Iain Mackintosh

It evaluates the successes and failures of many design projects and distills the architectural design strategies that help actors connect with audiences, including discussions of scale, sight lines, tiered balconies, and the see-and-be-seen qualities of performance spaces

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Richard Eyre

An Introduction and a Summary

Act 1 Pre-1920: Setting the Scene and Some Early Pioneers
Chapter One: Theatre is Ephemeral While Buildings Endure. Some Necessary Background
Chapter Two: Richard Wagner, Adolphe Appia and the Spreading of the Fan

Act II 1920
Chapter Three: The Festival Cambridge, Stratford-upon-Avon and Early Days of the National
Chapter Four: Guthrie's Thrust Stages
Chapter Five: Germany's Building Boom and Anglo-American Shakespeare
Chapter Six: The Olivier, the Lyttelton and the Barbican Theatres

Act III 1976-2020: The Past Informs the Present
Chapter Seven: The Cottesloe and Other Courtyards
Chapter Eight: Worthy Scaffolds: Brook's Empty Space and Spaces Found by Others
Chapter Nine: Regenerating the Old Offers an Antidote to Modernism. Part One: English Theatres of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Chapter Ten: Regenerating the old offers an antidote to modernism. Part Two: A Couple of Twentieth-century Scottish Theatres Reborn - One in Edinburgh and the Other in Florida
Chapter Eleven: New Opera Houses from Glyndebourne to Dallas. Elsewhere Some Starchitects Upstage the Performers
Chapter Twelve: Learning from the Netherlands, Berlin, Brazil, Australia, Indian and Chinese Cultures. The Threat of Internationalism
Chapter Thirteen: 2010-2020: Some New Builds, Two Renovations - One at Stratford-upon-Avon and One in London - And Diversions on In-the-round and the Open Air

Act IV 2021: The Future
Chapter Fourteen: Unforeseen Consequences of Seventeenth-century Plagues, of the Arrival of the Talkies and the More Recent Dangers of the Pandemic and of 'Virtual Theatre'. Some Central Themes Restated

References
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Theatre Index
Person Index