(A large, handsome book filled with illustrations by Alice...)
A large, handsome book filled with illustrations by Alice and Martin Provensen and an introduction by Sir Tyrone Guthrie. Includes the full text of Shakespeare's most beloved plays: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Life of King Henry 5th, Julius Ceasar, As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest. *** Among the provocative questions asked (and answered) are: What should Macbeth and Lady Macbeth look like? How can the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice be most meaningfully staged? What is the relationship of Prospero in the Tempest to Shakespeare himself? Why is it a misreading of the role to play Ophelia as an unworldly ingenue? Attempting to probe Shakespeare's own intentions in these matters, Sir Tryone comes to his own conclusions, freely admitting that not everyone will agree. For beauty of design, magnificence of its many color illustrations, and incisiveness of comment, this is a unique volume, an invaluable contribution to a fuller understanding and love of Shakespeare's richest works.
(Dust jacket notes: "'Acting as a calling somewhere betwee...)
Dust jacket notes: "'Acting as a calling somewhere between factory-work and prostitution is in demand as never before. Acting as a serious profession is in grave danger of extinction,' writes Tyrone Guthrie. His book, written mainly for young actors and for amateurs, teachers, and students of acting, argues the case for a serious professional approach to theatre - which he believes to be its only hope of survival. After establishing that good acting is as much a matter of technique as of imagination or intuition and can therefore, at least to some extent, be taught, the author analyzes the relation between student and teacher as well as methods of teaching, coming down heavily on those professors of 'Dramah' who would ignore the fact that plays were written to be performed. His frank and illuminating discussions about stagecraft, about technique, make-up, movement, vocal training; his perceptive advice on how to approach a dramatic role, including an appraisal of the real value of improvisation; his comments about straight and character acting and about the legitimate theatre as opposed to mass media - these and all other important aspects of the subject are reviewed with much intelligence, wit, and sympathy. Admired and respected throughout the world for his own immense contribution to the theatre, Tyrone Guthrie is a director of lifelong experience. He has had the opportunity to work with actors in many parts of the world and in many kinds of plays, and under exceedingly varied conditions: from Grand Opera at Sadler's Wells, and Covent Garden in London and at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, to repertory theatre in the Midwest and one-night stands with a 'fit-up' in the north of Scotland. He was for many years connected with the Old Vic, and was artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival, Stratford, Ontario, and of the theatre in Minneapolis which bears his name."
Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland.
Background
Guthrie was born on July 2, 1900 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, the son of Dr Thomas Guthrie (a grandson of the Scottish preacher Thomas Guthrie) and Norah Power. His mother Norah was the daughter of Sir William James Tyrone Power, Commissary-General-in-chief of the British Army from 1863 to 1869 and Martha, daughter of Dr. John Moorhead of Annaghmakerrig House and his Philadelphia-born wife, Susan (née Allibone) Humphreys. His great-grandfather was the Irish actor Tyrone Power. He was also a second cousin of the Hollywood actor Tyrone Power. His sister, Susan Margaret, married his close university friend, fellow Anglo-Irishman Hubert Butler.
Education
He received a degree in history at Oxford University, where he was active in student theatre, and worked for a season at the newly established Oxford Playhouse.
Career
In 1923 he joined the newly-founded Oxford Playhouse. However, the company's director, James B. Fagan, developed little confidence in Guthrie's acting abilities and did not re-hire him the following season. Guthrie then accepted a job as a broadcaster for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in Belfast and soon began to produce plays over the air. His success as a radio director led him back to the theater and to a directing position with the Scottish National Players in Glasgow (1926).
In 1928 the BBC produced two of Guthrie's radio plays, Squirrel's Cage and Matrimonial News, and employed him as a script editor in London. Guthrie soon left the BBC to become artistic director of the Anmer Hall Company at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge.
With this new company Guthrie's directing repertoire could shift away from the somewhat parochial national plays favored by the Scottish Players. He directed Euripides, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, and Pirandello. It was here at the Festival Theatre that Guthrie also began to develop his gift for staging innovative, animated crowd scenes, eventually one of his directorial trademarks. In late 1929 another of Guthrie's radio plays, The Flowers Are Not For You To Pick, was successfully produced by the BBC.
Despite Guthrie's primary involvement with the theater, his reputation as a radio writer and personality continued to grow. Accordingly, he was engaged to produce in Montreal a radio series of dramatized popular history, "The Romance of Canada" (1930 - 1931). Upon returning to the Anmer Hall Company Guthrie directed James Bridie's The Anatomist (1931).
The play opened the company's second home at Westminster Theatre and was Guthrie's first London production. He had his first West End directing success with Dangerous Corner, J. B. Priestley's first play (1932). That same year Guthrie published the first of his many books, Theatre Prospect, and his Westminster production of Love's Labours Lost brought him to the attention of Lilian Baylis.
As administrator of the esteemed Old Vic, Baylis was in search of a new resident director for the company. She offered Guthrie the position for the 1933-1934 season. Guthrie brought Charles Laughton to the Old Vic and directed him in several leading roles, most notably as Angelo in Measure for Measure (1933).
However, Guthrie received mixed reviews for his year's work and subsequently concentrated on tallying up a number of West End and Broadway successes. Having proven himself in the commercial theater, Guthrie rejoined the Old Vic in 1936. As resident director, he staged a number of important, if not always entirely successful, productions: Wycherly's The Country Wife (1936), with Edith Evans and Ruth Gordon; A Midsummer Night's Dream (1937, 1938) with Mendelssohn's music; a modern dress Hamlet (1938) with Alec Guiness; and Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (1939). Two of his productions, Hamlet (1937) and Othello (1938), became famous for their Freudian interpretations, with Laurence Olivier playing major parts in both. During World War II Guthrie struggled to keep the Old Vic organization afloat in the provinces. One of his finest productions of this period was Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1944) with Ralph Richardson in the title role.
From 1945 to 1951 Guthrie worked as a freelance director. Among his many productions during these years were Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1946), again with Richardson in the lead role, and Oedipus Rex in Israel, New York, and Finland (1947, 1948). He also directed several operas and presented plays at the annual Edinburgh Festival.
Guthrie returned to the Old Vic as interim artistic director for the 1951-1952 season, but his focus then moved to a new project in Canada. The project was the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario. It was founded in 1953 and originally housed in a huge tent. Guthrie's impulse to become involved with this venture was threefold: to help to develop a national theater tradition in Canada; to work with a resident ensemble, for Guthrie was a strong advocate of theater done by a community of artists; and to stage Shakespeare in a spatial configuration true to the Elizabethan spirit.
After years of experience with Shakespeare's plays, Guthrie felt that an amphitheater setting with a large thrust stage better served the Bard's theatrical vision than the more common proscenium stage. Guthrie was the festival's artistic director for its first two summer seasons and directed plays for the company until 1957.
He is buried in the graveyard of Aghabog Church of Ireland in Newbliss.
Achievements
In 1958 Guthrie began plans to expand the ideas he had realized in Canada and to transfer them to America. His goal was to establish a fully professional classical repertory company free from commercial pressure. His efforts came to fruition with the 1963 opening of the Minneapolis Theatre, designed somewhat on the lines of the Stratford theater. For the opening season Guthrie directed his second modern dress Hamlet and Chekhov's The Three Sisters.
His later productions in Minneapolis included Henry V and Jonson's Volpone in 1964; Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Richard III, with Hume Cronyn in the title role, in 1965; The House of Atreus, an adaptation and monumental staging of Aeschylus's The Orestia, in 1967; and Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in 1969. In 1971 the theater was renamed in honor of Guthrie. He was knighted in 1961.
Guthrie wrote two major books about the creation of effective drama: Theatre Prospect (1932) and A Life in the Theatre (1959).
He was an active member of the Dramatic Society At Oxford University.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
In the prologue to his biography James Forsyth wrote, "Anti-Broadway, anti-West End, anti everything implied in the term 'Legitimate Theatre', he ended up with a legitimate claim to the title of 'most important, British-born theatre director of his time'".
Peter Hall wrote, "Among the great originators in British Theatre. .. Guthrie was a towering figure in every sense. He blazed a trail for the subsidised theatre of the sixties. He showed how to run a company and administer a theatre. And he was a brilliant and at times great director. .. "
Connections
In 1931 Guthrie married Judith Bretherton, who survived him by only a year. He was knighted in 1961, and died a decade later at his home, Annaghmakerrig, in Newbliss, County Monaghan, Ireland, aged 70, from undisclosed causes.
