drawing), 1928,” Research (a publication of the Merrill C. Berman Collection), no. 2 (February 2024).
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