Imaginative Genius:: Spectators on Stage at Shakespeare's Playhouses & Bristol's Old Vic

by Mark Howell

Successful play performances inspire our imaginations and remain in our memories. Heightened imagination lies at the heart of every successful play performance. This book (building on David Wiles' 2003 view that play performance is a "spatial activity") explains how & why spectators on three sides can especially heighten imaginative play performance. Case studies include Shakespeare's Rose playhouse(s), the 250 year old Bristol's Old Vic and the new Wanamaker Playhouse opened in 2014 (modelled on seventeenth-century architectural drawings for a theatre in England). This book explains how & why audiences on three sides of stage floors can heighten imaginative play performances. It's no coincidence that the Royal National Theatre's most successful performances started on stages with spectators on three War Horse, An Inspector Calls, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time opened in theatres with spectators on three sides (or in-the-round). It's no coincidence that play performances at Bristol's Old Vic have become strikingly more imaginative since Andrzej Blonski Architects (2009-2012) first rebuilt a new version of its 1766 stage front inside its auditorium, restoring spectators on three sides.

The obvious links between the three wooden galleries & thrust stage of Bristol's Old Vic and the three wooden galleries & thrust stage of Shakespeare's playhouses far outweigh their obvious differences. Scholars have either ignored, overlooked or deliberately denied the significance of Bristol's Old Vic for understanding how & why Shakespeare's playhouses worked with spectators on three sides. The principal acting area for play performers at Bristol's Old Vic, then and now, was the stage front inside its auditorium. Plays happen now, not in history. Play performance is a spatial activity.

This book extends the only scholarly work ever published about on Bristol's Old Bristol-born Kathleen Barker' The Theatre Royal, Bristol 1766-1966: Two Centuries of Stage History (STR, 1973).

325 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 18, 2014