Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1971 - 16

minister a program of neighborhood street
festivals, for one. We have a mobile unit
that we call a festival truck. This unit is a
big trailer that carries aluminum modules,
stages, arches, and light and sound equipment. This is taken out of the truck by a
community group and set up on the street.
The neighborhood residents design the
street according to their own image and
put on their own festival using local talent.
They do t heir own decoration, and essentially create a cultural event which we hope
somehow reflects that particular neighborhood.
One of the motivations behind this program was the conviction that people could
come into contact with their own environment and then interact with it; that people
could get the confidence to interact in a
more meaningful and positive way. We felt
that by making an event a community one,
a neighborhood would be able to strengthen
its own sense of itself as a community.
I am not interested whether festivals are
good for people or whether they lead to
something greater. The fact is that a community that senses itself as a group gai ns a
need to celebrate.
The dynamics of a festival, if you will
bear with me for' a second, are such that
a group provides a framework in which the
individual is allowed to express himself
very freely. You see this same thing in the
carnival situation; everybody goes crazy,
everybody expresses himself as he would
like to be: his madness, his fantasies, his
sense of play. But he is allowed to do so
because he is given license by the group as
a whole. The power in festivals when they
work is not between the audience and the
material. It is the interaction between members of the audience which gives the festival strength and power. This interaction has
been used through history by religious and
political leaders.
I think interaction is something which architecture can also provide and for the
most part does not. For example, the Seagram Building is a good example of space
dramatizing a building. The place at Rockefeller Center dramatizes the Rockefell er
Center Building. I don't know what the G.
M. plaza dramatizes. Bethesda Fountain, on
the other hand, dramatizes people. It is a
very simple concept, but it works.
There are very specific things which happen in Bethesda Fountain which I think lend
to its drama. For example, people like to
look at each other and they like to be
looked at. In any space you need places for
resting and places for action.
When you enter the site of Bethesda
Fountain, you are an audience. You look
down upon the fountain itself and you see
people playing games, you see the movement of the people around the fountain, you
sp.e the boats on the lake, etc. You can decide at that point whether or not you want
to participate in the theatre which is going

on below. If you walk down the steps you
begin to get involved in the action.
When you get to the bottom any number
of options are available. You can join the
movement around the fountain or you can
sit around the fountain and watch the other
people; or you can leave the fountain area
and wander to the boathouse along a meandering path and join the action on the
lake. The point is, there is a series both of
stages and of audience locations.
People love to move. They enjoy walking
up and down. Therefore, I think, architectural spaces should be planned in terms of
movement as well as in terms of space.
To me the parallel is that a festival is to
theatre what the making of public spaces is
to the making of a building. And I don't
feel very hopeful about the possibility that
architects will be able to take that kind of
thing into account or be able to make it
happen. I think those buildings on Sixth
Avenue are a perfect example. You know
the ones I mean, on 48th Street, the same
clients, the same architects, three gigantic
buildings right next to each other and no
one was able to get them to make a communal plaza which would have been a very
pitiful gesture towards the kind of thing we
are talking about: making the total environment theatrical and the people within it
actors.
The only answer is to Ii berate the streets,
to block them off permanently and begin to
play in them. We cannot leave it up to the
professionals. Simply as normal, ordinary
people, we must experiment with what
makes us feel good in the environment.
Mr. Duffy: I don't have anything to say but
can I ask who these people attending are 7
Mrs. Cortesi: Sure. I know who they are.
Do you think that some summary of the
making of "Beautiful, Beautiful" would be
irrelevant or are you so bored telling that
story you can't tell it again?
Mr. Duffy: I don't think so. If anybody really
wants to know, I brought along a book and
it is all in there. I am just interested in who
is in my environment. Why are you here?
Who are these people and why are they
here? Is that too much to ask?
Mrs. Cortesi: I can't answer you, I don't
know who you are either.
Comment: Who are you 7
Mr. Duffy: My name is Gordon.
Mrs. Cortesi: Technically they were invited
by the United States Institute for Theatre
Technology and they were also invited by
the AlA. They are architects and theatre
people of all sorts ....
Mr. Pertz: I will be terribly pedantic and
lecture for the next five minutes, after
which we will be very relaxed. There is
something that Karin said that struck a
familiar tone. Karin was talking about the
fact that people like to be with people-to

get out there and feel that people are
around. Any kind of festival provides this
opportunity. What we couldn't get in the
two or three minutes just preceding my talking was any kind of sense of anybody else
being around. Although we sat mute, I
think the question was valid. Duffy asked:
"Who are you?" You are all sitting so that
you are not very real. You are not very
festive, and that's for sure. Furthermore,
we are not making it easy for you to be
festive, and I am about to lecture, so it will
get worse.
If you were doing the same kind of thing
together, if you had an opportunity for emotional catharsis, if you participated in the
same kind of thing-then you would know
one another if only because you were doing
the same kind of thing.
When you don't have comraderie and
everybody is nervous, when somebody says,
"Who are you?": nobody answers.
If you could all shout your names together, somehow that would work. I think
perhaps a street festival does do that.
I am not sure that architecture makes a
hell of a lot of difference for a street festival. In the midwest at about five on a Saturday afternoon, people drive out to a part
of town just beyond Main Street. They
swing open the car doors and then parade
from car to car in what is essential.ly the
midwestern, American paseo. This is the
way they communicate. It is a long way
from man to man, it is not sensible to talk
on the phone, and all they have is a steel
shell and four wheels.
The kind of thing we are reaching for is
something like the paseo where, for lack of
telephones and other opportunities to meet,
and for lack of the freedom to meet anyone
you want, young people go out and walk in
opposite directions in a circle. It is very
convenient and very clever because if you
rotate in opposite directions you quickly
meet everybody for you are all doing the
same thing and you are not terribly embarrassed. It is an opportunity for girls to
flirt, and it is an opportunity for young boys
to look smug and masculine. It is also an
opportunity to say hello.
It doesn't take a big, small, or architecturally related space; it takes people who
have a ritual to perform that satisfies their
need.
What Karin said was significant from an
architectural standpoint. In New York's
Sheep Meadow it is possible to see people
watching people watching people. Because
of the concave bowl of land where you sit,
you can see what is going on; you can
quickly identify with the whole crowd as it
moves around.
The same thing happens on the great
mall leading to the Washington Monument.
I don't know who contrived for the demonstrating students to use the oval when
they went to march, but he was an absolute

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

OCTOBER, 1971

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