Andor Weininger

  
Andor Weininger (1899-1986), was born in Hungary. From 1917 to 1918 he studied Law. The turbulence of the post WW I revolutionary period in Budapest interrupted his studies. From 1921 to 1925 he studied mural painting at the Weimar Bauhaus, with Vasily Kandinsky as a teacher. He then switched to the class in stage design taught by Oskar Schlemmer (the Bauhaus had by then moved to Dessau). During these years Weininger's work was interrupted by long periods spent devising cabarets, providing set designs, acting and working as a musician. After 1928 he earned his living in Berlin as an interior decorator and designer.
Weininger's work comprises print-making, painting, illustration, interior decoration and furniture design. But his great enduring interest was the theatre. His endeavour to devise works for the stage that required no human actors led him to the idea of a »mechanical review«, in which three-dimensional versions of geometrical forms would move about on the stage. In this he was probably influenced by his teacher Oskar Schlemmer.

He designed a theater which was a sphere 50 meters in diameter and a capacity of 5000 spectators. The interior of the sphere is covered with boxes arranged so that the viewer can see in all directions. There is an idea of ​​total theater, where there is no separation between the scenes and the spectators; there is thus a room-scene unity. Moreover the spectators are sitting freely in the room. Andor Weininger has created a theater based on abstract and kinetic movement games. Its scene is three-dimensional, because he uses space in all its dimensions. Weininger wanted to forget the two-dimensional scene, which he compared to a television screen. He was inspired by the theaters of antiquity with their immersive aspect.
In 1938 Weininger left Germany. He died in New York in 1986.

Spherical theatre