Des McAnuff (AD, Stratford Festival) talks about why he loves the theatre
From Des McAnuff, the artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival:
It has been my great privilege to work as a theatre director in countries around the globe – in Australia, in Europe, in Russia before the fall of the Berlin Wall and all over North America. Throughout those travels, and in my current position as Artistic Director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, North America’s largest classical repertory theatre, I continue to be awed by the extraordinary power of this art to engage the mind, fire the imagination and arouse the spirit.
Live performance is necessarily ephemeral: like life itself, it exists as an experience in the present moment, passing through our senses on its way into the “dark backward and abysm of time.” Yet its transitory nature also gives theatre an immediacy and an intensity that few other art forms can match. So potent is the electricity that flows through that live connection between artist and audience that it can change the way we think and feel about ourselves and the world we live in.
Theatre affords us insight and hope. It allows us direct access to the wisdom of the ages. It offers affirmation of our joys and consolation for our sorrows. It opens up avenues of exploration into our own souls, daring us to confront even the darkest truths about ourselves. Tyrone Guthrie called it the oldest social, moral, and political platform in the history of Western culture. And today we need it more than ever.
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