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The Theater Guild

[[image]] LAWRENCE LANGNER [[image]] THERESA HELBURN

THE THEATRE GUILD this year begins its twenty-sixth season as perhaps the foremost producing organization in the American theatre with the most outstanding and already the most legendary of all Guild hits: "Oklahoma!" Just as with "The Garrick Gaieties" and "Porgy and Bess," The Guild with "Oklahoma!" has proven again its time-honored theory that if artistic achievement rather than box-office reward is the producer's goal, his efforts sometimes win both.

Two factors have been largely responsible for The Theatre Guild's enduring success. First, the Guild is not a local but national theatre, and its experiments in the field of drama and musical plays are shared by its audiences. From coast to coast, the majority of its audiences attend Guild plays season by season "on subscription." With this subscribing audience as a vital cooperating factor. The Guild has been able to expand and improve is programs steadily, and to experiment where other producers cannot. 

The second factor in the Guild's success lies in the fact that two people solely responsible for the administration of its affairs-Lawrence Langner and Theresa Helburn- have belonged heart and soul to the Guild since its earliest beginnings. 

The Theatre Guild, since 1919, has produced more successes, both artistic and financial, than any single organization in the world. It has been the American theatre of George Bernard Shaw since 1920. It has produced four of Eugene O'Neill's finest plays and five of Maxwell Anderson's, including a Pulitzer Prize winner in each case-"Ah, Wilderness!" and "Both Your Houses."

In addition to such plays as "Strange Interlude," "Liliom" "He Who Gets Slapped," "Saint Joan," "The Adding Machine," "The Guardsman," "The Silver Chord," "Porgy," "Caprice," "Reunion in Vienna," "Biography," "Mary of Scotland, "Porgy and Bess," Amphitryon 38," "Call It A Day," "Idiot's Delight," "The Time of Your Life," "The Philadelphia Story" and "Love's Old Sweet Song," all of which The Theatre Guild made famous, it has given memorable productions to such classics as "Valpone," "The Sea Gull" and "The Rivals."

Its success with Shakespeare-the Helen Hayes-Maurice Evans presentation of "Twelfth Night," the Lunts in "The Taming of the Shrew" and now the Margaret Webster-Paul Robeson combination in "Othello"-has prompted the Guild to plan a Theatre Guild Shakespearean Company which each season will appear in one of the bard's comedies or tragedies, both in New York and in its other subscription cities.

This season's combination of "Oklahoma!" and "Othello" sums up the history of the Guild and the reason for its success: the combination of the new and experimental with the classic and proven-the determination to produce plays of artistic merit regardless of financial risk, believing that the public is always ready and eager to support fine plays, finely produced.