Tyrone Guthrie

Sir Tyrone Guthrie
Born	William Tyrone Guthrie (1900-07-02)2 July 1900 Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
Died	15 May 1971(1971-05-15) (aged 70) Newbliss, County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland
Occupation	Theatrical director

Sir William Tyrone Guthrie (2 July 1900 – 15 May 1971) 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.

Early life

Guthrie was born 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.

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 1924 Guthrie joined the BBC as a broadcaster and began to produce plays for radio. This led to a year directing for the stage with the Scottish National Players, before returning to the BBC to become one of the first writers to create plays designed for radio performance.

During the period from 1929 to 1933 he directed at various theatres, including a production of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1932. During 1933–1934, and 1936–1945 he was director of the Shakespeare Repertory Company. While in Montreal, Guthrie produced the Romance of Canada series of radio plays for recalling epic moments in Canadian history. The series was broadcast on the Canadian National Railway radio network.

Butler translated the text for Guthrie's 1934 production of Anton Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, for perhaps its first English-language production.

In the 1940s Guthrie began to direct operas, to critical acclaim, including a realistic Carmen at Sadler's Wells and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He also returned to Scotland where, with James Bridie in 1948, he staged the first modern adaptation, by Robert Kemp, of Sir David Lyndsay's grand-scale medieval comedy Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis for the Second Edinburgh International Festival; a landmark event in the modern revival of Scottish theatre. Staged in the city's General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland on the Mound, specially adapted for the occasion, it was here that Guthrie's hallmark thrust stage first proved its full worth.

Stratford Festival of Canada

In 1953, he was invited to help launch the Stratford Festival of Canada. Intrigued with the idea of starting a Shakespeare theatre in a remote Canadian location, he enlisted Tanya Moiseiwitsch to further develop his thrust stage design, successfully improvised in Edinburgh, and actors Alec Guinness and Irene Worth to star in the inaugural production of Richard III. All performances in the first seasons took place in a large tent on the banks of the Avon River. He remained as Artistic Director for three seasons, and his work at Stratford had a strong influence in the development of Canadian theatre. In 1963, he founded the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, designed by Ralph Rapson.

Legacy

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..."

Guthrie wrote two major books about the creation of effective drama: Theatre Prospect (1932) and A Life in the Theatre (1959).

Queen's University Belfast

He was Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast (1963–70). On 15 September 2010 a blue plaque in his memory was unveiled at the BBC in Belfast by the Ulster History Circle.

Personal life

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. He is buried in the graveyard of Aghabog Church of Ireland in Newbliss.

Bibliography

• Forsyth, James (1976). Tyrone Guthrie. London: Hamish Hamilton.
• Guthrie, Tyrone (1932). Theatre Prospect. London: Wishart. OCLC 1903289.
• Guthrie, Tyrone; Davies, Robertson; Macdonald, Grant (1953). Renown at Stratford; A Record of the Shakespeare Festival in Canada, 1953. Toronto: Clark, Irwin. OCLC 6122929.
• Guthrie, Tyrone (1959). A Life in the Theatre. New York: McGraw-Hill. OCLC 331308.
• Guthrie, Tyrone (1964). A New Theatre. New York: McGraw-Hill. OCLC 331078.
• Guthrie, Tyrone (1965). In Various Directions. New York: Macmillan. OCLC 711657.
• Guthrie, Tyrone (1971). Tyrone Guthrie on Acting. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-73832-8.
• Rossi, Alfred (1970). Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-01719-6.
• Rossi, Alfred (1977). Astonish Us in the Morning: Tyrone Guthrie Remembered. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-128860-6.

External links

• Tyrone Guthrie at the Internet Broadway Database
• Tyrone Guthrie at IMDb
• Tyrone Guthrie at Find a Grave
• Directing a Play: A Lecture by Tyrone Guthrie - Delivered at the West Side YMCA, NYC (Smithsonian Folkways)