Setting the Scene

’This valuable collection on theatre architecture of the twentieth century discloses the tight practice of modernism within making, designing, and performing theatre. The volume beautifully fills an absence in the scholarship of modern theatre architecture with chapters that range from delightful recollections, deep research and original scholarship through historic overviews and focused studies of iconic and lesser-known theatres. Each succeeds in revealing how modernism became embedded within changing practices and theories of performance, detailing reciprocal relationships between designers, architects, directors, as well as political, social, and cultural bodies. The book describes, in great detail, struggles to build and perform in new forms of theatre that instil inventive, avant-garde practice within modern technology. In Japan, Germany, Sweden, London, and New York City, we become entangled and ensnared by the complex stories that make up each theatre, more so telling here, where performance and theatre are ultimately for and about storytelling.’ Marcia Feuerstein, Virginia Tech, USA ’Joe Papp, champion of free public theatre in New York, viewed theatre as an important poetic and political force. By probing the relationship between theatre buildings, national culture and the civic realm, this collection shows how this was so, and convincingly demonstrates the enduring significance of theatre and the space of performance in the cinema and television age. Wide-ranging and thoughtful, this book offers fresh and stimulating perspectives on the links between architecture, community, actor and audience in the twentieth century.’ Louise Campbell, University of Warwick, UK