Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2009 - 29

Act 3 of A Night Out by Harold Pinter (1987), Wimbledon School of Art's
Theatre. Adapted and directed by Richard Negri; designed by the two actors, Mark
Tildesley and Camilla Bates.

ing 'Rosebud' in the dust. And really that was a sort of germ because the theatre is really based on the rhythms of the structure
of a rose and there was something about the actual Exchange
building that needed a huge rose in the middle, something
very...warm or inviting, in that colossal, hard space. So that
was really what triggered it off. Almost as if you had a rose and
sat your audience on the petals and the centre of the rose being
the lighting system, dewdrops on the rose if you like."
"What makes this theatre in the round different?"
"I know it has been called a theatre in the round. I don't
really, I don't think anybody really likes it to be actually called
that because I think basically what one is at is to make the stage
and the auditorium one thing so the actor, member of the audience, operator are all one and the same. Persons. Gathered.
For a performance. But, it isn't anything new and I think that's
what's marvelous about theatre history is that the picture frame
theatre as we know it occupied an extremely short part of the
actual history of the theatre. If we go back to the Greek theatre
which evolved from the landscape. Vast circle of audience with
one actor, so in a sense you could express the loneliness of
man as standing there in the middle of this vast space under the
sky. And that was the human condition. And I think we tried to
avoid that loneliness after a while and, if you like, it's almost as
if you pulled the Greek auditorium up to form walls and arrive
at the Shakespearean theatre in which the loneliness of man
would become expressed as one there and twelve over here.
Hamlet's a very fine example of that. And this process went on,
I mean to the picture frame theatre, where we're now in a room
not the market place, many rooms, there's one man thinking
here, some dancing here, some playing billiards over here. For

example in Chekhov. And this was really a theatre which actually completed the roof, pulled the roof over the Shakespearean
stage. And then we went into the completely subjective theatre
of the room which got smaller and smaller through Strindberg
until we get into the smallest room of all which is Beckett's dustbin. And there's a moment where, and I think all of us know
that moment, we say 'thinks!'-this is extremely uncomfortable
and restricting, and one has a go at just pushing the lid off.
Peeps out at this hostile environment. And as far as the eye can
see you see field after field of dustbins all lifting their lids-and
suddenly it's spring!"
"And that's what a rose is about." v
David Burrows is head of the Theatre School at
Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts, London,
and occasional freelance theatre designer. See www.
davidburrows.com.

EndnotEs
1. "Born in 1897, Michel Saint-Denis was greatly influenced
by his uncle, the producer and critic Jacques Copeau.
With Copeau's assistance, Saint Denis set up the seminal
Compagnie des Quinze in 1930 which made a significant
impact on the European theatre scene... After the
Compagnie des Quinze disbanded, Saint-Denis immigrated
to Britain and founded, along with George Devine and
Marius Goring, the London Theatre Studio in 1935. The
school was dedicated to the application of Copeau's acting
techniques and was later to become the Old Vic. In the
role of director, Saint-Denis' impact on British Theatre

W I N T E R

2009

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http://www.davidburrows.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2009