News and Events
Press Release: ABTT Announce Edinburgh Showing of Guthrie Thrust Stage Exhibition
24th Jul 2012
The Association of
British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) is delighted to announce the Edinburgh
showing of The Guthrie Thrust Stage 1948 - 2011: A Living Legacy exhibition,
which can be seen from this week at The Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh EH1 2NE,
opening hours Monday-Saturday, 9am-7:30pm and on Sundays, 10am-7:30pm (except
Sunday 2 September, 1pm-6pm only), coinciding with the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival.
Originally created
for the Prague 2011 Quadrennial of Scenography and Theatre Architecture, the
exhibition celebrates the unique contribution of the Thrust Stage to world
theatre architecture by director Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971). This recast the
theatre experience and successfully released the actor from the confines of the
proscenium arch. The story starts at The Assembly Hall Edinburgh at
the 1948 Festival, with Guthrie's spectacular recreation of the medieval
morality Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites. It is brought up to
date with this year's opening at Stratford-upon-Avon of the new Royal
Shakespeare Theatre, which can trace its pedigree back to Guthrie.
At the centre of the
exhibition are beautifully crafted models of peopled auditoria and stages, all
to the same scale, of the five key theatres: the Assembly Hall Edinburgh, the
Festival Theatre Stratford Ontario of 1953 and 1957, the Crucible Sheffield of
1971, the recreation of the 1599 Globe in 1997 and the new main theatre at
Stratford. In the course of this journey some of the other theatres, which owe
much or little to Guthrie, are put in context. These include Chichester, the
Guthrie Minneapolis, the Vivian Beaumont New York and the Olivier at the
National, all of which are illustrated and discussed.
Accompanying the
models is a Power Point display, which adds many more images, and a
thirty-two-page publication with over 50 illustrations in colour and black and
white. The exhibition was conceived and designed by Tim Foster, Peter Ruthven
Hall and Iain Mackintosh, who also researched and wrote the publication.
The exhibition has
already been seen this year at the Crucible Sheffield for the
40th anniversary celebrations of the only theatre in Britain conceived by
Tyrone Guthrie and his designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, at the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate the transformation of the
Royal Shakespeare Company's new home originally built as the Shakespeare
Memorial Theatre in 1932, and at the Victoria & Albert Museum London where
it formed part of the Society of British Theatre Designers Transformation and Revelation: UK Design for Performance
2007-2011.
Click here to buy the booklet that coincides with the tour.
