THEATRE CONSTRUCTION
. : ♦ —. — ' 'Different styles for plays. ■ lii Wellington we are under the'disad- . vantage of having to view every class of theatrical entertainment in the one theatre. In larger centres they manage these things better. For. big spectacular . plays' large theatres, with a jicrspective, are provided; -lor opera theatres .with the acoustic? carefully thought out, and for comedy the smaller and more "intimate" theatre, so constructed that every word is caught by the audience, and no fine point in- "business" 1 or expression misses its mission. Mr. Max B. Figman, in discussing these things with a Dominion reporter, said that tho Grand Opera House';was quite.unsuitably for the performance of such comedies' as "Nothing But the Truth." "We. are not getting the laughs here that are in the piece. I knew why as goon as I saw the theatre. Look at the vast distance the.people in .that, big deop-set gallery are away from the stage. How they manage to liear as much as they do beats me. In America our comedy theatres .only seat from HCO to 1500 people, and the galleries are brought right, forward—there is not all that waste space between the footlights and tho (rail of .your galleries. That is ail right for big. melodramas, where you want' a perspective, 1 but in comcdy you want to be near your audience. So ill America we built,our comedy auditoriums more square than oblong, gelling room in the : breadth rather than in the depth of the theatre, and briiifj the audience up into .Intimate .relationship with the play-
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Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 138, 6 March 1919, Page 3
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257THEATRE CONSTRUCTION Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 138, 6 March 1919, Page 3
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