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(2014) Modern architecture in theatre, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Art et action's largest, yet most intimate theatre commented upon the role of the spectator in modern mass culture. Autant's spatial design isolates each spectator in a box seat so he or she might focus on the scene with vicarious intensity, as if alone. However, the theatre is sky-lit, so each spectator would see a crowd of others in the opposite bank of seats. Inserted into the city, Chamber Theatre performances invoke a characteristically modern paradox of being alone yet together. Plays that Autant and Lara performed present archetypal characters who are seen only as shadows or who communicate across a barrier, heard but not seen. This staging invokes the new channels of media within the purview of architecture and abstracted them as elements of myth.
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Read, G. (2014). The spectator and mass media: chamber theatre, in Modern architecture in theatre, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 80-100.
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