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CHAPTER 1 THEATRE TYPES An understanding of the development of the physical nature of theatres requires an understanding of history and its effect on the design of theatre buildings. Throughout history, the design of theatrical structures has been heavily influenced by the engineering and construction methods that were known to a particular culture. Styles of producing plays (and other types of entertainment) have also been a factor. The type of venue needed for a play is entirely different from one that can be used for a chariot race. The Greeks did not arbitrarily select the amphitheater as a type of structure because they liked being outdoors, but rather used the construction methods available in their time period to create the most useful and efficient space possible, to be used in producing the type of entertainment that was popular in their time. Large indoor structures were simply not possible without modern engineering methods. www.focalpress.com Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science All rights reserved 2 ILLUSTRATED THEATRE PRODUCTION GUIDE The Roman society spawned excellent civil engineers. They used their talents to create many civic improvements like roads, aqueducts and public buildings. Many of these achievements involved the use of arches. An arch is formed when the forces created by one stone curve cancel out the forces created by one or more adjacent structures. This concept allowed the Romans to use a series of arches to build the Colosseum, a freestanding oval structure best suited to the games, races, and physical contests that were the most popular types of entertainment in that period. The Colosseum was an architectural marvel of its day, not only because of its size, but also because of its clever high-tech features like stage elevators and trap doors that allowed performers to enter the space unexpectedly. In a Greek style amphitheater, with a round performance area or Orchestra, it was necessary to curve the seating rows around the shape of the orchestra in order to ensure that audience members would be as close as possible to the action of the drama. Having the audience and performers in close proximity to one another is almost always good for the relationship between actor and audience. When the Greek choral form of entertainment began to give way to individual actors speaking lines of dialogue, a raised platform area was provided to give them prominence, or focus. This area was called the skene by the Greeks, and is the root of our word proscenium. Roman theatres were constructed in much the same manner as the Greek ones were, with the major differences being that the elevated stage area was greatly enlarged and elaborated upon, and the circular choral area was cut in half to form a semicircle. As with the Colosseum, the Romans were able to build freestanding banks of tiered seats for their theatres rather than depending entirely upon the geography of hillsides. These theatres generally were somewhat smaller in scope than their Greek counterparts. The earliest Greek theatres took advantage of existing hillsides to form a sloping audience area that curved around a circular performance area. Pre-Industrial-Revolution technology did not provide their culture with heavy earth-moving equipment to form the slopes from scratch, and oftentimes large amphitheaters were asymmetrical as a result of following the existing terrain. Greek theatres are an excellent early example of the science of sightlines as used in designing a performance space. The study of sightlines is a notion whereby the ability of the audience to see the performance area can be enhanced by the proper arrangement of the seating area. This term can also be used to indicate which portions of a stage space are visible from the audience. Obviously, another person sitting directly in front of you will impede your ability to properly view the stage. By banking (also known as raking) the seating rows up and away from the front of the stage, sightlines are vastly improved. www.focalpress.com Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science All rights reserved THEATRE TYPES 3 The Romans were also innovative in the introduction of a front curtain that could be used to mask the stage from the view of the audience. As these early theatres were open-air, daytime-use structures, there was no way to hang a curtain from above; the Romans used instead a series of poles coming out of the stage floor to hold up the drape. When these poles were lowered, the stage and its occupants were revealed. This seems at best a cumbersome arrangement, but lacking the technology to construct large open spans inside a building, it was the best method available at the time. It is mentioned here as a contrast to the ease with which curtains may be hung in a modern proscenium theatre using a counterweight system. The ability to construct the type of structure needed to house today’s modern rigging systems did not appear until much more recent times. The next period to greatly influence the progress of theatrical design was the Italian Renaissance. The development of theories pertaining to illusionist painting and perspective rendering created the need for much more advanced production methods. The type of scenery utilized during the Renaissance period was often based on the methods used in onepoint perspective drawing, where a single vanishing point is located somewhere near the bottom center of the viewing plane. www.focalpress.com Objects in the foreground are shown in a larger scale than those objects in the distance. This technique creates an illusion of depth and three-dimensionality. This effect was further realized by using a series of viewing planes spaced at intervals, moving away from the audience. Objects farther upstage were rendered in a smaller size. For a city scene, this would require a number of building images painted on flat panels, with each successive building being rendered in a scale somewhat smaller than the one preceding it. This style of design is known generically as “Wing and Drop” scenery. In order to assure that the carefully created illusion of depth was not shattered, all action was required to occur in front of the first plane. Naturally, an actor who ventured too near the rear of the stage would appear grotesquely large in proportion to the scale of the scenery. This latter technique can be seen in modern-day amusement parks, and movie special effects. The concepts embraced by Wing and Drop scenery are still very much present in the 21st century. Scenery designed for proscenium theatres today has many parallels to this earlier style of design. Because the vanishing point in this “forced perspective” style of design must be elevated from the stage floor in order for the lines to appear realistic, the stage floor behind the acting area was raked upward, away from the audience to achieve the desired effect. This was, of course, the origination of the terms upstage and downstage. In later periods when permanent theatres were larger and grander, the immense size of the settings negated somewhat the requirement that actors remain at a distance from the painted scenery. Hence an actor who traveled toward the back wall would literally be walking “upstage,” and on the return trip would be treading “downstage.” The question arises of how to easily change the appearance of the stage setting while a show is in progress. Some 15th- and 16th-century theatres used the “chariot and pole” system of shifting scenery. This consisted of a series of slots cut into the stage floor running left to right, and a number of symmetrically arranged poles that rose up through them. These upright poles were mounted on carts in a basement Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science All rights reserved 4 ILLUSTRATED THEATRE PRODUCTION GUIDE area that allowed the poles to roll easily (a relative term) back and forth. Using an intricate system of ropes, pulleys, and other linkages, groups of these devices could be operated in a more or less synchronized fashion. When one set of wings was moved off stage, a second set was revealed, telling the audience that the action of the play had shifted to a new location. This method of crude animatronics seems many times more complicated and clumsy than Roman efforts to elevate a simple front drape by using poles in the floor. However, when viewed in the context of the period, the chariot and pole system was an elegant engineering solution in a time that offered only limited facilities for suspending scenery from above. The Renaissance period saw the development of the proscenium theatre as we know it today. The farthermost downstage set of flats (also known as wings) became a permanent architectural feature of the building. When supplemented by an overhead masking piece, this feature became recognizable as the proscenium arch so common in our own era. The proscenium not only serves as a frame for the setting, but also separates the audience from the stage, allowing for the use of intricate mechanical devices that are completely hidden from patrons in the auditorium. By the late 19th century it became possible to construct an overhead fly house of the sort in use today. The advent of realism and “box sets” in the early 20th century eventually did away with the practice of raking the stage for forced perspective settings. The most common type of theatre in use in North America is the proscenium house. Its advantages are most obvious when spectacle is an important element of the production. Professional touring companies of Broadway shows are restricted to proscenium theatres because of their large audience capacity and also because of the similarity of stage equipment available in all proscenium houses. Although the lobbies and auditoriums of various road houses throughout the country are vastly different in style and size, equipment available upstage of the plaster line is more or less standard. An in-depth discussion of the proscenium theatre can be found in Chapter 2. Thrust theatres began a surge in popularity in the 1960s and 70s in an effort to break through to a more “actor friendly” type of space. It is interesting to note that this type of theatre was also popular in Elizabethan times, and the reasons for its success now and then are largely the same. Thrust theatres are best suited to the production of more intimate dramas. Plays that depend on the accurate understanding of words and/or the transmission of intimate emotional moments are well served by the close proximity of audience and actor found in thrust theatres. Generally, the audience seating wraps around three fourths of the stage area, giving the stage the appearance of “thrusting out” into the spectators. Since more stage area is abutting the audience, a large number of seats can be fitted into a small number of rows. A smaller number of rows results in audience members being closer to the stage. The thrust theatre is not without its drawbacks, however, as the layout of the stage leads to some rather difficult sightline problems. In a proscenium house, the audience view of the stage is more or less constant throughout the theatre. Although some seats on the extreme sides have a somewhat skewed view of the action, the stage retains a kind of movie-screen quality. In a thrust theatre, the audience view from the far left is completely the opposite of that from the far right. Patrons seated at the downstage edge of the stage see the action from straight ahead. This may lead to some serious design and/or performance issues. Most thrust theatres have either a modified proscenium opening, or some type of architectural staging at the upstage end of the playing area. This facade is in the center of vision for those seated downstage, but may not be visible at all for audience members in the far left and right sections of the house. Designers must be careful not to place too much emphasis on scenic units that may be barely visible to a large portion of the audience. Likewise, care must be taken not to use visual elements downstage that might block the view of www.focalpress.com Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science All rights reserved THEATRE TYPES 5 persons sitting in that area. Anything such as a wall, or a refrigerator, or a large wingback chair is certain to annoy anyone who cannot see past it to the action of the play. Seats in a thrust theatre are generally quite steeply raked to help alleviate this issue, and as a result the stage floor assumes a much greater focus than is usually found in a proscenium theatre. Low platforms and other intricate floor treatments are popular choices in a thrust theatre. Low-mass scenic elements like lampposts, bentwood chairs, and small props are also often used in downstage areas. Lighting becomes an extremely crucial element to change the stage picture in the absence of solid physical items. Theatre in the round is another popular modern form. As the name suggests, the audience seating wraps entirely around the stage, eliminating the upstage opening found in many thrust theatres. Other than the loss of the upstage facade, the sightline rules are primarily the same for theatres in the round as they are for thrust theatres. At this point you might well wonder how actors will be able to enter the acting space, as there is apparently no backstage area to enter from. A vomitorium entrance can be used to solve this dilemma. A vomitorium is a passageway under the audience seating from the backstage space to the stage itself. They are also popular in thrust theatres, where they provide a more direct route to the downstage area. “Voms” are also used to provide entrance to audience seating in stadiums, arenas, and very large proscenium houses. The black box style of theatre is especially popular with off-off-Broadway types of theatre groups because of its low cost, extreme intimacy, and its ability to conform to more experimental genres of performance. The seating may be set up to resemble virtually any style of theatre: proscenium, thrust, in the round, as well as more offbeat arrangements such as stadium (in which the performance area is flanked on two sides by seating, as in a football stadium). Or it may be truly flexible, allowing the performance area to flow in and around the seating (or standing) area. Audience members in this latter concept may move from place to place during the performance, blurring the dividing line into performance art. Scenic elements become less important in black box theatres, although lighting, props, and sound retain a great deal of influence. Another form of theatre space is the black box or flexible seating theatre. Either of these names is actually quite descriptive. This type of theatre is generally housed in a large, black, rectilinear room. Audience seating chairs may be moved around and set up in whatever configuration is desired. Risers are often used to facilitate better sightlines. Some theatres actually have bleacher seats that can be moved around the space. www.focalpress.com Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science All rights reserved www.focalpress.com Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science All rights reserved