Theatre Design & Technology - May 1967 - 35

Letters to TD& T
(Crosspatch or Inflexible Flexibility in
Lighting) Bentham (December 66)
Dear Sir:
I am grateful for your entertaining exposure of some of the
absurdities of the lighting trade (TD&T, Dec. 1966). Would
there were more such exclamations; perhaps then someone
would sit down and design a lighting system, rather than
the re-engineering of last year's which is now the habit on
both sides of the ocean.
There are a couple of points on which I beg to differ with
you. Your assumption that a control should be designed for
one man is romantic but manifestly impractical. Combining
operator and designer is like requiring a eomposer to play
every performance of his music. Most of the theatre we do
is formal and rehearsed; technical creation goes on during
rehearsal periods; it is not desired during performance. Adjustment, yes; creation, no.
It is an unfortunate fact that most new lighting systems in
America are bought by and for use by amateurs. Systems
designers try to ride two horses by pretending to provide
both a set of controls for an artistic operator and an "idiot
stick." The result is that the "artistic" grouping controls
are used only in colleges which don't need the multiple
presets, and ignored in the professional theatre because it
is too difficult for the designer to talk the often uninterested operator through complicated manipulations. We have
made a clear differentiation of function between artist and
craftsman in our unions; has it occurred to anybody that the
theatre might be better served if we designed separate
controls for the artist, who is concerned with the qualities
and quantities of light; and the technician, who deals with
things like instruments, circuits, and the accurate reproduction of the artist's work?
Your criticism of the Met system sounds rather hollow; how
can one purchase a daring lighting system when the only
systems available are different models of the same thing?
Nothing at all daring has appeared since your light console.
The only control offered is dimming of incandescent lamps;
to change a basic (to lightingl thing Iike color or angle one
must resort to the crudity of dimming down one lamp and
dimming up a duplicate. And we call this "flexibility"?
The challenge, I think, is to the lighting designer. If we
can stop talking generalities, ban the word "infinite," and
define the ways in which the artist desires to manipulate
not a group of dimmers but light on the stage, then the
engineers can start to design some "daring" systems.
Daniel Dugan
3759 Grim Avenue
San Diego, Calif. 92104

(The Experts Speak on Theatre Adminis(February 67)
tration) Wharton - Birkenhead

Dear Sir:
Below are my comments on the Seminar:
Wharton Address:
Perhaps the theatre is the Edsel of the performing arts.
That may have something to do with the increasingly taw-

THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

MAY 1967

dry and disappointing quality of theatre as "commodity."
If Mr. Wharton's analogy of theatre tickets with other
salable products were to be followed to its logical conclusion, art might vanish forever from theatre as vendors seek
ever more assiduously to find the sure-fire formula for success. The almost indefinable qualities that fortuitiously make
for great theatre cannot be designed and forecast in quite
the same way as most products--but even products can misfire on the market.
Nonetheless, as long as our commercial theatre continues
to exist, offering the kind of product it now does, Mr.
Wharton is right that certain adjustments should be made.
It seems reasonable that there should be more central ticket
offices; that ticket sellers be given some special commission or premium for pushing shows (and this might lower
the service charge per ticket for the customer); tickets
should be priced on a supply-demand basis, with the scale
sliding lower and lower as a show decreases in popularity
or plays to absorption. Of course the incentive value of
this "ice" going to the proper people--producers, author,
performers--is very nice, but as a stimulus to further production, it would have most meaning and value where there
is actually a producing organization extant.
There ought to be, as Mr. Wharton argues, more range of
pricing in the orchestra (at the Met, too ....some orchestra
seats are lousy there). Producers often say they cannot sell
cheap tickets. If that is so, why can I never get a cheap
seat, except for the most awful theatrical disasters? One
reason may be that there are so few of them. One sees
at a Broadway show with middling success a more curious
sight: The back row or rows crammed with those of us who
cannot afford better. The next few rows are spottily sold.
This suggests there ought to be more, not fewer, cheap
seats at the lowest price range for the literate poor. There
ARE some of us. As for those who don't want the next
highest price range unless there is nothing else (even in a
small house), they are not, generally theatre lovers so much
as they are spenders intending to give the wife or the outof-towners a thrill. "Nothing cheap" is their motto, and they
may not be terribly interested in what is going on on stage
anyway.
Birkenhead Address:
The bid ide3 is all very well, but how to make it work?
Bidding through the agency of theatre party organizers?
As for the idea of cut-rate prices just before curtain, this
system has long been in effect in Germany, but with a
special qualification. About fifteen minutes before curtain,
all unsold tickets and unpaid-for reserved seats are placed
on fixed-price sale (at one time no more than 25 cents;
now generally 50 cents) to holders of student ID cards-and only to students. The rationale is this: the costs of
production are guaranteed the state, whether the seat is
filled or empty. Thus the state subsidized student attendance
on the ground that it is (1) part of their education, (2) it is
building a theatre audience for the future, and (3) they
could not, on their limited budgets, afford theatre and opera
otherwise. This works very well indeed, but might not here
since New York youths are as much money snobs as their
parents.
From enquiries among friends who had attended California
music circus shows in their inaugural season and then stopped, I have discovered that the appeal was NOVELTV, not
theatre. Before many knew what they would be seeing, they

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