Oliver Rea This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Report by Jane King Hession to MN Historical Society

   www.savetheguthrie.org/whysave - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/1/2002   Last Visited: 4/15/2007

   In 1959, Guthrie teamed up with Broadway theater producer Oliver Rea, and production manager Peter Zeisler, to formulate plans for a "new theatre," one free from the economic pressures of Broadway.
   ...
   After considering several American cities, Guthrie, Rea and Zeisler chose Minneapolis as the home of this "new theatre," having been very favorably impressed by the city's enthusiasm for such a project and determination to raise the necessary funds and support to make it a reality.
   ...
   Guthrie became the theater's first artistic director, Moiseiwitsch its first principal designer, Oliver Rea its first administrative director, and Peter Zeisler, its first production director.
   ...
   Beginning in 1959, Moiseiwitsch and Guthrie collaborated once again, this time with Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler to found the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre.
   ...
   It was the brainchild of internationally renown British stage director, Tyrone Guthrie, former director of the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells Theatres in London, and artistic director of the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, Oliver Rea, respected Broadway producer of A Member of the Wedding and Medea, among others, and Peter Zeisler, a successful New York production manager for such productions as The Sound of Music.
   ...
   In the history of the growth and dissemination of the regional theater movement in the United States, it is highly significant that Guthrie, Rea and Zeisler chose Minneapolis as the most favorable city for their new model for the American professional regional theater.
   ...
   In a New York Times article in 1959 Rea expressed the team's belief that the new theater company could "be fully successful and useful only if its work can be closely identified with the name of the city where it plays." During its first year of operation, the theater was referred to in the national press as "The Miracle in Minneapolis," linking the city of Minneapolis for all time with a groundbreaking, new kind of theater.