On building a theatre / Stage construction and equipment for small theatres, schools and community

by Irving Pichel

Let those who are building to-day look to this: Visit the dressing-rooms, see the workplaces of the other workers of the theatre,—the carpenter, electrician, property-man, and wardrobe workers. Consider these workplaces, not only in comparison with the front of the house, but as fit places for human beings to spend as much as an hour a day. Consider them as places where work that should have in it joy and beauty may develop.

The community theatres that are going to be built within the next few years are bound to be a blessing to those who have access to them. But, for the most part, their projectors and builders are laymen, knowing little of the vast work of preparation that must be done before a play is ready for an audience. Where the commercial theatre builder does not care how the actor and the theatre mechanic fare, the lay builder is a little likely to overlook their existence. I have seen dozens of clubs and schools, with fairly adequate stages and auditoriums, but with no more than two small dressing-rooms, one for men and one for women. I have seen several with no more than one, originally intended for a closet but set aside as a dressing-room when it was discovered that something of the sort is indispensable.

Aside from the fact that the players and the workmen are human beings, quite often of the same tastes and breeding as those who occupy the front of the theatre, they have a long and exacting work to perform, most of which can be done only in the theatre. And their domain is the part of the theatre behind the proscenium line. The actors must rehearse for several weeks before the play can be acted. They must be in the theatre some time before the curtain rises on the play and they leave it some time after the play has ended and the audience has gone home. For they must dress and “make-up”, and should be allowed a little while to shake off John Smith and enter into Hamlet. There is, moreover, scenery to be built and painted, furniture and properties to be made, lights to be arranged, effects to be devised, costumes to be cut, fitted and sewed.

How should these activities and these workers be taken care of?

First, the actors.

For their rehearsals, first of all, the stage should be used. If the stage is otherwise occupied, with scenery, or with the rehearsals of another production, as it often is in busy theatres, there should be another place in the same building where rehearsals can be held, a room with as large a floor as that of the stage proper. But, as often as possible, the stage should be used for rehearsals.

Then, for their preparation to appear in a performance, their dressing and make-up. Dressing-rooms must be provided, sufficient in number to accommodate the cast of the average play without crowding more than two people to a room. Under ideal conditions, each player will have a separate room, so that he can prepare for his performance, mentally as well as physically, without disturbance. The rooms should be not less than eight by ten feet, should each have a window, and should be heated in winter. Against one wall there should be a long shelf or table, about eighteen inches wide. Above it, should be a good mirror, with lights so placed that the face of an actor seated at the shelf and looking into the mirror will be well illuminated. Under the shelf, there should be a drawer in which make-up materials may be kept. Each dressing room should be provided with a washstand and with hot and cold water. There should be a high clothes-closet or wardrobe in which costumes may be hung. Where this is impractical, there should be sufficient hooks to accommodate a number of costumes, and means of covering them with a cloth to protect them from dust. Above the clothes hooks, or at the top of the closet, should be a shelf for hats, shoes, etc.

It is well to provide from eight to twelve dressing-rooms, each large enough to accommodate two persons. In addition, there should be two large rooms, each with space for about a dozen persons, these to be used for chorus, supernumeraries, or players of small parts.

On each dressing-room floor there should be proper toilet accommodations for each sex. Also, the ideally equipped building will have shower baths. In these days of Dunsany, Hindus and Arabs and Ethiopians may be met in many a town en route from the little theatre to their homes, there to wash themselves white.

It has been noted that, to preserve the unbroken wall space of the stage as far as possible, dressing-rooms should not open directly upon the stage floor. In many theatres, they are ranged off galleries above the stage. On the whole, this is inadvisable. A dressing-room door, inopportunely opened, will let a beam of light fall upon the stage, often spoiling the lighting of a scene. The slamming of doors, sound of voices, and other noises are almost unavoidable. And the argument usually advanced for so arranging dressing-rooms—that the actors can hear what is going on on the stage and thus be in time for their entrances, is fallacious. This very fact breeds in them a confidence that makes them careless, and they are more often late than if they were required to wait for their cues on the stage.