Stratford theatre history
The town was already named for Shakespeare's birthplace. The festival was a new idea, and for four summers it lived in a tent.
The $125 errand
Tom Patterson, a local journalist, wanted Shakespeare played here. On January 22, 1952, city council gave him $125 to look for advice in New York. He did not land Laurence Olivier. Dora Mavor Moore put him in touch with Tyrone Guthrie, who came, looked, and became the first artistic director. The Festival was incorporated on October 31, 1952.
The tent
Guthrie and designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch built the idea that is still the Festival Theatre: a thrust stage, with the audience wrapped around three sides, nobody more than a shout from the actor. For the opening season, and the three after it, that stage and its seats sat under a giant canvas tent on the ground where the theatre stands now. A concrete amphitheatre held the stage. The tent was the roof.
In May 1953 the money almost ran out. Contractor Oliver Gaffney kept his crew working anyway, until Governor General Vincent Massey and the Perth Mutual Insurance Company covered the gap.
Opening night
July 13, 1953. Guthrie's Richard III, with Alec Guinness. The other play was All's Well That Ends Well, with Irene Worth. The season, planned for four weeks, stretched to six. People came.
The building
The tent came down after 1956. Robert Fairfield's permanent Festival Theatre was dedicated on June 30, 1957, and opened with Hamlet, Christopher Plummer in the title role. The thrust stayed. The canvas did not.
The Avon was already an old downtown theatre by then, a landmark since 1900. The Tom Patterson Theatre on Lakeside Drive is the newcomer, opened in May 2022. Here For Now took the old registry office in 2025. The tent is the origin story. It is not the only room in town anymore.