Summer Solstice Moon
Though slow to get there, we’ve now seen shows in the Wuertle thrust, Dowling studio and McGuire proscenium platforms at the new(er) Guthrie. The Wuertle, of course, conserves the old Guthrie’s radical proscenium thrust stage which pushes the performing space out into the audience. (see picture) This design the Guthrie shared with Tyron Guthrie’s other major theatrical location, Stratford, Ontario’s Festival Theatre. It was, and is, a compromise between theatre in the round and the traditional proscenium stage, like the Guthrie’s McGuire.
The Dowling studio recapitulates the old lab theatre over on 1st avenue in the Warehouse district. Even more so than the old lab and the thrust stage it puts performer(s) and audience in a very intimate space. We saw the Iliad in the studio last month, a one person performance by Stephen Yoakam.
The proscenium presents a play up and far away from the audience, performances with a barrier to the audience, the “fourth wall.” Each platform has its virtues and its drawbacks. The thrust and the lab try to break the fourth wall by enclosing the stage itself by seating, trying to place the audience almost in the action of the play. And, if you attended any theater at the old Guthrie by the Walker Art Center, you may remember actors rushing up the aisles to get on stage, or actors at times stumbling off stage and apparently into the audience.
Live theater and live music share the ephemeral nature of their productions. Finished, there is nothing that remains but a script or a score, neither alive as the performance just was. Yet live music can now be reproduced in 5 or 7 speaker stereo in your home to a remarkable level of fidelity. You cannot see the performers, no, nor can you hear some of the subtle harmonics (or so they tell me, but with only one good ear, I can no longer tell), but the experience is very close.
Not so with live theatre. A play on television or filmed as a movie is a dead thing, a different event altogether from sitting with the actors, breathing the air they breathe and watching them, flesh and blood, as they transform themselves into something or someone else.