A night at the Guthrie

Addendum to yesterday: a colleague of mine from UNC-CH/PlayMakers is up here doing set design for Sunday in the Park with George at the Guthrie Theatre. They have three theater spaces within their complex, so even though her show is only just going into tech rehearsals on the coming Tuesday, she was able to get us a couple tickets to the show running in the other theater. So, off i went to the show last night!

It's hard to comprehend the scale of the Guthrie without actually being there. It's nine stories tall, with not only three theatres inside, but also three restaurants, an art gallery, a store, and all of their production shops on-site. The only thing comparable I can think of in the US is the Public Theatre in NYC, except because it's in NYC, it's surounded by all of Broadway, off-Broadway, tiny street theatres, etc. There are other theatres here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, too, but the Guthrie is like nothing else.

 This is a piano on the sidewalk across the street from the theatre, which anyone can sit down and play. This lady was playing Beethoven's "Für Elise" with her hands under her toddler's hands.

This was the play we went to see, a world premiere of a devised work. 

I have to admit, in the philosophical discussion of theatre-making, i'm fully in the camp of works in which the authorship of the playwright is primary. I'm not necessarily talking about the traditionally-defined "well made play," as it were, but the modern movement toward devised work, generated and developed by a group of performers without any specific playwright? Well, i'm not a fan. To me, the lack of a writer's craft is most always quite evident in the shape (or lack thereof) of the show, and this piece is no exception.