Despite the amount of attention paid Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig, a misconception persists with regard to their ideas concerning the actor; namely, that Appia had the actor dominate all the elements of staging, and that Craig considered the actor less essential. However, to both, the actor was both essential and nonessential to the degree that the actor could or could not provide the perfect medium for movement that was for both the focal point of their staging concepts. For Craig, the supreme force in theater was movement while Appia understood music to be the supreme force and movement to be the synthesizing force uniting music and the other elements of staging. Although it appears from their writings that Craig rejects the actor while Appia stresses the actor's importance, in fact both are depersonalizing the actor, only from different directions. They each wanted a perfect figure, human or mechanical, to let the emotion and power of the music come through a living body that had cast off all its own individuality. The actor, both agreed, is an imitator or impersonator. Though their approaches were different, each wanted a depersonalized, nonemotional, poetical-musical (or symbolic) device as the ideal actor. (TJ)