Theatre Design & Technology - Feb 1972 - 31

understand that the chanter is not the accompanist of the puppets. They accompany
him. Yet Westerners never fail to misunderstand this point. Our primary visual
orientation leads us astray and we invariably
go to Bunraku to watch when we should go
to listen.
Ando has made all of this clear. In addition he has included a charming and accurate historical summary of the form for
the popular reader. He concentrates on historical personages (which will confuse readers unaccustomed to Japanese names) and
the contributions they have made beginning
with the great Takemoto Gidayu, the seventeenth-century Osaka joruri singer who developed the form.
No one who has not experienced Bunraku
can be made to apprehend its charm, its
fascination, its extraordinary adult sophistication-by merely reading this or any of the
other books printed on the subject in recent
years. Bunraku has begun to travel however;
having made two tours in the United States
in the last decade and is expected again

The Art of Stage lighting
Frederick Bentham. Sir Isaac Pitman and
Sons, Ltd., London: 1968. 447 pp.
$14.95.
The publisher of The Art Of Stage
Lighting gives us firm insights into both
the strength and weakness of this book in
the dust jacket description of it, which
states:
This is an entirely new and comprehensive
book written to replace the same author's
standard work Stage Lighting.
Stage
lighting is an art with an essential technical engineering basis and the author's object is to make this as palatable as possible to the artist while at the same time introducing the theatre to architects and en-

gineers who may practice there . . . . The
book falls into three not too rigid parts:
the first three chapters are introductory
and cover the general background includ-

ing theatre architecture and a short history of stage lighting; five chapters de-

scribe the technical materials used; and
five detail the actual processes of painting
the stage with light.
The work is
aimed at both the amateur and professional.

The publisher might have also noted that
the author is attempting to speak simultaneously to an English, European, and
American readership_ In short, Mr. Bentham
is trying to provide something for everybody; and while he succeeds moderately
well, such an approach is not without its
shortcomings.
The first portion of this book sparkles
with the astute observances of a man whose
life is and has been theatre, and therein
lies the greatest value of this section. Be-

THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

sometime in the next two years. Anyone interested in extending the range of Western
theatre will not fail to be impressed by the
extraordinary possibilities revealed by Bunraku, and Ando's book will prove a useful
aide to understanding. This is especially
true of the photographs (quite good in their
own right) which illustrate dozens of puppets, chanters, handlers, and scenes from
performance.
The publisher of this edition is guilty of
a glaring and unforgiveable error: the immense contribution of the translator and
adaptor, Don Kenny, is given a billing so
small as to be insignificant. Adapting Ando' s
Japanese for English readers is a creative
task in itself. Kenny has performed superbly. He is a skillful stylist in his own
right (Drama critic for the Japan Times)
and deserved full credit on the title page
with the author.
William J. Bruehl
Department of Theatre Arts
SUNY at Stony Brook. New York 11790

ginning with the second sentence of the
text: "Even the authors of Genesis realized
that the Lord had to create Light before
Man," Bentham continues to spice his writing with such tantalizing tidbits as, "The
hard-board-faced flat, for example, is not
better as a flat than a well-made canvas
one: it is merely heavier" (P_ 2); "Good
ideas and design in engineering have as
one of their essential ingredients a rightness of cost" (P. 5); and "Aunt Sally
sitting reading in her chair should not be
hard to light. After all, if it were not light
in that place, she would not be sitting
there reading" (P. 8). Having worked for a
number of years in opera, my favorite
"Benthamism" comes on Page 234: "As
for opera singers, we should not be too hard
on them, as light is a commodity somewhat
infrequently encountered in their world!"
Recognizing that any attempt to reflect
"state of the art" conditions in book format, particularly with respect to lighting
control systems, is doomed from the outset
by the meteoric speed of technological development, Mr. Bentham nevertheless gives
us a good accounting of the principles,
physics, and artistic utilization of modern
lamps, instruments, dimmers, and control
circuitry. His use of simple graphs, line
drawings, and schematics does much to enhance and clarify his text. Unfortunately the
choice and reproduction of photographic illustrative material does not measure up to
the same standard of quality. In his efforts
to make the engineering data "palatable"
to the artist (Mr. Bentham is a director of
Strand Lighting), he makes frequent references to theatres, equipment, and produc-

FEBRUARY, 1972

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