LESSON 37 
OuTpooR THEATER 
HIS exercise will give the pupil an opportunity 
to learn something of the design and use of outdoor 
theaters. Such open-air auditoriums are made 
in a great variety of styles, in all sizes, and are 
used for innumerable purposes, such as giving 
) plays, pageantry, music, religious meetings, pub- 
lic speaking, movies, vaudeville, etc., etc. 
Discussion 
The simplest outdoor theater is found where the boy scouts sit 
round in a circle while the scout master stands in the center to ad- 
dress them. From this point upward the idea may be elaborated 
to any extent, some of the notable examples being the college stadi- 
ums, like the Yale “‘Bowl,”’ which has been used for music and 
pageantry as well as for great spectacles of football; the beautiful 
high school ‘‘Bowl’” in Tacoma, Washington, and the famous 
“Greek”? theater at the University of California. 
Outdoor meetings are very common in all parts of the country, 
but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred these are held in improvised 
surroundings — a few planks laid across boxes under the trees with 
a bigger box to serve as a rostrum for the speaker. Now the proper 
procedure in landscape gardening is to provide comfortable and 
beautiful surroundings to meet the needs of these gatherings rather 
than to build some elaborate theater and afterward try to invent a 
use for it. Of course a theater once built, if it is suitable and ap- 
pealing, will create new demands. There will be more outdoor 
concerts, more open-air church services, more grange picnics, more 
neighborhood reunions. 
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