Black Box Theater - History

History

Black box theaters became popular and widespread particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, during which low-cost experimental theater was being actively practiced as never before. Since almost any warehouse or open space in any building can be transformed into a black box, including abandoned cafés and stores, the appeal for nonprofit and low-income artists is high. The black box is also considered by many to be a place where more "pure" theater can be explored, with the most human and least technical elements being in focus.

The concept of a building designed for flexible staging techniques can be attributed to Swiss designer Adolphe Appia, circa 1921, and instigated a half century of innovations in the relationship between audience and performers. Antonin Artaud also had ideas of a stage of this kind. The first flexible stage in America (not a proper Black Box due to the domestic decor) was located in the home living room of actor/manager Gilmor Brown in Pasadena, CA. This venue, and two subsequent permutations, were known as the Playbox Theatre, and functioned as an experimental space for Brown's larger venue, the Pasadena Playhouse.

Read more about this topic:  Black Box Theater

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)

    The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.
    Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)