38 WHERE DO YOU STAND The Theater in the City—An Architectural Mirror Game in Sabbioneta ANN MARIE BORYS University of Washington Through their instruments the sphere of representa- in northern Italy, is well-known as the first build- tion exploded. Its fragments resonate in every future ing to be constructed as a permanent theater since media apparatus…through their instruments a fragile imaginary was brought to light, through their instru- antiquity. Kurt W. Forster’s seminal interpretation of ments time, sound, reflex, could be seen, through the project focuses on its role in the development their instruments the world was no longer a paltry of theater design1 as a distinctive social and spatial given, it was a moving target, a dynamic presence, it type, and he articulates its political and rhetorical was, to put it bluntly, alive. - Timothy Druckery, Foreword, Deep Time of the message in terms of a symbolically potent location Media and iconographic program. Hermans and Mazzoni2 update and extend these readings so that we can The technologies of the performance space that now fully appreciate the dramatic intentions of its accelerate the drama of viewing a representation patron, Duke Vespasiano Gonzaga—making the vis- of our world give us access to how architecture can ible gift of a theater to his city just as the Emperor engage in urban performance. History can show Vespasian, his mythic predecessor, had bequeathed us how such technologies have been adopted and the Colosseum on the Roman population. In so do- adapted to architecture more generally, and may ing, both rulers are giving a to the city what had help us in framing the question of architecture and heretofore been privately held by the ruling class. performance in the city today. Nowadays, the screen is a potent site of performance, and its technology and Vicenza’s Teatro Olimpico, completed about five limitations form an important design consideration years before Sabbioneta, was also intended to be for more than just theaters; screens are already part permanent, but it shared with the temporary the- of the life of the street. The geometries of ancient atrical spaces of the cinquecento the restrictions performance space were key to how the audience of using an existing building. Therefore, the mass- could view and hear the performance, and theater ing and façades at Sabbioneta carry special sig- form and geometry in turn impacted the social spaces nificance: the duke’s theater is the first to declare of the ancient city. In the Renaissance, perspective through its form and character an intentional re- projection was developed first in the city, and then lationship to the street and the city. Architect Vin- adopted for use in performance space. The aim of cenzo Scamozzi declines the opportunity to directly this paper is to show how the theater at Sabbioneta, connect this theater to antiquity with a curvilinear built at the end of the Renaissance, is a performance form and the well-rehearsed scheme of stacked space that engages the urban context by optimizing orders. Instead, he invents a proper character for the technology of perspective projection in new the theater in the city according to his own under- ways, a building that performs as a camera obscura standing. Equally innovative is his design for the at the heart of the city. performance space inside, a unification of the il- lusory space of the perspectival stage set with the The ducal theater at Sabbioneta, a small new town architectural elements defining the cavea. He not located about halfway between Parma and Mantua only eliminates the screen-like stage front of the THE THEATER IN THE CITY 39 geographically and temporally proximate Teatro the urban piazza were at the heart of the Renais- Olimpico, a feature inspired by antiquity, he also sance development of the theater. Public perfor- eliminates the framing device of the Serlian tradi- mances mark holidays and significant occasions, tion that was more clearly his model. I propose that entailing elaborate ephemeral architectural set- these original design ideas for exterior and interior tings that temporarily transform the city. Howev- are linked, and that they serve some of Scamozzi’s er, the city is always still perceptible: “ephemeral most fundamental intentions regarding architec- architecture derives its power to impose an imag- ture: the understanding of architecture as a sci- ined place and moment upon a merely given one, ence, and the primacy of the city as a “fundamental from the fact that it is incomplete and is seen to be task of the architect.”3 so.”9 The architects that we connect with famous cinquecento theater designs, including both Serlio Scamozzi’s deep investigation into the nature of and Scamozzi, were also festival architects for their the city is apparent in the second book of his trea- princely patrons. They experience for themselves tise, L’Idea dell’Architettura Universale,4 devoted the power of ephemeral performance structures to to historical determinants of city location and form, transform the city through a reordering of percep- the environmental factors of water, air, light, and tions of space and also of time10 within a simultane- wind, and the cultural factors, such as population ous awareness of the illusory and the real. size, relationship to other cities, and defenses. He clearly designates the architect as the one respon- Festival books provide a record of this temporary ar- sible for using this body of knowledge to determine chitecture that would otherwise be lost to history. the advantageous location and the best design for Classical architectural forms enhanced the illusion of cities.5 While Vitruvius and Alberti clearly share timelessness and co-opted the myth of Roman lon- this conviction, 16th century treatises had large- gevity. The triumphal arch in particular was an ele- ly ignored the question of the city. The theoreti- ment suited to festival architecture.11 It was relative- cal stance that emerges from Scamozzi’s lengthy ly easy to adopt and adapt since it was not a building treatment is most remarkable because he moves with functional associations. As a composition, the beyond static descriptions of building types and hi- triumphal arch was flexible in scale, and its elements erarchies typical of Renaissance categories, seeing could be combined in unconventional ways without in the city a what Françoise Choay calls “a dynamic disrupting the overall figure. Triumphal arches easily field of desires, the power of invention, and the accommodated sculptural relief to specify the festi- creativity of humankind,”6 in short, a place of dra- val’s commemorative purposes, a pictorial narrative ma in the conduct of human affairs. to amplify the significance of the event for a broad audience. Furthermore, the use of the arch created Also fundamental to his definition is the firm belief associations with medieval street festivals that were that architecture is a science with a rational basis.7 staged or commenced at city gates, many of which Mathematics and mechanics are the means for dis- were formally related to the triumphal arch. covering the truth of things. When these theories are applied within his persistent analogical mode of While Renaissance theater tradition evolves from finding unity and synthesis8 at multiple scales, we the street festival as a primary source, there are can see the theater at Sabbioneta as a metaphori- of course distinctions to be drawn. “Festival ar- cal camera obscura, an instrument for looking and chitects harness the world to their purposes when for reproducing a perfect perspectival image of its they impose their architecture upon the space of setting. If not exactly a mise-en-abîme, certainly daily life; theatre architects project the world upon, the suggestion of one: a self-same representation or telescope it into, their stages and sets.”12 Thus of an ideal city within an ideal city, but one that also as the development of a theater tradition within projects the world of the stage back onto the street. the princely courts progresses, interest develops in a stage that could surpass the open loggia and FROM FESTIVAL SPACE TO THEATER SPACE: painted scenery as a backdrop. While many the- THE INVERSION OF ILLUSION atrical forms persist, the revival of ancient come- dic and tragic forms becomes an important focus Theater and festivals were an integral part of Re- among humanist patrons and academies.13 These naissance street life and, in turn, the street and are studied in the ancient texts, through the the- 40 WHERE DO YOU STAND ory and commentary of the ancient writers, and Bramante first takes this step by blending real and through acts of imitation as Renaissance scholars illusory space to solve the problem of site restric- write new plays in the ancient forms. As described tions in his design for Santa Maria presso San Sat- by Serlio, a dense assembly of appropriate build- iro: a constructed illusion visually transforms a T- ings forming a street or square is the proper setting shaped church into an ideal Greek cross. Though for these performances.14 The same architects who the illusion works, its efficacy is restricted by the transform urban space with ephemeral and fantas- particularity of the point of view. Bramante later tic forms for festivals are required to precisely in- uses “point of view” to advantage in the creation vert their creative vision to develop the stage set of a private theatrical space at an urban scale, the as a view in a city in order to “affirm the world of cortile of the Belvedere. Here the whole multi-level the set as reality, or the theater as the world.”15 The expanse is tuned to the visual angle of the pope in goal now is to make illusory space seem real, and his apartment above, a refinement that will later be the primary means to do so, perspective.