Along the river, a large group of people gather.
Swans swim by in the sparkling water of the tree-lined river.
A buzz moves through the crowd as they wait in eager anticipation.
Then, they hear it…
The doors open, and the crowd enters a new world of wonder.
Each person takes their seat, and as they wait, they can almost hear the echoes of voices from the past.
They are familiar voices to many.
Alec Guinness.
Christopher Plummer.
Maggie Smith.
Each of those voices brought to life the words of Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and even Harvey Firestein.
But it is so much more than just a performing space.
It is a place for working creatives, from the stage design, the costumes, the other lesser-known actors…it’s a place where the veil is thin between what’s real and what’s imagined.
The audience doesn’t know what they’ll get but they know it’s something special…and have been traveling from around the world for over 70 years…as we will be.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we’re treading the boards at the Stratford Festival!
Back in 1828, a small community began to spring up in southern Ontario.
As more settlers arrived, this growing center needed a proper name.
Thomas Mercer Jones, an administrator in Upper Canada, took inspiration from his English roots, and called the community Stratford in honour of Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace and burial spot of William Shakespeare.
The first hotel was opened that same year, appropriately named the Shakespeare Hotel where a portrait of the playwright, given to the settlers by Jones, was hung on the wall.
From the very beginning, Shakespeare was a part of Stratford.
By 1854, the community had enough of a population to incorporate into a village, and as the Grand Trunk and Buffalo-Lake Huron Railways came through in 1856, the future was looking bright.
In 1859, Stratford became a town, attracting many new visitors and residents including a 17-year-old telegraph operator named Thomas Edison, who lived there briefly in 1864.
In 1885 with a population of 9,000 people it was incorporated into a city.
The Grand Trunk Railway eventually became the city’s largest employer thanks to a railway repair yard that opened in 1901.
At one point, 40 percent of the working population was employed by the company.
As the 1920s dawned, the community had become a furniture manufacturing centre, with nearly 15 percent of all the furniture made in Canada coming out of Stratford.
But things can change quickly and after two World Wars and the Great Depression, Stratford wasn’t the same.
The Second World War had accelerated technological development, and the end of the railway’s dominance gave way to the automobile.
This was bad news for Stratford.
In 1951, the Canadian National Railways announced that they were phasing out the locomotive shops in Stratford, with an eventual closing date of 1958.
The furniture industry, once a vibrant part of the economy had not recovered from the decline that began during The Great Depression.
If Stratford wanted to stay a thriving centre in southern Ontario, it needed to evolve.
That is when a young man came up with an idea inspired by the city’s name and it would change everything.
In the early 1930s, Tom Patterson was a young student in Stratford.
He had an idea that his hometown should follow the lead of the original Stratford and create a festival centered on the plays of William Shakespeare.
He brought up the idea to his friends in the Shakespearean Gardens next to the school, but it went nowhere.
He was a kid after all.
It was an excellent idea, lightning in a bottle as they say, but the time wasn’t right.
Patterson had to be patient.
He carried his idea through the Second World War, while attending Trinity College and when he began writing for the magazine Civic Administration.
He bided his time until he attended a conference in late-1951.
By then Stratford’s city council and chamber of commerce were both looking for new ways to revitalize the town.
For inspiration, Mayor David Simpson attended a Waterworks conference in Winnipeg in 1951.
There, a man with a million-dollar idea ran into him.
It was like peanut butter meeting jam.
The two men talked, and Patterson brought up the Shakespearean Festival idea he had held close for two decades.
Simpson absolutely loved it and encouraged Patterson to bring it to Stratford’s city council in January 1952.
His proposal was to go to New York City to try and encourage Sir Laurence Olivier to join his efforts in bringing The Bard to Southern Ontario.
This was no small task.
Olivier was a giant of the stage during the mid-part of the 20th Century.
Considered the greatest Shakespearean actor of his time, he went on to win two BAFTAs, five Emmys, three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards.
There was no bigger Shakespearean actor in the world to approach with the festival idea.
Stratford’s city council loved his proposal and gave Patterson $125 for the journey, $25 more than what was asked.
Meanwhile, a reporter covering that council meeting also loved the idea and on Jan. 22, 1952, the Stratford Beacon Herald ran the headline,
“Council told of idea to make Stratford world famous Shakespearean centre”.
Unfortunately, in New York Patterson had no luck meeting Sir Laurence Olivier but he met with the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations.
They didn’t give him money, but they told him he had an excellent idea and that was enough to give Patterson the confidence to pursue his dream.
With news of a Stratford Shakespearean Festival spreading across the country, the city council abandoned all the other ideas on the table.
They were fully committed to Patterson, who at the same time met with CBC Producer Mavor Moore.
Mavor spoke to his mother, Dora, who was the director of The New Play Society.
She loved the idea of a Shakespeare festival and Patterson received the first firm commitment from someone in the industry.
She told him to contact Tyrone Guthrie, a close friend of hers who happened to be one of the leading Shakespearean directors in the English-speaking world at the time.
Patterson called Guthrie at his home in Ireland.
When Guthrie picked up and heard Patterson say he was calling from Toronto he hung up thinking it was a prank call.
Patterson called again.
This time, Guthrie gave him a chance and said.
“I’m certainly interested, especially if it offers a fresh advance in producing Shakespeare. How about money?”
Patterson could only offer $500.
Guthrie accepted the offer, and the small festival now had a big name associated with it.
For the next few weeks, they exchanged letters and planned everything out.
In July 1952, Guthrie arrived in Stratford. Expecting, in his words, to find a committee made up of elderly ladies, with businessmen but was surprised to find everyone was younger than he was.
Patterson and the committee told him they knew nothing about theatre, nor its operations, and had no facility to produce the festival.
That meant very little restraints to Guthrie’s artistic vision which made it impossible to pass.
He had spent 20 years producing large and extravagant Shakespeare productions for radio, at Cambridge, and the Westminster Theatre.
The chance to create a festival from the ground up, through a grassroots movement, was a challenge he had to take.
Guthrie had been pushing the idea of producing Shakespeare’s plays on the same type of stage Shakespeare would have used. Now he had his chance because the committee had also given him a free hand to decide over the theatre.
Guthrie wrote years later in his book Renown at Stratford,
“Most of us similarly placed abandoned our great ideas, write them off as daydreams, and settle for something less exciting, and more practicable. Not so Mr. Patterson. His perseverance was indomitable.”
While aspects of the festival could be amateur, Guthrie insisted that everyone involved in the production be experienced.
Guthrie used his connections in England to bring in some of the best production staff and designers in the world of theatre to the small town of Stratford.
With the theatre staff in place, it was now time to bring in an actor to give their first production real legitimacy.
Enter stage left…Obi Wan Kenobi.
When people think of Alec Guinness, they think of two things.
His Oscar-winning role as Col. Nicholson on The Bridge on the River Kwai, from 1957, and his Oscar-nominated role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, from 1977.
But for years he had been famous in theatre circles as one of England’s best actors alongside Laurence Olivier, with whom he occasionally acted.
Because of his theatre work, he became close friends with Tyrone Guthrie, who called in 1952 to ask a favour.
He wanted Guinness to act in a small production in a small town in Ontario.
He had received several offers to act in Shakespearean productions that theatre season, including one from the Royal Shakespeare Society in England and had turned down a contract in an unnamed movie.
But like Guthrie, the grassroots feel of the Stratford venture appealed to him and he accepted the offer.
When word got out that Guinness had turned down a movie to act at Stratford, a New York ticket broker bought up the seats for an entire week of shows.
Joining Guinness on-stage would-be Irene Worth, a British actress who had worked with Guthrie on several Shakespeare productions.
Patterson always had the goal that the festival would be quote,
“demonstrably a Canadian one, carried out not merely by Canadian initiative, and with Canadian finance, but by Canadian actors.”
The stars may have been British, but 74 of the 80 cast members were Canadian.
Guthrie chose two productions for the inaugural season of the festival, the historical drama Richard III and the comedic All’s Well That Ends Well.
Richard III was written between 1592 and 1594 and tells the story of the jealous and crippled Richard of Gloucester who wants to become King of England.
The Machiavellian pursuit of the crowd leads him to send his young nephews to their deaths and when he fails Richards famously shouts, “my horse my horse my kingdom for a horse.”
At that moment, Richard loses the Wars of the Roses. The victor in the battle, Henry Tudor, becomes Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs and the founder of the Tudor dynasty. Choosing that play was controversial.
The Stratford Beacon-Herald called the title character unwholesome, who was a quote,
“physically repulsive hypocrite, liar, and murderer, without one redeeming feature.”
The newspaper was especially angry it was chosen in 1953, the same year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and called the decision a hideous blot on royalty.
But as Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
And the show must go on regardless of what newspapers had to say.
So, it was time to build a venue.
In November 1952, the board of directors for the Stratford Festival Foundation were elected, with Tom Patterson in the role of general manager.
His main task was to raise money to build the stage and buy the tent that the actors would perform under.
For the next few months, Patterson worked hard as some worried the entire festival would be cancelled due to a lack of funds.
Thanks to donations from large companies in the area, and from Stratford residents, the money was raised in time.
With that a tent made in Chicago was ordered and the local contractors built the stage.
The tent wouldn’t arrive until the end of June, only two weeks before the first performance. As a result, the first rehearsals were held in a shed on Stratford’s fairgrounds.
The shed was small, with a hot tin roof, and home to dozens of sparrows.
Timothy Findley, a crew member stated the birds,
“relieved themselves with wild abandon as they flew above us.”
On June 26, 1953, Skip Manley and 30 of his workers arrived to raise the theatre tent over two 25-metre poles made of Douglas pine. It took them 60 hours to put up the tent, as nearly half the town watched.
The canvas was 45 metres in diameter and rose 19 metres from stage to peak while weighing three tons and was tied down with 16 kilometres of rope and three kilometres of cable.
The amphitheatre was dug seven metres into the ground and could seat 1,500 people.
Guthrie chose a thrust stage built for the festival, which is not like a normal stage, where audiences sit in front like they would a movie.
Instead, a thrust stage is surrounded on three sides by the audience, allowing actors to be more intimate and interactive in their performance.
The theatre was designed by Tanya Moisewitsch, who had worked with Guthrie many times in England.
Her design took inspiration from the Elizabethan apron stage, and the ancient arenas of the Greeks and the Romans.
It consisted of a protruding platform, a balcony, trap doors, nine acting levels and eight entrances. Meaning no audience member would be more than 19 metres from the stage.
For context, 19 metres is one-third the length of the ice in a hockey rink.
The Stratford Festival opening was becoming news across Canada.
In Macleans Magazine, Alan Phillips wrote a multi-page feature on May 1, 1953, two months before the festival. He said,
“The 19,000 residents of Stratford in Southern Ontario have for years taken a somewhat cavalier attitude towards tourists…The tourists have repaid Stratford in kind. They have roared past the east-end cluster of factories, glided down an avenue of tree-shaded homes, slowed down for a wide drab main street…This July, things are going to be different.”
Stratford hotel owner Wes Litt had reservations from across North America and as far away as England.
But there were some who criticized the arrogance of a small town attempting to put on a world-class festival.
Rupert Caplan, a veteran Montreal drama producer said,
“We know better than to try to pull off a thing like this in Montreal. But you, you don’t know the pitfalls, so you go right ahead.”
Meanwhile Patterson, Guthrie, Guinness and everyone involved in the festival would not be dismayed.
They knew they had something amazing.
As opening night approached, $75,000 in advance ticket sales were sold and Stratford was ready for show time.
The influx of people meant Stratford Festival organizers had to arrange homes and offer rooms to visitors.
Canadian National Railway also offered to provide a special sleeper-car service on its passenger trains for groups of 30 or more.
The Knox Presbyterian Church and YMCA offered to prepare and serve meals, while the Canadian National Telegraph made sure it had staff around-the-clock in case critics needed to wire stories to newspapers across eastern North America.
Girl Guides were even enlisted to direct traffic into parking lots.
July 13, 1953, was opening night. In the audience were 1,500 people, including 85 theatre critics from across Canada and the United States.
It was a who’s-who of famous faces.
There was Lady Eaton, the wife of former Eaton’s president John Craig Eaton. Canada’s Musical Knight, Sir Ernest Macmillan was there, as was the president of Maclean-Hunter, the publisher of Macleans Magazine, Floyd Chalmers.
God Save The Queen was played, and then Alec Guinness as Richard III, opened his mouth and said.
“Now is the winter of our discontent…Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”
Nathan Cohen, a theatre critic for the Toronto Daily Star was in the audience and although he was uncomfortable in the hot tent and the chair bothered him as Guinness continued the famous Shakespearean speech, he soon forgot all of that.
He wrote,
“That excitement, that enthusiasm, just kept mounting. We were one with the actors. It was more than involvement. It was a mingling of soul. We felt that something absolutely original and world-important was going on, and we mixed our tensions and jubilations with that of the actors.”
The first play was an absolute triumph. If Rotten Tomatoes had existed, that first performance would have a 100 percent rating.
It was universally acclaimed.
The curtain calls continued for five minutes until Guinness came out and expressed his thanks to the crowd, and to the British and Canadian actors who he had shared the stage with on that special night.
Detroit Times drama editor Harvey Taylor wrote,
“Not even the bloody, depraved hero of King Edward III dampened the festive mood of the audience under the huge canvas tent. Alec Guinness, Irene Worth and their spirited company of Canadian and English actors were given a long ovation, and the audience trooped out as if they’d seen a spritely little farce.”
Globe and Mail drama critic Herbert Whittaker went a step further, calling it the most exciting night in the history of Canadian theatre.
Even the Stratford Beacon-Herald that had criticized the play selection stated on a front-page headline that the festival had a triumphant start.
Although, that headline was overshadowed by a story on the increase in cheese prices.
10,000 people had attended nightly performances by the end of the first week.
The hope was to at least 60 percent of the seats filled each night, instead they were at98 percent capacity each performance.
It wasn’t just Stratford that benefited. Kitchener, 50 kilometres away, and London 62 kilometres away both saw an increase in hotel occupancy during the festival run.
It had been a massive success and so well received that the season was extended from five to six weeks.
Alec Guinness adored his time in Stratford and told the Beacon-Herald,
“I think Canadians are the most kind and generous people I have ever encountered. I must say that people have been very thoughtful in their offers of hospitality, but it just hasn’t stopped. One can’t possibly repay their hospitality in any shape or form.”
He was so impressed by two Canadian actors, Richard Easton and Timothy Findley that he offered them an opportunity to study drama in England.
That first season the original budget had been $150,000 and was exceeded by $60,000 so although the festival ended up with a $4000 deficit it was seen as a massive success.
Whether anyone knew it or not, Stratford and the theatre scene in Canada would never be the same again.
In the first four seasons of the festival, 400,000 visitors saw 260 performances.
The 1954 festival season was one of the most successful.
That year, it ran for nine weeks and included not only Shakespear’s Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew, but also Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex.
Among the actors on stage that season were Douglas Campbell, Timothy Findley, Don Harron, Douglas Rain and William Hutt.
The next year the festival debuted jazz and pop concerts, solo performances and opera.
By 1956, the festival saw the departure of Tyrone Guthrie, who moved on to new challenges. He was replaced by Micheal Langham, who remained the artistic director of the festival until 1967.
The festival was a growing part of Stratford’s identity, and the decision was made to build a permanent structure a.
The new theatre was designed by Robert Fairfield who wanted to keep the atmosphere of the original tent theatre and built a structure that looked like a giant tent.
The new theatre would be 61 metres in diameter and rise to 21 metres above the stage. Through the addition of a balcony, seating was increased to 2,276 people.
The Festival Theater as it would be known was constructed by 150 workers from Gaffney Construction, a local Stratford company, and finished just in time for a dedication on June 30, 1957.
What happened to that original tent you ask?
It was cut into small pieces, and those pieces were glued to tickets and given to Stratford Festival supporters as mementos.
Under the new building that first season, the festival’s productions included Hamlet, Twelfth Night and the satirical plays My Fair Lady and The Turn Of The Screw.
From this point on, the Stratford Festival would continue to expand and become the defining theatre festival in Canada.
The Stratford Festival didn’t just focus on classic plays, it also gave way to the silver screen.
From 1956 to 1961 and again from 1971 to 1975, the Stratford Film Festival was held alongside the Shakespeare festival.
It was one of the first film festivals in North America to present international films and was launched under the guidance of Tom Patterson, the same man who brought the Shakespeare festival to the community.
After the hiatus from 1961 to 1971, the film festival returned and ran for five more years.
When the Festival of Festivals, now the Toronto International Film Festival launched in 1976, it spelled the end of the on in Stratford l as the larger urban centre quickly overshadowed it.
But when it comes to the stage, Stratford reigns supreme in Canada.
In 2002, there were four venues. In 2022, the festival opened its latest venue, a 600-seat theatre called the Tom Patterson Theatre, honoring the man with the million-dollar idea.
Patterson had worked with the festival in various capacities until 1967, and he founded the touring company Canadian Players with actor Douglas Campbell.
He was awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario, and an island in the Avon River was named for him.
Sadly, he never saw this new theatre, as he died in 2005.
Richard Monette, the artistic director of the festival at the time, said,
“Without Tom Patterson, there would be no Stratford Festival. His was an extraordinary vision at an extraordinary time.”
The list of celebrated performers who have walked the stage of Stratford is immense. I could spend the next five minutes just listing them, but that isn’t fun.
One person who frequented the Stratford stage from it being under canvas all the way to the Festival theater and beyond was future Oscar-winner and the greatest actor to ever portray a Klingon, Christopher Plummer.
Who was his understudy you ask?
Some guy named William Shatner.
Just some other performers who went on to have legendary careers include,
Jackie Burroughs, who played Aunt Hetty along with Road to Avonlea alums.
Jonathan Crombie and Megan Follows.
Then there was Canada’s favourite Mountie on Due South, Paul Gross, Bonanza’s Ben Cartwright, Lorne Greene and Janet Wright, who later played Emma Leroy on Corner Gas.
Eric McCormack from Will and Grace projected the Bard’s words, as did two-time Oscar winner Dame Maggie Smith.
The man who couldn’t get enough cowbell, Christopher Walken appeared on stage in 1968, long before he became famous.
And so did the King of Kensington, Al Waxman.
If there is a famous stage, television or film actor in Canada, chances are, they have walked the boards of a Stratford stage at some point.
The impact of the festival has been immense.
In 1951, two years before the festival began, Stratford had 18 restaurants, one motel and seven hotels.
Within 50 years, the community had 78 restaurants, 11 motels and six hotels.
By the end of the century, it was estimated that the economic benefit of the festival equaled $125 million per year.
Today, those who have never been to Stratford know about the Festival.
It has become one of the most prestigious Shakespearean festivals in the world, and it’s not only a shining gem in the Ontario creative field, but in Canada.
The festival is a place where creative fields merge, and a working actor must stop.
In 2018, the federal government designated the Stratford Festival as a National Historic Event. There is even a Heritage Minute about the festival.
And to think it all began in a leaky tent with the words,
“Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York.”
