Glass box theater? Designers like Es Devlin are making the Fourth Wall out of something new
Even before Covid-19, many ambitious productions had been taking place not in the three-sided black boxes that defined the experimental zest and emerging punk of the late 1970s, or […] theater-in-the-round pioneered in ancient Greece and Rome, but in elaborately engineered glass cubes that evoke the International Style’s high Modernism and the minimalist penthouses of the contemporary metropolis. There would not seem to be a more flagrant violation of dramatic immediacy.Glass cube sets from Miriam Buether, artist Todd Knope, and Expo 2020 Dubai British Pavillion designer Es Devlin have been popular among directors like Sam Mendes. One of Devlin's previous designs was based on a temporary Rachel Whitehead installation in East London from 1993. The artist's work will take center stage once again with the reopening of Mendes' The Lehman Trilogy, which plays at New York's Nederlander Theater until January 2nd. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway (@lehmantrilogybway)“There’s a message embedded in a single room,” the three-time Olivier Award winner told the Times, “that architecture itself is the vessel through which history — whether intimate or monumental — is enacted. Glass helps you make that message explicit: A room is more than just a passive container. It remembers life.”
Even before Covid-19, many ambitious productions had been taking place not in the three-sided black boxes that defined the experimental zest and emerging punk of the late 1970s, or […] theater-in-the-round pioneered in ancient Greece and Rome, but in elaborately engineered glass cubes that evoke the International Style’s high Modernism and the minimalist penthouses of the contemporary metropolis. There would not seem to be a more flagrant violation of dramatic immediacy.
Glass cube sets from Miriam Buether, artist Todd Knope, and Expo 2020 Dubai British Pavillion designer Es Devlin have been popular among directors like Sam Mendes. One of Devlin's previous designs was based on a temporary Rachel Whitehead installation in East London from 1993. The artist's work will take center stage once again with the reopening of Mendes' The Lehman Trilogy, which plays at New York's Nederlander Theater until January 2nd.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway (@lehmantrilogybway)
“There’s a message embedded in a single room,” the three-time Olivier Award winner told the Times, “that architecture itself is the vessel through which history — whether intimate or monumental — is enacted. Glass helps you make that message explicit: A room is more than just a passive container. It remembers life.”
