Stratford Festival Research Articles

In the Ring

In the Ring translated by Robert Dickson was first performed in the Tom Patterson Theatre of the Stratford Festival from 22 June to 13 August 1994.

Wolfville Doing It Right: Bawtree’s Atlantic Theatre Festival

Overlooking the Bay of Fundy, situated in the quaint university town of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, stands a steel-supported wooden ‘O’, a proposed 514-seat skating-rink-turned-theatre, soon-to-be home of the Atlantic Theatre Festival. The brainchild of Artistic Director Michael Bawtree and associates, ATF stands as proof positive that local initiative and grass-roots collaboration are the key to Canada’s cultural future. Other than local residents and area politicians, further contributors include some of Canada’s finest theatrical talent: Christopher Plummer is ATF’s Honourary Fundraising Chairman; Michael Shamata, recently-appointed Artistic Director for London’s Grand Theatre, offers ATF invaluable advice on the daily running of, and casting for, a repertory company; Stratford lighting designer Michael Whitfield provided ATF with their initial requirements for stage lighting. He continues to advise project architect Michael Harvey (Halifax), on the theatre’s structural design. Former Artistic Director of Canada’s Stratford Festival, Michael Langham, is the festival’s Associate Director. On 16 June, 1995, ATF will launch its inaugural season with Langham’s mise en scène of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Stratford Tribute to Nicholas Pennell

My dear friend Nicholas Pennell was a much loved Stratford Festival company member for 23 years. His dedication, talent and generosity were an inspiration to us all. To Nicholas the theatre was a vocation, and in a letter he wrote to the acting company, crew and stage management of the 1995 season, which I read aloud to them on the first day of rehearsals, February 20, he spoke of the redemptive power of art:

Review: Play: Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, 1994, Othello

Review: Play: Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, 1994, Othello

From Nationalist to Multinational: The Stratford Festival, Free Trade, and the Discourses of Intercultural Tourism

The Stratford Story, it is called,' particularly story of Festival's founding, has been told and retold in Canada, most often under auspices of Festival's official discourse, where it not surprisingly functions, like a kind of institutional autobiography, justification. According to this narrative, Festival's first opening night on July 13, 1953-which Herbert Whittaker, who has been called dean of Canadian theatre critics, called the most exciting night in history of Canadian theatre2--was a culmination in a long teleological process in nation and its theatre,3 an event as momentous for Canada founding of Old Vic was for England, or Abbey Theatre for Dublin.4 Full maturity was reached eleven

Theatre by Default: Sharon Pollock’s Garry Theatre

When her play Fair Liberty’s Call was in rehearsal at the Stratford Festival in July of 1993 Sharon Pollock casually announced over a drink in a local bar that she had started her own theatre in Calgary, the Garry. The small venue, only 236 seats, is run like a cooperative, she explained, receiving no public or corporate subsidies and, she added with a nervous laugh, it might just bankrupt her. My first reaction was one of astonishment. Why, I wondered, would a senior Canadian artist, a multiple award-winning, internationally respected playwright choose to embark on such a breathtaking but stressful theatrical venture during dire economic times that saw some theatres in the country close and most in retrenchment? There was no question that the enterprise was gutsy, but was it also foolish?

CyberShaw: A 19th-Century Mandate Meets 20th-century Technology

The Shaw Festival is unique among Canadian theatres, and virtually unique among world theatres as well. It is one of only five major repertory theatres in the English-speaking world: the others are the Stratford Festival, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and the twin flagships of British classical theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National. In addition, the Shaw Festival is the only one of these companies to have chosen a specific period of history as its mandate: it produces only plays written during the lifetime of Bernard Shaw. The company describes this mandate as “plays by Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries (1856-1950) – plays about the beginning of the modern world”.

Christopher Newton: Unsure But Incredibly True

Thirty years ago, in June 1964, a young actor stepped on to a make-shift stage upstairs in the Court House in Niagara-on-the-Lake to play a character auspiciously named “A” in Shaw’s Village Wooing. After a circuitous route through many of the regional theatres in Canada, he returned in 1980 as the Artistic Director destined to set the Shaw Festival on a productive new course. That young man was Christopher Newton, and his career to date spans three of the most interesting decades in Canadian theatre, touching many of the groups that have shaped what Canadian theatre is today — Canadian Players, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Stratford Festival, Theatre Calgary, Vancouver Playhouse. Looking at these thirty years in the life of one actor-director puts a personal face on the recent history of theatre in Canada; listening to his story, frequently told in his own words, we catch some of the great changes that Canadian Theatre Review has documented since 1974.

Remembrance of Things Past and Present

John Murrell is one of Canada’s most established and widely-produced playwrights. During his career he has worked as playwright-in-residence at Alberta Theatre Projects and Theatre Calgary, as an Associate Director of the Stratford Festival, Head of the Banff Playwrights Colony, and as Head of the Canada Council’s Theatre Section. His plays are frequently produced in Canada, the United States and Europe. They include Power in the Blood (winner of the Clifford E. Lee playwriting competition in 1975), A Great Noise, A Great Light, Waiting for the Parade, Memoir (which ran in Paris for three years), Farther West (Chalmers Award, 1986), New World, October, and Democracy. His most recent play, Far Away Nearby, premièred last April at the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska. His translations (including Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, The Master Builder, Oedipus Rex, Mandragola and Divorçons) have also been widely produced.

Coming Home

Long-term readers of CTR may remember John Juliani’s impassioned response to the appointment of Robin Phillips to the Stratford Festival. In our inaugural issue, CTR capped an interview with Phillips with a similar interview with Juliani, who announced his new position as artistic director of the Strazione National Theatre of Italy. Coincidentally, Juliani has returned home from his 20-year stint just as CTR celebrates its 20th birthday. We asked Vancouver CBC producer John Juliani to interview John Juliani on his return.

Review: Play: Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada 1993, Antony and Cleopatra

Review: Play: Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada 1993, Antony and Cleopatra

Shakespeare, 1993, and the Discourses of the Stratford Festival, Ontario

The perspicacity to read the idea in the performance, and the tact to sense if it is fully expressed and in what details, by what means, by what surprising line readings, by what unpredicted movements. What the critic must not do is accept or reject these movements, these line readings, on their own-as being traditional or the reverse, as being handsome or brilliant or the reverse. He [sic] must see them, feel them, as part of a pattern, the pattern that expresses (if all is well) the pervasive idea. I am restating what I have taken to be the two main principles of Stark Young's theatre criticism. In essence they are traditional, even perennial, nor are they unduly complex. Nonetheless they remain beyond the grasp of most dramatic critics, who seem incapable of the discipline required, and the intellectual labour required, and instead blurt out their immediate reactions to the separate parts of the theatre occasion. They register only a brute response to each moment, or perhaps only to certain moments, the moments when they are awake. And since such waking moments follow minutes of somnolence, one senses the lack of connection with what has been going on. Our critics are accustomed to let themselves be as passive as the most helpless, hapless spectator. Show me! Entertain me! Alas, extreme passivity simply inhibits all real artistic experience.

The Stratford Festival Story: A Catalogue-Index of the Stratford, Ontario, Festival 1953–1990 by J. Alan B. Somerset

REVIEWS J. Alan B. Somerset, The Stratford Festival Story: A Catalogue-Index of the Stratford, Ontario, Festival 1953-1990. Bibliographies and Indexes in the Performing Arts, Number 8. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991). xxvii, 317. Illustrated. $49.95 US. The Stratford Festival Story, number 8 in the Greenwood Press series of bibliographies and indexes in the performing arts, is a companion volume to Stage Lives and Stage Deaths, and perhaps that is appropriate. The Stratford Festival Story records all the relevant details of every production at the Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario, from its inception in 1953 until 1990. As such, it records a significant part of the theatrical lives and deaths of countless actors, directors, and production personnel who have been part of the Stratford adventure over the years. The Stratford Festival Story is the published form of a data base that Pro­ fessor Alan Somerset, Chair of English at the University of Western Ontario, prepared for the Stratford Festival. Indeed, the book demonstrates only a fraction of the possibilities inherent in the data base. With this valuable tool provided by Professor Somerset, it is quickly possible to discover all the roles played by an actor at the Festival. Or, looked at from another angle, such being the marvel of computers, it is quickly possible to identify every actor who played Feste or Falstaff or the Fool. How many productions of As You Like It at Stratford? Ten, the most of any of Shakespeare’s plays, although Twelfth Night comes close behind. However, Festival trivial pursuiters will quickly tire of the book’s pedantic nature and leave it to the scholar. The scholar will applaud the thoroughness of Professor Somerset’s re­ search. Every production is catalogued, including much of the ephemera that appears every season as workshops or fringe activities. The facts are all here: opening and closing dates; number of performances; itineraries of tours; creative and production credits; cast lists; and a compact bibliography of significant reviews or interviews. The productions are discussed chrono­ logically, season by season, and within a season. The book begins with a brief overview of Festival activities and concludes with separate indexes of titles and names. If Professor Somerset’s book is of value to the researcher by itself, and it is, it is also valuable as an introduction to the riches of the Stratford Festival archives. The Archives are an indispensable repository of production records E n g l i s h S t u d i e s i n C a n a d a , 19, 3 , S e p t e m b e r 1993 and memorabilia. The Festival must be applauded for its support of this resource. It is encouraging to note that the data base will continue to be updated, as it has already proved invaluable. The book is a straightforward reference, but does not completely omit the flavour of living theatre. For example, we note that the stage manager’s notebook for Mother Courage contains “a memo from the Public Health authorities advising against use of a dead chicken as a stage prop.” However, it also does not draw attention to defamatory and colourful notations found in the many promptbooks, especially from the early years. Although The Stratford Festival Story appears to be very meticulous, there are some small errors or omissions that need to be corrected. Several ap­ peared on a cursory reading, which does suggest that there may be more. Stage managers are rarely credited prior to 1969; it must be possible to fill in some of the gaps. Actress Sally Sing/ial in the introduction becomes Sally Singal in the data base. Which is correct? Surely Sidonie Bell is Sidonie Ball, the Ophelia of 1991. There was a Master Merrythough and Mistress Merrythought in Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1990. Barren/ Yerma, 1979, is correctly described as “an improvisation inspired by Lorca’s Yerma” and yet Ken Dyba is incorrectly credited with authorship. Robin Phillips’s dates are wrong in the introduction. With the “Stratford Tempest” of 1980 still fresh, he certainly would not have been in charge in 1981. Indeed, it seems unkind not to credit Muriel Sherrin as Producer in...

The Winter's Tale Retold

through crucial speeches early on. He may have understood nimble shifts of Berowne's mind, but he did not communicate his understanding clearly. As a result, comedy foundered when it should have been zipping along; even 4.3, a scene all but guaranteed to succeed, lacked its customary delight. This lack of verve in main plot was particularly unfortunate because Douglas Rain and William Needles, as Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel, demonstrated how very funny their linguistic play can be, even for an audience whose little Latin comes from many years back. Maraden got a much better all-around effort from Young Company in its performance of The Two Gentleman of Verona. Her interpretation of play emphasized tension between claims of friendship and those of love. This tension resurfaced even at end of play, when Valentine and Proteus celebrated prospect of One feast, one house, one mutual happiness (5.4.173) by hugging one another; noticing surprised looks of Silvia and Julia (which exchange got a big laugh from audiences), cut short their embrace in order to pair off with women. Grouping these characters together as the men and the women is not quite fair, however, for harmony of Silvia and Valentine was not shared by Proteus and Julia. She reluctantly took hand of Proteus when Valentine tried to make this happy close (1. 1 17), and sense that Julia and Proteus's relationship was slightly strained persisted until very end. That was as it should be, given 4.2, blocking of which made Julia center of interest. While Proteus (usually with his back to audience) wooed Silvia in a gallery upstage left, Julia-downstage center-spoke with Host. Shifting focus to Julia, an effect that I had not seen in any production of this play directed by a man, established forcefully impact on Julia of Proteus's betrayal, effects of which still resonated in finale. The Two Gentlemen of Verona began and ended with entire cast singing a song of love, a song urging people to follow heart/hart. The camaraderie of Young Company singing together summed up for me collective effort that went into their Two Gentlemen. Indeed, all things considered, that camaraderie marked efforts of company as a whole. Many veterans of Stratford Festival turned in splendid performances in supporting roles, so that season as a whole was one worth celebrating.

Adventures in the Culture Trade: The Stratford Festival 1991

Adventures in the Culture Trade: The Stratford Festival 1991

Life Before Stratford: The Memoirs of Amelia Hall, Six Plays by Mavor Moore

It is appropriate that Amelia Hall should have been the first Canadian, and the first woman, to speak on the Stratford Festival stage when she played Lady Anne in Richard III, on 13 July 1953. That first Stratford company was predominantly Canadian, made up of actors who, like Hall, received their training and experience under difficult circumstances, in a country with virtually no indigenous professional theatre tradition. The Stratford Festival was a watershed in the development of the Canadian professional theatre, but it could not have come into being without the pioneering work of a dedicated group of Canadian theatre people – many of them women – who prepared the ground for professionalism. Amelia Hall – actor and director – was one of those people.

The Perfection of Gesture: Timothy Findley and Canadian Theatre

Timothy Findley, one of Canada's best-known writers of fiction, has also made notable contributions to Canadian theatre. His early acting career, his work as a playwright and as a scriptwriter for CBC radio and television have resulted in his participation in several 'firsts' in Canadian theatre history. Findley acted in the inaugural season at the Stratford Festival, was the National Arts Centre's first playwright-in-residence. and wrote the script for CBC Television's first feature-length colour film. As well, Findley's theatre background has had a profound effect on the development of his writing career and on his fictional style. Some of his recent work indicates a renewed interest in writing for the stage.

The Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada

The Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada

Designers’ Texts and Other Plays: The Stratford Festival 1990

Designers’ Texts and Other Plays: The Stratford Festival 1990

Stratford's First Young Company

The first so-called 'Young Company' at the Stratford Festival was founded in 1975 by the incoming Artistic Director, Robin Phillips. This essay describes the brief history of that loosely-defined company and analyses their productions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors in 1975 and of Hamletand The Tempest in 1976, the Festival's first productions of Shakespeare at the Avon Theatre.