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44-473: Reynaud introduced the Praxinoscope-Théâtre in 1879. This was basically the same device, but it was hidden inside a box to show only the moving figures within added theatrical scenery. When the set was assembled inside the unfolded box, the viewer looked through a rectangular slot in the front, onto a plate with a transparent mirror surrounded by a printed proscenium . The mirror reflected a background and

88-401: A "pit" or "arena" formation. This configuration lends itself to high-energy productions and anything that requires audience participation. It is favoured by producers of classical theatre and it has continued as a creative alternative to the more common proscenium format. In effect, theatre-in-the-round removes the fourth wall and brings the actor into the same space as the audience. This

132-554: A collective. All Word and Action productions were performed in normal lighting conditions, without costumes or makeup. The innovations of Margo Jones were an obvious influence on Albert McCleery when he created his Cameo Theatre for television in 1950. Continuing until 1955, McCleery offered dramas seen against pure black backgrounds instead of walls of a set. This enabled cameras in the darkness to pick up shots from any position. Richard Nixon's 1968 U.S. Presidential campaign staged nine live televised question and answer sessions using

176-455: A floor that were printed on interchangeable cards placed on the inside of the folded lid of the box, below the viewing slot. The animated figures were printed on black strips, so they were all that was visible through the transparent mirror and appeared to be moving within the suggested space that was reflected from the background and floor cards. The set appeared with 20 strips (all based on previous standard praxinoscope strips), 12 backgrounds and

220-412: A good view because the performers need only focus on one direction rather than continually moving around the stage to give a good view from all sides. A proscenium theatre layout also simplifies the hiding and obscuring of objects from the audience's view (sets, performers not currently performing, and theatre technology). Anything that is not meant to be seen is simply placed outside the "window" created by

264-513: A ground-breaking theatre-in-the-round format, adapted for a live televised audience. The first time use of the staging device was memorialized in the book, The Selling of the President 1968 by Joe McGinniss . The producer of these Nixon "Man in the Arena" programs was Roger Ailes , who later went to on start Fox News . Ailes' innovation of the theatre-in-the-round format for candidate forums became

308-465: A mirror intended for background effects for the swimming figure. This set also sold very well and appeared in slight variations, including a deluxe version made of thuja-wood with ebony inlays. Reynaud mentioned the possibility of projecting the images in his 1877 patent. He presented a praxinoscope projection device at the Société française de photographie on 4 June 1880, but did not market his praxinoscope

352-485: A projection before 1882. Only a handful of examples are known to still exist. In 1888 Reynaud developed the Théâtre Optique , an improved version capable of projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. From 1892 he used the system for his Pantomimes lumineuses : a show with hand-drawn animated stories for larger audiences. It was very successful for several years, until it was eclipsed in popularity by

396-520: A proscenium arch, but the term thrust stage is more specific and more widely used). In dance history , the use of the proscenium arch has affected dance in different ways. Prior to the use of proscenium stages, early court ballets took place in large chambers where the audience members sat around and above the dance space. The performers, often led by the queen or king, focused in symmetrical figures and patterns of symbolic meaning. Ballet's choreographic patterns were being born. In addition, since dancing

440-496: A proscenium theatre. The Teatro Olimpico was an academic reconstruction of a Roman theatre. It has a plain proscaenium at the front of the stage, dropping to the orchestra level, now usually containing "stalls" seating, but no proscenium arch. However, the Teatro Olimpico's exact replication of the open and accessible Roman stage was the exception rather than the rule in sixteenth-century theatre design. Engravings suggest that

484-401: Is no English equivalent ... It would also be possible to retain the classical frons scaenae . The Italian "arco scenico" has been translated as "proscenium arch." In practice, however, the stage in the Teatro Olimpico runs from one edge of the seating area to the other, and only a very limited framing effect is created by the coffered ceiling over the stage and by the partition walls at

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528-418: Is often problematic for proscenium or end stage trained actors who are taught that they must never turn their backs to the audience, something that is unavoidable in this format. However, it allows for strong and direct engagement with the audience. It is also employed when theatrical performances are presented in non-traditional spaces such as restaurants, public squares, or during street theater . Set design

572-623: Is on the National Register of Historic Places . In 1947, Margo Jones established America's first professional theatre-in-the-round company when she opened her Theater '47 in Dallas. The stage design as developed by Margo Jones was used by directors in later years for such well-known shows as Fun Home , the original stage production of Man of La Mancha , and all plays staged at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre (demolished in

616-625: Is usually minimal since it would obscure the audience's view. Theatre-in-the-round was common in ancient theatre, particularly that of Greece and Rome , but was not widely explored again until the latter half of the 20th century. In Margo Jones' survey of theatre-in-the-round, the first two sources of central staging in the United States she identified were the productions by Azubah Latham and Milton Smith at Columbia University dating from 1914, and T. Earl Pardoe 's productions at Brigham Young University in 1922. In 1924, Gilmor Brown founded

660-567: The 1960s), including Arthur Miller 's autobiographical After the Fall . Such theatres had previously existed in colleges, but not in professional theatre buildings. Theater in the round is a particularly appropriate setting for staging of dramas using Bertolt Brecht 's alienation effect , which stands in opposition to the more traditional Stanislavski technique in drama. Alienation techniques include visible lighting fixtures and other technical elements. Round theatres also allow lighting parts of

704-512: The Fair Oaks Playbox in Pasadena, California, an important early practitioner of central staging in addition to other stage configurations that it pioneered in its advent of flexible staging . As Indicated by Jones, the centrally staged productions of the Fair Oaks Playbox were followed approximately eight years later by the work of Glenn Hughes in his Seattle Penthouse. Stephen Joseph was

748-611: The Netherlands, Mamil Moviton in Italy, etc. The word praxinoscope translates roughly as "action viewer", from the Greek roots πραξι- (confer πρᾶξις "action") and scop- (confer σκοπός "watcher"). Proscenium A proscenium ( Ancient Greek : προσκήνιον , proskḗnion ) is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre , usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on

792-470: The action took place in front of the scaenae frons and that the actors were rarely framed by the central archway). The Italian word for a scaenae frons is " proscenio ," a major change from Latin. One modern translator explains the wording problem that arises here: "[In this translation from Italian,] we retain the Italian proscenio in the text; it cannot be rendered proscenium for obvious reasons; and there

836-419: The audience and so necessarily lose exclusive command of the acting space. All members of the audience can see the actor, but the actor can no longer see all of them. At this point, in order for the play to function, the audience themselves must be allowed to become key conductors of the meaning of the performance. Some, like the writer Mick Fealty , have stressed a close analogy between Gregory's description of

880-408: The audience so that people are reminded that they are in a theatre watching a drama with others. The stage is always in the centre with the audience arranged on all sides, and is most commonly rectangular, circular, diamond, or triangular. Actors may enter and exit through the audience from different directions or from below the stage. The stage is usually on an even level with or below the audience in

924-480: The audience which has come to witness it. But since the curtain usually comes down just behind the proscenium arch, it has a physical reality when the curtain is down, hiding the stage from view. The same plane also includes the drop, in traditional theatres of modern times, from the stage level to the "stalls" level of the audience, which was the original meaning of the proscaenium in Roman theatres , where this mini-facade

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968-435: The beginning of dance-performance as a form of entertainment like we know it today. Since the use of the proscenium stages, dances have developed and evolved into more complex figures, patterns, and movements. At this point, it was not only significantly important how the performers arrived to a certain shape on the stage during a performance, but also how graciously they executed their task. Additionally, these stages allowed for

1012-525: The blueprint for modern "town hall" candidate formats and even multiple-candidate debates. Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special TV program was performed with the musicians seated using a raised staging in-the-round format. When an arena staging was conceived for the progressive-rock group Yes by their tour manager Jim Halley in the mid-1970s, it prompted a redesign of rock concerts and venue seating arrangements. The politics of theatre-in-the-round were explored most deliberately by RG Gregory. In his view

1056-413: The bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame into which the audience observes from a more or less unified angle the events taking place upon the stage during a theatrical performance. The concept of the fourth wall of the theatre stage space that faces the audience is essentially the same. It can be considered as a social construct which divides the actors and their stage-world from

1100-416: The characters performing on stage are doing so in a four-walled environment, with the "wall" facing the audience being invisible. Many modern theatres attempt to do away with the fourth wall concept and so are instead designed with a thrust stage that projects out of the proscenium arch and "reaches" into the audience (technically, this can still be referred to as a proscenium theatre because it still contains

1144-402: The corners of the stage where the seating area abuts the floorboards. The result is that in this theatre "the architectural spaces for the audience and the action ... are distinct in treatment yet united by their juxtaposition; no proscenium arch separates them." A proscenium arch creates a "window" around the scenery and performers. The advantages are that it gives everyone in the audience

1188-816: The first to popularise the form in the United Kingdom from the US in the 1950s and set up theatres-in-the-round in Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Studio Theatre in Scarborough. The current theatre, opened in 1996, is known as the Stephen Joseph Theatre . Joseph was reputed to have once rhetorically asked, "Why must authorities stand with their back to a wall?" His answer was: "So nobody can knife them from behind." Sam Walters set up an impromptu performance space in

1232-526: The front of the pit, where a barrier, typically in wood, screened the pit. What the Romans would have called the proscaenium is, in modern theatres with orchestra pits, normally painted black in order that it does not draw attention. In this early modern recreation of a Roman theatre, confusion seems to have been introduced to the use of the revived term in Italian. This emulation of the Roman model extended to refer to

1276-407: The lit space of a proscenium arch is analogous to the seat of power; the audience adopts the role of passive receivers. In traditional theatre design, maximum care is taken with sight lines in order to ensure that the actor can engage every member of the audience at the same time. However, once removed from the picture frame of the arch, the actors are compelled to turn their back on some members of

1320-508: The photographic film projector of the Lumière brothers . The praxinoscope was copied by several other companies. Ernst Plank offered several variations, including one that was automated by a small hot air engine. The Red Raven Magic Mirror and its special children's phonograph records , introduced in the US in 1956, was a 20th-century adaptation of the praxinoscope. The Magic Mirror was a sixteen-sided praxinoscopic reflector with angled facets. It

1364-554: The proscenium arch was already in use as early as 1560 at a production in Siena . The earliest true proscenium arch to survive in a permanent theatre is the Teatro Farnese in Parma (1618), many earlier such theatres having been lost. Parma has a clearly defined " boccascena ", or scene mouth, as Italians call it, more like a picture frame than an arch but serving the same purpose: to deineate

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1408-414: The proscenium arch, either in the wings or in the flyspace above the stage. The phrase "breaking the proscenium" or "breaking the fourth wall" refers to when a performer addresses the audience directly as part of the dramatic production. Proscenium theatres have fallen out of favor in some theatre circles because they perpetuate the fourth wall concept. The staging in proscenium theatres often implies that

1452-556: The proskenion, on and behind the skene . Skene is the Greek word (meaning "tent") for the tent, and later building, at the back of the stage from which actors entered, and which often supported painted scenery. In the Hellenistic period it became an increasingly large and elaborate stone structure, often with three storeys. In Greek theatre, which unlike Roman included painted scenery, the proskenion might also carry scenery. In ancient Rome,

1496-534: The rudimentary dynamics of theater-in-the-round with the network effect of Internet-based communication in comparison to traditional broadcast and marketing channels. George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia is home to the largest arena stage archive and contains material from the theatre's 50-year history. Included in the collection are photographs, production notebooks, scrapbooks, playbills, oral histories and handwritten correspondence. According to their website,

1540-477: The stage and separate the audience from its action. While the proscenium arch became an important feature of the traditional European theatre, often becoming very large and elaborate, the original proscaenium front below the stage became plainer. The introduction of an orchestra pit for musicians during the Baroque era further devalued the proscaenium , bringing the lowest level of the audience's view forward to

1584-434: The stage area as the "proscenium", and some writers have incorrectly referred to the theatre's scaenae frons as a proscenium, and have even suggested that the central archway in the middle of the scaenae frons was the inspiration for the later development of the full-size proscenium arch. There is no evidence at all for this assumption (indeed, contemporary illustrations of performances at the Teatro Olimpico clearly show that

1628-399: The stage area in front of the scaenae frons (equivalent to the Greek skene) was known as the pulpitum , and the vertical front dropping from the stage to the orchestra floor, often in stone and decorated, as the proscaenium , again meaning "in front of the skene ". In the Greek and Roman theatre, no proscenium arch existed, in the modern sense, and the acting space was always fully in

1672-687: The upstairs of the Orange Tree pub in Richmond, London in the early 1970s and subsequently moved across the road to a permanent Orange Tree Theatre . In 1972, RG Gregory set up the Word and Action theatre company in Dorset in England to work exclusively in theatre-in-the-round. Gregory sought to create a grammar that would enable actors to maximise the form's potential for connecting with the audience both as individuals and as

1716-461: The use of stage effects generated by ingenious machinery. It was the beginning of scenography design, and perhaps also it was also the origin of the use of backstage personnel or "stage hands". Theatre in the round A theatre in the round , arena theatre , or central staging is a space for theatre in which the audience surrounds the stage . Theatre-in-the-round was common in ancient theatre, particularly that of Greece and Rome , but

1760-508: The view of the audience. However, Roman theatres were similar to modern proscenium theatres in the sense that the entire audience had a restricted range of views on the stage—all of which were from the front, rather than the sides or back. The oldest surviving indoor theatre of the modern era, the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (1585), is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the first example of

1804-399: Was considered a way of socializing, most of the court ballets finished with a ‘grand ballet’ followed by a ball in which the members of the audience joined the performance. Later on, the use of the proscenium stage for performances established a separation of the audience from the performers. Therefore, more devotion was placed on the performers, and in what was occurring in the ‘show.’ It was

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1848-479: Was given more architectural emphasis than is the case in modern theatres. A proscenium stage is structurally different from a thrust stage or an arena stage , as explained below. In later Hellenistic Greek theatres the proskenion (προσκήνιον) was a rather narrow raised stage where solo actors performed, while the Greek chorus and musicians remained in the "orchestra" in front and below it, and there were often further areas for performing from above and behind

1892-560: Was not widely explored again until the latter half of the 20th century. The Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre in Seattle, Washington was the first theatre-in-the-round venue built in the United States. It first opened on May 19, 1940 with a production of Spring Dance , a comedy by playwright Philip Barry . The 160-seat theatre is located on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle and

1936-667: Was placed over the record player's spindle and rotated along with the 78 rpm record, which had a very large label with a sequence of sixteen interwoven animation frames arrayed around its center. As the record played, the user gazed into the Magic Mirror and saw an endlessly repeating animated scene that illustrated the recorded song. In the 1960s, versions of the Red Raven system were introduced in Europe and Japan under various names—Teddy in France and

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