Theatre Survey

Table of Contents - May 1971 - Volume 12, Issue 01  

Research Article

Theatre Reconstruction: Tentative Steps Toward a Methodology

Alan Woods☼

The scholarly work of reconstructing vanished theatres is of crucial importance to theatre history. The playhouse provides the physical plant for the drama; therefore its shape exerts enormous influence upon plays written for it. Its size and accommodations for the audience reflect and may even determine the drama's function within a given society. To ignore the physical setting of a play's first production is an error almost as damning for the theatre historian as the practice of the literary scholar who forgets that plays are not written for examination in classes.

Footnotes

☼ Alan Woods is a Teaching Assistant in the Division of Drama, University of Southern California.