Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2007 - 73

book
reviews
Architecture in Words
Theatre, Language, and the
Sensuous Space of Architecture
By Louise Pelletier; London and New York:
Routledge, 2006. 241 pp. Paper, $64.50.
Reviewed by Arnold Aronson
I am willing to bet that few theatre historians
are familiar with the eighteenth-century French
architect, writer, and theoretician Nicolas Le
Camus de Mézières. This is certainly understandable. Le Camus built no theatres and his
one treatise on the subject is devoted entirely
to a method for making theatres fireproof. Yet
as an architectural theoretician, he was at the
heart of a late eighteenth-century debate over
architectural aesthetics. Was harmony and visual unity the chief goal of architecture and was
this attainable only through well-established use
of classical orders? Or, was the goal of architecture akin to that of theatre: the evocation of
emotions in the soul of the observer?
Le Camus was an advocate of the latter, and
in order to achieve his goals he suggested that
a new vocabulary was needed. His major theoretical work, The Genius of Architecture; or,
the Analogy of that Art with Our Sensations
(incidentally, the only one of his several works
available in English), together with his other
writings, exerted a profound influence on such
well-known architects as Étienne-Louis Boulée
and Sir John Soane. Le Camus' most significant
architectural creation was the Halle au Blé or
grain market (1767), the first circular building in Paris. By building such a structure in the
heart of the urban environment, it was, as architect and historian Louise Pelletier notes, "one of
the most intensely theatrical structures in Paris
at that time."
Pelletier has set out to rescue Le Camus
from his relative obscurity in her fascinating
scholarly study, Architecture in Words: Theatre, Language, and the Sensuous Space of
Architecture. This book is not merely a study
of Le Camus' practice. Rather, it is an exploration of the art, philosophy, theatre, and world
of ideas in France in the decades leading up to
THEATRE

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the Revolution.
Pelletier begins with an exploration of the
changing staging practices in the eighteenth
century: the introduction of the scena per angolo, the innovations of Servandoni, the increasing separation, both physical and psychological,
of the stage and auditorium, and the increasing
sophistication of lighting technology. Le Camus
was one of the first architects to discuss the
significance of light and its impact on perception and emotion. Although Pelletier makes no
mention of Appia, I could not help thinking of
him throughout the book. Le Camus' interest in
light and shadow and his emphasis on the creation of volume and texture through the use of
light seems like a logical precedent for Appia's
ideas. There is probably no direct influence, yet
it would be fascinating to trace a progression
from one to the other.
Because Le Camus saw architecture not
as something static but as a phenomenon that
unfolded through time, the theatrical metaphor
was of much greater use to him than the frozen
image of a painting, the more common simile.
Pelletier examines acting theory of the period,
including Charles Le Brun's studies of human
expression and, of course, Diderot's famous
paradox of the actor. If this seems irrelevant to
architecture, note that Le Camus (and others)

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described architecture as something capable of
evoking happiness or sadness through a kind of
physiognomy of the façade, and he examined
the way in which different architectural elements expressed emotions depending on their
combination in a particular work. At the same
time, Diderot also criticized much contemporary architecture, declaring, "Architects do not
ask themselves: What is the main object of my
building?...What will be the circumstances in
which events will take place?" This could be
Stanislavsky talking to his pupils.
Almost at the literal center of Pelletier's
book is a chapter entitled "Theatre Architecture and the Role of the Proscenium Arch." For
theatre historians and designers, this will likely
be the most immediately relevant discussion.
She is not merely describing the changes and
developments of the eighteenth-century stage;
she is exploring the "strange tension created by
an inherited architectural form and a changing
mode of social expression." This includes the
struggle between the social function of the theatre, in which it was important for the spectators to be seen, and the aesthetic demands of
performance, in which it was essential for the
spectators to see-for the action on the stage to
be equally visible from all vantage points.
The introduction of seating to the parterre
during this period, first proposed in 1770 for a
redesign of the Comédie Française (audiences
had previously stood in this section of the theatre), resulted not only in better sightlines, but
in "the taming-and ultimately silencing-of
the audience." But if the spectators were being constrained within the auditorium, they remained actors in the social drama that unfolded
in the complex public spaces of the theatres of
the time.
This chapter also includes a superb discussion of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's theatre at
Besançon. In a famous engraving, "Coup d'oeil
du théâtre de Besançon" (A Glance at the Besançon Theatre), Ledoux depicts the auditorium
of the theatre reflected in a giant eye. The eyelid in the engraving, which sections the pupil,

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