The Guthrie Theater was born in the form of an idea in 1959 by Sir Tyrone Guthrie with the help of Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler. Guthrie and his colleagues had become dissatisfied with New York's Broadway. He published an ad in The New York Times for cities interested in his plan to make themselves known. Seven cities responded, and the colleagues chose Saint Paul for being in the heart of America, the youth of the cultural community with a large state university and many small colleges on their doorstep, and because of the public's vigor towards the project. It would take four years before the Guthrie opened on May 7th, 1963 in Saint Paul. Since then, The Guthrie Theater has been the home of a vast number of people who have been very influential in the art community and on Minnesota. This is why the Guthrie Theater should be preserved as a historical building.
Unfortunately, that original building's last performance was on May 7th, 2006 before being demolished. The new building, located in Minneapolis, has kept the spirit of the original and Sir Guthrie's aspirations alive. Sir Guthrie had wanted a place to cultivate an atmosphere to nurture artists' talents, to produce great works of literature, and to satisfy the audience's hunger for exceptional plays. An innumerable amount of people throughout the years have embraced those desires and aimed to accomplish those goals, and a multitude of very prominent actors have walked through the Guthrie Theater's halls: Jerry Stiller, James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, Rainn Wilson, Patrick Stewart, Angela Bassett, Sir Ian McKellen to name a few. Even the artistic directors chosen to run the theater have been important. Joseph Haj, the current artistic director, was named one of 25 artists who will have a significant impact on the field over the next quarter century by American Theatre. The last artistic director, Joe Dowling, directed at theaters in London, New York, Washington D.C., Montreal, Alberta, and Dublin. These people have respect and admiration from people all across the world.
Vincent Kartheiser, an actor from Apple Valley who was on "Mad Men", along with dozens of other famous people in the acting community, visited the Guthrie Theater on its 50th anniversary. On this momentous day, former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak said, "There are a lot of reasons we're a great arts city, but the Guthrie was the big bang that created so much theater which spawned visual art, grass roots theater, [and] performance art. The Guthrie gave us the confidence to strut our artistic stuff." This shows that the theater has encouraged Minnesota to show its artistic side, and Minnesota has always supported the Guthrie Theater.
In 1960, hundreds of dedicated volunteers had a statewide fundraiser to help make the Guthrie a reality and over $2.2 million was raised. When plans began in 1999 for the construction of the new facility, Minnesota came together to form the "Save the Guthrie" movement. At the same time, the old Guthrie theater had been under consideration to be placed on the historic register, but due to structural issues, the building was denied.
While the Guthrie Theater is Minneapolis is fairly new and therefore does not have as much history as the old building, it is still dearly loved by many Minnesotans, and it will continue to offer the world what the first facility did. The Guthrie Theater continues to hold the history of the old one within its halls. Minnesota should make sure that we never lose that history or its influence in the world.
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Academic Papers
Non-FictionThese works are the papers I've written for my community college and university courses. Topics will range from violence in video games and literary analysis to slavery and rape. There is also some poetry in here!
