Minnesota's Guthrie Theater turns 60: A look at its legacy

CATHY WURZER: Well, now, may 7th, 1963, date sound familiar? The curtain rose on a new artistic venture in the Twin Cities, the Guthrie Theater. The first production, Shakespeare's Hamlet, directed by the Theater's first artistic director and founder, Tyrone Guthrie.

This season, the Guthrie Theater will celebrate its 60th anniversary. How is the theater and its performances changed with the times? Well, to talk about that is Joseph Haj, the artistic director at the Guthrie Theater. Well, it's always a pleasure. Welcome back.

JOSEPH HAJ: Thank you. It's so good to be with you, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Well, the 2022-23 season is launching this weekend. I can't believe that. Tell me about the production.

JOSEPH HAJ: Well, we've got-- the we just closed our last season with Emma and Sweat closing us out. And in rehearsal, we have Vietgone, which is in tech. And as you say, we'll begin performances next weekend. And we also are beginning the second week of rehearsals for world premiere by Suzan-Lori Parks, a new play called Sally and Tom.

So it's a really, really exciting start for the season. You know Suzan-Lori is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama with her play Top Dog Underdog. So having a world premiere of her play in rehearsals, which is in association with the Public Theater in New York City, which birthed Hamilton, we're really excited about that. So it's just so fun to have these two really great plays in rehearsals right now.

And Vietgone, I watched the designer run, Cathy, just a few days ago in the room. And it's just a blast. It's so smart. It's so fun. The music in it is brilliant. I think we're going to open with two shows that I think are going to thrill our audiences in the coming weeks.

CATHY WURZER: Is Vietgone-- is that the one by Qui Nguyen?

JOSEPH HAJ: Yes, by Qui Nguyen, exactly right.

CATHY WURZER: And tell me a little bit about it for folks who've not seen it or heard about it.

JOSEPH HAJ: So it it's about two refugees from the Vietnam War who end up in a refugee camp in Arkansas, which sounds-- well, it is what it is. But as Qui points out, it's not a story about war. It's a story about falling in love. And there's this brilliant American adventure that these two refugees go on in order to find themselves across the play. And there's multiple other characters, actors playing multiple roles who are all the folks who intersect with our lead couple's lives through the play.

And it's just so fun, so smart, and in the end, and finally, just so moving. It's really beautiful. I'm just tremendously excited to share this with our community.

CATHY WURZER: Can you give us a peek behind the curtain, if you would? And give me an idea how you choose plays, how you choose productions for a season. You've already said the word smart has come up and delightful. And I mean, what's the alchemy here?

JOSEPH HAJ: It's a great question. And the Guthrie in a typical year-- these being still atypical times-- we sell almost 400,000 tickets annually. And there isn't a single community that wants to see a single play. It's made up of multiple communities.

So a good season at the Guthrie, in my view, is one that feels determinedly eclectic, where everybody can see something for themselves. If you want a comedy, it's there. If you want a murder mystery, that's there. If you want a musical, that's there. If you want to Shakespeare play, that's there. If you want a world premiere, there's two of them. If you want A Christmas Carol, come on by.

And so a very good season for me is one where various parts of our community can see themselves directly in, and also have areas where people go well, I'm interested in that, or I want to see that. Maybe that's a little bit outside my wheelhouse, but this could be great.

And so I would say especially for our season subscribers, when people are coming multiple times across the season, ensuring that there's variety in that journey is really important to us. So in any given season, there will be a mix of classical plays and contemporary plays, in most seasons a musical, in many seasons a Shakespeare play. So we really try to cast a very wide net.

CATHY WURZER: And I know you want to break new ground, but you need to keep the lights on, right? So you've got these contradictory goals in a sense, the creative and the commercial, right? And they play out when you select the productions you're going to be featuring.

JOSEPH HAJ: This is true. But I must tell you, we don't have conversations that's about, this play is to keep the lights on--

CATHY WURZER: I know, it's a bit crass on my part, sorry about that.

JOSEPH HAJ: No, no, no, not in the least, really, no, not in the least. I think of it this way. I think there are two very good uses of the theater. One is a theater that implores us to see, to look at some of the hard things that we might be facing as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a society. And that and that it encourages us to look at and square to some of those themes.

Another very good use of the theater is allowing people a couple of hours of something that frees them from the troubled times that we live in and is entertaining in the extreme, and isn't necessarily provocative or challenging in particular ways.

And again, for me, a good season is one-- if it was only entertainment, this would feel like a season of confection, and that wouldn't feel good to me. If it's all bone hard material, that also wouldn't feel good to me.

So we're, again, working hard to find that balance, some things that satisfy in an uncomplicated way, and some things that are asking a bit more from audiences in ways that we know that our audiences also enjoy.

CATHY WURZER: I see that you have Hamlet I'm glad to see that, the first ever play staged at the Guthrie, as I mentioned in the intro, in '63 was Hamlet So I'm going to assume this was intentional, to include Hamlet in this season.

JOSEPH HAJ: Yes, well, it's not only in our 60th anniversary season, it will be playing on the date of our 60th anniversary in May. And I'll be directing that production. I directed it once before in Washington, DC some years ago. It's one of those plays that contains such multitudes that one can return to it again and again and seek new insights into it.

And I couldn't be more thrilled. And I think of the Guthrie's eight artistic directors over the course of 60 years, more than half of us have directed a Hamlet I think it's an artistic director's rite of passage at the Guthrie to make a Hamlet So I'm actually really excited for it.

CATHY WURZER: And what else are you going to be doing to celebrate 60 years?

JOSEPH HAJ: So I think what the central focus was the season we just finished, which we were enormously proud of, was a much reduced season in that it was kind of pathing us back to full strength. And so the Guthrie staff, the board, we felt we have got-- for our 60th year, we can't be doing tiny, little plays in a smaller season. We have to come back and look like ourselves.

And so the robustness of the season, it's a big season with 10 amazing plays, all of them at scale. I think it's a big, ambitious, energetic season, which allows us to reflect on a 60-year legacy, and as importantly chart the path forward.

So we're just excited by the ambition that's in that season. We have the world premiere of Sally and Tom, as I mentioned. We have a world premiere by Karen Zacarias, a co-commissioned co-production with Cincinnati Playhouse of the western novel Shane, where she's exploding some of the western myths, even while honoring the shape and architecture of that story, which we're really excited about.

Bringing Sarna Lupine in to direct Into the Woods with Stephen Sondheim's passing last year-- we just felt to do one of his major, major works seemed important to us.

CATHY WURZER: Yes.

JOSEPH HAJ: So just a big, ambitious ride, yeah.

CATHY WURZER: I'm so happy to hear that. And always great talking to you Joseph Haj. Thank you.

JOSEPH HAJ: Thank you, friend. It's great to talk to you.

CATHY WURZER: Likewise. Joseph Hodge is artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. For more go to GuthrieTheater.org and check out the great productions.