Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1989 - 6

t's not that I had to be begged. At a 1960 panel of a
Denver AETA convention I
was already making an impassioned argument for an
English-language journal
about the same time Tom DeGaetani was doing his earliest
politicking on behalf of the Institute. My argument, as I
remember, contended that
American stage design was at
its current nadir (otherwise
unsubstantiated) in large part
because we had no journal to
stimulate exchange of ideas
about design.
Three years later, with some
idea of convincing the University of Pittsburgh to underwrite publication of a tech
theatre magazine, I translated
(and was showing about at
AETA and USITT meetings)
one entire issue of Biihnentechnische Rundschau set in
type as a demonstration of
what a technical theatre magazine might look like. That project came to nothing more
than warm words from editor Walther Unruh, who liked
the idea. Getting the translation set in type (via Frieden
Flexowriter punched paper tape) did serve as an introduction to the Pittsburgh printer, Harvey Hoechstetter.
Harvey was in business fresh from the printing program at
Carnegie Tech, and was a joy to work with: he subsequently printed a decade or so of TDetJT and many years of
the history journal Theatre Survey as a result of tha~
contact.
(Younger academicians may find it strange today to
contemplate asking one's university to underwrite a serial
publication single-handedly. Those early sixties were different days, my friends!)

Anyway, Pitt wasn't up to it
even then, either. I worked off
my frustration doing an offset
and mimeograph version of
something called Pittsburgh
Publications on Theatre Technology, which was long on
handy hints for the technician,
and which Ben Sammler at
Yale would find familiar today.
Then there was the annotated
bibliography Recent Publications on Theatre Architecture,
which had a life span of about
12 years, and which was a twopage feature of TDetJT until
October 1972. I only found out
how many people looked at it
regularly after I stopped doing
it.
The short version of the
story is that I was ready when
destiny in the form of Messers
DeGaetani and Rubin called
(the call probably charged to
Kliegll some time in 1964.
With all the newsletter,
conference, and committee
blather about manuscripts being needed, it was still with a
thin backlog indeed that publication of the USITT journal,
Theatre Design etJ Technology, began with the issue distributed at the May 1965 convention.
(In the eyes of New York-based executive committee
members, even more problematic than the new magazine
that year was the daring innovation of a convention held
outside New York City in sylvan Bloomington, IN. Would
the Institute recover from a convention to which no one
came? Would the journal, for which a printing bill had to
be advanced, fail to appear on schedule - or at all? We were
faced with two chances to fail miserably in the same
month. People did come, and I have no problem remembering the smell of ink from 500 very fresh copies, transported
continued on page 62

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