Stratford Festival Theatre
The Stratford Festival's 1957 main house, whose thrust stage reshaped post-war Shakespearean staging
The Stratford Festival began in July 1953, when Tyrone Guthrie directed Alec Guinness in Richard III under a canvas tent beside the Avon River. Tanya Moiseiwitsch's stage for that first season abandoned the proscenium arch for a deep thrust platform with the audience wrapped around it in a 220-degree arc, a form based on Elizabethan practice that has since been copied in theatres across North America. The tent came down in 1956 and the permanent building opened on 1 July 1957.
Designed by Rounthwaite and Fairfield, the theatre is a low circular drum with a shallow tented roof, set in the Arthur Meighen Gardens above the river; it won a gold medal in the 1958 Massey Medals for Architecture and seats about 1,800. It is the largest of the festival's four houses, the others being the Avon Theatre, the Tom Patterson Theatre and the Studio Theatre. The season runs from April to early November and mixes Shakespeare with classic drama and musicals.
Highlights
- Tanya Moiseiwitsch's thrust stage, the model for many later theatres
- Circular 1957 drum by Rounthwaite and Fairfield, a Massey Medal winner
- Arthur Meighen Gardens and riverside setting beside the Avon
- Backstage and costume warehouse tours during the season
