Análisis con espectroscopia de impedancia electroquímica

Theatres are places in which actors and spectators interact. Peter Brook has reduced this idea to its barest by suggesting that a person walking across an empty space watched by another person has performed an act of theatre, but throughout history the nature of this ‘empty space’ has been questioned, modified, developed and changed to serve different social and artistic imperatives. This has affected ‘scenography’, the technical side of theatre practice, and even the building in which the play is performed. This edifice itself may encourage reverence for the ‘art of theatre’, or it may be designed to facilitate social intercourse between those who attend.

The earliest theatres in Western Europe were those of ancient Greece, which were initially little more than natural amphitheatres found in the hills. Later buildings reproduced this shape, aiming to keep the naturally excellent visibility and audibility which the hillside provided. Over time, the Greeks refined their theatrical architecture, developing, for example, the skena, the building behind the performance area, the proskenion, a raised stage for individual actors, and an orchestra, a circular area in front of the proskenion and surrounded by audience for more than half its circumference. This configuration evolved further through the

classical era, but with the collapse of the Roman empire was largely lost.

Many medieval performances took place in churches or cathe- drals, themselves designed for visibility and audibility, of course. But performers at this time also appeared in castles or great halls, on trestle stages in town squares or market places, in pubs and on village greens, and – in the case of mystery players – in ‘mansions’ or on pageant wagons. In many of these cases, actors and specta- tors were hardly separated, and there was an informality about even the most impressive performances which typified the time.

Something of this was lost when the Renaissance rediscovered and attempted to resurrect classical theatre architecture. But the Renaissance also discovered perspective, which scene designers wished to be incorporated into their stages, resulting in an ‘end- on’ configuration, with a proscenium arch dividing the ‘scenic stage’ from the auditorium with the actors on an apron stage in front of the proscenium arch. Significant developments in stage machinery and lighting also encouraged this design, which was at least par- tially vitiated, however, by social convention which demanded that spectators, especially upper class spectators, could sit on the stage. They came to the theatre to be seen as much as to see, and this desire had to be catered for, since aristocratic patrons paid high prices for what they wanted.

Meanwhile, in Britain something of the old informality was retained in the development of the first permanent playhouses in Elizabethan England. The builders of these theatres, including Shakespeare’s Globe, echoed the shape of inn yards where plays had been staged, or of other entertainment venues such as bear-baiting rings. By 1600, therefore, in Britain the typical theatre building included a stage which thrust forward in among the standing spectators. Even though there were tiers of galleries around the central area, it was this yard where the major interaction between players and watchers took place. The thrust stage encourages a particular kind of spectator–actor interaction based on the fact that both occupy the same space.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, theatre owners and managers were attempting to cram in as many spectators as possible – nearly 4,000 could be accommodated in Richard Sheridan’s Drury Lane Theatre Royal which opened in the 1790s – and the

thrust stage was nothing more than a memory. Now the actors performed behind the proscenium arch, totally separated from those who filled the auditorium. Such an arrangement encouraged pictorial illusion in presentation, and this search for scenic illu- sion was aided by developments in stage lighting and technology. The ideal was perhaps that of a room from which one wall had been removed; through this missing wall, marked by the pros- cenium arch, the audience peered at the evocation of ‘real life’ within.

This proscenium arch form was almost universal in the Western world by 1900. The stage had ‘wings’ at each side where actors waited to enter and lights might be posted; above the stage were the ‘flies’, where scenery (and occasionally ‘flying’ actors) might be suspended out of sight. At the back of the stage was the ‘scene dock’ where scenery was stored or set ready to be placed on stage, and besides dressing rooms, a costume store or wardrobe and similar working spaces, there was also the ‘green room’, where actors waited to be called on stage. The auditorium contained a ‘pit’, where benches set in rows immediately in front of the stage provided comparatively cheap seats, but which was gradually usurped by ‘stalls’, comfortable seats for better-off patrons. Behind the stalls and to the sides were boxes for the patrons who paid the highest prices (and who could be seen by their social inferiors in the more popular parts of the audience); the ‘dress circle’ for patrons in evening dress, above the stalls but below the galleries; further balconies, or galleries above them; and at the top, the ‘gods’, the cheapest seats where often rowdy lower-class patrons were accommodated.

In the twentieth century this architectural arrangement was gradually superseded by a wide variety of styles, which often attempted to provide more flexible spaces, intimate, imposing or unexpected. The ‘black box’ was conceived, a space in which an infinite number of configurations could be set, and each play or production could have its own arrangement. The end-on, prosce- nium or ‘fourth wall’ shape was not abandoned, but it existed alongside thrust stages, traverse stages (where an audience is divi- ded into two blocks by the stage which runs between them) and theatres ‘in the round’ (with the audience completely surrounding the stage area).

Box 7.1: Total theatres

Wagner and Bayreuth

Authors and directors have often imagined the perfect building for the staging of their works. As a young man in the 1840s, Richard Wagner (1813–83) dreamed of a special theatre where could be staged a national festival to unite his fragmented country, Germany. Over decades, this transformed in his imagination into a theatre for the staging of his own mighty operas. Though he did not know how it could be paid for, he nevertheless oversaw the laying of the foundation stone of this ideal theatre in the small town of Bayreuth in 1872.

The planned building was adapted by the architect, Otto Bru¨ckwald (1841–1904), from designs originally prepared with extreme care by Wagner for execution in Munich. Wagner wanted no ornamentation or ostentation, but a building to serve his artistic purpose, and on this he refused to compromise.

The auditorium was fan-shaped, instead of the usual rectangle, and steeply raked. There were no boxes or balconies, but Wagner insisted on perfect sight lines from every seat. There was a kind of double prosce- nium on either side of what Wagner called ‘the mystic gulf’ between audience and stage. In fact, below the mystic gulf and completely out of sight of the audience was the orchestra pit, screened by a huge curved wooden cowl. Orchestra and conductor were invisible. Behind the stage was a large area for the most up-to-date theatre technology. The whole building was completed in brick, plaster and wood, con- structed for the best possible acoustics. And indeed this, together with the fan shape, afforded unequalled acoustic clarity for the time, richer and more resonant than anything experienced anywhere before.

In 1875 preliminary rehearsals were held here, but there was not enough money to complete the building. Wagner desperately set about raising it, giving concerts, holding receptions, selling subscriptions and making speeches. Finally, the lighting and machinery were installed, and on 13 August 1876,Das Rheingold, the first part of The Ring of the Nibelungen, was performed. Notably, the auditorium was plunged into darkness, perhaps for the first time in theatre history. Wagner’s theatre was complete.

It was indeedhis ‘total theatre’: not only was he responsible for the building, he also wrote the music and the lyrics of the opera, he coached the singers, he designed the scenery and he oversaw the staging.

Gropius, Piscator and modernist total theatre

Fifty years after the opening of the Bayreuth Theatre, the fiercely mod- ernist director, Erwin Piscator, asked Walter Gropius (1883–1969) to design another ‘total theatre’. Piscator’s productions had involved revolving stages, multiple projections of both film and slides, and mechanised settings, but his Berlin theatre was simply incapable of responding to his desire to employ every technology the world could then supply. Gropius was an artist and architect who had founded the influential Bauhaus, which attempted to bring artistic concepts into everyday living largely through techniques of industrial technology.

The theatre he designed for Piscator was more or less oval-shaped, with an auditorium which echoed this shape and was extremely steeply raked, allowing office space beneath. The theatre was to seat 2,000 spectators in a single bank, with no balconies or boxes. Its chief feature was the use of revolving stages, one almost within the other, which enabled the theatre to change configurations from, first, a proscenium stage to a thrust stage, and then from a thrust stage to a stage in the round. Around the aisles were placed screens, each with its own projector for film or slides, and more projectors behind the stage area permitted back projection. Images could even be projected onto the domed roof. Unlike Wagner’s Bayreuth theatre, Gropius’ theatre, though its design was exhibited in 1928, was never built. It was, however, a strong influence on many theatres built later in the twentieth century.