Goldovsky Portable Stage

this is walter shepherd and my guest is boris gold ask it the man who's known on radio for distinguished commentaries from that brought an opera only opera companies productions but today he's with me in his capacity as an opera producer himself and more particularly a pouring opera producer prep sessions a producer of touring opera in the two hours that he has made with his opera company across the country into what it took me four hundred and thirty four hundred and thirty community is now i'm sure he has encountered some severe local problems that the best way to put it the lack of proper facilities in the country you stated the problem when people ask you will you elaborate fourteen years well as though you've said we've traveled around the country for the last almost twenty years performing in cities a very sizes and reducing hopper grand opera that means opera with scenery and lights and costumes in orchestras and courses and that we run into various severe difficulties simply because there are so few places

in the united states where you'll have a proper facility in which to produce opera or monday or musical comedy or for that matter even with a symphony orchestra in the states what you usually encounter gymnasium cafeteria like you do encounter of a forest and so we hop or arab my high school auditorium or a gymnasium in which some kind of forum shackled platform is a record and without any proper curtain and no place to hang lights and no place to love with the orchestra and the m four acoustics and particularly poor visibility small way off that your headlights and of course that was a severe difficulties understand the problem about the high school gymnasium kind of thing but one would think just on the outside is as a non expert in these areas that a movie house when they are as a state as a ferrari and the fbi says a curtain and so i always that is usually have very poor because then

you see they say they have bought a hang nail on the screen and that's old age they need and also was to kill usually very poor very little prissy new openings for good music one needs a hyper seen him opening otherwise all the music remains behind a teaser and so out of this a very important experience i talk about it would be enormously valuable rather than the wait another hundred years or four hundred years until all these people built themselves proper of theaters are fine art centers which by the way are being built in a number of places and so that we'd all get new well people aren't of one kind or another critical in the very large cities and some of them i really magnificent they do build them on terms that are suitable phone grandma prayed yeah yeah so i would say that that maybe by now there are thirty five or forty communities that means not more than ten percent of those in which we play fewer than ten percent which have adequate facilities many of them

building cultural centers on i know will build small theaters i can think of one where i myself was once employed in flint michigan when they built the new college and a very nice every plant but it was a little theater was very suitable for the college drama production hats but you would've had a great deal of difficulty in mounting anything other than an off his telephone in that family wouldn't even be permitted to play there because the people who engaged the play and would require an audience of at least fifteen hundred to two thousand people and he says small theaters for good drama department of the college's unusually seat between two hundred and four hundred to listeners as though that would be completely useless for very good for recycled but it doesn't much use for that and this is the interesting thing and i've noticed that the spacesuits as such do exist particularly in the form of a gymnasium or a basketball court and these bases are interestingly enough acquisti really silent because our boxes static wrangler boxes and we know that the

rectangular box is a good acoustical shape also their ceilings are not too high and most of the really bad acoustics come from seedlings which are too high but the gymnasiums have pretty good feelings can you give me a rough figure of what is too high yes i can do that i think anything that is or where a forty foot hockey as it creates a disturbance i'm lauren and julie the seatings of the kind that the philharmonic hall here ahead this was in my opinion the main reason for the war was dixon and find the last summer you know they spend an additional x million dollars in putting in a straight and lore ceiling and that improved greatly obviously we wouldn't have here is true asking if you didn't have some solution to suggest that that's probably true for the city as well about the small all university college theater and not large enough or offer about but also have a field house the gymnasium agricultural exposition holland

well i finally decided that if one quote provide a portable stage that would have certain characteristics mean that could be erected rapidly that means and the day of the performance of one more win maybe at seven or eight o'clock in the morning and by six o'clock that afternoon will have a platform and that are seniors with a beautiful court would would masterpieces with a great but behind the curtain which one which one would hang like licensing any drapes and put up scenery and the havoc with the rumination and also possibly hang up with a political ceiling right there behind the curtain and that would provide a good looking stage a large enough stage with a high enough for senior opening which would then service about fifteen hundred thousand people and this stage could be dismantled the same night so that the people who used a basketball court or whatever it is without sacrifice more than one day one twenty four hour period that i think would be the proper solution and out

of this meeting with some engineering friends of mine we funded developed just such a stretch there have been other portable or at least set up a knockdown stages before i know there have been what have the particular advantages of the one well there were two about two stages in existence some of them are much too small for the sports that means the hapless he will preserve maybe twelve feet as against twenty and there they simply don't have all the needed their air facilities for hanging lights and four hanging seem to get something going for a string quartet says actually that's it and then i've heard about some that were so elaborate that they cost about half a million dollars and with daycare several days maybe to erect them and some of them are very good ones and very expensive ones have been used in the open air this is a purely indoor proposition my feeling was that if unquote design something that would be a relatively inexpensive that means in the category of maybe fifty to sixty thousand dollars that would be

gone portable and one truck and could be dismantled rapidly and good either remain on the drugs that would be used in various places in the same couch in the same region or would be rated east toward in a very small open area at that this is what people would want would want it would need how large a crude business record was set up and say well our spirits to show that people who know how to do and said about in about ten hours i know how to do it you know like all these are actors said bad things with with some other aluminum parts which have to be very carefully put together if you know how to do it if you just go across a gritty it can be done very right but if you don't enforce it can take forever so the idea is that somebody who has been trying to know how to do it would train a group of local people called simply not operative and obviously you're suggesting this as something other than a solution for your own

touring problem where you could have a couple of ease and send them on trucks ahead of you that's not your a memo it has to provide something for all the communities and read and i'd like to come to many communities that have basically that have my opera company play in this equipment and have of course all kinds of other companies ballet companies and so when your kisses and musical comedies and whatnot they're also play in this equipment what size stage is that winning is about forty feet forty beds flexible and this is the important part of the stage it can be made wider and narrow ad can be made cheaper and shallow it can be made higher and laura because these are all modular units by omitting and adding a few units or you can adjust it so that the arts council the forces would like the ornate and give it out to the various areas i would not worry about the fact that that this area has a little

wider our own narrow were arranged on another one and these things are very regular just can you give me the minimum force base that you need in order build a set this up winning and you at the door yes or well you know you would've force base there is not so much a question of where the stage is it with the audience but i would say that the normal a basketball court nichol it was just about the right place for it unfortunately this is the most commonly found area in the entire country every place we went as such equipment this seems to me to offer a solution to the problem of theatrical inefficiency of them i put it that way where a community will have a need in its own regular ongoing local activities with some kind of stage setting three or four dozen times a year the local school commencement inauguration of a mayor at sabra and it's a very expensive

proposition to build of an auditorium that sits idle most of the time i don't know construction costs his business owner is true even of high school victoria yeah they're really an abuse that often and instead of spending millions of dollars on building a school auditorium and it would be so much better i think if the occupants were given the opportunity of using this money for school rules that would be off when can use use and then use another aereo which is continually use all occasionally for the same purpose for which a school auditorium is used today ivory which route is a question of oral efficiency in using money and buildings something i think it's of particular interest to architects and other planners today were trying to my ten dollars go as far as possible and get the best use of them does this stay engineers have a state built into it that you play on the floor of the basketball court more normal you what is platform inside a specially

designed platform goes inside one can use existing platforms but since most hospitable quartz and gymnasiums of course have only a floor there is a platform that is specially designed to go inside of it and which is well enough constructed so that people can dance and that as well as just as important political sidelines elevations necessary was also didn't have to get if it's a musical production you get to get the stationary above the heads of the orchestra so according to guess the three foot high does essential little rusty does this portable stage of years have a name of a commercial kind of miami one can refer to it by yes i will whittle the golden globe lost the portable stage or that makes it very easy for them or is there going to be an opportunity sometime in the near future for people to see this demonstration that that was severed were planning a demonstration on the eleventh of march arrive here in new york city on five thousand and sixty six treaty there is a seventh regiment

armory at which is an area at which is completely useless for musical purpose but and what i think serve as a very good demonstration it'll be at nine o'clock in the evening and i hope to put all kinds of musical things in two weeks short on operatic scene would work our own ensemble playmate and of course particular to demonstrate to people how one disassembled sifton the symbolism isn't nine o'clock what happens in my mind this time the state police and the stage is set up and first we'll have some music it's not so much just they deserve the various kind with the orchestra sitting and so to speak and the position and singers on the stage and then possibly some music right on the stage itself and then we would show the special design with which forces the great remorse and how one that touches flights do with it and how the curtains work and how the mosque in pieces work and all these technical things which would show people just exactly how a portable stage it operates can anyone

come anybody was interested should drop a note to me at carnegie hall in new york and they will be met and would it be possible for individuals interested in political point of you can get into the armory ahead of nine o'clock to see the whole school or you would like to see how does a record should also let me nor the carnegie hall building in new york and will be very happy to get them very deadpan and see the whole operation of how the thing is a record from eight was the orbit which they afterwards and see how it is disassembled or build one last question asking how soon will the production of this be possible so that if i were planning the way you lead here out in the midwest would i be able to get one time right yes so we have the manufacturer heuser quick to build them and i think that they have something like that three months period between ordering and delivering which reasonable bet movie during the size of the enterprise so that it is possible to get one relatively rapidly

i will say with another year and hopefully will be enough orders over to assume it will be in production or less continuously it's also thank you very much mr gillespie for exploring this conversation with me about the goal must be portable stage