ARCHITECTURAL TRADITION IN THE THEATRE:
THE AUDITORIUM
There are, of course, other types of auditorium and platform than that of the theatre. Churches, lecture halls, and the chambers of legislative assemblies are planned with the same general end of making a person or persons at one part of the room audible and visible to many persons gathered in another part. The ready defense of much bad planning in school auditoriums is that they were not modelled after theatres but after one of these other forms. To-day this will not serve as a defense. Interest in the drama is too widespread, and recognition of the social potency of the theatre is too general. And whereas none of these other forms of audience chamber meets the needs of the theatre, a well-planned theatre can serve any use to which a gathered community may care to put it.
The rocks which threaten disaster to our intent to devise a room which may serve as theatre, assembly hall, chapel, or whatever, are, if we go to beginnings, the traditional form of the theatre and its traditional décor. In the latter, time has wrought many changes. It was once felt that a theatre was not a theatre if it was not adorned with a wealth of gilded cupids, masks, tambours, and daggers, surrounded by stucco wreaths and garlands in high relief, and interspaced with pictured panels of the muses, especially those most at home in a playhouse. And, indeed, about those old houses, their garishness now mellowed, there is a glamor peculiarly of the theatre, and a sweet mustiness in the air bespeaking audiences of perfumed ladies, long since dead, the grease-paint and pomade of a long line of players, old scenery, the fine fustian of the old plays. It is somewhat like the odor in a garret stored with the treasures of our grandparents, or the mustiness of an old book. But these are faded flowers that cannot be brought to life, and the theatre of to-day, its plays and its players, are moved by a different spirit. Whatever lure these tinselly old temples have is a reminiscent one. To-day, there may be found theatres with the simplicity and peace of a church, the unobtrusive luxury of the drawing-room, and even, by overshooting the mark of simplicity, the bareness of the lecture-room or the legislative chamber.
The greater sincerity that has come into the theatre, and that fear of romance that marks the first decade or more of the Twentieth Century, did much to overcome traditional over-elaboration. There has come, too, a marked freedom from tradition in the planning of the usual large show-houses. The more modern theatres are, for the most part, free from those glaring structural ineptitudes that several centuries of custom had imposed. In Germany especially (the traditional form of the theatre did not develop there), great progress has been made, and the theatres of such architects as Max Littmann and Oskar Kaufmann serve as models. Stage machinery in Germany has been brought to a point of perfection not yet reached in any other country. Lautenschlager, Brandt, and Fortuny (a Spaniard) have contributed inventions that have only occasionally been experimented with in this country, and then somewhat half-heartedly.
Tradition clings close to its native heath, nevertheless, and in England, to which America looks first, perhaps, and in the Latin countries, it has enough vitality still to be a source of danger. It may be worth while to scan the history of the tradition, especially from the “front of the house”, before we consider the stage itself. For it is from here that the gravest criticism against a stage can be made,—that it is not easily visible from all parts of the house.[1]
[1] I shall not consider it expedient, in any part of this discussion, to go into questions of engineering detail. It is assumed that the architect is equipped or will equip himself with such technical knowledge. Nor shall I refer to structural modifications brought about by the regulations of Boards of Fire Underwriters. These matters have been treated more or less efficiently in several other works, to which reference will be found in the Appendix.
The form of the stage and the manner in which it has been used have, throughout the history of the theatre, been the primary factors in determining the shape of the auditorium. The Greek theatre was devoted to a ceremonial drama in honor of Dionysus, acted about an altar erected to him. So the stage took the form of a circular space with an altar in the center. The seating was arranged in concentric tiers, with the altar as a center, and more than half surrounded the stage space or orchestra. Tangent to this circle, and perpendicular to a line drawn through the center of the seating space, was built the skene, or back scene. At first, this was merely a dressing tent; later it was a wall, of wood or stone, masking the dressing-rooms of the actors. It was pierced with doors, giving access to the stage before it, and served as the palace, temple, or city wall, in front of which the scene of the play was laid. There is no satisfactory evidence that it gave on to a raised space conforming to the later stage platform. Chorus and actors were on the ground level of the orchestra. All the seats being raised, the spectator looked down upon the action of the play, and all the seats were set on radial lines drawn from the altar or center of the orchestra.
Stage of the Teatro Farnese at Parma, Italy. An
example of the picture-frame stage set into the
plastic stage of an antique theatre. See page 18.
(From Hammitzsch’s Der Moderne Theaterbau.)
