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The architecture of the theatre at Epidaurus did much to influence the design of several modern European theatres, most notably the Olivier Theatre in London's Royal National Theatre complex.
Sir Peter Hall (the ex-artistic director of the Royal National Theatre) visited Epidaurus with the architects of the new Olivier Theatre (Denys Lasdun and Partners) and observed the space with the eye of a modern theatre practitioner. Hall asserted that the symmetry of Epidaurus was never 100 per cent perfect because the human body is never perfectly symmetrical, and claimed that the ancient architect wanted his theatre to feel 'human' rather than geometrically 'perfect'.
Sir Peter Hall deduced from his visit that the theatre at Epidaurus must have been designed like many of the other monuments in Epidaurus, primarily as a place of healing. He therefore presumed that the harmonious proportions of the theatre were related to the Ascelepian principal that the components of an ailing body are in a state of disharmony, and that a treatment for the soul is an essential part of a more general corporal therapy. Sir Peter thus found it tempting to explain the architecture of the theatre at Epidaurus as an “embodiment of the principal of catharsis'' as it is outlined in Aristotle's Poetics.
Such a reading of a theatrical space has significant implications for our understanding of the social function of theatre.
Are theatres harmonious, tranquil and recuperative places; structures intended to 'heal' a range of social and individual maladies?
Or are they, rather, more investigative spaces, intended to cut, incise and reveal the disease and corruption that infects both individual human bodies and the wider body politic? The sort of space that leads on to a dialectical analysis of different ways to heal? |
