The Small Room
Three Perspectives on Intimacy in the Theater
The Princess Theatre had 299 seats. The Hippodrome had 5,000. Both were Broadway houses. Both opened in the same era. Both put performers on a stage and asked an audience to believe in them. The difference was everything.
I wrote for the Princess. Murray directed the Hippodrome. Raoul dressed them both. Between the three of us, we have worked in every size room the American theater has to offer, from nightclub floors the size of a dining table to stages large enough to accommodate a live elephant — and on one memorable occasion, the elephant actually appeared.
We recently asked ourselves the same question from three different chairs: what does intimacy mean in a theater, and how do you create it?
The answers were different. They were also, in the way that matters, the same.
The Director's Chair
Murray Anderson directed twenty-four shows at the Diamond Horseshoe — a nightclub in the basement of the Hotel Paramount where the stage was approximately the size of a generous cocktail napkin. He also directed Jumbo at the Hippodrome, which featured Jimmy Durante and a real elephant named Big Rosie, and which played to five thousand people a night.
The elephant, Murray says, was easier.
"At the Hippodrome, scale does the work. The audience is far away. They see the SHAPE of the show — the silhouette, the colour, the mass of bodies. Spectacle forgives a multitude of sins because the audience is too overwhelmed to notice them."
"At the Diamond Horseshoe, scale works AGAINST you. The audience is close. They see your eyes. They see the moment you lose focus. They see the performer thinking about the next number instead of being inside this one. You can't hide behind a set because there isn't one. You can't hide behind choreography because the stage is the size of a dining table. You can't hide behind ANYTHING."
His conclusion is the sharpest thing I've heard about directing in fifty years of listening to directors: "The big room lets you get away with brilliance. The small room demands honesty. And honesty is rarer than brilliance."
How, then, does a director create intimacy in a large house? Murray's answer is not about the room at all. It is about the performer.
"You make the PERFORMER feel small. Not diminished — intimate. You tell the actor: don't play to the back row. Play to the person sitting three feet from you. Forget the balcony exists. The balcony will lean in if you give them something worth leaning into."
He told Eartha Kitt this when he put her in New Faces of 1952 at the Royale Theatre — 1,058 seats, after she'd spent her career in nightclubs. Don't change what you do. Do what you've always done. The room will come to you.
The Designer's Chair
Raoul Pène du Bois designed for the Ziegfeld — the biggest, the grandest, the most spectacular house on Broadway. He also designed for revivals in intimate theaters where the front row could count the buttons on a waistcoat.
The difference, he says, is between silhouette and texture.
"At the Ziegfeld, I designed for silhouette — the shape read from the back of the balcony and the detail didn't matter. At a 299-seat house like the Princess, I designed for TEXTURE. The weave of the fabric, the weight of the button, the way a lapel sits on a shoulder. The front row sees everything, so everything must be intentional. You can't fake it at close range."
His answer to the question of scale is the most elegant formulation I have encountered: "You don't shrink the room. You shrink the distance between the performer and the audience. That's design at every scale."
The method is specific: bring the action downstage, close to the audience. Use warm colours that draw the eye in rather than cold colours that push it away. Use one chair instead of a set. A pool of light instead of a wash. Small props. Real objects. Let the detail do the work that spectacle does in a larger house.
"The audience forgets the empty space because you've given them something intimate to focus on."
This is not minimalism for its own sake. It is a deliberate choice to make the audience feel that they are close to something true — close enough to see the wear on a tuba that has been played for fifty years, close enough to notice that the piano upstage has been there the whole time, waiting in shadow for the light to find it.
The Writer's Chair
I wrote for the Princess Theatre from 1915 to 1918 — the shows with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern that the critics later called the beginning of the modern American musical. We didn't know we were beginning anything. We were trying to write books that worked in a room where the audience could hear every word and see every expression, and where a weak scene had nowhere to hide.
The Princess taught me that dialogue in a musical is not a bridge between songs. It is the pressure that makes the songs detonate. And pressure requires proximity. The audience must be close enough — emotionally, if not physically — to feel the tension in the room. If they are at a distance, watching spectacle, the tension dissipates. If they are close, watching people, the tension builds until only music can release it.
Every line I wrote for the Princess was written for the front row. Short sentences. Quick exchanges. Real emotion underneath the comedy. If the woman three feet away didn't believe the scene, the joke wouldn't land, and if the joke didn't land, the song that followed would have nothing to push off from.
This is the bookwriter's version of Murray's principle: don't write for the back row. Write for the person close enough to know when you're faking it. The back row will follow, because truth carries further than projection.
The funniest line in a musical is always the one that comes right after the saddest song. That line only works if the audience has been held at close emotional range — intimate enough to feel the sadness, intimate enough to need the relief. You cannot achieve that effect at a distance. Comedy requires proximity. Tragedy can fill a stadium. Comedy needs a room.
What We Agree On
Three chairs. Three crafts. Three different answers that arrive at the same place:
Murray: "The big room lets you get away with brilliance. The small room demands honesty."
Raoul: "You don't shrink the room. You shrink the distance between the performer and the audience."
Plum: Write for the woman in the front row. She can tell when you're faking it.
The small room is not a limitation. It is a standard. It is the room where every choice must be intentional, every detail must be true, every performer must be present. The large room can learn from the small room — can borrow its honesty, its intimacy, its insistence on truth over spectacle. The small room has nothing to learn from the large.
Build the show for the small room. If the work is honest, the room will expand to meet it. The balcony will lean in. The back row will follow. The elephant, if there is one, will know its place.
P.G. Wodehouse wrote for the Princess Theatre (299 seats). John Murray Anderson directed the Hippodrome (5,000 seats) and the Diamond Horseshoe (approximately 12 cocktail napkins). Raoul Pène du Bois designed for all of them and looked magnificent doing it.