. The art theatre; a discussion of its ideals . atre, Joseph Urban. These people know thestage and stage equipment in the light of the newideals. Their advice is likely to save the theatrefrom the necessity of making expensive altera-tions later—and it will save a deal of cussing anddisappointment on the part of the artists. IV The size of an ideal art theatre is a matter forspeculation rather than for estimate on the basisof experience. The very large theatre is doubt-less passing. The house seating two thousandor more people is going out of fashion because itsdimensions are such that the int
. The art theatre; a discussion of its ideals . atre, Joseph Urban. These people know thestage and stage equipment in the light of the newideals. Their advice is likely to save the theatrefrom the necessity of making expensive altera-tions later—and it will save a deal of cussing anddisappointment on the part of the artists. IV The size of an ideal art theatre is a matter forspeculation rather than for estimate on the basisof experience. The very large theatre is doubt-less passing. The house seating two thousandor more people is going out of fashion because itsdimensions are such that the intimacy demandedby the new ideal is impossible there. On theother hand, there is a tendency on the part of theinsurgents to make their auditoriums too small,even where space and expense do not dictate alimit. Littleness is made a fetich, and manya group will waken later to the fact that the sizeof its auditorium is limiting its artistic develop-ment. My own ideal theatre would provide a seatingcapacity of seven or eight hundred. It is by no224. Buildings and Equipment means certain that a repertory playhouse of thatsize could be made a financial success in an aver-age American city without a substantial it seems to me that such a theatre would comenearest to combining economic independencewith a satisfying intimacy of atmosphere. Itmight be possible to bring the number of seats upto approximately one thousand and still avoid thebarn-like atmosphere of most of our existingtheatres. In other words, a theatre seating fewer thanseven hundred people is likely to demand, for con-tinuous art theatre production by a paid com-pany, a larger subsidy than any we can now rea-sonably expect; and a smaller theatre, moreover,will not be able to serve its city as a communityplayhouse in any wide sense. On the otherhand, a theatre seating more than a thousand islikely to be too vast in proportions to foster thesense of intimacy and to keep the attention of allthe spectators concentr
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