The beauty of three stages

Could we imagine the Guthrie Theater without the thrust stage jutting its chin into our consciousness? Tyrone Guthrie had built the bold design at Stratford, Ontario, in 1953 to invigorate his directorial conceptions of Shakespeare, so it was natural for him and designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch to build their Minneapolis theater around that asymmetrical playing space. Guthrie proclaimed it could work well not only for Shakespeare but contemporary drama as well.

"By and large he was right," said artistic director Joe Dowling, who has overseen the remaking of the thrust in the new building -- a smaller auditorium but a stage that is within inches of Moiseiwitsch's original. In a time when the theatrical pendulum is swinging away from the free-form 1960s and '70s, Dowling recognizes the thrust's signature meaning for the Guthrie and for a generation of theatergoers who have become accustomed to it.

But Dowling also has come to believe that Guthrie's belief in the versatility of the thrust and the conventional wisdom that grew from it is not entirely true.

"The thrust stage is magnificent for classic works of epic scope," Dowling said recently. "But by the late 19th century and 20th century, plays were influenced by realism that demands the audiences see the same thing at the same time -- to see it from the same perspective."

This is why the new 700-seat proscenium stage promises to become the most transformative space in the new building. More than the thrust (with which we're familiar) and the black-box studio (a model we've seen around town for years), the proscenium offers a distinctly new way for the Guthrie to present classic and contemporary drama.

"Take a work such as 'Virginia Woolf,' " Dowling said, referring to the 2001 Guthrie production of Edward Albee's play, directed by David Esbjornson and starring Patrick Stewart and Mercedes Ruehl. "David did a marvelous job but it could have benefitted from a proscenium. Because of the thrust, the actors had to keep moving around."

"The Glass Menagerie," which Dowling will direct next year, is another example. Even though it has been done three times at the Guthrie, Dowling contends the work needs to be seen from the same perspective.

"You want everyone to see the same room, not three different rooms," he said, referring to the various views one gets in a thrust. In a proscenium, "everybody captures the same psychological moment."

The proscenium makes it easier to import and export productions. Staging a show is an intricate puzzle. It is as difficult to put a show built for a thrust into a proscenium as it is to put a square peg in a round hole. It can be done, but at great cost and time. Since few other theaters have a thrust, the Guthrie is likely to originate touring shows on its new proscenium stage.

Dowling said he is particularly optimistic about the future of the "World Stages" program, which brings in foreign and diverse theater troupes that generally work with prosceniums.

"These are companies we otherwise wouldn't see," he said. "The proscenium is the natural currency of those shows."

Far from obsolete

Even in 1963, it was daring for Guthrie to build a theater with only one option -- the thrust. Based on his experience in Stratford, though, and his convictions of the thrust's muscularity, he forged on and for better or worse it has shaped productions for 43 years. For all of Dowling's fondness for the proscenium's uniform perspective, he never dreamed for a moment of building a new theater without the emblematic stage. Well, perhaps a moment. But only a moment.

"I remember standing over at Vineland and looking out at this magnificent room and thinking, 'What kind of fool am I?' " he said, laughing at the memory.

Even through the thrust is renowned for its capacity to stage Shakespearean plays, with all their pageantry and direct address, Dowling said the stage has other applications. For example, this season Gary Gisselman will direct "Lost in Yonkers" on the thrust. The Neil Simon play has only seven characters and clearly fits the "contemporary theater" category. Yet, as Dowling and Gisselman discussed the production, they decided the thrust gave them a chance to "shake it up, and redo it. It could benefit from the nature of the staging."

This season's musical, "1776," is a large work that proclaims history so it, too, makes sense on the thrust.

"There's a practical reason for that, too," Dowling said. "It's eleven hundred seats versus 700 in the proscenium so that's a consideration."

Bottom line, Dowling said, is that it's not impossible to stage O'Neill, Chekhov, Shaw, Simon, Ibsen or any other modern playwright on the thrust. Visuals, mood, directorial intent, content, economics all figure into each decision.

The playground

Part of the old Lab's mission was to give the Guthrie a venue in which to experiment with new work. The new studio, high above the proscenium and the thrust, allows the company to expand that program and offer a venue for partnerships with other Minnesota troupes. Mu Performing Arts, Mixed Blood and Commonweal are all producing work in the first season. It is, at this point, the least defined of the three spaces, although the appointment of literary director Michael Bigelow Dixon clearly signals the intention of launching new plays.

Dixon was a leading light at Actors' Theater of Louisville, home of the Humana Festival of New Plays, so it makes sense that he would use this portfolio to expand the Guthrie's forays into new play development.

The studio became inevitable, Dowling said, after the thrust and prosceniums fell into place.

"The flexibility allows young writers to grow and change the art form," he said. It is the final piece in a three-stage approach that Dowling said was planned "a long time in advance."

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299