Shakespeare Theatre

A 43-year love affair with Shakespeare

Carthage's annual trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival

"I'd make a journey twice as far, to enjoy
A second night of such sweet shortness . . ." (Cymbeline)

By Maria Carrig
Associate Professor of English, Theatre, and Great Ideas

Each October, in one of Carthage's most cherished traditions, about 50 students, faculty, staff and alumni board a bus and travel 350 miles to the tiny town of Stratford, Ontario (90 miles from Toronto), for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, a world-class theatre festival that attracts actors from all over the globe.

Jean Preston, director of the Carthage Writing Center, is a longtime organizer of the event. "It is one of Carthage's most unique activities," she said. "It brings together all members of the College community who love Shakespeare and theater. Any student, Carthage employee or graduate may attend. The trip is entirely self-funded. For about $400, a little more if you want your own room, you get to see five plays and spend two nights in a hotel, with round-trip bus fare. It is only a weekend, but it feels like a vacation."

"I fell in love with Stratford in 1994, when Pat Wendricks, who was secretary of the Theatre Department and then-organizer of the trip, asked me to go," Ms. Preston continued. "I haven't missed a year since then."

Don Michie, professor emeritus of English, began to go around 1967.

"Ruth Maxwell was chair of the English Department," Prof. Michie recalled. "She, Shandy Holland, chair of the Theatre Department and I came up with the idea. We took a group of students and some alumni on an eight-hour bus ride to Ontario. We would leave Thursday morning early, arrive about 5 p.m., have dinner and rush to the theater. Two nights later we would board the bus and drive home.

"Back in the beginning, it was about $80 or $90 for the entire trip. Everyone in the English Department went at one time or another. The plays were topnotch, amazingly done. What made it special was seeing four or five plays in two days."

About the Festival

The Stratford Festival was inaugurated in 1953 by Tom Patterson, a journalist who wanted to improve the dismal state of Canadian theatre. He succeeded in luring the legendary British director Tyrone Guthrie, who had worked with the likes of Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Edith Evans, and many other greats. Two of these, Alec Guinness and Irene Worth, agreed to headline the Festival's first season, which consisted of two plays, Richard III and All's Well That Ends Well, performed under a leaky tent.

One of the Stratford Festival's supreme innovations was its new stage, created by the designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch. Revolutionary at the time, the Festival Theatre's thrust stage mimicked the bare platform of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, built in 1599. When Shakespeare created his great soliloquies, in which a character alone on stage reveals the inner workings of his mind to the audience, he was imagining the thrust stage.

For the first few years, the stage was protected only by a tent, but the extraordinary success of the Festival enabled the group to build the Festival Theatre, which has remained the main stage. The Festival has grown to 15 shows per season. Over the years the repertory broadened to include classic European drama from the 16th to 20th centuries, the occasional Greek tragedy, and a number of American classics. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a perennial favorite, most recently revived in 2009 with Stratford great Brian Bedford directing and starring, in drag, as Lady Bracknell. The Festival has staged new works by contemporary artists, and produces two musicals each year. But Shakespeare remains the staple.

Actors at the Stratford Festival have included James Mason, Julie Harris, Paul Scofield, Maggie Smith, Christopher Plummer (who stars this season in The Tempest), and Christopher Walken. Many actors who became well-known in other venues got their start at Stratford. Lorne Greene (of the long-running TV show "Bonanza") and William Shatner of "Star Trek" performed together in the 1955 production of Julius Caesar, with Greene as Brutus and Shatner as Brutus' boy servant Lucius.

"For years my mother went with me," Ms. Preston said. "She loves Christopher Plummer, has had a crush on him since she was a girl. One year he was playing King Lear, and I made sure we were in the front row so she could see him up close. He looked ancient, nothing like Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music. My mother's face fell. We spent the rest of the weekend looking for him in various venues so she could see him as he was meant to be seen. We never did find him."

Students encouraged to attend

Antoni Cimolino, general director of the Festival, points out that it is crucial to attract the younger generation, not just for one season, but to build a lifelong love of theater. These days, the Carthage group includes more students than ever. Both the Theatre and English departments encourage their majors to attend, and each department funds a yearly full scholarship.

"We used to take the students into a room and quiz them about the plays before we left, to see if they had read them, but we finally gave up and decided to leave them alone," Prof. Michie remembered. "That turned out to be best. Now we merely require that they attend all the plays."

Profs. Herschel Kruger, (Theatre), Marilyn Ward (Education) and Maria Carrig (English) are seldom absent. Prof. Ingrid Tiegel (Psychology) was joined for many years by her friends Merle and Eunice Boyer, long-time professors in philosophy and sociology, respectively, who died in 2008.

"Even in the last year of her life, Eunice got herself to Stratford," said Prof. Tiegel.

Sue Witkauskis, secretary to President F. Gregory Campbell, has been going since the 1980s. She has fond memories of attending the plays with secretaries Patty Jo Wendricks and Gladys Dart, and librarian Betty Kendall.

"The group used to be smaller than it is now, but in many respects the trip hasn't changed," Mrs. Witkauskis said. "We have always stayed at the Queen's Inn in the center of Stratford — only now we take up the whole hotel. And Stratford is still a quaint little town that looks much the same as it did in the '50s."

"I like that you get to know the actors over the years," she said. "One year we saw Guys and Dolls. Afterward we went out to a restaurant and ran into some of the actors. One of the show's stars, Bruce Dow, talked to us and took pictures with us."

'A very special trip'

"It's a very special trip," said Ms. Preston. "I seldom come away disappointed from any performance. In Stratford, everyone has their special stores to shop in, and even though the town is small, there is such a variety of things to do. You can take a lovely walk to the theatre along the Avon River, which is full of swans.

"Even the bus ride is special. A few years ago, the students learned the Canadian National Anthem, 'O Canada,' and they sang it as they crossed the border. One year they had a card tournament on the bus and stayed up all night. These days they show a video."

"When we first started going, there were only two places in Stratford you could get lunch or dinner," Prof. Michie said. "One was a Woolworth's and the other was a Chinese restaurant. Now, there are great gourmet restaurants where you can easily spend $100 a person.

"The last time I went was in 1997," he continued. "In addition to the Shakespeare, we saw Oedipus Rex," a revival of Tyrone Guthrie's legendary 1954 production in Greek masks, which had been made into a film. "The performance was overwhelming. You know what's going to happen but you hope it doesn't; you have a knot in your stomach.

"I took my son Mike when he was age 11, and he hasn't missed a season since," Prof. Michie added. "The first trip hooked him. A lot of the students went on the trip on a dare, but ended up coming with us again, some even as alumni. I remember two couples who met on the Stratford trip and later got married. I still get postcards from them when they're in Stratford."

This year's group of students, faculty, staff and alumni numbers around 50 (just enough to fit on the bus). The trip will be co-coordinated by Jean Preston and Justin Zahn, '04, an administrator in the College's Business Office. The plays include As You Like It, Dangerous Liaisons, Peter Pan and Kiss Me, Kate.

Prof. Michie concluded, "We didn't intend to initiate a tradition — it just grew into one."

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Bibliographical note: Some of the information in this article comes from Robert Cushman, Fifty Seasons at Stratford (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2002).