Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1989 - 41

turntable stage at the Residenztheater
in Munich.
In our century, Nornun Bel Geddes
converted the immense New York
Century Theatre into a medieval cathedral for Max Reinhardt's production of The Miracle. He coordinated
space and decor so completely that the
spectators felt themselves as participants in the spectacle. Another
technological breakthrough in that
production came in communication:
the chief stage electrician sat in the
gallery and directed the lighting by
telephone. The play itself was not important from a dramatic perspective
since it combined religious liturgy,
pantomime, and circus stunts, but his
achievement was such a brilliant feat
of stage engineering that it appeared in
Scientific American and The Architectural Record.
MODERN
DEVELOPMENTS
In the present era designers and artists

are busy suggesting new possibilities
for the further applications of computer technology to the art of the
theatre. Robin Wagner's retromechanical design for the Broadway
version of Chess consisted of 12 large
periaktoi moving through 47 major
scene shifts on a full-stage revolve.
Rob Chase of Artsoft used several programs to plot the dynamic movement
of the towers moving through complicated patterns. This first Broadway use
of rendering and animation software
for scenic design shows a new way of
modeling stage settings.
The new supplement to the Directory of Softwam has several new programs specifically adapted for theatre
applications as well as custom versions of commercial programs like
Autosketch, Filemaker Plus, and
MacDraft.3 Among the special application offerings are: Lightwright,
an enhanced version of ALD Pro contributed by John McKernon; LiteWorks MAC for Filemaker 2 by Mark
Stanley and Mark Mongold at the New
York City Ballet, and UCLA's Pattern
Maker costume construction program. There are many other programs,
including audio software and updated
versions of AutoCAD, VersaCad,
Macdraft, and Generic CADD Ie 1-3.
The personal computer industry is
once again in transition. Sixteen-bit
processing is giving way to 32-bit processing. Clock speeds are running at

25 MHz and higher. There are clearly
two main choices for the computer
user in the theatre: the PC and the
Mac. Granted, there are many more
machines that can call themselves
PCs (such as those made by Compaq,
Zenith, Tandy, and others), but they
share the same essentials. In Cleveland's report, more than 60 percent of
the respondents stated that they used
IBM or compatible machines, but
noted that Macintosh would be their
next purchase. Evidently there are
quite a few people ready to say no to
DOS.

The first edition of the Directory of
Software was weighted heavily in
favor of MS-DOS software, but the
supplement reflects increasing support for the Mac. The Maci11tosh has a
different image, more "West Coast"
than the businesslike IBM Pc. The
Mac is a user-friendly box that has a
nice look and feel. Everything about it
invites exploration and encourages a
curious, intuitive approach. Simply by
using the mouse and pointing at pictures, a user may easily slip into the
Macintosh environment. It has a
smooth learning curve.
TD&T

SUMMER 1989

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1989