Theatre Design - Peter Brook & the Bouffes du Nord

Peter Brook (b. 1925): (CBE) influential and innovative British Director with a wide and varied career in theatre. Took over the French theater, Bouffes du Nord, in 1974 as a home for his theatre company.

Bouffes du Nord - completed 1876 in Paris, France. It has always been a theatre but was entirely rennovated in 1904 and renamed Theatre Moliere. Was brought by Peter Brook in 1974 in a very dilapidated state - the owner was going to demolish it.
http://www.bouffesdunord.com/en#en/about-us?&_suid=134462886886904066218110105331

Bouffes du Nord

- designed by Louis-Marie Emile Lemenil
- conventional horseshoe/ellipse but has the long axis parallel to the stage instead of perpendicular to it, resulting in particularly bad sightlines for the audience seated at the sides
- this form mirrors that used by Charles-Nicolas Cochin in 1765 who used this form to bring the audience closer to the players plus enhanced acoustic qualities for voice as the auditorium is shallower than normal. This transverse ellipse is first seen in Palladio's Teatro Olimpico - the space was too narrow for a Vitruvian circle auditorium so he simply squashed the circle towards the stage to fit the space...

"...One day, Micheline Rozan said to me : "There is a theatre behind the Gare du Nord station that everyone has forgotten about. I have heard that it is still there. Let’s go and see!. We jumped into the car but, once we arrived where the theatre was meant to be, there was nothing, just a café, a store and a façade with a lot of windows, typical for Parisian XIXth century buildings. We did notice, however, a sheet of cardboard along the wall which was sort of covering a hole. We pulled it away and a cleared a path through a dusty tunnel, and then, suddenly, we could stand up. What we found , though delapidated, burnt-out, and ruined by rain and hail, affected us.It has noble proportions and was filled with light. It took our breath away. This was the Bouffes du Nord. "

Aims of the rennovation

An over riding decision was to leave the theatre exactly as it was and not to wipe out the traces etched in by a hundred of years’ living. 

 

"We had kept the old wooden seats on the balcony but had them reconvered with new fabric. During the first performances some people were literally stuck to their seats and we had to reimburse a few very cross ladies who had left a piece of their skirt on the seat.

Fortunately there was a great deal of applause, but it literally brought the house down because large sections of plaster moulding broke off due to of the vibrations and fell down, narrowly missing the heads of our audience. Since then, the ceiling has been cleaned but the extrordinary acoustics remain. "

Another aim was that the theatre should be simple, open and welcoming. There should be no numbered seats and a single ticket price, the this price should be a low as possible, half or a quarter of that of prices in the theatre district. To make the theatre accessible to those living in suburbs way outside Paris, and to families so that all of them would be able to go to the theatre. "We also organised matinees on Saturdays - where we had the best and most enthusiastic audiences - with even lower prices. In this way, the elderly, who were nervous about going out at night, were able to come. "

 Peter Brook also required that actors & audience should be together in the same space (stall seating should be on the same level as the acting surface with no threshold).

Dimensions & their impact

• the centre stage is 10m away from the furtherest spectator on the ground level (250 seats)
• there are 125 seats on the 2 lower balconies
• distance from the centre of the front row to the plane of the prosenium arch is 9.5m
• the arch is 8m wide but the acting area is defined by the arc of the front bench - the best place for actor visibility from the stalls and the balconies is in the middle...
• "the most comfortable acting place is in the centre. When you enter the stage it feels right to go straight to the middle...the comfortable acting space is about 6 by 6 metres, and this is just about the right size to do work of quality and concentration - a good human scale. It also happens to be the same size as the stage in a smaller Noh theatre." - Yoshi Oida (famous Japanese actor)
• one of the most striking characteristics is a lack of a middle scale between the intimate acting area (stage area near audience) and the vast background area back from the proscenium arch (11m high and 15-16m wide) - this depth allows a flexibility of theatrical effects though.Thus, the proscenium arch, rather than cutting off the world of the play, now has the role of a flexible threshold, like a diaphragm with a 'focal length' that can be  controlled.

• closely linked with the atmosphere of the theatre is it's powerful focus on the vertical dimensions
• the stage surface is the reference, with 14 cast iron columns arranged in an ellipse out from this level
• this ellipse is 16.5m long by 14m wide, divided into 16 equal bays of 3m, of which 3 are spanned by the proscenium arch - the rhythm of the absent columns being taken up in the arcade above
• the side walls are formed by filling the space of the 2 structural bays bracketing the proscenium with plastered over brick - these are very tall: 3m x nearly 13m high
• the 3 balconies start at the edge of these side walls - the first leans further into the void than the second, and the third (no longer used for spectators) threads between the columns, exposing their height as they climb upwards towards the dome

Analysis of the space

Main design element = contrast between the shadowy horizontals of the balconies and the ultra-thin columns, the close spacing of which further emphasises the height; also the very tall side walls.

There is a rhythm to the key dimensions of the theatre:

• cut along the axis of the stage, the volume described by the columns is as broad as it is high - that is, the theatre is contained within a square or wrapped around a circle of 14m in diameter
• the horizontal centre line of this circle (halfway point in the height) lies on the second balcony which divides the theatre at a key line of force between the inhabited bottom half and the upward and ouward acceleration towards the dome
• cut parallel to the proscenium, the overall volume of the theatre to the auditorium walls corresponds approximately to a golden rectangle (proportions of 1 : 1.618)

Below are excepts from the book 'The Open Circle: Peter Brook's Theatre Environments' (Andrew Todd & Jean-Guy Lecat) which analyses the spaces in this theatre:

What is a good space for a theatre?

1. it mustn't be cold - the Bouffes is warm, because of its walls which bear the scars and wrinkles of its history
2. it can't be neutral - an impersonal sterility 'gives no food for imagination'
• the Bouffes has the magic and poetry of a ruin; anyone who has allowed themselves to be invaded by the atmosphere of a ruin knows strongly how the imagination is let loose
3. it is intimate - a room in which the audience sit with the actors and see them in close up
4. however, it is also challenging - forcing the actors to go beyond themselves
• the Bouffes is both intimate and epic - intimate with the audience but with soaring arches and mosque-like proportions. It is both a shadowy interior and a sunlit courtyard.

 "...The Bouffes has something very special and unique, which is that in the natural structure of the space, the depth is articulated. There is something which delineates the big space into two linked areas beacuse of our playing way in front of what was the procsenium; and there are still remnants of...the flytower. We have a circle coming round and framing something which for us is no longer a picture frame [i.e. the proscenium] but a flexible division, beacuse as you go through it another space opens out. Through this, something very interesting is happening architecturally speaking...There is a new principle that could be used, which is that of a double-depth theatre space. The first area has a front and back, surrounded by the semicircle of the audience; when an actor passes in front of the plane of the proscenium... there is an enormous gain in intimacy which the actors use...like a close-up...There is a curious perspective which means that, if you walk backwards in the first space, one goes in filmic terms from close-up into full figure; then, as you go back beyond the proscenium, you suddenly go into a long shot ... exploding the view into a distant panorama." - Peter Brook

The red colour in the Bouffes is dominant but warm, it gives a good feeling unlike the black in many theatres.
On entering your gaze is at once drawn upward - partially because of the narrow vaulting, elegant and rhythmically divided by slender columns...it is a place oriented towards sky and light (verticality).

The very ordinary pleasant and usually overcrowded cafe is an essential part of the theatre experience - the performers are usually there before and after the show, mingling with the public.

"It has, first and foremost, a humanity of proportion, creating an intimacy among the audience and between the audience and performers. This is contrasted by the epic gesture of the proscenium - a soaring height which would be unfashionable in a new theatre. The theatre and the equally welcoming cafe...serves real theatre in the context of the culture of the city it's in; it doesn't scream 'art' at you - it's very much a part of the city...
The Bouffes demands a heightened level of energy form the actors, in spite of its intimacy...[and]...the audience has to offer a heightened level of energy too, and the performance is something that results from this meeting. It's a theatre that's made to be changed, that gives energy from teh past life on the walls."