On Building a Theatre: Stage Construction and Equipment for Small Theatres, Schools and Community

Architectural ineptitudes are more likely to be perpetuated and in time condoned than those in any other art. Generally speaking, a bad painting is scrapped, poor music remains unpublished and unplayed (along with much good music, no doubt), and bad books, after a time, cease to be read. But a building is somehow inescapable. Having a durability that needs no treasuring, and being erected more often for use than for beauty, a building generally achieves longevity, and the bad art crumbles no sooner than the good stone. Usefulness, great initial cost, sturdy stuff, are all against a building’s being put out of the way merely because it is ugly. Or even, as a matter of fact, because it does not successfully serve the purpose for which it was erected.

As people live in a house, or work, day after day, in a store or factory or public building, they become used to inconveniences, bad arrangement, and lack of proper facilities. They complain for a time, perhaps, and then forget. And after a while, when the house has become home, or the large building has gathered tradition, a sort of admiration settles upon it. What is really plain ugly or wrong or bad appears quaint and full of “atmosphere.” And is imitated. Style and tradition embalm the very features that make the building a bad building.

In the theatre, this perpetuation of musty, tradition-hallowed faults of construction has been carried to an extraordinary extreme. There is more ritual, one might believe, in constructing a stage and auditorium in accordance with honored custom than there is in the building of a church. In the more modern theatres, there have been notable improvements over the theatres of a generation ago; but in the auditoriums and stages of schools, clubs and societies, and in other public or semi-public buildings in which such facilities are included as a sort of side issue, the ancient law is observed. The average high school stage seems to be inspired by the faint recollection of a visit to the theatre, supplemented by the examination of old prints illustrating the stage of Inigo Jones.