Engineering and Theatre --The Space

The most fundamental and necessary questions of theatre space are to ask (1) how the audience physically relates to the performance, and (2) how the theatre space meets the demands of the performance. In very primitive space, how the audience physically relates to performance happens naturally when a group of people gather around a person or persons who are performing. The circular arrangement, when the audience forms a circle around the performance area, seems to be the natural norm when no designated space for theatre is built. We imagine the circular arrangement in the prewriting era reenactment of the hunt, the earliest staging of Greek performance on the threshing floor, and the static street performance. The circular arrangement creeps into designated theatre space as in the medieval circular arrangement seen in the mid-fifteenth century illustration of the Martyrdom of S. Apollonia as well as Piran Round at Cornwall or the staging for The Castle of Perseverance, c.1425. Other types of natural arrangements besides the circular are the "parade" arrangement when the performance moves past the audience for viewing, the "carnival" arrangement when the audience moves past the performance area, and the "fan" arrangement when the performance area takes place in front of a man-made obstacle like a wall or a building or a natural obstacle like a forest or hill. One of the most significant moments in history of the carnival arrangement is during the medieval age with the Valenciennes Passion Play around 1547.

These four natural arrangements defining the spacial relationship between audience and performance determined the indoor relationship once architecture came into the picture. The circular arrangement helped develop the arena type of theatre structure, the parade arrangement is found in some theme parks, the carnival arrangement is found in museums as well as theme parks, and the fan arrangement helped develop the proscenium theatre structure as well as the cinema structure.

Soon after the invention of drama, people built the theatre space to meet the demands of the performance. Once theatrical storytelling evolved to demand visual cues to location as part of the performance, then theatrical artists/engineers began to need an architectural structure made to realize visual location cues. It began with Sophocles, as far as we know, and the Greek theatre. Eventually, the Greek theatre as part of its architectural structure made scenic or post holes or grooves we interpret to hold pinakes, periaktoi, or scenic set pieces.

From era to era, the degree of elaboration of visual cues depended on audience expectations and how the audience defined storytelling as theatrical performance. At first, minimal visual cues to location were enough for the audience. A tree represented a forest. The Greek and Elizabethan audience cared more about the story itself and how characters deal with their relationship with fate or the gods or society or each other than they cared where the characters were at the time. That's not to say that the audience did not care at all about scenic effects, as we see the possibility of at least one trap door in the floor of the Elizabethan stage and a plethora of scenic effects during the Medieval age. But the focus of audience expectations was not on location.

Eventually, however, audience expectations shifted. A caring about location led to a reenactment of location in the theatre, and consequently theatre architecture developed to realize that reenactment. The answer to a reenactment of location began to blossom during the Italian Renaissance with the use of wing flats. The audience's shift of focus to location was due to several factors including the development of perspective scenery. The architectural result was a proscenium building style with the capability to handle wing flats. The earliest and most complete proscenium type of theatre structure was the Teatro Farnese at Parma, Italy around 1618. It is not clear whether or not Aleotti designed the theatre to use grooves to shift wing flats, but it is clear that the Teatro Farnese was rebuilt to accommodate the shifting of scenery.

Eventually, the audience defined the theatrical experience in such a way that they expected location to serve as a character, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whereas location not only helped tell the story, but had its own particular affect on the audience, outside the influence of the actor. Theatre architecture met this demand with more and more elaborate ways to accommodate the machinery needed to rig and run scenery. And as scenery developed, so did theatre architecture to accommodate scenic rigging and shifting demands. Torelli's chariot and pole method of shifting wing flats demanded grooves to be cut in the floor and machinery beneath the stage. The wing and drop scenery eventually demanded a fly loft. And nearly every major theatre structure built during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries accommodated machinery: the elevator stages of Steele MacKaye, grooves, rollers and barrels of the Theatre Royal at Bath, fly galleries with hemp lines that we find in the Calumet Theatre at Calumet, Michigan built in 1901, counterweight systems beginning in 1891 at the D'Oyly Carte's New English Opera House, the gridiron, hydraulic bridges of 1896 and electric bridges of 1898 at the Theatre Royal - Drury Lane, a stage-wide horizontal rolling cloth as in the Budapest Opera House around 1880, and the revolving stage. The reenactment of location coupled with audience expectation of theatrical experience seemed to diminish after the invention of film.

With the shift away from a reenactment of location came a shift in audience expectations about their experience in the theatre. Instead of scenery being seen as affecting the audience outside the actor, scenery was seen as affecting the audience by influencing the character portrayed by the actor. This is a hallmark of twentieth century scenic design. The focus shifted back fully onto the drama and consequently the character portrayed by the actor. Developing from the late nineteenth century and the principles of Realism in the theatre and Darwinism in society, audience expectations of the theatrical experience changed. Instead of location as an indicator of place, the focus was on location as an indicator of environment. That the actor moved from in front of the scenery to within the scenery indicates this change of focus.

A key concept of twentieth century scenic design as environment is that the quality of the scene helps determine the quality of the action. The location, as part of the theatrical storytelling, came to be known through character, as where the character lives helps determine who a character is and affects the character's response to the world. Visual cues not only identified place, but emotionally (and often subconsciously) affected the audience. Each play then needed its own scenic design. The theatre architectural structure, as always, shifted to meet this demand. The proscenium type of theatre remains, along with its mechanical abilities to shift scenery. But other types of theatre structures cropped up during the twentieth century that emphasized a focus on the drama by demoting the focus on scenery, such as arena theatres and environmental or black box theatres.

While the scenic focus remains on environment, at least as it relates to drama, the twenty first century grapples with more and better ways to realize the theatrical experience. Theatre architecture is adjusting to the use of computers and more elaborate special effects such as holograms and pyrotechnics. As the century moves outside the traditional theatrical experience into the music concert experience or the "imagineering" of a park, the relationships between the theatrical experience and audience expectations also develop. Meanwhile, these alternate experiences continue to use the basic storytelling techniques of traditional theatre to help connect to the audience.

Lighting:

One of the most fundamental considerations of theatre architecture's technical possibilities and limitations is lighting. Is the theatre structure an enclosed structure or is it open? This question not only leads to studying the question of the audience's ability to see a production, but also to studying the question of when during the year a production can take place and even when during the day a production can take place.

Early theatre productions depended on the sun for visibility, of course. The climate helped determine the time of year that the festivals of ancient Greek culture took place. The climate also helped determine the need to enclose the theatre space. Once enclosed, then people began to invent other ways to light the stage.

Sound:

One of the more aggravating experiences for theatre artists/engineers is performing in a space where the acoustics are so poor the audience has problems hearing the actors speak. The Theatre of Dionysus did not have that problem. Whether it was the air or the stone or the light that made the theatre acoustically vibrant, we don't know. However, if the audience was rowdy as it very well might have been in ancient Greece, then the audience member who actually wanted to, still could not hear. Perhaps this cultural rowdiness led to stratifying the audience to the degree that theatre artists/engineers placed a Very Important Person in an audience position to be able to see AND hear the best. After all, it's the VIP who holds the funds or the political clout to keep productions going, and everyone involved in the theatre is quite motivated to help that person see and hear the best of the performance.

Modern Acoustics*:

A classical concert hall stage is a large resonating box to help support bass instruments -- in particular double basses which are far too small to resonate at the fundamental frequencies of their strings.* In contrast and due to Equity rules and the need to suppress the sound of footsteps, theatre and dance stages are all sprung stages resulting in acoustically inert stages.

The sound design winners in Los Angeles in 2004 and 2005 both designed in a space of about eighty feet by eighty feet but with an LCS electro-acoustic reverberation system. That is a system that uses speakers and microphones to alter the acoustical space. They used this system to create acoustical space relevant to the play's scene, creating a different feeling in the ballroom scene and the tomb in Romeo and Juliet, for example. This offers very powerful possibilities within the theatre space that is now becoming possible.

For Cirque du Soleil's show in Las Vegas with the huge pool of water, they used an LCS reverberation system to increase the liveliness of the hall's acoustics so that the audience could hear one another. Through this variable, they were able to control the audience's applause. When the show first opened, the hall was so dead that audience members did not hear the other people applauding, so they did not applaud. Once the reverberation in the hall was increased, the audience applauded more and integrated better with the performance. What is very interesting here is that you don't hear the change in the hall's acoustic, but it very effectively controls how the audience interacts with the show -- the extent to which they sit back and watch verses the amount they applaud and become part of the circus.

The Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York uses electronic amplification-reverberation to maintain the presence of a live acoustic hall even when they open the walls of the theatre to let a fresh breeze blow though. Countless outdoor classical concerts also use electro-acoustic systems to provide the sound of a concert hall in the great outdoors.

* Written by Christopher Plummer, Assistant Professor of Sound Design, Michigan Technological University.

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