Theater Technology

The most recent innovation brought to theater technology by the eminent theater designer George C. Izenour is a "trans-sondant" curtain, mimicking a wall, which allows halls visually to metamorphose into small or large performance spaces while retaining optimum acoustic quality in both guises. A full set of drawings and photographs of the first trans-sondant structure, in the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts (1995), is one of the new features in the second edition of this incomparable reference guide to theater engineering and technology. Izenour ties detailed information on construction, lighting, acoustical structures, electro-mechanical-hydraulic systems, and stage controls to a rich history of technological developments from the invention of the proscenium stage in late Renaissance Italy to the contributions of our own time. All the drawings are produced on the same scale for plan, transverse section, and perspective section. Theater Technology is a reference and source of ideas and inspiration for students, teachers, and practitioners in fields including acoustics, structural engineering, design, lighting, and architecture for the theater. For theater and architecture buffs it offers a detailed and illustrated history of the field and speculation on its future directions.