Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2018 - 27

THE ENDURING STAGE
CREATED BY GUTHRIE AND
MOISEIWITSCH HAS HAD
A PROFOUND INFLUENCE
ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF
CANADIAN THEATRE.
thrust stage designed by Moiseiwitsch, opened in 1963. The
theatre by Ralph Rapson seated 1,441 and the seven-sided
stage took up 1,120 square feet (104 m²). In 1980, modifications allowed the size, shape, and height of the stage to be
adjusted and the back wall opened up to create more depth.
In 2006, the theatre's location was slated for other purposes
and was demolished; the same year a new Guthrie Theatre designed by Jean Nouvel opened as part of a three-theatre complex that preserved the signature thrust configuration for the
1,100-seat main auditorium.
Other notable influences of the Guthrie-Moiseiwitsch
thrust stage include the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln
Centre and, in the United Kingdom, the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Chichester Festival Theatre, the Olivier
Theatre at the Royal National Theatre in London, and most directly the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. Moiseiwitsch designed
the stage for the Crucible with input from its founding director
Colin George, who took inspiration from her previous work. In
his obituary in the fall of 2016, he was quoted as saying he
decided the length of the thrust stage by declaiming speeches
from Henry V from different parts of the theatre. One terse critique of the seating on three sides of the performers came from
a local councillor who stated he wouldn't "pay to look at Hamlet's backside."
In Canada, the Festival Stage influenced the design of the
Atlantic Festival Theatre in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the theatre at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, to which Diamond
Schmitt Architects added, in time for Canada's sesquicentennial celebrations in 2017, improved spaces for performance, new
wings for audience and presentation events, and an enhanced
visible presence and identity with a marquee tower. Tellingly,
the thrust stage theatre required little in the way of intervention.
For the town of Stratford, the festival has been a major
economic driver-from the first season in 1953 with 68,600 in
attendance; to 2015 when the audience numbered 475,742.
Other recent seasons have exceeded the half million mark.
For a festival known for staging Shakespeare, only about 30
percent of tickets in 2015 were for productions of the Bard's
works. Other classics and contemporary dramas garnered
a similar percentage while the remaining 40 percent was allotted to two musicals that season, Carousel and The Sound
of Music. The economic impact generated by the consistent
150,000 room nights booked per season and related goods
and services amounted to a $170 million shot in the arm to the
local economy in 2001.
The thrust stage at Stratford continues to encourage experimentation in the 21st century. In a January 2017 article,

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