Permanent Theatre Research Articles

Public et répertoire aux théâtres Regio et Carignano de Turin

Marie-Thérèse Bouquet-Boyer : Public and repertory in the Turin theatres. In the 18th Century Turin had two great theatres, the Regio and the Carignano, which were both linked to the Savoy royal family, but had very different audiences and repertories. The Teatro Regio, opened on 26th December 1-740, was built by the King of Sardinia, who wanted to own a permanent theatre devoted to Neapolitan opera which was then the rage in Italy. It was reserved for the King, the court, foreign diplomats and a few privileged individuals, and its season went from 26th December to Ash Wednesday. In contrast, the Teatro Carignano, built at the beginning of the century by the Prince of Carignano, was open almost all year to a much wider public, and its repertory ranged from opera buffa and French and Italian comedies to masked balls and puppet shows.

Shakespeare on the Montreal Stage 1805-1826

A history and chronological bandlist of Shakespearian performances staged in Montreal between the construction of the city's first permanent theatre space in 1804 and the conclusion of Edmund Kean's visit in 1826. Some eighty performances included productions, readings, and adaptations of a dozen plays by such actors as the Allen-Bentley-Moore company, Seth Prigmore, Noble Luke Usher, Joseph Harper, Mr and Mrs John Mills, Frederick Brown, Emmanuel Judah, Robert Campbell Maywood, Lydia Kelly, Edmund Kean and Mrs Barnes.

Lumia Kinetic Art with Music: My Theatre of Light

The artist, W. Christian Sidenius, discusses the origin of his interest in Kinetic Art utilizing electric light of the type called Lumia by Thomas Wilfred. After a period of working to develop the means of producing kinetic images on a translucent screen, he decided, in 1960, to invite the public to performances in his home of Lumia productions accompanied by music. The favorable response he received to the performances led him to construct his Theatre of Light in 1962. He describes the technical aspects of the theatre and the audience reactions to the performances he has presented He concludes by mentioning Wilfred's decision to opt for Lumia art presentations without the accompaniment of music and of sounds and his disagreement with Wilfred's decision, pointing out the possibility that the Bauhaus group in Germany, if it had not been dispersed by the Nazis in the 1930s, might have established a permanent theatre of light of the type he has developed. My orientation to Luminal Art began with Moholy-Nagy. My mind conceived of Lumia after having seen one of the small light-boxes by Thomas Wilfred at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1950. Previously, I was painting. The reason I painted was the same reason for my involvement with Lumia: I was constantly trying to understand what artists were attempting to communicate. By working in the same manner as the artist I might understand what he was attempting to achieve. After viewing the Lumia box by Thomas Wilfred at the Museum of Modern Art, I experimented and discovered that reflection was the essence of the art. I made a little cardboard box similar to Wilfred's and included a little plexiglass screen, bent metal mirrors, and a Christmas tree light bulb. The results seemed to duplicate the image I had seen. Immediately, I knew it could be improved upon. The first improvement I wanted to add was a motor, and that took me several years to find. All sorts of gear trains and variables controlled the speed of the motor. It made terrible whining noises! After some years of shuffling around Canal Street, where all the surplus and mostly useless war material is sold in New York, I found a quiet motor. It operated very slowly and was inexpensive. This led me to construct a larger luminal box of wood with a dozen motors in it. Its interior was black and I used color filters in front of projection bulbs. The various motors could move turntables, and turn bent metal mirrors, elevate the turntable, the light bulbs, and color wheel. All of this was connected to a little portable console with a dimmer and controls for the

Nazi Germany's Jewish Theatre

In the Age of Enlightenment, prominent critics and theorists called for an innovative program that would significantly affect the nature, status and future of the German theatre. Johann Elias Schlegel in 1747, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert in 1751, Johann Friedrich Löwen in 1766 and Gotthold Ephriam Lessing in 1767 variously urged the creation of permanent national theatres with resident artists on established salaries, subsidized by the wealthy or by the state. To those working in the uncertain world of semiprofessional companies, criss-crossing central Europe in search of friendly cities or courts with paying audiences, it was a logical idea. Remarkably, it came to be accepted and realized, first in Vienna, then in Mannheim, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, all the major capitals and cities of the fragmented German states. It was an important advance, not only for the sake of the German theatre, but also for its performers because they were accorded the status of Beamten, or civil servants, in these new state theatres. Yet the Beamten classification allowed for an action unforeseen by Schlegel, Gellert, Löwen or Lessing: a hostile government could punish segments of its civil service it deemed offensive by forcing retirement.

The Orsini Sala Theatri at Monte Giordano in Rome

The designing of permanent indoor theatres did not command the attention of Italian Renaissance architects until the sixteenth century was well under way, temporary structures and portable facilities having previously sufficed for dramatic presentations. Yet already in the second quarter of the quattrocento a chamber in one of the most prominent palaces of fifteenth-century Rome was referred to as the sala theatri.

Soviet Theatre: 2 Views

Although the Soviet theatre is gigantic in extent and past achievements, its exact lineaments are often hard to discern from the West. Because of a distance which is linguistic, cultural, and political as well as geographical, balanced news does not filter through to us with any regularity; for many the Russian theatre is still summed up by one man—Stanislavski. Others are impressed by the Soviet system of permanent theatre companies but are unaware of their disadvantages and the pressures to which they are subject. Except on a few festival occasions, such as Edinburgh, London's “World Theatre Season,” or Aix-en-Provence, the theatre is not a very exportable commodity, and on the rare tours by Soviet theatre companies outside Eastern Europe, critical reaction has usually differed sharply.

The Stratford Shakespearean Festival

UMMER stock is a light-hearted affair. Summer festivals often feel some obligation to be equally attractive to the dilettante tourist. The Canadian Stratford could hardly have been accused this year of following the trend. In fact, as far as much of the press of Canada was concerned, a program which offered The Comedy of Errors, Troilus and Cressida, and T imon oJ Athens seemed eccentric-a little-known comedy, a little-played tragedy, and a difficult, dark-period drama. Michael Langham, the artistic director of Stratford, does not, however, conceive his role to be entirely one of purveying the old favorites to a summer audience. The Stratford Theatre is, and always has been in its ten-year existence, a place where Shakespeare is done just as well as the resources of the Foundation permit. Since the Foundation has a first-rate, permanent theater seating over 2,000 people, and a yearly budget near the million-dollar mark, its resources are considerable. Excellence then is the aim of the Ontario Stratford and each of the three plays this summer was to be approached in its own way to give a new and vital interpretation to a public paid the compliment of being regarded as intelligent. Each play was produced in an entirely different fashion: Troilus and Cressida was a fairly orthodox production, but the arena stage of Stratford could make the battles hair-raising; The Comedy of Errors, directed by a French Canadian trained in the French classical tradition, was commedia dell' arte; Timon of Athens was done in modern dress with a musical score composed by Duke Ellington. Of these three plays, the one which excited most comment and interest was not, curiously enough, the modern dress Timon, but the commedia dell' arte Comedy of Errors. Jean Gascon, the director, was the co-founder of Le Theatre du Nouveau Monde in Montreal, and has had a rigid training in French classical theater. Whether because of this or despite it, he chose to ignore the text of The Comedy of Errors and make it a Punchinello pantomime affair. All the costumes were exaggerated pantaloon (designed by Robert Prevost and Mark Negin), and the whole performance was done as a play within a play, five Punchinellos acting as general theatrical factotums around the stage. They lighted the little lamps which stood around the center area and in which the action was from then on confined. They made comments in mime on the action of the play, which sometimes called for the actors to stop dead in their tracks and wait for this foolery to happen and to get its laugh. Though the idea of presenting it as a play within a play was good, in Jean Gascon's hands it had three disastrous effects. First, it reduced his playing area

Acoustical Design and Performance of the Stratford (Ontario) Festival Theatre

The Stratford (Ontario) Shakespearean Festival has had a record of continuing success since it was started six years ago in a unique theater tent. Since then, the festival authorities have built a new permanent theater retaining the unusual stage and general seating arrangements which combined the Greek and Elizabethan architectural traditions. The shape of the theater and, in particular, the use of a semicircular rear wall centered in the middle of the acting area, presented certain obvious acoustical problems. This paper describes the means taken to overcome this difficulty together with the results obtained.

Consolidation in Stratford, Ontario

HE Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, faced its most critical year this year. It was started artistically by the comAd bined efforts of Tyrone Guthrie and Miss Tanya Moiseiwitsch in 1953, Miss Moiseiwitsch designing the stage from suggestions by Dr. Guthrie, who has directed all the plays but one of the first three seasons. Last October it was announced that Dr. Guthrie had resigned and that, though he was to act as consultant if necessary, his direct connection with the festival had ceased. This announcement was followed almost immediately by the news that the tent which had housed the theatre from its inception was rapidly nearing the end of its waterproof life. The governors therefore decided to launch a campaign for funds to build a permanent theatre. Now a permanent theatre might be an ossifying influence; the proscenium arch might creep in if only to make the theatre useful for other functions during that part of the year when it would otherwise be idle. There was also a vague feeling of uneasiness that the festival could not perhaps afford to lose Guthrie whose drive and energy had done so much. One remembered the modern dress production of All's Well which had started the festival off along with Guiness' Richard 111, the exciting classical interpretation of Oedipus Rex, which had run for two seasons, and the elaborate pantomime of The Taming of the Shrew. Fortunately none of these gloomy forebodings was substantiated. The architects' sketch of the projected permanent theatre reassured everyone that the tent theatre's excellent features would be retained and that even the outside of the building, to be constructed of concrete and glass, would still be reminiscent of the carnival atmosphere of the original tent. The model of the permanent theatre was exhibited early this year and very quickly the fund grew. The provincial government contributed $Iooooo, an Ontario charitable foundation undertook to build the gallery at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars and, within a few months, nearly three quarters of the million odd dollars needed had been subscribed. This was not only a triumph for the organizers of the fund, it was a triumph of the festival itself and proof of how much it had become a national and not just a local affair. With the permanent building assured the governors still had to face the problem of whether their new director would be as good a draw as Guthrie and whether they could manage without an imported star. The subsequent festival banished this anxiety too. The new director at Stratford is Michael Langham, an Englishman who