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‘Down With the Boot-Faced’: Public Relations at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Graham Woodruff
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Extract

In a previous article I examined Terence Gray's contribution to the development of theatre architecture and design in England. I argued that Gray's work was not so much an innovation in theatre practice but rather an attempt to bring into the English theatre the production methods that were being developed in Europe. Ideas and techniques were borrowed from Craig and Appia, Meyerhold in Russia, Jessner in Germany, Gaston Baty in France and Norman Bel Geddes in the United States and introduced into the English theatre which had remained isolated since the end of the First World War. Many of Gray's ideas were indeed second hand, but the freshness and exuberance of his work startled the English theatrical scene of the thirties and are still relevant to the theatre of today. One only has to compare the designs of the new National Theatre with Gray's plans for a Festival Theatre at the National Sporting Club, King Street, to see the influence of his work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , February 1976 , pp. 114 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1976

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References

Notes

1. Woodruff, Graham, ‘Terence Gray and Theatre Design’ in Theatre Research, vol XI, nos 2 & 3 (1971), pp. 114–33.Google Scholar

2. Gray, Terence, Festival Theatre Review, vol IV, no 64, p. 2.Google Scholar

3. ibid., p. 2.

4. Gray, Terence, ‘Can the theatre be practised as an Art Form?’, Festival Theatre Review, vol IV, no 73, p. 2.Google Scholar

5. Gray, Terence, ‘The Theatre shall be theatrical’, Varsity Weekly, 8 01 1932, p. 2.Google Scholar

6. Gray, Terence, ‘I look at the Audience’, Theatre Arts Monthly, 1931, p. 819.Google Scholar

7. Festival Theatre Review., vol II, no 62, p. 7. (Gray accused Barry Jackson of sitting on Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.)

8. ibid., p. 7.

9. Dean, Basil, Drama, 11 1928, p. 29.Google Scholar

10. The Cambridge Chronicle, 10 01 1927, p. 4.

11. This is an explanation suggested by Terence Gray in an interview with me in August, 1969.

12. The Gownsman, 6 01 1929, p. 6.

13. ibid., 26 November 1926, p. 6.

14. Gray, Terence, ‘I look at the Audience’ in Theatre Arts Monthly, (1931), p. 817.Google Scholar

15. Gray, Terence, Festival Theatre Review, vol. III, no. 62, p. 4.Google Scholar

16. Gray, Terence, ‘I look at the Audience’, op. cit., p. 817.Google Scholar

17. , D. J. W., The Granta, 12 11 1927, p. 6.Google Scholar

18. Several books published under the name of Wei Wu Wei.

19. The Editor, ibid., vol. IV, no. 70, p. 1.

20. Gray, Terence, Festival Theatre Review, vol. II, no. 29, p. 3.Google Scholar

21. The Cambridge Chronicle, 26 01 1927, p. 4.

22. The Varsity Weekly, 10 04 1931, p. 6.

23. The Gownsman, 17 01 1931, p. 8.

24. ibid., 31 October 1931, p. 8.

25. ibid., 6 June 1931, p. 14.

26. Gray, Terence, Festival Theatre Review, vol. III, no. 63, p. 3.Google Scholar

27. ibid., vol. II, no. 30, p. 9.

28. ibid., vol. III, no. 63, p. 3.

29. Jacks, Peter, The Gownsman, 19 02 1927, p. 6.Google Scholar

30. Festival Theatre Review, vol., no. 21, p. 4.

31. ibid., p. 5.

32. ibid., p. 6.

33. ibid., vol. III, no. 55, p. 12.

34. Marshall, Norman, The Other Theatre (1947), p. 56.Google Scholar

35. Festival Theatre Review, vol. VI, no. 87, p. 5.

36. Quoted in Marshall, Norman, The Other Theatre, pp. 70–1.Google Scholar