KNOWLEDGE of visual and optical perspective has been applied to the design and operation of theatres and amphitheatres, plus in artworks/scenography, since the ancient Greeks.
Theatrical Perspective
Indeed, these fields are all related in that they involve an interplay of natural or environmental perspective and visual perspective (2nd type).
Greek optical theory asserted that visual angles govern apparent size (ref. image on spherical retina). This theory, when applied to their practice of representation in the theatre or a realistic painting, has two solutions: either to represent (or build) objects that are smaller when higher up (changing apparent scale space), or to make a higher object be larger in order that it appear the same size (identical apparent scale space). These are pseudo-perspectival methods variously termed negative perspective, optical adjustments, or visual angles methods.
However, in most cases, the depth represented involves only a few feet, indicating that the Greeks preferred to avoid deep spaces. Hence, the perspectival scenes serve to close spaces rather than to open them as with linear perspective during the Renaissance.And neither do any of the parallel lines converge to a single point. In the rare cases where most lines observe this rule, the rest still converge to other points along an axis.
Once again, this suggests that Greek scene painting (and painted theatre backdrops) involved a pseudo-perspectival method variously known as axial, vanishing vertical axis or fish-bone perspective. Ergo, the central axis that historian Vitruvius mentions refers to an axis running through the central point of a Greek theatre, used to accommodate the optical size distortion caused by different heights of viewers seated higher up in the auditorium.
Perspective, Represnetation and Spatial Trickery
In the fifteenth century, Brunelleschi’s perspectival interests in representation and spatial reconstructions for theatrical plays are likely related. By the sixteenth century, these connections evolved greatly with Buontalenti’s painted backdrops at the amphitheatre, which linked to the Pitti palace in one direction and the Boboli gardens in another. And so we see close links between linear perspective and theatrical perspective or panoramic and ‘banked theatres’ or semi-circular stadiums/amphitheatre’s.
Perspectival trickery linked the palace, theatre, and countryside (as practical perspective methods), as well as the amphitheatre, and thus literally played on distinctions between interior and exterior, extending artworks directly into nature. Here we have evidence of a combined, blended, or double/triple perspective.
Ancient stage settings also sometimes featured impossible images or juxtaposed buildings that could not exist in real architecture. By contrast, Renaissance stage sets were interplays between fiction and reality. Sometimes we see the use of blended or double-scene perspective to provide unified views, using false scenography that allows for realistic but accelerated perspectival paths/roads leading off into the distance.
Modern Theatres
One important development is in the field of panoramas, sometimes using circular perspective, has been documented in a book by Oettermann (1979). This principle was adapted to the world of cinema by Disney in their Circle-Vision 360-degree theatre (1955) and developed independently by the founders of IMAX for the World Fair in Montreal (1967), the latter being a form of partially multi-directional curvilinear/spherical perspective (curvilinear wide-angle image capture and internally projected image spherical display).
In modern times, 360-degree views have become popular, and the best-known examples are IMAX and the Las Vegas Sphere Theatres, which encompass a large portion of a sphere. The Sphere Theatre is a spectacular dome spherical theatre (in Las Vegas) that is 516 feet in diameter with a 16 K resolution LED screen on the internal surface of the sphere allowing images to be displayed for the audience of 18,000 people. The eternal sphere also operates as a spherical display LED screen.
If we are talking about live shows, it has become common to combine different perspectives to enhance the spectacle in numerous ways. In particular, the use of mixed imaging/projection perspective, achieved through special arrangements of scenery to provide a particular scene or vista, plus projection perspective with lights, spotlights, and lasers, is common; ergo, we have a mixed perspective employed here.
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