Thrust Staging at the Guthrie

Located in the heart of our facility, this Theatre is named after its thrust stage configuration. The Thrust Theatre features a traditional blackbox style lighting and rigging grid system and seating for 164 patrons. The space offers a wide variety of staging options that creates intimacy between actors and audience members.

A thrust stage is a type of theatre in which the performers are surrounded on three sides by the audience while a back wall provides a backdrop. This staging design is more naturalistic than the traditional proscenium stage, which relies on the use of illusionistic scenery to transport the audience into a fictional setting for each scene.

TheĀ thrust stage installers was developed in the twentieth century by theatre practitioners such as Tyrone Guthrie and Peter Brook. It became popular for a range of performances, including Shakespearean plays, as it allows the performers to more naturally interact with the audience.

In a thrust stage, the audience can see the actors from different angles, which makes it more like they are part of a real conversation than in a theatre with a proscenium arch. Actors can also move among the audience, which heightens the interaction between them and increases the sense of being an active participant in a performance.

A thrust stage can be any shape, but it is most often square or rectangular. It can be attached to a backstage area, which is convenient for performers and props, or it can be completely exposed with no backstage at all, similar to a theatre in the round. Typically, entrances onto a thrust stage are made through the audience in the form of vomitory entrances, although they may be accessed from a door on the side of the stage or through a trapdoor under the floor of the auditorium.

Thrust stages are most often built in existing venues such as theaters or houses of worship. They can be especially challenging to build in houses of worship because they may have to span existing seating or remove pews that would be in the way.

Because of the close proximity to the audience, it can be difficult to direct a play on a thrust stage, as directors must carefully consider where each actor will move and where the action should take place. Director Sarah Rasmussen, who recently directed “Sense and Sensibility” on a thrust stage at the Guthrie and has worked in other proscenium-style theatres, believes that comedy can be particularly challenging to direct on a thrust stage because of its high speed pace and the need for precise timing.

Some theatres, such as the Globe in Stratford, Ontario, are designed specifically for thrust staging. Others are converted into thrust-style theatres from a variety of other settings, such as church halls and former school gymnasiums. The earliest fixed type of theatre was an arena stage, which was similar to the thrust stage and was used in Ancient Greek theatres. Later, this arrangement was adopted by the pageant wagons and Elizabethan theatre, and eventually became the default staging for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

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