SHAKESPEARE THEATRE

Evening Star, Issue 19758, 7 January 1928, Page 5

SHAKESPEARE THEATRE

MISS SCOTT’S DESIGN (British Official News.) Press Association —By Wireless—Copyrigms. RUGBY, January 5. Miss Elizabeth Scott (who lias been chosen as tbc architect for tbc Shakespeare Memorial 'Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon) is the daughter of a Bournemouth doctor. She states that her idea is that anyone seeing tbc building from the outside should know that it is a theatre in which Shakespeare is played. More than £230,000, much of which has come from America, has been subscribed lor the theatre, which will be one of tbc finest in England. AIMS Ob’ THE GOVERNORS. (Jibe ‘Daily Telegraph’ recently announced that the fund for the rebuilding of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon, which was destroyed by fire on March 6, 1920, had reached £230,818. Of the total sum £158,700 has been raised in America by the American Shakespeare Foundation. Toward this Mr John D. Rockefeller, jun., has given £50,000, and has also contributed £50.000 to the British fund.

Commenting on the announcement, ‘ The Times ’ says; The governors oi the Memorial Theatre now have funds enough to ensure the building of the new theatre. The site has been cho sen. As soon as the final selection of the design has been made the building will begin. But the building is not the only, nor the chief, object which the governors have before them. Many a theatrical scheme has come to grief be cause it put bricks and mortar before drama. The object is to get Shake speare’s plays acted as well,' as often, and in as many places as may be. At present about 150,000 people see Shakespeare acted at Stratford-on-Avon in the course,of a summer; and the new theatre will doubtless enable the number to be increased. But that theatre will not be able to do justice to its high office and to the world-wide interest to which it will owe its being unless it is able also to radiate Shakespeare far and wide over' Great Britain, and perhaps farther and wider still. Its mission is to be the home and practice ground of a permanent Shakespearean company, which should travel to town after town with all the prestige of Stratford on-Avon to herald it, and all the ad vantages of establishment to ensure its merit. If the memorial governors have their way, it looks as if the burning of the old theatre would be a blessing very thinly disguised, and the building of the new one an opportunity for removing an old reproach from England by the making of a central and permanent source whence Shakespeare may flow all over the country,. ’