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[[left margin]] [1946] [[/left margin]]

Frank Lloyd Wright Turns To Theater

NEW YORK, Nov. 19 (U.P)- Frank Lloyd Wright, the self-styled Messiah of modern architecture, announced today he has designed a new theater so radical that the audience will be able to see and hear the actors. 

Wright, 79, famed for his earthquake-proof Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and a house built over a stream, said he drew up the plans to help the legitimate theater meet the technical advances of the movies. 

He unveiled plans for his theater, which will be built at Hartford, Conn., before a gathering of leading Broadway figures, including Actress Helen Hayes and Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse, who set theatrical records with their "Life with Father."

The theater will have no balcony, no proscenium arch, no long waits between scenes and no stage hands. It will be octagonal in shape, seat 750 persons and have no ornaments inside or out. Audiences will enter and leave by ramps. And the floor will be steeply shaped so that even the tallest member of the audience will not block anyone's view. There will be no posts.

The stage will be round, jutting out into the audience. The curtain, made of plastic, will encircle the stage. All scenery will be kept under the stage, and two men pushing buttons will be able to change the scenery in seconds.

Wright has provided for "intimate" lighting effects which will make the audience feel like it is playing a part in the play, he said, and the acoustics will be perfect, the drop of a pin will be heard in the last row.

Wright designed the theater for a pair of young producers, Paton [[text cut off]] and Morgan O'Brien James. [[text cut off]] built in 1949 at a cost of [[text cut off]] tely [[approximately]] $100,000. Wright will [[text cut off]],000 for the design

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