Tyrone Guthrie's "A Life in the Theatre"

The world of the paperback the University of Chicago invites you to join

us for this series of 15 minute programs dedicated to the discussion of literary topics

and the review of significant paper bound books each weekly program brings to the

microphone a different author authority or educator with his particular viewpoint towards the

topic for discussion. Our guest for today's discussion is search are own

Guthrie associate artistic director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis

and author of a life in the theater. Here is your discussion host from the

University of Chicago Robert C. Albrecht.

Mr. OTTO prime injury has had something to the effect that the director of the film is virtually the

creator of the film.

Is this true of the director and theater also know that in that you do it too and I think it's

true about films but popular because a great many pins are good on

themselves rather than knowledge. I have an idea that if Dickens will tell us a lot even he could

be able to write a film script he wouldn't be too pleased if the director started creating it.

What about the director of the drama then what is his primary function.

It depends. It's different in different dramas and it led to

a good deal of possible controversy about the interpretation of the thing. I suppose his finest

job is to be the chairman of the committee of interpreters that's to say of the

actors and that is how the people who have something to say and how it's to be done

and I think really it's as a kind of chairman a moderator that he's

best occupied.

You know I noticed in your autobiography you remarked that the director must be careful not to work with

all the actors on interpretation of the play but simply the those who were

immediately involved in interpreting a scene.

Well if you're getting up Hamlet say it's kind of boring for the two grave diggers to have to sit around

while the director and Hamlet talk psychology and the director is a bubble responsible for not

allowing the rehearsals to be a blog.

And he's responsible for that I suppose the movement of the actors. What about the voices of

the actors how much does he have to say about this assuming that there are good I think it depends

on who he is and who they are.

I wouldn't feel very much like telling Mrs. Lunt how to say her lines but I think

she would expect me to say I believe would be more interesting if you went a little faster here and

didn't breathe quite so often on a few things like that. I don't think any good actor

is ashamed to take criticism if it's not personal. And if they think you know what you're

talking about and generally of course I suppose the difference in dealing with an experienced actor

is quite different from dealing with inexperienced people as so yes well

there are many experienced actors prefer to work inside quite a tight

framework of direction that they feel are free if you actually go from here

to that chair over there and get there in 4 steps and sit down when you say whatever the

word is and so your function to some degree varies with the way he did or tell with the temperament of the

person. I think if I'm acting I like to be told exactly what to do in

that sort of way and then feel free in imagination if the technical framework is worked out

for me.

I find it's quite interesting to fulfil that and it suggests a feeling it is your

function and directing people in an opera more

narrow than in nonmusical.

Yes because so much more is done for the opera singer by the

composer the composer shows them exactly how each phrase is to be

expressed. The caught hell so very much more about what is to be expressed than the

printed word so that there's much less scope for invention by the singer. And

in general it all moves at a much slower pace and you've got to make perhaps one

gesture holding out an arm or something. Nearly always begin as an opera move at a

natural pace. They've used up their gesture in about three measures of the music but it's

got to take a page and a half. And really the good experienced old

hands at it if they've any talent at all. They float through the thing moving

very very slowly and simply and expressively with the utmost economy of

means.

What about the producers who have to change the subject a bit. I think many of us who are not

in the theater have very little sense of the difference in the function of the producer and

the director is the producer in any way involved with the moving of the

actors and so forth as his functions are external to the drama.

Well it depends again a little. Second this is old cases but mostly the producer is

just a man who arranges the organization and finds the money and

controls the budget. But he may attend rehearsals.

And if he doesn't like what you're doing I guess he's entitled to say so. But I

think you know if you've got any kind of mentality at all you can hold your

own.

Unless he's talking sense only in establishing the theater we still

think of it as a new theatre I think in Minneapolis did you then to some degree take on the role of a

producer.

Well really no my title the titles mean anything is artistic

director and there are three of us in it. There are now four of us because

I'm associate artistic director there are two of us who direct the plays and

all the important policy decisions are discussed amongst us. But the two

directors take the rehearsals and we are responsible for all

that side of it. And then the two administrative men look after the

promotion and the planning and the budget and the box office and all the business

side.

Do you think of this rough dry Theatre in Minneapolis as a new type of theatre in the

United States.

Yes I think it's a new type of theatre it's not the past but it's an emerging type of theatre in the

United States. And I think what distinguishes it chiefly is that the

object of the operation is not to make money for private investors. It's not so

much a business as a service to the community and hopefully

an artistic sevice the word artistic is rather much abused. But what I mean is that

that what we do is more important than the money that is made.

Nobody is making out of the Minneapolis venture. Nobody is making any profit. The

community has invested and a non profit making company has been set

up and all of us who work there are simply paid hands we take a salary but we don't take any share of

profits.

Is this comparable certainty or unsay theatre companies in england.

It's comparable yes to what you might call the institutional theatres.

Things like the National Theatre and the Stratford company and most of the of the

British repertory companies which are not to the repertory told us stock companies but

most of them are set up as a service rather than as a profit making

institution. They're controlled by boards of citizens and that kind of thing.

I noticed in your autobiography that you spoke at one point of being happy to be back with the

Old Vic company because it was an institution you were glad to get back into some

association with the institution. Can you explain this remark.

I think a lot of us feel this way. If you are not attached to an institution you

simply take work as its offered and you work to advance yourself

financially. You hope to get a better salary and to advance yourself in

reputation you hope to get better and better name the better known

more celebrated that kind of thing. And really I find that quite

boring and satisfactory I want to work for something that I think more important than my own

really Korea.

Why does it seem to you that this sort of theatre has not been established in the United States before

that is the the institutional theatre.

It's quite complex I think in the United States

decreasingly rapidly decreasingly but still it is considered very

important that any activity of any kind should pay its way. And the view is

widely prevalent that if something doesn't pay it can't be any good. But it doesn't occur to

people that some quite good things don't pay and that a great many of the best

products are not the ones which have the largest sales.

Always off Broadway theater as it's become known and any

time I step in this direction I was it merely a variation of the commercial they are on

Broadway.

I think that the profit motive was less certainly at the beginning or broad with the profit

motive was less dominant. But the sums the things cost in

New York are so astronomical owing to the pressure of competition and the cost of

land and premises and rents rates services all those things sell at such

inflated rates that I think this is rather knock the bottom off out of all of Broadway. Unless

people are prepared to lose simply astronomical sums they have to operate

with the profit motive very firmly under their noses. Well you get out of

New York things become a little easier because it isn't quite so expensive. Also the competition

is so hot. In a place like Washington

where there's a there's a repertory theater. They're not operating in

the tremendously busy turmoil of cultural and entertainment life that prevails in

the big cities like Chicago Los Angeles and New York. It's a little karma. The

competition isn't quite so hot but yet this I don't think means that second

rate standards do because Washington isn't entirely populated by who don't know good from

bad.

Is this one of the reasons you're established you're in the news Theater in Minneapolis.

Yes it is. We felt that Minneapolis was was rather good size. It's

a big enough city to have a big city outlook to provide enough people

to make an economic basis. But it's a small enough city and a quiet enough city

that it wasn't too hard for us to become the biggest frog you know our particular puddle.

It is the Stratford Ontario theory quite comparable to the Minneapolis theatre and

lost respect in some respects architecturally it's comparable.

And it also aims to be an institution. But it's different in that Minneapolis

St Paul is a complex of well over a million people I think nearly 2 million

and a center with quite a number of crowded smaller cities

around Stratford is 20000 people and very much further from

anywhere. The only really big city is Toronto which is almost 100 miles away

and Stratford is partly because of its name but that but the

idea of the Stratford Festival was that it should be a Shakespearean Festival.

They've branched away from that and I think in the future they're likely to branch further and it's becoming just

a classical program in general with the emphasis in Shakespeare but the exclusively

Shakespeare but as we always set out to do a more flexible program classical but not

exclusively Shakespeare.

Is the stage which was designed for the Stratford theatre in a similar one for the Minneapolis theatre.

Were these designed particularly with the Shakespeare repertoire and in mine at Stratford.

Yes but then Tanya was a bitch was the designer at Minneapolis and with whom I've

worked very closely for a number of years. We both felt that the design which had worked for

Shakespeare was more flexible than we had first thought. The Stratford

thing was based on the principle that to do Shakespeare you must go back to relating the audience to

the actors spatially as they were related in Shakespeare's

imagination in other words that it must incorporate some of the important features of the

Elizabethan Theatre in London. Well and we tried that a number of experiments

before even Stratford and we've had very confident that this did justify

itself for Shakespeare and the experience at Stratford emboldened us to think that it could be

expanded the same formula which has certain very practical advantages

brings the actor closer to the majority of the audience makes it easier to see

and easier to hear. And it's a more economic way of filling the cubic space of the

auditorium into the same too big space you can get far more people if you packed them around an

open stage than if they all face a proscenium stage.

What relation is such a design there to the problem of realism and

illusion and theater.

I think it tends to make illusion a less important factor

but I've for many ceased to believe that when people go to the theatre they

undergo illusion. I don't think they really think that the little it is carelessly

hanging on a wire is Mel Martin. Always Peter Pan they never have a divine it's Mary Martin

pretending to be Peter Pan and I.

Think the plan is kidding yourself saying I know perfectly well

that this isn't happening that we're not on the battlements dance you know. I know perfectly well that that little

ladies are painfully suspended.

Is Miss Mary Martin but I'll go along and pretend she's beat a path and you think this kind of

stage helps to heighten this feeling in the audience or does it not affected.

It effects them consciously I think far less than you might expect but

unconsciously I think anybody must realize that they're a member of a

number of people participating in a shared work of the

imagination and that I like very much because I think it's very important to

emphasize the social nature of the theater the joy one of a group of people

undergoing the same experience.

The guest for today's discussion of his book A Life illustrator was sort of our own

Guthrie associate artistic director of the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

Your host for the world of the paperback has been Robert C. Obrecht assistant professor of English at the

University of Chicago. Today's program concludes the world of the

paperback series which has been produced for a national educational radio by the University of

Chicago in cooperation with W A I T. This is the national

educational radio network.