Manitoba Theatre Centre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MTC Mainstage

Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC) is Canada's oldest English-language regional theatre. Next to the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, MTC has a higher annual attendance than any other theatre in the country. It was founded in 1958 by John Hirsch and Tom Hendry as an amalgamation of the Winnipeg Little Theatre and Theatre 77.

1 History
2 Architecture
3 Artistic Directors
4 2007-2008 repertoire
5 External links

[edit] History

Manitoba Theatre Centre operates two theatre venues in the heart of greater Winnipeg, Manitoba. Each year MTC produces six Mainstage productions, four second stage or MTC Warehouse Theatre Productions, an annual 10-day Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, a mid-winter festival honoring master playwrights and a regional tour. MTC's play list includes classical, contemporary, and musical productions by established and new, upcoming playwrights providing the Winnipeg community with quality and balance in MTC's programming.

Each season MTC provides, exclusively for student audiences, preview performances of plays that relate to the high school curriculum. Students travel not only from schools throughout Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba, but also from Northwestern Ontario, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Past student matinee productions have included Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Miracle Worker and Of Mice & Men.

MTC gives out two scholarships to students attending a post-secondary theatre program full time, aspiring for a theatre career in Manitoba. The scholarships are funded purely from donations received during a run of a particular show each season. The scholarships given are the Jean Murray - Moray Sinclair scholarship, and the Naomi Levin Scholarship.

Each summer, MTC produces the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, the second-largest Fringe festival in North America.

[edit] Architecture

The Manitoba Theatre Centre was designed in the Brutalist style by Winnipeg's Number Ten Architectural Group with input from artistic director Eddie Gilbert. With its exposed concrete sculptural form, an informal interior theatre space and a foyer originally conceived to balance large gatherings and smaller intimate groups in the same space, the Manitoba Theatre Centre is one of Canada's most important small-scale Brutalist designs.