Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1987 - 56

elsewhere. It is famous not only for itself, bLlt also for its
offspring. Its audience is fed with a varied diet and everchanging menu. The company may never travel from its
own base, bLlt it will bring to its performances;l full and
lively sense of the society in which it thrives and of the
wider world and its history.
If these criteria are accepted, the main problem in the
use of contemporary theatre space is not to provide a
void for the sake of exceptional productions and a thorough immersion of select audiences. A more important
task i to provide a powerhouse, a base from which to
create and sustain a strong, responsive, responsible, attractive, multi-talented, and abundantly varied theatre
company. The entire building should be planned to foster and display this company, and to enable it to build an
audience; theatre going should become as regular as
eating, not an occasional event. The public should feel at
home in this theatre, as well as ready for adventure. It
should be encouraged to stand apart and judge, as well as
to yield to exceptional experiences. In the best of times,
an audience might attend performances weekly and on
each occasion enjoy the pleasure of discovery. A company with such a vision and the resources to make it a
reality will have to be provided with a plant which
allows it to deliver a constant supply of new productions,
both large and small. Its work would be long-considered
and well-made, bLlt also, on occasion, it should be quick,
cheap and irrepressibly tOpical.
If this is the target, the greatest achievements of the
last hundred years are not those chosen by Bablet, and

the problems of the present time are different from those
which he poses. Theatre space must be simple, highly
efficient, and hospi table to many different kinds of theatrical experience. Sound, light, and scenic device" uf all
kinds must be controlled exactly and inexpensively. A
constant and easy audit of expenses-of time, manpower, and expertise, as well as money - should now be
possible, so that new technology can be pur into trict
harness and its full potential realized. The auditOrium
need not have a variable form, but it must be changeable
in "feel"; Brecht-whom M. Bablet omitted from his
tally of great directOrs - has encouraged such work by
discovering how to change the role of an audience in
whatever configuration it is placed; his experiment
could be taken much further tOday. A wide range of
effects is available at comparatively little COSt which can
either enhance theatrical unreality or heighten realistic
illusion. The lighting, acoustics, and comfort of an auditOrium can be adjusted during a single performance so
that the "immersion" associated with the use of a hollow
space should be equally accessible in many fixed forms
of theatre. The earlier cry for variable-form theatres led,
as Bablet says, to some very clumsy and inefficient buildings, bLlt technology has developed further than anyone
at that time could have foreseen. Today should see the
development of variable-effect theatres, if the appropriate sizes and configuration can be determined.
What directOrs and scenographers wish to place on the
acting area is more than ever at their command, wi thour
insisting on new architecture and equipment for each

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1987