[In the following essay, Guthrie examines Tanya Moiseiwitsch's "open" stage design for the Stratford, Ontario production of All's Well That Ends Well, noting that the intention was "to offer the facilities of an Elizabethan stage, but not to attempt an Elizabethan pseudo-antique style."]

The first Shakespearian Festival at Stratford, Ontario, is worth attention from two points of view: first as an enterprise, a feat of courage, faith and vision by the community of this little Ontario city; secondly because, so far as I know, this is the first time for many years that a stage and auditorium have been specially constructed for the presentation of Shakespearian plays.

Stratford is a town of 19,000 inhabitants, it is a railway junction, the site of a railway engine repair works, there are some furniture factories; but it is principally a market town for a very prosperous agricultural country-side, old-established by Canadian standards. It was settled over 100 years ago. The present population is some three or four generations removed from the Pioneers, who were mostly Scottish and German, although the actual township was named by a group who came from Stratford, Warwick-shire, and a Utile willow-edged creek flowing nearby is spelt Avon, though pronounced Avvon. This creek has been dammed up to form a series of lakes and islands—very pretty, and the one feature which distinguishes Stratford visually from any one of many similar little towns in Ontario.

The idea of the Festival was conceived by a young journalist called Tom Patterson. On warservice in Italy he had encountered grand opera for the first time and been bowled over. Then, still as a soldier, in London he saw his first professional productions of 'straight' plays. Then he went to the Old Vic. The result was to make him feel that the entertainment hitherto available in Stratford, Ontario, was rather insufficient. He set to work to mobilize local interest in a Shakespearian Festival and after three years had raised a considerable head of steam. There was plenty of enthusiasm, but very little experience. So I was asked to go out and give advice. The plan we evolved was as follows:

1. A stage that would realize the physical relation between actor and audience which prevailed in the Elizabethan Playhouse; and that would have the practical features of an Elizabethan stage, as far as we can deduce them from the evidence available.
2. This stage to be placed in a temporary auditorium under canvas, designed to hold about 1500 people, this figure being the largest that I thought could adequately see and hear under these conditions.
3. Two plays to be given in repertory.
4. The services of a small group of experienced and, if possible, celebrated actors to be sought in Great Britain—the project, however, to be demonstrably an effort for and by Canadians, with some outside assistance, but not much.

This project was then 'budgetted' and it was believed that, if a subscription fund of $150,000 (£50,000) were raised, then takings of 60% of capacity for four weeks would make ends meet.

On this basis the committee went ahead. Imagine a British community of approximately similar size—Ballymena, for example, or Truro, or Tonbridge, or Skipton, or Galashiels—embarking on a similar project with no outside backing whatsoever, with no influential 'names' on the committee. This was just a group of small-town citizens, doctors, lawyers, a clergyman, business men and women prepared to back an idea with not a hope of making money—indeed, with every likelihood of a considerable financial loss and very red faces into the bargain. In the end, I am glad to say, the enthusiasm and faith were justified; the plays were given for an extended season, played to the remarkable figure of 96% capacity, were considered an artistic event of national importance, attracted a flattering amount of favourable notice from the leading American as well as Canadian critics and, by no means least important, were the cause of a considerable fillip to the business of the little town. A weekly influx of ten thousand souls on pleasure bent is not to be sneezed at by local tradesmen. The municipality, lukewarm last year, is now heart and soul 'for' the Festival. It is hoped that this will have been the first of a long annual series. Plans are already well advanced for the second Stratford Festival.

Now for the more 'Shakespearian' aspect: the two plays chosen were Richard III and All's Well That Ends Well; the first as a 'vehicle' for Alec Guinness, who headed the cast; the second as a bold contrast and because it offered a number of good parts which we thought we could cast suitably.

The acting of Guinness in Richard III was highly and justly admired. But it was interesting to find that the booking for Richard was no better than for All's Well, an unfamiliar and supposedly 'difficult' play; and that of the two plays All's Well, certainly in my opinion, and I think in that of most of the audience, emerged as much the better bit of work.

The stage, designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch, with a certain amount of suggestion from myself, presented a balcony supported by slender pillars above a main stage thirty foot square. The balcony was accessible, in sight of the audience, by two staircases from each side of the stage, as well as from a central entrance at the back. The main stage was accessible directly from the dressing-rooms, through the pillars supporting the balcony, from the aisles of the auditorium, and from two tunnels beneath the auditorium. There was also a trap-door cut in the floor of the stage, to serve as grave, entrance to dungeons and so on.

The designer's aim was to offer the facilities of an Elizabethan stage, but not to attempt an Elizabethan pseudo-antique style. The floor was of oak, polished—about as shiny as a dance-floor; the pillars, balcony and partition wall were stained a rather darker colour, appreciably darker than the actors' faces. The general visual effect we aimed at was to be strictly 'functional'; neither aggressively modern nor antique; a structure that unobtrusively offered to the actors standing-places, seats, and things to lean against, where they needed them; a platform that offered neither too much space nor too little, and which was so placed as to be the focal point of the nearly circular auditorium.

There was no curtained alcove under the balcony, partly because I did not think either of these two plays required its use (and I am not convinced that this practicality is, in fact, a necessity), partly because we did not like the look of drapery in this position.

Because we played at night, artificial light was a necessity. But there were no illusionary 'effects' of light. We permitted ourselves an unobtrusive 'dim' at what seemed appropriate times, not without a feeling that this was a weak concession to current theatrical convention and a departure from the method and style we had adopted.

Scenic austerity was offset by extremely rich and handsome clothes. I do not think audiences felt that they had been cheated of 'spectacle' in either play; and I do not think there was any loss of 'illusion' because there were no naturalistic indications of whereabouts. It is not for me to assess how successful these performances were. I can only say that, in my opinion, they had, owing to the nature of the stage, a number of advantages, which the proscenium stage, by its very nature, can never offer.

First, because there was no picture-frame and obviously no possibility of scenery, there was no need to attempt scenic illusion. In a proscenium one has to create a 'picture'; even the most negative background to the actors—black curtains for instance—makes a visual statement that cannot be ignored. And if in a proscenium, with all the paraphernalia for creating 'pictures' and all the weight of pictorial tradition associated with such buildings, one gives a whole play against some carefully and monotonously negative background, it is clear that the mechanism is being denied. This denial cannot but seem emphatic and self-conscious, cannot but draw attention.

Scenic statements, even negative statements, are obviously malapropos in a Shakespearian production. The plays were written for a stage that did not offer scenery. Therefore, if it is necessary for the audience to know the whereabouts of the characters, an indication is given in the text. If it is important that the audience's attention be drawn to facts about the weather, time of day, season of the year, its attention is drawn in the text; usually in language so apt, so memorable and so timely that to make another statement in visual terms, whether in paintwork, carpentry or lighting, is not merely superfluous but impertinent.

Our stage, trying to provide the facilities which the plays do require but no others, offered a merely functional background: anything that was visible had a practical purpose and was not there just to look pretty. Even its colour and proportions were functional. They may not, in the event, have fulfilled all their purposes adequately but there was at least a sensible reason for everything being as it was. Freed from scenery, scene could follow scene without the slightest interruption of continuity. I realize that this absolute continuity can be achieved in a proscenium—Motley did so brilliantly in a recent Antony and Cleopatra: Moiseiwitsch in a recent Henry VIII—but it is achieved only by toiling and spinning, by prodigies of technique. If there can be no scenery, it is merely wilful to break the continuity of the play's flow except to give the audience a rest. I need not enlarge on the advantages of continuity.

If the audience sits, as ours did, around the stage, certain choreographic problems are posed. But, on balance, the grouping and flow of movement are infinitely easier to arrange. The chief difficulty arises, I think, in long soliloquies, especially meditative soliloquies where movement 'feels' wrong to an actor and tends to disturb the concentration of the audience. I think the solution is for the actor to keep turning slowly, facing now this, now that, part of the house. With a little practice this soon feels, and looks, perfectly natural. Both Alec Guinness in Richard III and Irene Worth in All's Well managed long passages of psychological monologue in a way that felt comfortable and natural to themselves and entirely held their audience.

Conversational scenes are infinitely easier to arrange if the participants do not have to conform to the highly conventional groupings that rule the proscenium stage, where 'masking' or 'upstaging' one's interlocutor are rightly crimes. On an 'open' stage masking is inevitable. It is the producer's duty to see that all parts of the house get fair do's—that if Mr X faced East at one important moment, he must face West at the next; or better still must contrive to scatter the favour of his countenance over a wide radius. In practice two things emerge: the naturalness and expressiveness of the group is more important than the face of any single member of the group; a good actor's behind is often just as expressive as his face. Finally on the 'open' stage choreography can be much more fluid and varied than in a proscenium; first, because there is no question of avoiding masking; second because the picture must all the time be planned to be expressive from all angles, not just from 'the front'; thirdly because entrances and exits can be available in all directions, not just left, right and centre. This is especially helpful in those scenes, so frequent in Shakespeare, when a group pauses en route from X to Y. In the proscenium the progress of My Lords of Norfolk, Suffolk and Rutland from X to Y occurs parallel to the footlights, from right to left; and the progress of My Lords of Kent, Sussex and Surrey from Y to X occurs, parallel to the footlights from left to right. On the 'open' stage a far greater variety both of direction and pace can be achieved, because there is a wider choice of exit and entrance and a greater variety of distance to traverse.

But the great and basic practical advantage of the 'open' stage is that an equivalent number of people can be put into a smaller space than if they are all arranged to face a proscenium. Shakespeare's plays, with large casts, involve a large number of salaries, and shoes and hats and swords and so on. They are inevitably more costly to put on than a nice little modern comedy involving from six to sixteen actors, including understudies. As a result the modern comedies occupy the small intimate theatres where the actors can play with great finesse and still make their points. Shakespeare, in order to recoup the expense, has to be played in large theatres. Most of Shakespeare's plays, but especially the comedies, are interesting only if they are played with great intimacy, great finesse; above all if they are beautifully spoken. It is all but impossible to speak beautifully if you are only audible either when you speak loudly or when you speak slowly. The wonder is that actors do as well as they do. Top-ranking performers like Olivier or Sybil Thorndike or Edith Evans can make vast auditoria seem intimate by sheer force of magnetism. A great rhetorician, like Gielgud, can, by sheer virtuosity, conceal the fact that he is able only to use a fraction of the vocal variety which he could employ in more favourable circumstances.

Finally, it may be argued that an open stage is less conducive to 'illusion' than the comparatively realistic 'pictures' created behind a proscenium. This point I must immediately concede. But is 'illusion' the true aim of a theatrical performance? I do not think so. I do not believe that anyone beyond the mental age of twelve can believe that actors in a play are 'really' the characters they are pretending to be, or that the events which are being enacted are 'really' taking place. I do not believe that an adult public has ever swallowed the 'illusion' of the theatre; and certainly not in this epoch when dramatic entertainment is squirting out of machines at every minute of the day or night, when the features of leading players are more familiar than those of Prime Ministers and Archbishops. Who in this age is really taken in when Sir Laurence Olivier makes believe to be King Lear? We admire the artifice of his disguise, the emotional force of his feeling and the intellectual acumen of his comment—for every performance is a comment by the actor upon the part, the play, upon his own personality and the collective personality of the audience. Such admiration can be so tinged with sympathy that we do actually 'feel' with the actor, are moved to laughter and to tears and to feelings deeper than laughter and tears can express. But such sympathy does not, in my opinion, proceed from 'illusion'. Exactly analogous reactions can be evoked by music or paintings, by great works of architecture or literature, where there is no question of illusion.

I suggest that theatrical performance is a form of ritual, that the audience is not asked to subscribe to an illusion but to participate in the ritual. If the performance is sufficiently expert it is not hard for the audience to participate with great fervour; for each member of the audience to lose a great deal of his own identity; to allow his personality to become fused with that of other participants, to become lost, rapt, in a collective act of participation.

The attraction for me of the 'open' stage, as opposed to the proscenium, is primarily this: that it stresses the ritual as opposed to the illusionary quality of performance. Next there is the important practical advantage that an auditorium built around a stage, instead of facing it, accommodates a larger number of spectators in the same cubic space (at Stratford we could seat 1500 people in great comfort and the back row was only the same distance from the stage as Row M in the stalls of the Old Vic; the Old Vic holds fewer than 1400 people packed closer in its three tiers). Thirdly, it seems to me incontrovertible that it is more sensible to attempt to produce Shakespeare's plays in something that approximates as closely as circumstances will permit to the conditions for which they were written.

This is not to say that I am for putting all sorts and conditions of plays onto an 'open' stage. Far from it. The plays of Congreve or Sheridan, for instance, of Wilde, Pinero or Barrie were written for the proscenium stage and should be so produced. Nor am I suggesting that the Memorial Theatre at Stratford, Warwickshire, or the Old Vic should straightway be torn down and replaced by more 'Shakespearian' edifices. For some time to come the open stage will still be in the experimental phase. Ours in Canada was only one of many experiments that must, and will, be made. Detailed modifications and improvements will be made to our stage and particularly to our auditorium. We were all aware, I know, of deficiencies. In my opinion the auditorium embraced too wide an arc; the nearest spectators were too near to the actors, the farthest off too far—defects only curable either by a cut in capacity, which is economically unthinkable, or by building galleries which is, for the present, economically unthinkable. All in all, however, the results achieved were very encouraging.