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Concept
Theatre in the round
Summary
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 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 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 the Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home, the original stage production of Man of La Mancha, and all plays staged at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre (demolished in the late 1960s), including Arthur Miller's autobiographical After the Fall. Such theatres had previously existed in colleges, but not in professional spaces for almost two millennia. It is also a popular setup used in contemporary pop concerts in an arena or stadium setting.
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 Stanislovski technique in drama. Whereas the Stanislovski school of acting attempts to immerse the audience so deeply in belief of its characters that they can imagine themselves as the character, the Brechtian alienation effect deliberately tries to remind the audience that this is a fictional representation. Alienation techniques include tactics as obvious as displaying placards or posters around the set. With theater in the round, merely keeping the audience lit so that each audience member is constantly aware of the rest of the audience can act as an alienation technique.
Official source
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