Word: semi-arena
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Sellars chose a thrust, semi-arena stage for this production, bare except for white gauze strips concealing the huge number of props trotted out for each scene. While this staging does evoke the circus-like atmosphere Mayakovsky wrote into the play, Sellars does not overcome the audibility problems inherent in theater in the round. As the actors careen about the stage, whipping out their lines, each section of the audience gets to hear a few words, but no one hears the entire sentence. While this mayhem may be intended to suggest the decline of human sensitivity and individualism, it succeeds...
Preliminary plans for the new College Theatre, drawn by the firm of Hugh Stubbins and Associates, allow for an auditorium which can be used with a regular stage or as a semi-arena. "This plan achieves our aim of flexibility," Harry T. Levin '33, member of the Faculty Committee on the Theatre commented--and keeps within a cost limit of $1.5 million, reportedly set by the Corporation...
...real start of the current "renaissance" of student theatre here can, I think, be rather exactly pinned down to the last week of February, 1954. It was then that the HDC, having ripped out the floor seats of Sanders Theatre, opened a semi-arena production of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. This was a show of tremendous power, and gave clear notice that, once again, Harvard students were capable of providing a superlative theatrical experience...
Particularly noteworthy is the Eliot Drama Group, formed in the spring of 1954. From its debut the next fall up to date, the EDG has provided a splendid series of intimate semi-arena productions devoted almost exclusively to the works of Shakespeare...
...deliberately chose to move the play as close to the audience as possible. Instead of performing on Sander's stage, they use a highly symbolic set built on a semi-arena sunk into the floor. This decision was a good one; instead of an aloofness, designer Webster Lithgow has produced a feeling of closeness that adds to the intensity. One can only wish that the individual components of the set were larger and placed further apart. Lighting, by Campbell Steward, and costumes, by Leslie Van Zandt, were excellent...
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