Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1972 - 20

ous producers, Peter and Adela Holzer wanted it on
Broadway with all the customary trimmings. It was intended for the market place, wh ich meant it had to be
done in a typical Broadway house complete with prosceniu m stage. The Holzers felt that if it were so important
to Ragni, Morgan and the Lee's that DUDE be staged in a
total space, it was up to them to create one in the Broadway context. Morgan and Lee talked to Ragni about what
had been done at the ANT A Theatre, and at a relatively
low cost. He liked the idea, so they contacted the rest of
us that had worked on the ANT A design.
In the meantime, the Office of the Midtown Manhattan
Plan, that division of the City Planning Commission responsible for Times Square and the Broadway area, became interested in the DUDE proposal as a means of revitalizing Broadway. The Planning Commission has worked
imaginatively to save Broadway for many years. With
another round of Broadway houses slated for demol ition
th is season, the Commission was heartened by a producer
extending the life of another Broadway house.
The Holzers at the same time had been negotiating
with the Shuberts for their largest house, the Broadway
theatre (1725 seats). In th is context, it is easy to see how
the question of doing DUDE in a bubble, likeORLANDO
FURIOSO, or developing a new performance space in an
old generator plant was never brought up. The idea of
doing it elsewhere never crossed anyone's mind - until
afterwards when the cost rose higher and higher, above
Variety's reported $100,000.
On July 7th, we took the preliminary plans to the
Building Department for an initial reading. That was the
first time I realized that this job was going to be a nightmare. After a positive reading from the City's chief engineer, William Kupfer, I was told by Morgan and the Lees
that it would take some time to persuade the Holzers that
based on the ANT A precedent the scheme was economically feasible. The squeeze play between the Building Department permits and available construction time began
during this week in early July.
If the plans could not be shown to the Shuberts for
another week, the Shuberts in turn could not sign the
Building Notice, and we in turn could not file for a Building Notice number. The Building Notice affirms for the
Building Department that the owner of the theatre approves the work about to take place. Once th is notice is
filed, it receives a number, similar to a bakery, and one
waits for that number to come up to have the plans formally examined. The loss of a week in the building profession where plans are exami ned months or years before
construction is normal. But to DUDE's six week construction schedule, the loss of this week was critical. The inability of the lickety-split pace of a Broadway production
schedule to mesh with the plodding and endless pace of
architectural construction threatened a new nonrelationsh ip between theatre and arch itecture. "You just
don't put Environmental Theatre together in the standard

Off-Broadway length of production time", Eugene Lee
had previously observed. He was right.
Once the Shuberts indicated their enthusiasm for the
scheme in their trompe d'oeil tudor sanctum sanctorum
on Shubert Alley, the designers thought they were home
free. There would still be time to fiddle around with the
design of the set and its superstructure. But we still had a
long way to go with the Building Department. Final drawings had to be prepared so that when our number came
up, we would be ready for the agonizing and lengthy
process of having this maverick project, the remodeling of
this fifty year old giant house, picked over item by item.
By August 1st, three weeks after the chief engineer's initial reading, the drawings were complete. The estimates
for scaffolding and the gypsum board to surround it were
in and in keeping with the production budget.
To gain time for this more solid and permanent kind of
construction, Adela and Peter Holzer wrote a letter to the
Building Commissioner asking for consideration of the
plans as speedily as possible - known in the trade as "an
expedite." In their desire to inject as much revitalization
as possible into the "fabulous invalid" of Broadway, the
Office of The Midtown Manhattan Plan wrote a supporting letter to the Building Commissioner on behalf of expediting the examination. We waited another agonizing
week. Materials could not be ordered nor could any construction be started.
Our "expedite" was turned down. This should not have
been surprising; clearly there are so many schools and
hospitals that need faster consideration in the great
scheme of things. And yet what Broadway does with
paints and flats and parallels in production schedules of 6
weeks we had to accomplish in steel, fireproof lumber,
and gypsum board. Every day that DUD E waited for approval meant a tighten ing of that squeeze play between
construction time and the first preview performance
scheduled for September 11 tho The dollars began to
mount up. We had only three weeks left to build, not a
set, but an entire theatre, and we hadn't even been examined, much less approved. Our contractors began to
speak about overtime. The Holzers and their managers,
George Thom and Leonard Mulhern, kept their cool, but
gave us only one more week to get approval. Otherwise,
we would have to scrap the whole thing and throw together a last minute proscenium production: for DUDE
with an opening song that says "Goodbye to Broadway?"
that was impossible!
Miracles are supposed to happen in the theatre. This
was the first time the dynamics of "the show must go on"
helped to push us along. Within three days we received an
examination in what appeared to be the normal order of
things. But just as that examination was about to come
up, the assigned examiner was called to review a project
that had been granted an expedite. Ulcers grew. Finally,
on August 10th, one month before previews, and only
two days before our own cutoff deadline, Thomas Kolsky,

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

DECEMBER. 1972

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