Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1975 - 12

ties away from home base where they can be seen
and heard "on the road" to better advantage than
ever before. More than any other factor this has
created a need for theatre design-engineering and
acoustical consultants who are only now beginning to
produce in English a body of much-needed literature
on the subject. This has contributed to the organization of professional societies such as U.S.I.T.T. and
the Acoustical Society of America, that in time, it is
to be hoped, will, like their older models in
architecture and engineering, insist on professional
standards of excellence. To date professional excellence in theatre design has been upheld by only a
handful of individual consultants who have brought
to the problems of theatre design, technology, and
acoustics the American proclivity for rapid technical
assimilation and its ready adaption to a fluid social
and economic situation that has no precedent anywhere else in the Western World.
The situation of arch itect versus theatre and
acoustical consultant, begun innocently but forcefully
with Brandt at Bayreuth and Sabine at Boston (Adler
was his own theatre and acoustical consultant), and
now spreading generally throughout the western
world, was bound to produce areas of conflict among
contemporary architects, who had never designed
theatres before, and the newly arrived professionals
in theatre design-engineering and acoustical consultation: And let no one believe that there is not
controversy here. It is a matter of record that over
the past century, although almost imperceptibly at
first, em phasis has now irretrievably sh if ted away
-from the primacy of architectural design to theatre
design-engineering, and today is centered about
whose definition (the architect's or the theatre
design-engineering consultant's) is to be decisive. Do
we define function as "architecture" or as
"theatre"? The twentieth century architect, unlike
his eighteenth and nineteenth century predecessors,
has at hand virtually unlimited options as far as
materials and systems of building are concerned.
They are unprecedented in the history of architecture
and building. That this was to affect contemporary
theatre design was inevitable. The Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Century architect, with justification, is
accused by his contemporary of a precious superficial
ornamental approach to a manneristic style of
design. In contrast, the contemporary architect
instead sets great store by the mystique of what he
defines as "functional design," a like syndrome
where the building itself has become the ornament,
requiring not only the essential detailed knowledge
but the obeisance of structural, mechanical, and
electrical engineers, who are not only to make his
creations stand up but to render them habitable as
well. Confronted for the first time with the problem

12

of theatre design, the contemporary architect (and
this is particularly true of the virtuoso designer) has
too often insinuated his own just as precious,
non-rational and at times self-imagined "architectural functionalism" that bears scarcely any relation
whatever to the realities of how a theatre building is
used as the enabling instrument of performance by
the performer and as a means of aural and visual
communication from stage to auditorium for the
audience. Given these circumstances, it is incumbent
upon the consultants in theatre design-engineering,
with full cooperation from the acousticians, to insist
just as forcefully that the "essential basic functions"
of rational modern theatre auditorium design are
upheld.
With allied studies in room acoustics, West
Germany stands first today in theatre consulting as a
developed professional specialty. It supports a course
of graduate study at the Technical University of West
Berlin and an apprentice program at the high
technical level supported by the professional (subsidized state and municipal) theatres and opera
houses. It was also the springboard that catapulted
the late Walter Unruh to a spectacular career as
theatre consultant to the world. Here theatre consu 1tation, so far as its applications to theatre technology
are concerned, deals almost exclusively with design
of backstage spaces and machinery. It is different
from the helter-skelter experience developed in
America, for it does not often venture outside its
tightly circumscribed province of backstage machine
design and operations. American theatre consultation, second to West Germany in numbers and scope
of activities, is perhaps inherently more broadly
based, owing in part to a lack of tradition of any kind
whatever, but it has unfortunately tended to produce
narrow specialists in auditorium design, sight line
analysis, and stage machinery design. The still
narrower specialties of stage lighting and stage
rigging both suffer by being almost exclusively
commercially oriented. Room acoustics consultation,
when it is not carried out by the theatre consultant,
all too often occupies a somewhat ambivalent position astride both architecture and theatre designengineering.
It takes strong convictions on all sides (owner,
architect, and theatre consultant) to produce theatres
that work as well as buildings that satisfy an
architectural aesthetic. It is my considered opinion
that the theatre consultant should be expert in both
design and engineering and he must first of all
achieve primacy over archite.gture in all matters
affecting auditorium and stage design. For maximum
effectiveness he must be more than just knowledgeable in architecture, engineering, and theatre design;

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THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

SUMMER. 1975
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1975
