Fun

Last week the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan put on exhibition the results of an interesting challenge. The challenge was made to architects last autumn and its terms were substantially these: let's see you design an intelligent theatre, if possible. The challenger was a hopeful organization entitled the American Na tional Theatre and Academy, whose advisory board includes such theatre folk as Katharine Cornell, Maxwell Anderson, the Lunts, Lee Simonson, Robert Edmond Jones. Because these people believe that future health and expansion for the U. S. theatre lies in the hinterland rather than in hectic Manhattan, the site pro posed for their festival theatre was on the campus of William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va. First prize, $1,000.

Most U. S. theatres are either obsolete or stupid. Famed in the profession is the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia, where the builder forgot dressing rooms. Another building had consequently to be bought on the next street, to which actors could commute by tunnel. First-rate modern architects have usually done business with individuals who want sensible homes or with industrialists who want sensible factories. Broadway has been no place for them.

From more than 100 designs submitted for William and Mary's hypothetical theatre, the judges unanimously chose that of three very young men: Ralph Rapson, 22, Frederic James, 23, and Erro Saarinen, 28, of Cranbrook Academy, Michigan. Their theatre was planned to rest on the sloping bank of a small lake, with a minimum of excavation--a balanced set of simple building-masses rimmed by open terraces. The interior gracefully conformed to requirements with: 1) a stage adaptable to every kind of entertainment, 2) ample dressing and property rooms, 3) wide aisles and plenty of leg room, 4) full visibility and sound acoustics, 5) an art gallery in the lobby for leg-and-neck-stretching between acts.

Last week Senior Partner Erro Saarinen, broad-shouldered, impish son of Cranbrook's famed, apple-cheeked Finnish Architect Eliel Saarinen, was elated but slightly old-hand about the victory. Five years ago he won third place in an architectural competition in Helsingfors," last summer won a fifth in the Wheaton College free-for-all (TIME, June 13). A few weeks before the deadline this year, he confided, "I went skiing up at Quebec, and to hell with it." He got back in time to help Friends James and Rapson get their entry in just under the wire, because "competitions are so much fun."

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