Theatre Design & Technology - May 1966 - 14

To be distant enough to be able to play older,
some other business. Such are the very bones of
theatre, upon which everything else is built. It is younger, or character roles and be accepted;
To have the stage organized so that it is a suptime to stop concerning ourselves with parking lots,
pushbuttons and projection systems and to start re- port and a comfort, not on encumbrance.
learning what every theatre man once took for granted.
B. That inwhich the audiencehasthese capabilities:
I have heard more than one director admit that the
only thought he gave to an audience was as warm
To have pleasant surroundings and reasonable
bodies during performance and ca.sh at the boxoffice. comfort;
For whom do we create? Ourselves? What arrogance!
To be among others and share their responses;
To have a "sense of occasion" in surroundings
different from office, home, school;
To have a pleasurable sense of anticipation and
WHAT IS THE MOST FLEXIBLE THEATRE FORM
POSSI BlE? A proscenium stage with a high open- not have the stage revealed too soon;
To see actors and action and to hear natura I
ing, a grid to match, a very large offstage space,
voices clearly;
complete traps or elevators, and with an apron that
To be able to distinguish small business and
may be extended when needed. The key is "high
facial expressions without strain;
opening," which will, when used to its greatest
To become involved with actions and emotions
extent, enable the proscenium to vanish entirely.
but to be separate from distasteful things;
The audience will not then be looking through a keyTo feel safe in house and seat; to be a port of a
hole, but wi II be poised upon the edge of a void,
small
group associated with a mass rather than a
within which anything, or nothing, may be mounted.
midge
within
a moss.
The terrible Picture Frame, our bete noir, is present
only in low openings, typical in university and provincial houses. Although not generally used even
when available, the high opening can give a sense
of space greater than that of any so-called space
stage of the arena or Greco-Roman type. A completely trapped floor enables the audience to look
down upon, up at, and directly across at a scene. A
stage of this type can produce anything whatever,
and has. Unfortunately this most flexible of forms
happens to be almost ruinously expensive to build.
Hundred-foot grids are uncommon in this country for
that very reason.

Curiously enough all these requirements of the actor
and the patron can be met most satisfactorily in a
late eighteenth or early nineteenth century English
playhouse one with a reasonable loft yet still retaining the thrust apron. The wrap-around of the galleries
encloses the actor within the audience chamber,
allowinghim to oct as presentationally as you please.
The high proscenium makes possible special effects
or withdrawal for representational displays.
The
patron is nowhere remote from the acting area, and
the house presents a sense of intimacy unknown in
other types. A later nineteenth century house will
be less satisfying and a modern proscenium least so.
Questions such as the above should resolve themTheorists have been so concerned with developing
selves into "what is the most flexible form possible
perfect sightliness so that the audiences could see
within our budget," and avoid absolutes. That kind
all the scenery that the delicate balance of relationof variable prohibits the type of generalizing we are
ships between patron and actor has been destroyed.
doing here, though a scaled-down version of the
The arena and the Greco-Roman forms recover
proscenium noted above may well serve smaller
partially from the destruction, but not to the extent
purses, providing the proportions among its elements
previously held.
are not altered.
Attempts to answer the question
with limited means have been mode in other ways at HOW DO WE PRESERVE THEATRICALITY? Have
ANT A Washington- Square, the Questors Theatre in the audience reminded of the theatre at every moment;
London, and even at the old Vieux Colombier. How no art galleries. Too many structures have audience
areas that are appropriate to nothing in particular.
flexible such stages may be is open to doubt.
Why should theatres be jumbles of decorative treatWHAT SHOULD BE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
ments that follow the current fashion in window
THE ACTOR AND THE AUDIENCE?
display and cocktail-lounges? Such decorations are
A. That in which the actor has the following capa- vulgar and become badly dated, for somehow the
"latest" simply ends up being "last year's." How
bi Iities:
many of us have had patrons, with tears in their eyes,
To be seen clearly, and to see, so that he may
plead for carpets instead of tile, for chandeliers
"ploy" the house;
instead of indirect lighting from cheap fixtures, for a
To be heard (without aids), and to hear, so that
little honest paneling instead of the endless miles
he may judge reactions and timing;
of Weldwood panelboard? We have also been asked
To avoid playing to blank walls;
to be either frankly feminine or masculine in our
To be able to act as the situation requires, and
decor, but for God's sake not neuter.
not have the performance dictated by the design of
Theatricality has another manifestation, and one with
the stage;
To be able to play all the house at once, or, which the audience is more intimately involved. Perconversely, to be able to withdraw from all the house haps the most theatrically-oriented piece of architecture still standing is the Paris Opera, in which
at once;
To make business and have it seen, and to fake the audience members themselves are constantly
"on stage." The entire ensemble of salons, foyers
business and not have it discovered;

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