Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1977 - 9

MASS AUDIENCE ENTERTAINMENT EVENTS
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

J. ROBERT WILLS
Two of the most recent USITT conventions (Los
Angeles/Las Vegas in 1975 and New Orleans in 1976)
both focused in part on mass audience entertainment
events, that pop culture extremity of the show business
industry where audiences in increasing numbers are
discovering the peculiar American consciousness of our
late twentieth century. "There's a lot more fun at Kings
Island than meets the eye,,,1 we are told. And the same
holds true for Disneyland, the Las Vegas revue, Mardi
Gras, the Superdome and America on Parade - each of
which represents a singular example of kitsch art exploded
into mass appeal.
Not surprisingly, given recent and current trends in
societal change, such explosions are becoming an increasingly significant aspect of our social fabric. Unlike
some other popular arts events, each of these appeals to
large number of people, each creates a circus-like environment without the limiting inhibition of three rings, each
develops with skill an all-engulfing atmosphere of participatory leisure. Each also depends for total success on an
audience of groups rather than individuals: they are not
the kind of entertainments you do by yourself. They offer
shared, spontaneous fun, devoid of pre-planned rigor. Just
being there is enough; and once present, the event happens to you. It's what Sanford and Law in their book,

Synthetic Fun, call "pre-canned, precubed, pre-heated,

pre-gutted, pre-hygienized, emasculated, dialed-for instant
experience, that state in which the real world can be forgotten, replaced by a dream world, synthetic euphoria.
It is, perhaps, the number one ideal of our time."2
Each of these mass audience entertainment events
also enjoys a more-than-just fringe relationship to theatre
technology. In fact, each functions with such technical
expertise, draws so heavily upon the physical aspects of
theatre architecture, engineering, administration and the
basic conditions of presentation, and offers such a virtual
wonderland of adequate funding and advanced technology
for the theatre designer and technician, that we can easily
forget the fanciful, frivolous, trivial nature of the event
itself.
Triviality, however, should neither. negate the significance of such pop culture events nor degrade them as
unworthy companions for the more traditional and more
serious entertainment arts. Rather, such frivolity helps in
large measure to define our changing society. Furthermore, in terms of theatre, the techniques used by such
events can help extend more 'serious' work, while their
structure can reveal possibilities for more 'legitimate'
endeavors and their message of shared dynamism can
influence more 'normal' theatre systems. It is impor-

European architecture lines the pathways on International Street at Kings Island. Photo Courtesy of King Productions.

USITT

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

SPRING. 1977

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1977