Infinidome

Extract

“Since Gordon Craig, every artist of the theatre has tried every way conceivable to bridge the gap between audience and stage,” wrote Blanding Sloan, artist, scene designer, and Eastern Regional Director of the Federal Theatre Project, in 1939. “The Infinidome is the answer, and makes possible the ultimate in theatre production and creation.” It was to be, as he put it, “the last word in modern theatre design, and the first step toward the theatre of the future.”

From the beginning of Sloan's career, a radical approach to design was an integral part of his work. In an article in Theatre Arts in 1918, a critic wrote that Sloan's sets revealed “a structural sculpturesque sense of the play of light and the third dimension. Like the other stage artists to whom the unities of the drama are something felt, and not a merchant phrase, Mr. Sloan has searched in vain for a definition, a word, that will explain rationally and coldly what he can consummate irrationally and artistically.