Toronto, September 6, 2006....Glastonbury West Productions
presents its first fundraising event: two lectures on the controversial
English stage designer, director and reformer Edward
Gordon Craig (1872-1966). The Passion of Gordon
Craig will be delivered by author and Professor Christopher
Innes on October 13th at 8:00pm, and
on October 14th at 2:30pm, both at the George
Ignatieff Theatre, Trinity College, University of Toronto, 15 Devonshire
Place. The evening also features actor John O’Callaghan,
mezzo-soprano Laura Pudwell and dancer Carla
Zazzarino whose performances will 
illustrate the lecture at key points.
Christopher Innes, FRSC, is Canada Research
Chair in Performance and Culture at York University and author of Edward Gordon
Craig: A Vision of Theatre (Harwood 1998, now in 2nd edition) and 12 other books,
including Designing Modern America:
Broadway to Main Street.
As prologue to the lecture, actor John O’Callaghan,
appearing as the young Gordon Craig, will read an extraordinary dream Craig wrote
down in 1901. Carroll Bishop, Glastonbury’s
Artistic Director, obtained special permission from the Estate of Edward Gordon
Craig and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas
at Austin, to use it.
Passion could refer to Gordon Craig’s casual attitude toward women and
the children he sired. His father E. W. Godwin, architect and stage designer,
had loved his mother, actress Ellen Terry, but when Teddy (Gordon Craig) was
three, Godwin left. He tried to take Edie, the older child, but Ellen wanted
Edie. She offered him Teddy. He didn’t want Teddy. Teddy waited in vain
for his father to return and rescue him.
Craig’s affair with Isadora Duncan was certainly passionate. He was the
father of Deirdre, one of Isadora’s two children who drowned in the Seine
in a car accident. The affair did not lead to marriage: Gordon Craig was already
married. He and Isadora remained friends, and it was Isadora who introduced him
to Stanislavsky. So Gordon Craig went to Moscow and a memorable Hamlet resulted
(1912).
Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew was Craig’s lifelong inspiration.
Hearing it first in 1899, he started to make sketches for a theatre to receive
it. He returned many times to the Passion but did not produce it in his lifetime.
He did produce (with Martin Shaw, his composer friend), design and direct three
Baroque operas: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, The Masque of Love (Dioclesian)
and Handel’s Acis and Galatea. Their beauty, wit and originality made poets
swoon and critics forget to criticize.
Glastonbury West is a small independent production
company. Carroll Bishop, who founded the William Morris Society of Canada 25
years ago, met her Glastonbury West partner John O’Callaghan in 2001 shortly
after 9/11, while working on Glastonbury West’s first production, a staged
reading of Fiona Macleod’s The Immortal Hour. They co-produced the tough
contemporary Irish plays Rum & Vodka (Toronto, New York, L.A.) and Howie
The Rookie (Toronto, L.A., New York). They workshopped and produced Bishop’s
Between Us Goddesses in 2004, and did a major production of Schnitzler’s
Affairs of Anatol in 2005. O’Callaghan is just back from Los Angeles where
he has been publicizing his appearances in the tv series Stargate Atlantis (MGM)
for the coming season.
All proceeds from both lectures will go toward Glastonbury West projects.
Christopher Innes speaks on controversial stage designer
Friday October 13 at 8pm and Saturday
October 14 at 2:30pm
George Ignatieff Theatre, Trinity College, University
of Toronto, 15 Devonshire Place.
Admission: Suggested donation of $15 or pay-what-you-can
Reservations: by email to gwreservations@aol.com,
or by telephone 647-439-6506.
Media Refer: Dianne Weinrib, Amy Stewart – DW Communications, 416-703-5479,
dw@dwcommunications.net
