Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1974 - 34

success Madame Vestris richly deserved was never
hers, time did pay her the ultimate compliment; her
reforms became commonplace: greater accuracy in
costume and setting, integration of script, performance and physical production, and the morale and
spirit of her companies. All of this has been captured
by Professor Appleton in a most readable piece of
scholarship.

I would strongly recommend that anyone in the
Arts who has to function in the area of fund raising
read this book. It offers perspective, suggestions,
and reasonable arguments calculated to bring the
artist and the businessman together. As a matter of
fact USITT benefits from corporate patronage and it
would behoove the entire membership to not only
realize this but to actively further it!

Jacques Bundelet

THE NEW PATRONS OF THE ARTS
Gideon Chagy
New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1972
128 pp., 139 illus., index
$10.00 hardcover
Even in my more depressed moments as an arts
administrator I must admit that interest in and
support of the various Arts is steadily increasing in
America. It may never become what some of us think
it ought to be, given the staggering needs of
humanity even to survive, but then one reminds
oneself that Man does not live by bread alone. And if
the Arts need and deserve patronage, it is a
reflection that the creative and spiritual side of man's
nature must be served. However, we must continually temper our soaring hopes with a measure of
realism. Given present conditions, how much can we
expect from governmental bodies at all levels which
are largely indifferent to the Arts (not to mention the
welfare of the citizenry); how much can we expect
from a largely uninformed and naive market-place
(just think of the caliber of most of our critics and
commentators); and most important to the impact of
Mr. Chagy's new book, can we really expect much
from large economic institutions which suffer financially by being good guys? I doubt if anyone knows
the answers to these questions, and it is selfdestructive to belittle those who are actively seeking
to improve the climate for the Arts in America.
The New Patrons of the Arts is the fourth in a series of books
written under the auspices of the Business Committee for the
Arts in an effort to provide current information about the state
of the arts and the amount and kind of support contributed to
the arts by business. The current volume has a dual purpose:
first to demonstrate to corporations the direct, practical
business benefits to be derived from the arts and the
long-range benefits that the arts can confer on business as a
result of their contributions to an environment favorable to
business generally; second, to arm spokesmen of arts organizations and individual artists with information and a rationale
for their quest of corporate support.

As are its predecessors, this volume is attractive
and informative, and if this entire series of publications reaches the business community with arguments and evidence for the support of the Arts then
its impact could well be notable. No one really
questions that corporate responsibility is nothing
more than a form of self interest. Corporations act

when their interests are directly affected, action
which quickens when outside pressure is brought to
bear - preferably with a maximum of publicity. And
this tactic is clearly one which the BCA is attempting
to utilize in its various publications. It also does no
harm that the membership of BCA is composed of
some of the most notable and successful businessmen in America.

Robert H. Cowden
University of Nebraska at Omaha

ORGHAST AT PERSEPOLIS
A. C. H. Smith
New York, Viking Press, 1973
264 pp., illus.
$8.95 cloth
At the invitation of the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival
during the summer of 1971, Peter Brook was able to
coalesce some of the ideas that sprang from his work
with the International Centre for Theatre Research.
Out of his philosophy and experimentation grew a
first major public project, Orghast, a performance
that took place on a mountain at the ruined palace of
Darius the Great in Persepolis. In the cast were
twenty-five actors representing nine different nationalities.
Working with this international company, in a
place undergoing a cultural transition from Eastern
to Western, from the past to the present, Brook's
challenge lay first in overcoming the immediate
social and cultural conflicts, and second, from an
artistic point of view, in the question of language.
Integral to that problem was the question of how the
actor responded to that environment and how he was
ultimately going to communicate to his audience. For
Brook, the answer lay in the expression of a
communal myth which was unaffected by language.
In effect, this meant a return to the roots of theatre.
With the assistance of Geoffrey Reeves, Ted
Hughes, several other directors, a designer and
specialists in various forms of physical discipline,
Brook and his International Centre for Theatre
Research spent three working months in Persia. They
developed what Brook would term as being "an
endlessly evolving and continuously self-destroying
play." Orghast was based on the Promethean myth

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

DECEMBER. 1974

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