Stratford (Ontario) Festival

Stratford (Ontario) Festival, Canada, annual drama and music festival which lasts from mid-May to the end of Oct. It was founded for the production of plays by Shakespeare, along the lines of the festival at Stratford-upon-Avon. Its first theatre was an immense tent housing an approximation to an Elizabethan open stage, thus fulfilling a long-standing dream of Tyrone Guthrie, its first Director, and his designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, both from England. The opening production in 1953 was Richard III with Alec Guinness, followed by All's Well that Ends Well. Concerts, opera, and a film festival were later added to the programme, and in 1957 a permanent theatre was erected, which retained the spirit of the tent and the original stage. The conical roof, locked by 34 girders which meet at the centre like the spokes of a wheel, and the cantilevered balcony are without visible means of support. The auditorium sweeps in a full semi-circle round the stage, from which no seat is more than 65 ft. away, although the building seats 2,262. In 1956 Guthrie was succeeded by another English director, Michael Langham, who continued to maintain a permanent Canadian company with visiting stars, though it was not long before the stars themselves were Canadian. In 1956 the company appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in a distinctively Canadian production of Henry V in which the French king was played by Gratien Gélinas, with actors from the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde as his courtiers, Henry V being played by the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer. A year later Plummer inaugurated the new theatre building with his performance of Hamlet. The company has also visited the USA, London, Continental Europe, Australia, and Chichester. In 1963 a second theatre, the Avon, a proscenium house seating 1,100, was acquired and in 1971 an experimental Third Stage was added, later named the Tom Patterson Theatre after the Festival's founder.

Two Canadian directors, Jean Gascon and John Hirsch, succeeded Langham in 1967, and after Hirsch resigned in 1969 Gascon remained as sole director until 1974. The repertoire was expanded to include Jacobean authors and Molière as well as European classics ranging from the elder Dumas's The Three Musketeers to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The Shakespeare canon was completed with Titus Andronicus in 1978. Gascon was succeeded in 1975 by an English director, Robin Phillips, amid a storm of nationalistic controversy. He pioneered a Young Company, offering stardom to young Canadian actors, and invited many Canadian directors to share productions with him. He also experimented with double and triple casting of certain leading roles, and astutely utilized both the Avon Theatre and the Third Stage for Shakespeare productions, hitherto reserved for the main festival stage. The festival was given a more truly festive character by opening several seasons with a casual ‘Gala’ or ‘Revel’. Although stars had been imported over the years, among them Irene Worth, Paul Scofield, and Julie Harris, with Phillips the idea became central. In addition to engaging the Canadian actor Hume Cronyn and his wife Jessica Tandy, Phillips essentially built four of his six seasons around Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford, and in 1979 and 1980 Peter Ustinov was invited to play King Lear. After a leadership crisis Hirsch returned as Director, 1981–5, his varied programme including most of Shakespeare's comedies, a Gilbert and Sullivan cycle, and three modern American classics. John Neville's tenure as Director, 1986–9, was marked by the introduction of musicals on the main stage, starting with Rodgers and Hart's The Boys from Syracuse, and the revival of rarely seen plays such as Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday and Brecht's Mother Courage. Only one Canadian play, The Canvas Barricade (1963) by Donald Jack, has been shown on the festival stage, but a number have had major productions at the Avon, among them James Reaney's Colours in the Dark (1967) and Foxfire (1980) by Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn. Others have been seen on the Third Stage. Long-standing Canadian actors at Stratford have included William Hutt, Martha Henry, Douglas Rain, and Kate Reid.