Gray, Terence

Gray, Terence (1895– ), co-founder in 1926 of the Festival Theatre, Cambridge (formerly the Barnwell), which during his brief management had an enormous influence, particularly on the Continent. Like Craig, whose theories on lighting and stage-craft were the basis of his experiments, Gray fertilized the theatre more by his ideas than by his achievements. He abolished the proscenium arch and footlights, and built out a forestage connected with the auditorium by a staircase, broken by platforms on different levels which offered exceptional opportunities for significant groupings. With Maurice Evans as his leading man, and with interesting experiments in lighting, Gray produced the Oresteia of Aeschylus, following it with a number of English and foreign classical and modern plays, including some by Shakespeare. In 1929 a company headed by Flora Robson occupied the theatre, and in 1932 Norman Marshall ran a season there. Gray returned intermittently but finally abandoned his project in 1933, after the first performance in English of Aeschylus' Suppliant Women. The theatre was then bought by a commercial management and restored in a conventional style. It was later owned by the Trustees of the Cambridge Arts Theatre and used as a workshop and costume store.