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:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)