1. Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland.
Tyrone Guthrie is famous for his original approach to Shakespearean and modern drama.
Tyrone Guthrie's mother was the daughter of Sir William James Tyrone Power, Commissary-General-in-chief of the British Army from 1863 to 1869 and Martha, daughter of Dr John Moorhead of Annaghmakerrig House and his Philadelphia-born wife, Susan Humphreys.
Tyrone Guthrie's great-grandfather was Irish actor Tyrone Power and he was a second cousin of famed film actor Tyrone Power.
Tyrone Guthrie received a degree in history at Oxford University, where he was active in student theatre, and worked for a season at the newly established Oxford Playhouse.
In 1924 Tyrone Guthrie joined the BBC as a broadcaster and began to produce plays for radio.
Tyrone Guthrie returned to Scotland where, with James Bridie in 1948, he staged the first modern adaptation, by Robert Kemp, of Sir David Lyndsay's grand-scale medieval comedy Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis for the Second Edinburgh International Festival; a landmark event in the modern revival of Scottish theatre.
Tyrone Guthrie directed the play again in Edinburgh in 1959.
Tyrone Guthrie remained as Artistic Director for three seasons, and his work at Stratford had a strong influence in the development of Canadian theatre.
Tyrone Guthrie published a small invitation in 1959 in the drama page of The New York Times soliciting communities' interest and involvement in a resident theater.
From that beginning, the Twin Cities was chosen and the Tyrone Guthrie Theater was established, with construction being completed in 1963.
Tyrone Guthrie served as Artistic Director until 1966, and continued to direct at the theater he founded until 1969, two years before his death.
Tyrone Guthrie blazed a trail for the subsidised theatre of the sixties.
Tyrone Guthrie showed how to run a company and administer a theatre.
In 1931, Tyrone Guthrie married Judith Bretherton, who survived him by only a year.
Tyrone Guthrie was knighted in 1961, and died a decade later at his home, Annaghmakerrig, in Newbliss, County Monaghan, Ireland, aged 70, from a heart attack.
Tyrone Guthrie's body was buried in the graveyard of Aghabog Church of Ireland, in Newbliss.