Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1971 - 19

mote different kinds of theatre. I was hoping to hear about such theatre and I haven't
heard too much of it.

into the ground. There was a terrific amount
of involvement and argument about my reason for being there in the first place.

Mr. Pertz: Someone was implying that be-

Aher seeing the fiesta in Pamplona, I began to wonder whether this prolonged festival was some marvelous palliative to peasants to keep them somehow able to function under a terrible, oppressive regime. I
wonder if there is a valid analogy. As I see
it-I am a public school teacher and man,
that's the living end-the kids are being
programmed out of existence. But do the
festivals just enable people to function under an increasingly oppressive architectural
scene, a political scene, etc.? Is there a
way to directly motivate people to work not
just on the government, (maybe through
their zoning) but on me client who pays the
developer or who pays the architects? Is
there a way to show the value of the street
thing and then get people to make it occur
in other places?

cause the architect designed the space,
therefore he designed all the problems.
The psychologist is determining the neurosis and the sociologists-Orchard Street is
filled with lots of I ittle people shopping and
ru nning up and down. If you took away
those people, you would create a different
space. The world is the play and the people
are the play and the container is a passing
accoutrement. You walk down the sunny
side of the street on a cold day because
it's sunny there. Also, if the sidewalk is
lousy, people don't walk on it.
If you contrive everything, then everybody becomes a spectator and everyone sits
and waits for the first guy to speak.

Miss Bacon: The architects are systematically destroying a lot of the warmth that
makes the city interesting. Take the whole
area over on South Street.

Mr. Pertz: The bad architects ....
Miss Bacon: You are saying the architects
are not responsible, but the fact is that they
are affecting our environment.

Mr. Toan: You should make a distinction between the architects and the so-called developers. Let's take the Sixth Avenue situation for a moment. The client in that case
is a commercial institution. The developer is
looking for an optimum return for his buck
from institutional tenants. In the process,
they both squeeze the movement of humanity out of the whole building, beginning
with the shops. The dimensions of the
shops are very important. There was a reference a moment ago to the fact that duri ng
performances of street theatre people used
their windows as balconies. The fact is that
shopping areas are also a tremendous attraction for the drama of the street because they induce people to come there.
Perhaps one of the greatest lacks in the
city, one that Jane Jacobs has pointed outand certainly anyone who has traveled in
Europe has observed the contrast-is the
absence of small shops under houses.
Shops under houses are a tremendously
rich thing, architecturally, and in New York
they have simply been zoned and legislated
out of existence.
We also have to get vehicles excluded.
This is a very mundane subject to bring up
at this time, but the shopping centers in
the suburbs are becoming tOvvn centers. In
fact they are taking over this role even
though they don't have the shop-over-house
format.

Mr. Wood: I wanted to underline one point
and then raise, for me, what seems to be a
rather complex question. I built a music tree
house in Union Square last fall and one of
the big problems was to keep the helpers
from getting hurt as we put ten-foot beams

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Comment: I think once you start that you
sort of institutionalize it. When art goes into
the museum, it immediately dies, it becomes art. You would make a sacred cow
out of street festivals.
Mr. Wood: I don't want a museum, I want
more plazas and more places of the sort
that you are talking about; places to do
theatre things.

there. But there is always the big excuse
"we can't do it, we don't have the funds."
A good idea is enough to get a thing
happening, though not a big technological
thing costing thousands and thousands of
dollars, I think the main idea is to do the
thing at the right place at the right time and
be flexible.

Comment: I came in late. I am an architect
and this might have been covered before,
but from the questions that have been asked
I doubt that anybody has referred to what
the zoning legislation changes recently have
been in New York. I happen to be involved
ina midtown project. In getting involved in
it I became aware of a new bit of legislation which the public at large doesn't know
about at all, and I think this group should
know.
Developers are essentially greedy. They
want to make money. The new legislation
motivates the developer to exercise his
greed. I am getting to the fact that the developer will get the highest possible bonus
for including a particular kind of public,
pedestrian space in an office building. And
that space has to fulfill many requirements
which they were wise enough not to try to
put in words.

Mrs. Cortesi: Is this internal street a concourse?

Comment: When architects plan spaces
they cause dead spaces. Nothing really happens there. Things are supposed to happen
there, but nothing really does. People find
other spaces to congregate in. Somehow,
when a space is set aside for public gatherings, no one goes there.

Comment: They call it a "Covered Pedes-

Comment: Just a quick footnote to Ernie's
comments about people wanting to involve
themselves. I can remember, like a few
others, the time when the circuses came to
town. We would get up at 6:00 o'clock in
the morning to watch the circus unload, to
see the preparation, and to carry a bucket
of water to the elephant.

Comment: Is this the Kip's Bay idea with
stores, theatres, and restaurants?

Maybe you shouldn't be complaining
about the fact that it needs two more people to put up the platform. Maybe there
should be pieces that require 25 people to
carry them to the platform and put them in
place. I appreciate your wanting to have
professional performances, but I think maybe
this is something we are too close to.

Mr. McClintock: I agree with you completely. The more people know, the more that
they can do, the better. But the way things
are today, if a light or a pole falls on a kid,
you're in trouble. I would love to involve
people, but I have to be careful in involving
them.

trian Path."

Comment: This is the Fihh Avenue zoning.
Comment: No, this applies to the entire midtown section. I think if anybody is interested in knowing ...

Mr. Tichy: This kind of discussion gets me
back to Sonny's anger. We are talking three
steps removed from the needs of people.
This is where architects are caught up.
We have only begun to touch upon one
particular form, street theatre, which still
has built into it the ideas of participants
and people observing in a passive role.
We have not talked about the need for
any environment where they can really participate. An example tonight: we had an attempt to socially engineer this group. One
individual started by saying, "Who are
you?" We weren't capable of responding
nor did he have the skills to change the
social architecture of this room, but it was
an attempt.
Later, Sonny's intervention of anger and
emotion was an attempt to change the social architecture of this room.

Mr. Pinter: I don't see your theatre in such

Miss Bacon: I want to ask something of the

an old-fashioned way that you have to have
a stage. New York is big enough. There are
such a lot of exciting places in every borough where the theatre or whatever we call
it could really take place immediately withuut any stage. Use the things that are

theatre people; allover Mexico there are
those Iittle gazebos. They are free stages.
I am not myself involved in the performance,
the theatre side of things too much, but
how would theatre people respond to that,
to having more free stages around the city?

OCTOBER,1971

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