Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1994 - 53

design-technology to architectural design experienced elsewhere in the Western world. The rest of
Western Europe during this time contributed but
little to theatre design and even less to technology.
The Western hemisphere, and particularly the United
States, was not yet free of cultural colonialism and
artistic paternalism. Except for Sabine's stunning
development of the science and engineering of room
acoustics at the turn of the century, we produced no
technical innovations other than superficial and
spur-of-the-moment improvisations by professional
managers in theatres built as objects for real estate
speculation. In no way did this contribute to an
understanding and application of technology to
theatre design. With the exception of Dankmar
Adler, who was more engineer than architect (and
the exception that proves the rule), no late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century American architectural, engineering or theatrical professional can be
said to have exerted either incidental or lasting effect
on contemporary theatre design or technology.
Except for application of the new stage lighting
techniques, the principles of which were imported
from Germany between the two World Wars by the
scenic designers (instumentation based on crackerbox spotlights and lighting control at this time being
strictly an improvisation based on manually operated
resistance dimmers), it was not until the decades
between the two Twentieth Century World Wars and
the founding of the professional university of drama
schools at Carnegie Tech, Iowa, and Yale that
anything even remotely representative of a serious
long-range effort to understand the technical aspects
of either auditorium design or stage technology was
attempted. During this same period the professional
theatre, centered in New York City and dominated,
then as now, by craft unionism, was technically
speaking a retrograde movement bent on preserving
a status quo in obsolete rented theatres. That the
American theatre of this time did not develop
technical innovators is certainly the reason why only
two buildings of distinction for public performance
were built in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
up until World War I: the Chicago Auditorium
Theatre and Boston Symphony Hall, and it was
private and educational philanthropy between the
two World Wars that produced the Goodman Theatre
in Chicago and the university theatres at Iowa and
Yale. Except for the movie palace, American theatre
design by Americans became a serious business only
after World War II.
Improvisation of theatre in old barns, abandoned
factories, lofts, stores, banks, and churches has
satisfied and, no doubt, will continue for a time to
satisfy a craving by avant-garde producers and
artistic directors in search of innovative and experi-

mental staging techniques, but in the light of history
it has notably failed to satisfy the theatre, opera, and
concert-going public over the long pull. Novelty, no
matter how startling in the beginning, eventually
pales and the sheer physical discomfort of the
audience in an unsatisfactory performer-audience
relation wears thin when the noble experiment fails
to produce style. For example: Copeau's experimental Theatre du Vieux Colombier in Paris, Reinhardt's
Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin, and Beck's Living
Theatre in New York, among dozens of like experiments on both sides of the Atlantic, were never
consummated beyond empirical improvisation. The
struggling young contemporary theatre companies in
the United States, with either private or educational
financing, that oscillate between revivals of Broadway hits and provincial avant-gardism applied to
classics as well as a sprinkling of new plays, do not
yet show stability in style or a longevity beyond the
time of their founding artistic directors.
The emergence of the theatre consultant in North
America since World War II is due to a proliferation
of public and privately financed urban or educationally sponsored individual performance facilities and
performing arts centers that are largely instrumental
in developing a long overdue social interaction
among professionals in the performing arts, educational institutions and their constituent communities.
There are those of us who believe that if this can be
sustained eventually by public subsidy, this shows
promise of becoming truly beneficial to the general
welfare on a scale never reached before. More than
anything else this has helped to stabilize theatre
design and capitalizing of building projects for the
performing arts to such an extent that now, for the
first time on a national scale, an essential working
arrangement is possible among local public and
private institutional ownership of buildings, local
managements, and national booking agencies in all
the performing arts. This union of forces brings to a
greater cross-section of the public the best professional talent, augmented by local performing groups
and other ancillary activity requiring public assembly. Most of the innovative ideas for renovation of
existing buildings and the design of new ones are a
direct result of work originating in and carried out by
the professional schools within the universities and
executed by a new breed of professional directors,
managers, technicians, and consultants, who have
received their basic training therein. More than
anything else, development on a national scale of the
modern multiple-use theatre has provided a place
where talent of all kinds can get a hearing, and at the
same time has been a decided help to existing
professional orchestras, opera, ballet, and theatre
companies by providing excellent performance facili-

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1994
