An actors' story often repeated at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon was that addressing the back rows from the stage was like standing on the cliffs of Dover and addressing Calais.
The original, 1932 Art Deco theater was designed at the height of golden age of cinema. The design was influenced by the huge movie palaces of the day. And the cheap seats used to be pretty far away. Not any more.
One thing visitors will notice as soon as they arrive - even before the thrust stage and the entrance aisles between the seats makes much of an impact - is how close they are to the stage. Four hundred seats have been removed to create an intimate space for an audience of 1,000. In the new auditorium, no one is more than 15 meters from the stage. That's less than 50 feet.
The audience and actors can see each other, hear each other, play off each other. The design may incorporate the latest scenic and acoustic technology. But in style and spirit it's a return to the kind of theater Shakespeare would have been happy with more than 400 years ago.
