Biographical Sketch
Boris Aronson was born in Kiev in 1900, the son of a Jewish rabbi. He
came of age in pre-revolutionary Russia in the city that was at the center
of
Jewish avant-garde theater. After attending art school in Kiev, Aronson
served
an apprenticeship with the Constructivist designer Alexandre Exter. Under
Exter's tutelage and under the influence of the Russian theater directors
Alexander Tairov and Vsevolod Meyerhold, whom Aronson admired, he rejected
the
fashionable realism of Stanislavski in favor of stylized reality and
Constructivism. After his apprenticeship he moved to Moscow and then to
Germany, where he published two books in 1922, and on their strength was
able
to obtain a visa to America. In New York he found work in the Yiddish
experimental theater designing sets and costumes for, among other venues,
the
Unser Theatre and the Yiddish Art Theatre.
Aronson's first major success was
The Tenth Commandment,
directed by Maurice Schwartz at the Yiddish Art Theatre in 1926.
His
reputation was further improved by an exhibition of his set models in New
York
in 1927 and by the 1928 publication of a book about Aronson by the art critic
Waldemar George. Aronson quit the Yiddish theater to avoid the
ghettoization of his work and began doing
Broadway productions in 1932. Between 1935 and 1939 he did several
productions
for the Group Theatre, among them two Clifford Odets plays and Irwin Shaw's
The Gentle People, the
latter considered a breakthrough for Aronson. In the 1930s and early 1940s
Aronson experimented with projected scenery and did his first settings for a
ballet and a musical.
Despite Aronson's critical successes in the 1930s, his career was in
limbo for much of the 1940s and 1950s. In a Broadway which favored tactful
sets
over dramatic designs, other designers were getting many of the better
productions. Aronson was forced to temper his abstract, Constructivist
inclinations and produce naturalistic sets, but he continued to make
important
contacts. In 1953 he created sets for
The Crucible, the first
of six Arthur Miller works that he would design. He worked frequently with
the
directors Harold Clurman and Garson Kanin and was praised for his sets for
the
long-running
The Diary of Anne Frank
(1955). He became proficient in using collages, and some of his
work
anticipated the epic style that he employed to great effect in the
conceptmusicals of the 1960s and 1970s.
Aronson's career upswing began with
Fiddler on the Roof
(1964). His first commercial success, the play marked the beginning
of
Aronson's fruitful association with the producer-director Harold Prince.
After
creating sets for two productions at the Metropolitan Opera, Aronson
collaborated with Prince on
Company (1970). The show
featured Aronson's most Constructivist sets to date and established Stephen
Sondheim as a composer. Three more Price/Sondheim/Aronson shows in the 1970s
(
Follies, A Little Night Music,
and
Pacific Overtures)
solidified Aronson's reputation as one of Broadway's most respected
artists. His last set design was in 1976 for
The Nutcracker,
choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov. Aronson won eight Tony Awards
and
maintained an active career as a sculptor and painter until his death in
1980.
The Boris Aronson Scenic Design Papers were donated to the Ransom
Center by Lisa Aronson in 1996. One rendering for
Love among the Ruins was
a purchase.
Scope and Contents
The Boris Aronson Scenic Design Papers, 1939-1977, contain original
sketches, photostats and copy prints of sketches, photographs, art
reproductions, scripts, technical drawings, and a model which document
Aronson's work as set designer for thirty-one plays written or produced
between
1939 and 1977. The papers are arranged alphabetically by title of
production
and can also be accessed by playwright, librettist, or translator via the
index
of authors following the folder list. Items are grouped together in
accordance
with their original order, e.g., the two folders of photographs for
The Garden of Sweets
have not been interfiled, but are left in Lisa Aronson's original
groupings.
Though the papers are slightly skewed toward the later part of
Aronson's career, his work in the 1940s and 1950s is amply represented. In
particular, works by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Irwin Shaw
abound.
These production materials include Miller's
The Crucible and
A View from the Bridge,
Williams'
The Rose Tattoo, and
Shaw's
The Gentle People. Also
represented are two Stephen Sondheim works (
Company and
Pacific Overtures) and
four Harold Prince productions (
Fiddler on the Roof,
Cabaret,
Company, and
Pacific Overtures). Two
of the works represented in these papers,
The Golden Door and
Love among the Ruins,
are unrealized projects for which Aronson made preliminary
sketches.
Also included are scripts of three plays on which Aronson did not work:
Sex and
Death by Woody Allen
(never produced, though
Death was published in
Allen's
Without Feathers in
1975);
Vieux Carré by
Tennessee
Williams; and Benjamin Sonnenberg's unproduced 1975 translation of Fernand
Crommelynck's
Les Amants puérils.
The bulk of the papers comprises concept drawings, study sketches, and
preliminary and final renderings for stages, scenery, show curtains, and
cyclorama projections. The sketches range from a single prop to individual
scenes to overall floor designs. They are executed in pencil, ink,
watercolor,
lithographic crayon, or pastel. (For brevity and clarity, all of the
drawings,
renderings and sketches are referred to as sketches in the folder list; those utilizing color
media such as watercolor and pastel are so noted.) Complementing the
renderings
are research files and production photographs. The research files contain
art
reproductions, a few postcards, and photographs, many of which were taken
by
Robert Galbraith of Jamaica, N.Y. The production photographs depict
Aronson's
models or the finished sets. Also present are technical drawings and a
stage
model for Arthur Miller's
Incident at Vichy.
Completing the papers are rehearsal copies of scripts, including
multiple versions of
Pacific Overtures and
Company, and a folder of
bulletins written by director Garson Kanin to production personnel during
rehearsals for
Dreyfus in Rehearsal.
Annotations found throughout the papers are usually Lisa
Aronson's.
Item-level descriptions of all materials except for the
Incident at Vichy model
are available in an earlier finding aid in the Reading Room.
Notes Concerning the Folder List
In the folder list, year of production is given in parentheses after
the title of the work. Dates for the contents of individual folders are
given
only if known and if they differ from the year of production. The number of
items per folder is given in parentheses.
Abbreviations used in the folder list are as follows
- b = box
- ff = flat file
- ob = oversize box
Source: Rich, Frank, with Lisa Aronson.
The Theatre Art of Boris
Aronson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
ArrangementThe finding aid for the Boris Aronson
Scenic Design Papers is a conflation of the original inventory created
in 1999, and of a small
addition that was catalogued in 2006. Currently
the addition is described only by a Folder List which has been appended to
the
original inventory, continuing the box and folder numbering sequence. The
Scope and
Contents does not make reference to the addition, and the RLIN record for
the collection
summarizes the original inventory only.
Boris Aronson Scenic Design Papers--Original Inventory
[This Page]
Boris
Aronson Scenic
Design Papers--Addition