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  • Geometry and Atmosphere: Theatre Buildings from Vision to Reality by C. Alan Short, Peter Barrett, Alistair Fair
  • Cathy Turner
C. Alan Short, Peter Barrett, and Alistair Fair with Monty Sutrisna and Giorgios Artopoulos. Geometry and Atmosphere: Theatre Buildings from Vision to Reality. Ashgate: Farnham and Burlington, 2011. Pp. ix +257, illustrated. £65 (Hb).

This is a fascinatingly and usefully detailed study of six Capital Arts Projects concerned with theatre buildings in England, all opening their doors between 1999 and 2008. It examines the conflicting pressures put upon such projects and asks which of these are particular to arts buildings. It then makes a series of recommendations. Thus, it offers a useful resource for funders, theatre professionals, and architects embarking on similar projects.

It was with particular interest that I read about one of the theatres under consideration – the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry – having spent a happy year, at the end of my teens, clambering around the Belgrade theatre with a paintbrush, as a trainee scene painter. I knew the old, tiny studio well, having painted every surface in it black, several times; and once, memorably, a deep, rich blue. I also remember the quantities of Artex required for what must have been one of Patrick Connelan’s first designs for the theatre: it clung to my clothes, fingers, even my hair. In fact, for much of 1985–86, I was wearing, rather than inhabiting, the building. I mention this not merely as anecdote but to suggest something of the tactile, material experience associated with putting on theatre work, something that almost inevitably creates a tension between the desire for better facilities and the visceral need to wrench, daub, and reimagine an existing space. It is this need that causes theatre professionals to have the predilection for ruins that Turner comments on, here (186). I particularly enjoyed the section of the book (178–88) where the real, but often vaguely articulated, needs of theatre makers are discussed seriously. Here, Alastair Fair begins to conceive of theatre architecture in terms of performance. “[A]re questions of bricks and mortar actually dramas in themselves?” he asks (186), going on to cite Michael Elliot’s 1973 talk, “On Not Building for Posterity,” where Elliot suggests the value of “lightness and improvisation” in theatre building (41; qtd. on 186). [End Page 266] As is clarified elsewhere (241), these qualities cannot always be found through an all-purpose flexibility, but it is hard for glossy new architecture to open itself up to artistic reinvention; hence, I think, the reason why the Belgrade’s Hamish Glen came, ultimately, to prefer “an industrial space for theatremakers to transform” (with retractable stalls seating) over the more “finished,” elegant, court-yard structure initially favoured by Connelan (128–29). It is also clear that, while the vision was sometimes successfully accommodated, few of the projects were led by an artistic vision that was carried through, unchanged, to the end of the process. A notable exception, Leicester’s Curve, maintained the artistic directors’ notion of a “porous” theatre as central to its design (Thiarai 16), despite the inevitable fluctuations of the project.

The present book is meticulous in demonstrating why this is not more frequently the case and why effort and compromise are so often required to realize the architectural project, sometimes occasioning a complete restructuring of the theatre company, in the process. Writing of Coventry, the authors explore the tension between the city’s need for landmark and the theatre’s need for a second space. At one point, the building of the new auditorium was actually halted, which, as the authors suggest, “might seem astounding,” given that the auditorium was “the raison d’être of the capital project” (128). Although the story has a happy ending, it does illustrate the perils of entering into such a process.

Framed by a usefully contextual first chapter by Fair, the six chapters that follow feature case studies that are wonderfully careful and tactful documents of each of the processes of building and rebuilding: The Lowry, Salford (Alan Short); The Contact Theatre, Manchester (Short); Poole Arts Centre (Short and Peter Barrett); Belgrade II, Coventry (Fair); Curve, Leicester (Short); and Hackney Empire (Short...

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