Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1972 - 37

ROMAN PERSPECTIVE PAINTING AND THE
ANCI ENT STAGE
By Alan M. G. Little
(Self-published at P.O. Box 1554, Wheaton, Md. 20902,
1971 ($3.00), 50 pages, plus illustrations).
This monograph by Alan M.G. Little is at once valuable
and frustrating to the serious student of theatre technology and theatre history. The great worth of this rather
slim volume (50 pages, including notes and bibliography)
is in the author's ability to draw together into meaningful
relationships contributions from scholars in the fields of
archeology, architecture, art history and social history. In
so doing, he develops a most persuasive schema for the
recognition of Roman domestic wall painting as a source
for the dis(;overy of the structure of temporary theatres
during the late Roman Republic and early Empire.
Little's contributions to the sociological study of theatre history began in 1938 with Plautus and Popular
Drama, and continued in 1942 with the better-known
Myth and Society in A ttic Drama. In this new work he
develops his thesis through three perspectives. First, he
explores and defines ancient scenography and Greek perspective painting (skenographia and skiagraphia) , giving a
short history of the major developments with sources.
Next, he demonstrates a theory for reconstructing the
ancient perspective system, and, finally, he shows the relationship of wall painting to architectural forms. In the
second section this relationship is explored in greater detail from the standpoint of social goals and decorative
standards, as well as from that of architectural developments and fashions. Here Little deals with the implied
architecture of the Roman wall paintings that survive and
the relationship between the painting and the room and
building in which it existed.
While these first two sections are of great value, the
principal interest for the theatre scholar lies in the third
section, "A Painted Sourcebook for the Roman stage," in
which Little, taking his cue from a careful reading of
Vitruvius, postulates a plan and design of the temporary
wooden stages of the fir,t century, B.C. It is here, too,
where the difficulties in the content, style and design of
the monograph lead to the greatest frustration for the
reader. In terms of content, two problems are apparent.
First, the author's intuitive leaps are difficult to follow as
he moves from perspective wall painting to his postulated
dimensional wooden stage-structure. This in no way ameliorated by the placement of the illustrations, which will
be discussed subsequently. Second, Little make no attempt to relate his hypothetical wooden stage to exigencies of the scripts or Roman production history of the
period, instead basing all of his theories on architectural
and graphic sources and relating them to the later stone
theatre forms of the Empire. Part of this problem may be
ascribed to the dearth of surviving literary and theatrical
source material from the first century, B.C., but Little
makes no attempt to demonstrate the validity of his
theory in terms of the works of Plautus and Terence

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

which logically could be assumed still part of the repertoire. In terms of actual theatrical usage Little's outer
structure or frame (three walls and a low platform stage)
in and on which the temporary wooden stage is to be
erected, and the absence of steps in front of the podia on
which the decorative structure with its doors is mounted,
presents particular difficulties. While these questions do
not necessarily invalidate Little's hypothesis, they do raise
serious questions that should be dealt with in a rigorous
development.
The other difficulties of the monograph are entirely
mechanical; careless proof-reading, erratic spacing in the
typography, minor errors of fact in literary and historical
references, and a peculiar aversion to more than the most
elementary functions of the comma. The latter leads to a
near Germanic obfuscation of sentence structure and
meaning. Far more serious is the placement of the illustrations and the quality of their reproduction. The many
pictures of wall paintings and the diagrams, sketches and
plans based upon them are central to the development of
the author's thesis. In this day of photo-offset lithography - a method by which this monograph appears to
have been reproduced - there is no excuse for unclear,
smudgy, or blurred reproductions, nor is there reason to
group these critical pictures at the end of the work, forcing the reader to fan back and forth. In addition, the
sequence of the illustrations, at first related to initial mention in the text, soon loses its apparent logic and becomes
random.
All of these difficulties, however, should not obscure
nor minimize the many contributions of this work. In this
day when theatre historians remain stubbornly insular in
their consideration of the sociological implications of
their discipline and of the histories of the other arts, and
theatre technicians remain unaware of the vast historical
heritage in stagecraft, the synthesis created in this volume
is an important guide to future work, especially in the
ancient theatre. The lacuna in Little's development of his
hypothesis shou ld not be used as points of attack, but as
indications for further study in this vexed period of
theatre development.
George E. Bogusch
University of Minnesota

NOTES OF A DIRECTOR
By Alexander Tairov, translated by William Kuhlke. Coral
Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969. 149 pp.
$6.50.
This is the first English version of this book, originally
published in Moscow in 1921; it has historical interest as
well as contemporary appeal. Professor Kuhlke's introduction provides an excellent clarification of the relationship
between Stanislavski, Meyerhold, and Tairov (whose real
name was Alexander Jakovlevich Kornblit) when the
Soviet theatre was undergoing the complex introspection
of realism, the decentralization of influential theatre, and

DECEMBER. 1972

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