Vomitorium
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A vomitorium (plural: vomitoria) is a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre, through which crowds can "spew out" at the end of a performance.
Despite their association with Ancient Rome, vomitoria are still found in some theatres, and many sports stadiums. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for instance, has vomitoria in two of its theatres, the outdoor Elizabethan Stage and the Angus Bowmer Theatre. The voms, as they are called, allow actors to mount the stage from halls cut into the amphitheatre. The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota has two permanent voms, one at stage left and one at stage right, of its thrust stage. The Circle in the Square Theatre, designed to reflect the theatres of ancient Greece and Rome, is the only Broadway theatre that has a vomitorium. The Vomitorium is still used in many of their productions as an entrance and exit for the actors.
The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone in London designed by Edward Mendelsohn in the 1960s, is one of the very few purpose built theatres in the round in London and features four voms as corner entrances between four banks of raked seating arranged in a square.
In addition the Mark Taper Forum, one of the three theatres making up the Los Angeles Music Center, has two vomitoria. It has a strong thrust stage such that the audience sit in an amphitheatre type array.
[edit] Mistaken belief
A commonly held, but false, belief is that Ancient Romans designated spaces called vomitoria for the purpose of actual vomiting, as part of a binge and purge cycle.[1][2][3] While Romans did practice vomiting after meals, the conflation of vomitorium with actual vomiting is a recent invention.[4]
