The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler. Disenchanted with Broadway, they intended to form a theater with a resident acting company, to perform classic plays in rotating repertory, while maintaining the highest professional standards.The Guthrie Theater has performed in two main-stage facilities. The first building was designed by Ralph Rapson, included a 1,441-seat thrust stage designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch, and was operated from 1963–2006. After closing its 2005–2006 season, the theater moved to its current facility designed by Jean Nouvel.In 1959, Sir Tyrone Guthrie published a small invitation in the drama page of The New York Times soliciting communities' interest and involvement in a resident theater. Out of the seven cities that responded, the Twin Cities showed not only interest but also eagerness for the project.Frank Whiting, the director of the University of Minnesota Theater, introduced Guthrie to the arts community in the Twin Cities and helped gather support that persuaded Guthrie to locate his theater in Minneapolis. With the help of the newly founded Tyrone Guthrie Theater Foundation a fundraising effort raised over US$2 million. The new theater was completed in 1963 in time for the May 7 opening of Hamlet. During its first season the Guthrie featured well known stage actors Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy and Zoe Caldwell and featured a group of younger actors including George Grizzard, Ellen Geer and Joan van Ark. Tyrone Guthrie served as Artistic Director until 1966 and continued to direct at the theater he founded until 1969, two years before his death. In 1966 Douglas Campbell was named Artistic Director.Throughout the 1960s the Guthrie found critical acclaim in its productions of Henry V, St. Joan, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Three Sisters and The House of Atreus. In 1968 the production of The House of Atreus was taken on the road in a national tour that was a first for a resident theater.[1] Also starting in 1968, the Guthrie began a tradition of producing plays on smaller stages in the Twin Cities area, including the Crawford-Livingston Theater in St. Paul and The Other Place.In 1971, Michael Langham became artistic director and produced classic plays including Oedipus Rex, Love's Labour's Lost, She Stoops to Conquer, and A Streetcar Named Desire. After Langham left in 1977, the Guthrie crossed a milestone of sorts when for the first time it selected an artistic director that was not a respected collaborator or friend of Tyrone Guthrie. That year Alvin Epstein was selected as artistic director and was the first American to fill that role.In 1980 Liviu Ciulei replaced Epstein. Ciulei was the former artistic director of Teatrul Bulandra in Romania and had a profound influence on the Guthrie. He challenged audiences with his bold theatrical interpretations and his highly contemporary and international style. Ciulei's interest in theater didn't stop at the productions themselves, he was a designer and architect and one of the first things he did was to redesign the theater itself. His changes allowed more structural flexibility in the stage to allow each production a unique physical presentation. While Ciulei was not able to attain all the goals he had envisioned, he was able to maintain and advance the Guthrie's national and international reputation as a first-rate example of American theater and drew critical success with productions of classics such as Peer Gynt, The Marriage of Figaro, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Seagull, and Tartuffe. He also was able to reestablish the Guthrie’s commitment to acting ensembles by gathering together a rotating repertory in his last season as Artistic Director in 1985. In 1982 the theater won the Regional Theatre Tony Award.
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