The 299-seat theatre's two galleries, steep orchestra seating rake, and modest capacity create a closeness between the actors and audience that will remind some of a groundbreaking theatre 3,500 miles across the Atlantic. A theatre that through its innovative physical flexibility, intimacy, and dedication to experimentation helped revive the form of the courtyard theatre: The Cottesloe Theatre at the National Theatre in London.
The similarities are not an accident. In the 36 years since it opened, the Cottesloe Theatre has exerted an immeasurable influence over the theatrical world, not only in nurturing legions of actors, directors, writers, and theatre professionals, but also in shaping the form, function, and potential of countless theatres across the globe.
Conceived as a laboratory for experimentation and a space to nurture England's growing anti-establishment "fringe" movement, the Cottesloe - it was thought - would be a studio theatre and serve in part as a workshop for young actors, writers and directors to polish material and eventually transfer works to the stages of the National Theatre's other venues - the Oliver and Lyttelton Theatres. However, as the National Theatre opened and the Cottesloe's sibling theatres began staging shows, the space the theatre would come to occupy remained empty due to bureaucratic and funding shortfalls.
In 1973, after the red tape and budgetary hurdles were cleared, Theatre Projects' designer Iain Mackintosh was called upon to meet a list of varied and seemingly contradictory demands: To create an intimate theatre that could seat a sizable audience of 400 people; that could be transformed into various configurations, from scenic end stage, to flat floor, to in the round, to free space; and perhaps most difficult of all, he was tasked with reconciling the demands for simplicity and freedom while at the same time creating a space with total flexibility.
To meet all those requirements, Mackintosh - under the guidance of Theatre Projects' founder Richard Pilbrow - elected to create a steep seating rake and wrap two galleries around three sides of the room. Additionally, he placed the stage parallel to the second seating level - enveloping the actors in the audience.
By bringing the audience closer to the performers in all directions, the Cottesloe created a dynamic interplay between the two parties, fostering interactions that were undiluted by distance and artifice. "At the Cottesloe, the audience participates in a shared experience," Jenny Harris, former head of the National Theatre Education Department said. "The energy generated by the performers is not dissipated by the size of the theatre. The relationship between the audience and performers is immediate and direct."
In creating the Cottesloe - a space that Mackintosh would call "a simple and unpretentious framework for freedom" - Theatre Projects laid the groundwork for the revival of the courtyard theatre and helped make the smallest and most humble of the three national theatres into "the beating heart of the National Theatre."
Following the Cottesloe's 1977 opening and near-immediate success, other theatre groups across the globe, looking to encourage a similar artistic freedom, sought to create venues equally as flexible.
The courtyard form would soon take hold in America, and Theatre Projects was responsible for not only the majority of the new courtyard theatres, but also the continued evolution of the style.
Building on the successful evolution of the courtyard theatre, Theatre Projects, was approached by Theatre for New Audience to design a theatre that would take the best features of the Cottesloe - it's flexibility and intimacy- and improve upon them.
"Jeffrey Horowit
