Set design by Jocelyn Herbert for the 'Baal's Attic - Early Morning' scene in Bertolt Brecht's play, Baal, Phoenix Theatre, 1963

Design for Baal's Attic in Baal, showing a wooden stage platform with, centre, a free standing structure representing the back and left hand walls and ceiling of an attic room. The left hand wall, covered with roof tiles on its left hand side, slopes upwards and contains a window, the rear wall contains a wooden door. From the ceiling hangs a lamp on a long flex. To the left, a bed and, to the right, a table and chair.

This is one of a collection of 21 designs by Jocelyn Herbert for Bertolt Brecht's Baal, Phoenix Theatre, 7 February 1963, which was part of Lot 366 in Sotheby's Sale of Illustrated Books, 22 May 1997. The production was directed by William Gaskill. Herbert's designs had previously been sold by Ifan Kyrle Fletcher in 1963: they appear as Item 128 in the Ifan Kyrle Fletcher Catalogue, number 207, July 1963.

Historical significance: A design for the world premiere of Brecht's Baal, dating from a period when Jocelyn Herbert's work was exerting considerable influence on British theatre design. The production is significant in the career of its director, William Gaskill, being Gaskill's first essay in Brecht, a dramatist with whom he became closely associated.

S.330-1999