THEATERS AND AUDITORIUMS

by Harold Burris-Meyer, Edward C. Cole '26.Reinhold Pub. Co., 1949. 228 pp., $8.00.

"Theaters and Auditoriums" is a technical data book for architects who for reasons explained by the authors are unaccountably thrown into the unusual task of designing a theater. The data collected therein is now published for the first time, a situation which should establish the authors in a class with Vitruvius and Serlio.

Heretofore, architects have had only the prejudices of theater technicians, the understandably biased opinions of equipment salesmen, and the demands of real estate owners as guides. Too often they were reduced to the reproduction of outmoded and thoroughly inconvenient designs in lieu of working from

scientifically demonstrated information. This book eliminates the last possible excuse for any further duplication of the hot, stuffy, inconvenient, and hideously impractical auditoriums which, rashlike, appear in high schools, lodge halls, women's clubs, on Broadway, and, regrettably, in the existing plant at Dartmouth College.

The view of the authors is from the standpoint of comfort for the audience; flexibility for the director, designer, and stage technicians; and adequate working space for the actors. The primary interest is to provide a proper building in which audience, plays, and actors may come together under the best possible conditions which include a fair return to the real estate operator.

Fortunately, Mr. Cole, as consultant to Mr. Larson, has been able to make a practical demonstration of his thesis in Hopkins Center, plans for which are reproduced. Mr. Cole is Technical Director of the Yale University Theater and Mr. Burris-Meyer is Director of Research of Dramatic Arts and Sound in the Theatre at Stevens Institute of Technology. Illustrative marginal drawings are by Robert E. Costello, Jr. '42.