This book introduces the concepts of theater planning, and provides a detailed guide to the process and the technical requirements particular to theater buildings. Part I is a guide to the concepts and practices of architecture and construction, as applied to performing arts buildings. Part II is a guide to the design of performing arts buildings, with detailed descriptions of the unique requirements of these buildings. Each concept is illustrated with line drawings and examples from the author’s extensive professional practice. This book is written for students in Theatre Planning courses, along with working practitioners.
Theatres: Planning Guidance for Design and Adaptation focuses on the design, type and size, safety, acoustics, and lighting systems of theaters. The publication first takes a look at the type and size of theaters, design of auditorium, sightlines, acoustics, and safety. Discussions focus on hazards and safeguards, fire-fighting appliances, sprinkler systems and smoke detectors, reverberation, methods of adjusting acoustics, curved and concave surfaces, staggered seating, acoustic limits, and concert and recital halls. The book then examines exits and means of escape, seating layout and safety regulations, legislation, and stage scenery. The manuscript ponders on stage lighting, communications, film projection, performance organization, and public areas. Topics include access for the disabled, lavatories, restaurant, repair workshops, property store, scene dock, projection suites, amplifier racks, direct projection, stage management performance control system, and access to lighting positions over the stage. The book also reviews the restoration of old theaters, conference facilities, art centers and studio theaters, electrical and mechanical services, and administration. The publication is a valuable reference for design engineers and researchers interested in the design and adaptation of theaters.
Author Rich Dionne reframes theatre production as a project and provides essential tools for understanding and managing it efficiently, whether it be a stage play, an opera, a dance piece, or other performance that requires the collaboration of the artists and artisans creating the visual and aural landscape for it. Project Planning for the Stage is organized into four sections corresponding to the life cycle of a theatre production: defining the goals and scope of the production and assembling the crew; planning, estimating, and scheduling; executing and managing; and closing and strike. Each section focuses on relevant concepts and skills and outlines the application of effective project-planning procedures and techniques—including critical path analysis and Gantt charts. This book will be a valuable addition to the libraries of technical managers in live entertainment. Technical directors, costume shop managers, master electricians, properties masters, and video supervisors—anyone managing even part of a production—need to understand project-planning concepts such as the boundaries of authority and responsibility, parametric and bottom-up estimates, and precedence diagrams. The incredibly useful and powerful tools outlined in this book allow any technical manager to deliver the best possible outcome for a production.
From the INTRODUCTION. We are informed that dramatic history in New York began more than a century and a half ago. The first dramatic performance ever seen in America was given in this city during the last week in September, 1732. The first playhouse was the Nassau Street Theatre, on the east side of Nassau Street-then called Kip-between John Street and Maiden Lane. It was a wooden structure, and opened March 5, 1750. Kean and Murray were the managers, and the play for the first night was Richard III. There were performances twice a week, and the season lasted for five months. This house gave way to a new one, built in 1753 by Lewis and William Hallen, the one a manager, the other an actor; but in a few years the new house was converted into a church for the use of the German Calvinists. David Douglass built in 1761 a theatre at Nassau and Beekman streets, where Temple Court now stands, at which, on November 26th of the same year, Hamlet was presented for the first time in America. The cost of this playhouse was $1625. The dimensions were 40 by 90 feet. From 1761 to the present time what a contrast and advancement are perceptible! The Madison Square Garden and the Metropolitan Opera House, built within the last six years, are of special prominence because of their magnitude as buildings and of the expenditure of enormous sums of money. The Madison Square Garden in magnitude is the more important of the two. It is the largest building in America devoted entirely to amusements, and cost about $3,000,000. It occupies the entire block bounded by Madison and Fourth avenues, Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets. It is 465 feet long and 200 feet wide, and its walls rise to a height of 65 feet. Architecturally it is a magnificent structure, because of the simplicity of the construction and the absence of trifling details in the ornamentation. The style is in the Renaissance, and the materials buff brick and terra cotta. The roof is flat, or nearly so, but the sky-lines are broken by a colonnade which rises above the roof at the Madison Avenue end and extends along either side for 100 feet; by six open cupolas, with semi-spherical domes, which rise above the colonnade; by two towers at the Fourth Avenue corners; and by a magnificent square tower which rises from the Twenty-sixth Street side, with its lines unbroken for 249 feet, and then in a series of open cupolas, decreasing in diameter, on the smallest and topmost of which is posed a figure of Diana, of heroic size, the crown of whose head is 332 feet from the sidewalk. At the Madison Avenue end, and extending on either side for a distance of 150 feet, there is an open arcade which covers the sidewalk, and the roof of which rests upon pillars of polished granite and brick piers. The top of the arcade is laid out as a promenade. The main entrance to the building is at the Madison Avenue end, through a triple doorway, and above it is the most prominent feature of exterior decoration, an elaborate arch in terra cotta set in relief into the wall....
This handbook, “Theater Campaign Planning,” is intended to provide combatant command planners with a conceptual approach to developing theater campaign plans (TCPs). It is based on insights from a variety of sources over the last several years. This booklet is designed to assist planners by presenting a broad approach to TCPs and country-level planning that considers ongoing security cooperation efforts, current operations, the Phase 0 component of contingency plans, and resourcing constraints as part of the combatant commander's implementation of his strategic approach to the area of responsibility. Doing so successfully requires some modification of traditional operational planning approaches and an appreciation that every Department of Defense (DoD) action, word, and image communicates the real or perceived intent of DoD and the United States Government (USG).This handbook serves several purposes: Present a common intellectual approach to TCP and country planning, that provides CCMDs enough flexibility to meet their specific requirements; Improve the integration of posture, joint operations and steady-state security cooperation with the Phase 0 component of contingency planning—setting the theater; Explain where and how the Department's planning efforts align with the interagency, specifically but not limited to Department of State and USAID; Help CCMD planners build resource-informed TCPs that (1) identify a total resource demand signal to the Department and other government agencies, (2) link resource expenditures to CCMD objectives, and (3) explain the strategic or operational risks associated with resource shortfalls linked to theater end states. Achieving these purposes will enable the Department to take a significant stride forward in designing and executing well-integrated, resource-informed TCPs and country plans.
