Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 9, No. 11. August 21, 1946

No Man's Land

Student Assoc. Theatre

Dear Sir,—

Mr. Eiby, in his report of the Lili Kraus recital, suggested that the theatre in the new Stud. Ass. building should seat a thousand.

Readers will have noted that the proposals approved by the Stud. Ass. in general meeting provide for a theatre to seat 500-600. That number was fixed on for several reasons which I regard as important.

(1)	To provide a hall capable of seating every student would mean eclipsing the Town Hall and the Majestic, which is clearly absurd.
(2)	We can confidently expect that there will one day be a College Hall.
(3)	The day of the big theatre has long since passed. Every theatre built in Wellington during the last twelve years or more has provided for a maximum capacity of 800-850, reflecting the world-wide policy to build intimate theatres. No theatre above this size can give to its patrons adequate seating sight-lines and audibility.
(4)	The ground floor space will be limited in width by the site, and in depth from the stage, which is the practical limit for adequate seating. This means that if our hall were made to seat a thousand it would be necessary to have two galleries and those in the top gallery would be too far away and at too acute an angle to the stage to see or hear properly.
(5)	If we can build a theatre that will be adequate for all but two or three functions a year, we shall have succeeded. It would be uneconomic, wasteful, and would result in an inferior theatre if we tried to stretch seating capacity to provide for peak numbers.
(6)	Finally, I am convinced, that our gymnasium should be in a separate building where the noise and commotion involved could not interfere with social and cultural activities.

I have listed my reasons because I feel it is important for all students to keep clearly in mind what our aim is and where our limitations will lie.

R. M. Daniell

Our Cathedral

Dear Sir,—

In reply to the letters published lately in "Salient" about the Cathedral, I should like to say that the main objection to building it is not, I think, the shortage of building materials and labour. Those problems will be fairly well solved by the time the Cathedral is started, I think. The reason I am against building this Cathedral is that I do not think it is a religious action, but a society gesture. I do not think the Anglicans are building to the glory of God so much as to have a grand building in which society marriages, etc., can be held, and in which, while the sincere can pray, the less devout can hold their dress parades, watch the Governor when he comes in, etc., in more fittingly grand circumstances than they can at St Paul's. One reason I say this is that in "the general plea for money, and especially in the advertisements for the Cathedral, the stress is on a Cathedral for Wellington the Capital City, not on a building in which to worship God. Another reason is that they are collecting money, not from people who believe that a church is needed, so much as from people who are importuned into giving, and even more, from firms who found a good opportunity to advertise in the newspaper columns which listed which firms had given, and how much they had given. That St. Paul's is old and needs rebuilding is obvious, but in this large, imposing, expensive edifice the glory of material wealth seems again to be taking the place of the glory of religion, as it did in the church of earlier days, leading to corruption and splitting; and striving for show and splendour seems once more to be entering into a religion that preaches against excess wealth, and against formalism. Perhaps It is not too late for the Church of England to reconsider its plans, arid build something less pretentious, less important socially, and more important religiously.

—C.