Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1978 - 6

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Opposing Views
Izenour and Mackintosh:
Fan-Shaped Auditorium

VS.

Courtyard Form

The following contributions by lain Mackintosh and George
C. Izenour were originally presented as papers for the 8th
World Congress of the International Federation for Theatre
Research, in Munich last September. Both papers have been
edited somewhat and certain illustrations have been deleted
for reasons of space. To facilitate reading, minor adjustments
were made in editing to conform with "article," rather than
"paper," format.
Mackintosh revised his paper, before delivering it on the
fourth day, in response to Izenour's, which was delivered on
the first day of the week-long Congress. The following statement by Mackintosh is an excerpt from the first of twelve
footnotes added to the paper after its presentation. Izenour's
rebuttal, printed below, was written specifically to accompany
the paper for pUblication in TD&T.-eds.

The romantics, because they do not know the difference
between an acoustical field and a hayfield, would not understand this and, like the Bourbons, they seem neither to learn
anything nor to forget anything. For example, in 1871 Royal
Albert Hall, designed by an army officer-architect with a romantic penchant for putting a lid on a smaller sized replica of
the Roman Colosseum produced one of the great acoustical
disasters of all time. It was exactly a century later, when a
pragmatic "engineer" solved the problem of its horrendous
echo, that the room was eventually made acoustically tolerable at all. I can only conjecture that it will take as long again
for the pragmatists to again be called upon to clean up the
romantic mess of a more recent romantic foray into theatre
design. Quod erat demonstrandum.

It is important for the readers of the two essays reprinted
herein to understand that it was not my printed essay that
elicited the response by lain Mackintosh at the Munich Congress. It was, rather, an extemporaneous comment by me
that accompanied the projection of a series of isometric seating analysis slides of audltorla reproduced from drawings in
my book Theater Design.
From his romantic comments on theatre design, I very
much doubt that Mackintosh understands, or does he perhaps just choose to ignore, the basic methods of a pragmatic
theatre designer. Like all romantics who get themselves involved In theatre design, It Is only the overall visual essence of
the auditorium space that gets any mention. The difficult and
exacting mathematical and engineering details of both the
visual and acoustical fields go completely unnoticed. Mackintosh makes a great romantic case for the enveloping auditorium. I am not against the enveloping auditorium so long as
there is something to envelop, but a proscenium stage and its
relation to the auditorium, which was the point at Issue here,
in my judgement can neither be properly viewed nor coupled
acoustically to other than a fan-shaped auditorium.

In George Izenour's contribution at the 8th World Congress, he took further the themes of his published paper,
"The Origins, Evolution and Development of Theater Design
since World War II in the United States of America." He spoke
of "the nuts and bolts of seeing and hearing" and produced
his seating geometry analysis criteria-the only satisfactory
seats in a theatre being those within a wedge shaped "box"
which includes, in the transverse plane, only those seats
within a 30° splay from the proscenium opening and, in the
vertical plane, only those seats within 30° of the front edge of
the stage, measured on the center line, which are within 80
feet for drama and 120 feet for lyric theatre.
Using three projectors he showed simultaneously the plan,
longitudinal perspective section, and the "seating geometry
analysis" isometric for thirteen theatres. La Scala, Beazley's
Drury Lane and the Vienna State Opera scored badly while
Bayreuth, the Deutches Oper Berlin, and all of Izenour's multiple use fan-shaped theatres scored very well indeed. It was
this presentation in particular, which was delivered on the
first day, that led to this paper being rewritten so as to provide
an alternative presentation on the fourth day.
I. M.

Theatre Design & Technology

G.C.I.

USITT/Summer, 1978

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