Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1966 - 21

stage production, for there was nothing remarkable or extravagant there, but to grind and torture the auditorium
into three or four strait-jacketed caricatures of supposed
theatres of the past and future.
For this the lighting on which the whole of the visual
side of theatre production depended, the one reason the
place could call itself a theatre (by derivation a place for
viewing), had been butchered and cut down to what
seemed to me a mere bad joke.
I remembered on a previous visit, which incl uded the
Loeb Drama Center at Harvard, thinking how little of the
million dollars (claimed to have been spent on the technical equipment there) must have been allocated for equipment to the important piece of the lot - the switchboard.
The strange thing is that in Britain we think the educational theatre is the one place where, if one must have
adaptable theatre (and must one?), machinery can be minimal. This is because the tempo of use is slow and there
is so much labor about. To shove about platforms and
seating is so easy with the football team, and you in
American also have in college the cheer leaders and other
hordes of exuberant youth bulging with muscle (or at any
rate bulging with promise of one kind and another).
The spirit behind the 250-seater adaptable theatre at
SI. Marys, Twickenham in England is that youth can alter
the form of theatre completely in ten minutes, even with
the audience present. It is quite otherwise with lighting;
muscle and numbers are of no avail there.
No, I simply do not believe that the budget need be so
tight that dimmers must be rationed. You in America have
got used to it and do not see the idea as silly as it is.

ashamed of themselves that they masquerade as dimmers
switching in and out somewhere, specified with care, on
the travel of a dummy dimmer handle!
In London England at the Queens Theatre a few years ago
we nearly fell from grace. Twenty non-dims were discovered as I walked through the factory examining, as is
my wont, the consoles being made there. In spite of the
fact that there were a hundred dimmer circuits as well for
the Queens it was a case of "Sound an alarum" and
within a week the order had been amended to turn these
perverts into honest dimmers. I am thankful to say that
our escutcheon still remains unbesmirched as far as
Britain is concerned; though I have heard tell of jobs with
too few dimmers and with too many non-dims being
smuggled out of the factory behind my back in exchange
for dollars, to give the American continent what it specifies.
Personally I cannot help thinking that specification of too
few dimmers may arise from a client's fear that no one
will be able to design a good control console for him.
I propose to be quite frank about this, knowing full well
that, in the best traditions of free speech, American manufacturers can have a go at me and mine in later pages
of this journal.
Theatre Design and Technology unsupported as it is by
advertising exists to be a privileged forum of USITT, a
society founded to encourage technical discussion among
members from far and wide. Such discussion obviously, if
it is to serve any purpose, must originate in the strongly
and honestly held views of people who may in another
place find themselves as competitors.

If dimmers are rationed then lighting instruments and cir- I have therefore to declare that except for the Radio City
cuitry certainly are not. In many cases you install far too Music Hall I have never seen an American control system
many of these and via Broadway and our London West which impressed me as coming in sight of solving the
End have infected Britain as well. Great choruses of light- real problem of its time. Now I have not of course seen
ing instruments vie one against the other to provide more all that your continent has to offer, far from it, but I belight. A solo instrument simply does not stand a chance lieve I have seen all the more important systems. As
and the result is the visual equivalent of a massed choir early as 1933 you were able to install an all-electric sysin an over-reverberant auditorium. What about a quartet tem of 314 channels in Radio City with presetting. There
or octet for once, with lots of dark to show by contrast were others, but this one is still working and should be
how beautiful the light is? This technique would be more an object of pilgrimage for all interested in stage lighting.
logical with the few dimmers you have.
You should all be very proud of that control; of getting
that far in 1933, leading all the world.
I ask you what good is a separate circuit if you cannot
light it up and regulate it independently of its fellows? Now move half a mile or so away to Lincoln Center and
That idiotic creation the" non-dim" shows that you really see what America has done with the thirty years or so of
hanker aiter more control circuits anyway. What good on technical development that lies between. At the dimmer
earth is a non-dim? If lighting cannot fade in or out then end there is the remarkable controlled rectifier instead of
it is useless for theatre. If money must be saved, then the cumbersome saturable reactors and thyratron tubes of
one might just conceivably return to the ancient practice Radio City but at the control consoles I can only express
of switching out the auditorium lights instead of dimming disappointment. Are these three systems really worthy
them, retrograde though this would be; bu t not to have successors to follow the Radio City console thirty years
dimmers for all the stage lighting circuits is inconceivable. later? The answer in my personal view has to be "No!"
Even in the days of gas lighting there were in effect dimLet us take the New York State, the Vivian Beaumont,
mers and master dimmers on everything. In the 1880's
and New Metropol itan Opera in that order. At the first,
practically everything was there in lighting control; only
safety, impossible with gas, was missing. Every non-dim the State, there are two hundred dimmers serving a
patching system; but of all things the control lines of
circuit installed today when electric dimming has at last
these dimmers are themselves patched through a pinbecome so easy, is a betrayal of all those who strove
board to a mere eighty sets of control levers. This apagainst immense technical odds to make an electric stage
pears to me to be because there would not be space in
lighting circuit expressive.
the already large room for all the levers that the ten preWhat can be so laughable is the fact that the price gap sets or so breed. Wisely, the levers throughout are all
between these wretched non-dims and a dimmer is so the same size, and not miniaturized. This facilitates
narrow, thanks to the controlled rectifier. In fact you actu- matching of levels and "playing" within scene, but of
ally have on your side of the Atlantic some solid-state course takes up space. What I question is the need for
non-dims which are in practice dimmers in every sense ten presets. To my mind all two hundred dimmers could
except the least costly item, the printed circuit control be directly and better controlled for this kind of work
card. Then what about those non-dims which are so using only four presets and up-to-date grouping facilities.

DECEMBER 1966

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