Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2018 - 22

Irene Worth onstage in 1953. Photo by Peter Smith, courtesy of Stratford Festival Archives.

he only thing a rural Canadian
community of 19,000 had in
connection with William Shakespeare in the early 1950s was the
name of his hometown. Stratford, Ontario, 90 miles west of Toronto, seemed an
unlikely place to become a major force in
staging the Bard's plays. When a railroad
company closed up shop, local journalist
Tom Patterson took on the task of reinventing Stratford as a celebrated center
for seasonal theatre. Not only did the
town become that cultural center, but the
Stratford Festival Theatre introduced an
innovative thrust stage design adapted
from the three-sided Elizabethan stage

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

WINTER 2018

combined with the Greek amphitheatre,
wherein the sloping auditorium surrounds the stage. Setting new standards
for all kinds of performance, Stratford
established a leadership role with an
influence that continues to resonate 65
years later.
Stratford has become one of the
most significant performing arts organizations in Canada, and its influence
stretches around the world. The innovative concept and design of the Festival Theatre has been developed and
replicated in many countries around
the world, including the UK, Germany,
Japan, Italy, and the United States. Most

recently, Studio Andrew Todd's Globe-inspired Elizabethan theatre opened near
Calais (Gibson 2016).
The zeitgeist supported this bold
post-war vision. Legendary British theatre director Tyrone Guthrie, intrigued
by the idea of Stratford launching a festival, became more so when Patterson
told him there was no venue as yet in
which to perform. "Guthrie had been experimenting with thrust-like staging and
saw the opportunity to custom build the
kind of theatre he wanted," says David
Prosser, communications director for the
Stratford Festival. Guthrie had staged a
landmark production of a morality play
in 1948 at the second Edinburgh International Festival. The venue was essentially found space-Edinburgh's General
Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland
on the Mound-where Guthrie placed
rows of seats on three sides of an apron
stage-an imaginative and unique configuration.
In October 1952, the Stratford
Festival was incorporated and Guthrie
became its first artistic director, recruiting stars Sir Alec Guinness and Irene
Worth, as well as actors from across
Canada for the first season the following
summer. The venue would consist of a
concrete amphitheatre beneath a large
canvas tent; the architect who created
this design solution was recommended
by an acquaintance of Guthrie, had no
theatre design experience, and had only
six months to realize the structure.
But it was the stage-designed with
Tanya Moiseiwitsch, whom Guthrie recruited from the United Kingdom-that
would revolutionize the production and
theatrical experience of Shakespeare's
plays and many other dramatic forms in
the decades that followed. Moiseiwitsch's
pioneering role in 20th century theatre
included hundreds of set and costume
designs for acclaimed productions, in addition to subsequent thrust stage designs
after Stratford, among them the Crucible
Theatre in Sheffield, England.
"This was an original invention, not
a reproduction of an Elizabethan stage,"
says Prosser. "It had influences of Greek
and Roman theatres. The thrust was
hexagonal, not a projecting square that
we often associate with Shakespeare
and was reproduced at Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre in London." Stratford's
original (1953-57) protruding stage con-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2018