Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2008 - 38

Regressive Design
There is a category of architectural design services roughly
known as "re-use" which involves considerably lower fees
and reduced amount of work for re-using a "stock" design.
(Chain-restaurant design is in this category.) Re-use is simply a
recognition of reduced architect/engineer work scope when a
previously designed building is recycled. But in contemporary
performing arts architecture and consulting, this rational notion has not applied-although I see plenty of architects and
consultants using the same internal theatre or concert hall layout over and over and over again. Instead, the "stock" ideas-
often packaged inside new and inventive exteriors-are the
same 200- to 300-year old "courtyard/horseshoe" theatre designs. These are not only tough on many of the spectators but
they stick our writers, directors, actors, and designers behind
the same old proscenium wall.
Of course, we don't want to re-visit those old fan-shaped
theaters of the 1950s and 1960s, but there are many ideas
which we can explore-exemplified, for example, by cases
like Walter Gropius' "Total Theatre" (1927) or the intriguing
Ford Foundation challenge (1961) to think about an "Ideal
Theatre." Ultimately, these theatre concepts were less than
perfect and less than fully practical, but they generated healthy
thinking and discussion. Powerful and unique halls have been
built-the Berlin Philharmonie with its brilliant "vineyard" au-

dience and stage spaces designed by Hans Scharouns or Tanya
Moiseyevitch's gold-standard thrust for the Guthrie. We can also
point to Frank Gehry's Disney Hall as a wonderful exception
to today's derivative design tendency. (Literally scores of different audience and stage spaces were dreamed up and modeled for the Disney by the architects and consultants.) But in
city after city, I think the record shows that we simply build a
new exterior around audience and stage areas which are only
a generic re-hash of something like the Theatre Royal of Bristol
from the 1760s: gently sloped orchestra seat rows forming an
ellipse or circle plan-shape surrounded by stacked galleries of
seats facing essentially away from the stage then transitioning to
balconies at the rear (the only portion of upper floors where
seats actually do face the stage.) This cookie-cutter reflex is
certainly cost-effective for the architect and consultants. I have
been in design meetings where drawings put on the table as
first concepts are literally layouts from prior projects except for
a new name plugged into the title block. What it all boils down
to is that too many of today's architects professing special skills
in theatre design are perpetuating a standardized reliance on
regressive internal design. And, when many theatre consultants'
portfolios emphasize pretty pictures of building exteriors they
did not design and theatre interiors copied from antique sources (on which their standard stage lighting and rigging packages
are applied) a bit of healthy skepticism about intellectual property is in order.

Figure 5. Visual Democracy?
The proscenium theatre at a major new
PAC boasts about its seating layout because
"straight angles ensure all patrons see the
play from the same vantage point." Rigidly
straight rows or not, this statement is obviously
false at a rudimentary geometry level. All that
remains is counter-productive rigidity; patrons
in side seats will try to turn their bodies against
the seat orientation in an effort to see the
performance.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2008
