Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1967 - 56

tinction that, "If a lot of people like it, it must be good." I cannot go
along with this at all.
You base your other point on your not being personally interested. If I
say I am interested in these performances, that I went every night, does
that "balance the books?" We can't iust take a vote among the people
that saw it.
I think the mistake of the Nine Evenings was letting people in who
didn't know what they were getting into, and had never seen these
things. You can't show an abstract painting to a person who has only
seen realistic still lifes. Opening Nine Evenings up to fifteen hundred
people an evening was a mistake; but, outside of that, on artistic terms,
we are not going to go by a public opinion poll or a vote.

it must be communication to a mass of people. This must
be something happening between the audience and the actors; and if you do not have this, then I don't think it is
theatre.

BOWMAN: I think that's probably as summary a statement
as we have ever extracted from a group of this kind of
diversity.
Ray Smith has a few closing remarks.

to expose a

KLUVER: The advertisements w e hord Iy handled; but, of course, we
should have foreseen this and Clone so ething about it. We should also
hearsals. It was too late to do
have let the audience come 0 the
something abounhis.
SNYDER: I think that one of
glected today is the theatre 0
been exposed to a kind of
from the visual image, and
citing art forms that I have eve

hanges in the transcript, Mr. Snyder offered a more comprehe sive c ange of emphasis in
the title of the Conference. "I would not a d to your manifold burden,"
he stated, "by suggesting improvement; sa e perha s for the title of the
article itself, Theatre Explosion; which to my way f thinking be somewhat altered to Theatre Implosion. I belie e that raditional theatre like
traditional painting and traditional music has run its gamut and is 'withdrawing' as a vital cultural aesthetic sourc as a re It of enormous cultural, technological, 'psychedelic' changes; as a result a very different
concept of 'neo-theatre' (for want of a better description, emerging is
rooted deeply in very ancient ritualistic philosoph es and magic rather
than merely extending a 'western' classical eatre eritage."

BOWMAN: We had planned on having a 2>kfool:.wide projection at this
point which was to have read "De gustibus non es
i's utandum_'_'_ _

...,i

- ......

--~

There is no disputing taste. But restrictions being as they are, I wonder
if Mr. Mielziner might have a few choice words to say which would
serve in lieu of a more structured conclusion.

MIELZINER: I have been listening with great interest to considerable talk that I think has nothing to do with the theatre;
it seems to me that we have missed the essential point
that theatre is a communication art, and that it is a mass
communication art.

I do not mind theatre being in different forms, underground
or in the air, in different shapes, using new technology-but

[]WJ THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

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