Size of Room The first and most important consideration is the size and height of the room. A stage that is smaller than fifteen by twenty feet is too small for much use, and a larger one is better. The stage itself should not take up more than one-third of the room, or else there will be no space for the audience. Therefore, probably it will be unwise to attempt to turn any room less than twenty by fifty feet in size into a theater. Some ingenious things have been done by organizations with smaller rooms, but to do much is difficult. A larger room is more desirable. Height is another important consideration. A stage should be raised three feet from the floor, if the floor of the auditorium is level, or else the actors cannot be seen sufficiently well from any but the first two or three rows. If the auditorium is large, four feet, or even four feet six inches, is a better elevation for the stage. The proscenium-arch opening should be at least nine feet in height, otherwise the actors look cramped and out of proportion. Twelve feet, or more, is a still better height for the proscenium arch. There should be a space of at least four or five feet above the proscenium arch. In a really well proportioned theater, there is as much room above the top of the arch as there is below; that is, the top of the proscenium arch should be half way between the floor of the stage and the ceiling, so that it is possible to haul scenery up against the ceiling and out of sight. Probably few rooms are high enough to allow this to be done, and it is not absolutely essen tial, as the scenery can be handled in some other way. But allowing three feet for the height of the stage, nine for the proscenium arch, and five for the space above the opening, it may be seen that the room to be turned into a theater should be at least seventeen feet in height. If this height is not available, the space above the opening had better be reduced, rather than any other dimension. The minimum size of the room that can be successfully turned into a theater should be, then, about twenty feet by fifty, by seventeen in height. Permanent Stage and Proscenium If the room can be turned into a permanent theater, the problem of building a platform and proscenium arch is not difficult. The undertaking then assumes the form of building a wall to cut the room into two parts, the smaller of which will contain the stage, and the larger be the auditorium. In this wall will be left the large opening called the proscenium arch. The stage must be solidly built, and should be floored with soft wood, so that stage braces may be screwed to the floor with stage screws. A hardwood floor is undesirable for any stage. The proscenium wall may be built of beams, and covered with beaver board or some similar substance. It is still better to have it plastered, or finished in the same way as the auditorium itself. The color should be subdued and harmonious, and if it is desired to outline the proscenium arch in some way, a plain dull black, or a dark finish of some sort, is much more suitable and artistic than the gilt, ornate effect so often found in public theaters. The prosce nium arch is merely a medium through which the play is to be seen, and it should not attract attention to itself. It should be an inconspicuous frame for the action. Persons wishing to turn a large room into a permanent theater will find a wealth of suggestion and aid in Irving Pichel's admirable volume, Modern Theaters.2 More often, perhaps, especially in schools and colleges, the problem is to turn a room into a theater only temporarily. Here, the stage and the proscenium wall must be movable. It must be possible by a few hours of work to transform the room into a theater. Of late, several theatrical dealers have begun to make little theater equipments which can be thus set up and taken down, but there is no reason why an energetic dramatic organization cannot make its own. Movable Stage The stage is the most difficult thing to build, for it must be made solid. No general plan that will be universally satisfactory can be devised. A series of strongly built sections, each of which has permanent legs like a table, which can be fastened together, is perhaps the easiest sort of stage to manufacture. It requires considerable storage room, however, so that it will usually be necessary to make a stage that can be stored in less space. The illustration on page 67 and the explanation of it should suggest a possibility. A good grade of lumber should be used, if possible, otherwise the warping of the stage makes it difficult to put up 2 Irving Pichel, Modern Theaters, (Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1925). FIG. 4.-Sections of flooring are nailed to cleats and supported by a framework of two- and take down easily. The short crossbeams supporting the planks of the floor of the stage should be near enough together to hold them absolutely rigid—fourteen or eighteen inches apart, at the very most. The cross braces may be fastened to the short upright beams that hold the sections with bolts and winged nuts, and the sections may be fastened to the frame and to each other in the same manner. A stage that is built in this way will hold almost any weight, and it may be put up and taken down without the use of a tool. If a movable stage is to be built, it pays to put as much money and labor into it as is necessary to make it absolutely tight, for good play production is impossible on a shaky, unsatisfactory platform. Movable Proscenium Wall For the proscenium wall there are two possibilities. The wall may be made of covered frames, or of draperies. I. To build a temporary proscenium of frames.— A temporary wall of frames should cut off the stage end of the room, by extending from wall to wall, and from floor to ceiling. In its simplest form it would consist of three pieces, two tall frames (A) standing on the floor, and a crosspiece (B) reaching from the inner edges of these frames, and placed up against the ceiling. An arrangement of this sort, however, needs to be supported by the side walls of the room, or by the platform, or in some other way. Often it is not permissible to attach things to the walls or the ceiling. In that case, it is possible to devise a proscenium wall |