Theatre Underground

摘要

In New York, Craig Kellogg uncovers architect Beyer Blinder Belle's collaboration with production designer Klara Zieglerova and graphics firm 2x4 on a dramatic adaptive re-use. Off-off-Broadway productions play in cramped black-painted rooms or worse, to audiences often seated in mismatched chairs. A lucky few shows eventually swap this squalor for larger rooms, en route to the big Broadway houses. Midtown Manhattan once boasted plenty of the necessary medium-sized venues, built originally for legitimate theatre or vaudeville and the other burlesques. But decades ago, in the name of modernisation, history saw the majority fitted with permanent cinema screens, if not chopped into multiplex cinemas with sticky floors and a popcorn concession.