Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982 - 5

Theatre Design

Technology
Volume XVIII * Number 2 * Summer, 1982
Journal of the United States
Institute for Theatre Technology
Number 69

Contents
4

Contemporary American Designers: Eugene Lee
by Arnold Aronson

The Boston Metropolitan Theatre Center

Stuck On a California Freeway

The Control of Electric Light Sources

by John T. Howard
by Theodore Shank
by Karl Heinz Bodenhausen

24
26
27

BOOK REVIEWS
NEW PRODUCTS
RESEARCH
The Columbia University Theatre Collection
by Tina Margolis

Photo Credits

On the Cover
A San Francisco street scene
designed by Eugene Lee for the
movie Hammett by Francis Ford
Coppola.

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, 1982, by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc.

Introduction
In the Fall issue of TD&Twe announced our resignation
as editors. Since then, however, there has been a major
restructuring of the operation of the journal and we will
continue to edit it. As part of the reorganization, the very
large and important job of layout will be assumed by Joel
Weltman Design. Mr. Weltman designed the 1982 Biennial Scenography Exhibition Catalog and he will be a
welcome addition to the TD& T staff. The position of
Advertising Manager will be taken over by Bill Frein in the
national office. In the future all advertising inquiries should
be directed there. These changes should create a better
looking and more efficient journal for USITI.

* * *
In this issue we continue the Contemporary American
Designer series with an article on Eugene Lee, the
resident designer of the Trinity Square Repertory Company, and designer of Sweeney Todd and the original
Saturday Night Live among many other productions. Mr.
Lee has been one of the American theatre's most daring
and innovative designers yet, as he explains in the article,
he is feeling stifled and suffocated by current trends and
practices. Two years ago in this space, discussing the
First Biennial Scenograpy Exhibition, we bemoaned the
lack of vision and daring in the designs. While there is
some improvement in that direction this year, the designs
seem to generally bear out Lee's despair. We are trapped
somewhere between a pictorial and sculptural tradition of
stage design with extremely limited possibilities for the
use of the stage and performance space. This is all the
more disturbing because trends elsewhere in the world
indicate that this need not be so.
Students of theatre history know that theatre goes in
cycles. There are times when playwriting is dominant and
other elements recede into the background such as the
Elizabethan/Jacobean era; there are times when acting
dominates as in the Restoration and 18th Century; and
there are times when design and production dominate as
in the 19th Century. Clearly, throughout the Western
world, we are not currently in a period of great playwriting,
nor can we say that the theatre is dominated by actors.
The most exciting work in theatre in the past decade, if not
in the whole post-War era, has been in the realm of
scenography. Theatricalism prevails in much of Eastern
Europe, Italy, Germany, and France. Examples of this, for
those unfamiliar with the movement, can be found in the
Prague Quadrennial issue of TD& T (Spring 1980), the
June 1977 issue of The Drama Review, and in several
articles to be found in (Yale) Theatre, Performing Arts
Journal, Cahiers Theatre Louvain, and Travail Theatrale
among others.
All of the designers we have spoken to for our series
have expressed an admiration for this style and a desire to
work along those lines but economics or the lack of vision
on the part of producers prevents them. As technicians
and designers we should be clamoring for a theatre that
celebrates the exhuberance of the stage through its
physical capabilities. We need not be forever tied to
prosceniums and New Stagecraft.

A.A.
K.D.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982