Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1993 - 38

1981. Here in the gurted and massive
cinema space originally designed by the
archi tect Erich Mendelsohn, the most
modern of German technology has been
employed to articulate the complete floor
area with "podiums" (individual
hydraulic-operated floor sections based
on a pantograph design), a complete
electrically operated grid overhead, and
provision to divide the overall space into
three theatres by employing large doublesided sound-attenuating doors.
In France there is an equally famous
room, better known to musicologists
than to theatre people, located below
plaza level in the Pompidou in Paris.
IRCAM (the Institute for Research and
Coordination Acoustique/Musique)
opened in the late 1970s under the
imprimatur of conductor Pierre Boulez
(Piano & Rogers, architects; Victor
Peurz, acoustics; and Guy-Claude Francois, theatre consultant.) The remote
controlled "periaktoi" may be used to
completely alter the acoustics of the
space; everything in this room-ceiling,
floor, walls-is based on modules which
are two meters square.
Here we may finally review our discussion. We have seen how theorists, such as
Appia, Craig, Gropius, and Schlemmer
described new explorations of the actor's

THE BLACK BOX SPACES
WERE DEEPLY
INFLUENCED BYTHE
MULTI-FORM THEATRE
EXPLORATIONS THAT
FOLLOWED THE
CONCLUSION OF TH E
SECOND WORLD WAR
AND BVTHE
ENVI RONMENTAL
THEATRE MOVEMENT
OF THE '60S AND 70S.
space and changing theatre forms. We
have seen how these forms evolved freely
within "found" spaces. The black box
spaces were deeply influenced by the
multi-form theatre explorations that followed the conclusion of the second
World War and by the environmental
theatre movements of the '60s and '70s.
A studio, a laboratory, a place for experimentation-the black box is all of these.
It is an "uncommitted space" in which
for each production the director and the

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1993 WINTER

TD&T

designer are free to explore and establish
anew the relationships and limits
between audience, performance, and
space. It is seldom painted black any
more! The amenability of the "black box"
to variety in scale of production and the
ability of the director and designer to
refocus the audience/performer relationship thus accounts for its ever-multiplying presence in theatrical production. ffi
Joel E. Rubin is a Fellow ofthe Institute, a
theatre consultant based in New York Cit;\
a contributing editor of TD6-T, and the
chair of the United States Center of
OISTAT
"T!Jr Black Box alld Er)'olld" /VfIJ origillally prrparrd ill COli'
'idrrably morr brirffom, fIJ ,hr Irad arric!r for Thea"e C",ns
''Archi'(((lIrr 90: Thr Mllltiform Spacr: TI" Black Box alld
Eryolld" (Drcrmbrr 1990.) A comidrrablr rxpamioll of ,hr
maurin/ wm zwdtrrakfll fOr tlu conftrtl1Cf ''Arquitretllra Y
Trclmica Trarral" hrld ill Caracas, Vfl/rzllrla (April 1991),
fUlda lIlt joim fluspicrs

of rlu

Vtl1fzutla Crmrrs

of IT/and

O/STAT; if was SUbUquflltly {rmISt'lud find publislud ill

Spanisb aJ part of tlu cOllftrl'lla docrwU11lllriofl by rlu IT!
\lrntzurla. A Ct'rmall tram/arion apprarrd il1 Btihnemechnische Rundschau il1 Jal1uary 1992 al1d a Dutcb tram/aliol1
is sdJfdulrd 10 apprar il1 Zichdijnen.

Endnotes
1 \Xfaher Gropius. descriplion of the TOlal TIJfatrr from
"Teauo Dramatico" Rome, 1935 (quoted from his
introduction to TIJf TIJfatrr ofl!Jr Bauhaus).

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1993