page_title: Martha Allan
section_title: Montreal Repertory Theatre
hierarchical_section_title: Martha Allan / Montreal Repertory Theatre
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Écuries de H. Montagu Allan, «&#160;Ravenscrag&#160;», Montréal, QC, 1903; 1903, 20e siècle; Plaque sèche à la gélatine; 20 x 25 cm; Achat de l'Associated Screen News Ltd.; © Musée McCord. English: H. Montagu Allan's stables, "Ravenscrag", Montreal, QC, 1903; 1903, 20th century; Silver salts on glass - Gelatin dry plate process; 20 x 25 cm; Purchase from Associated Screen News Ltd.; © McCord Museum.
context_page_description: Marguerite Martha Allan was the founder of the Montreal Repertory Theatre and co-founder of the Dominion Drama Festival. She loathed amateur theatre, but her energies spearheaded the Canadian Little Theatre Movement at a time when live theatre in Montreal and across Canada was being threatened by the rapid expansion of the American-influenced movie theater. She almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the development of the professional modern Canadian theatre scene. In 1935, she received the Canadian Drama Award for outstanding service in the development of the Canadian theatre. At the annual Dominion Drama Festival the Martha Allan Trophy is awarded in her memory for the best visual performance. She also wrote three plays: What Fools We Mortals Be; Summer Solstice; and All Of A Summer's Day, that won the Sir Barry Jackson Trophy for the best Canadian play at the Dominion Drama Festival in the early 1930s.
context_section_description: Before World War I, Allan studied theatre in Paris and came to know among others the actress Rita Jolivet, who remained a close family friend and later married Jimmy Bryce Allan, her Scottish cousin. In 1921, along with Rupert Caplan, Akkab was among the founders of the Community Players, with W.A. Tremayne as their stage director. They disbanded after four years and Caplan joined the Provincetown Players before returning and becoming a major force in Canadian radio, producing the Radio Theatre Guild with the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission. Allan gained a reputation for herself as a successful theatrical producer in various art theatres in the United States, most notably as the director of the Pasadena Little Theatre, one of the most respected institutions of the kind on the continent. Under Allan's directorship, the Pasadena Playhouse drew such local support that George Bernard Shaw dubbed Pasadena "the Athens of the West" referring to the city's enthusiasm for community theatre. She returned to Montreal in 1929, determined to establish a community theatre there at a time when 'live theatre' seemed in danger of extinction; the 'movies' having by then become the 'talkies'.
  In 1929, Allan organised a meeting at Montreal to be led by Sir Barry Jackson, director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in England, in which he emphasised the success of the theatres at both Birmingham and Manchester and urged Montrealers to establish their own community theatre. Margaret Anglin, then Canada's best-known stage actress, who happened to be in town performing Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, also spoke in support of local theatre. Allan, of course, spoke too, and one year later, with much local support, particularly from Sir Andrew MacPhail, she founded the Montreal Theatre Guild, which came to be known as the Montreal Repertory Theatre, or the MRT.
  Montreal's Rialto Theatre was used strictly for opera, and the Theatre Francais had burned down in 1900, as had the Palace Theatre in 1927. Jackson's meeting had been held only a few months after Montreal's other main stage theatre, Her Majesty's Theatre, Montreal, had been purchased by an American motion-picture chain, Consolidated Theatres. The very week after Jackson's meeting, the Orpheum Theatre, which had been the traditional stock company theatre in Montreal, was transformed - like many others - into the Popular Talkie Playhouse. These significant sweeping changes to the cultural scene swiftly galvanized Montreal's elite into supporting Allan's initiative. The MRT's opening night performances were packed to the rafters with old Montreal's social elite, all of whom Miss Allan knew intimately, many of them being close friends of, or related to her parents. Other than her parents, among the other principal donators to the establishment of the MRT were Athanase David, Madame Athanase David, General Sir Arthur Currie, Sir Edward Wentworth Beatty, Lt.-Colonel Herbert Molson, F.E. Meredith and Lord Atholstan.
  Allan hated to have the word 'amateur' applied to the MRT; "amateur theatricals? I loathe them" she once said. By the mid-1930s, she had almost succeeded in her aim of making the MRT professional, and in its standards, it largely was. Unlike its predecessor, The Community Players, the MRT had established a traditional subscription series of plays, an experimental studio wing, a French section, a school for theatre training, an extensive library collection of theatre books and memorabilia, and an organization magazine - Cue - that kept subscribers up-to-date with all kinds of theatrical information. Allan was passionate about demanding the highest artistic standards at the MRT, and encouraged other local amateur groups to achieve the same level of artistic consistency. Moreover, the MRT was much more open than other significant Anglo-Montreal controlled institutions of the city, which were still firmly closed to French-Canadians, Jews and others. The MRT determined to produce plays in English, French and German, to make it accessible to all Montrealers, not just in the audi
caption: The stables at Ravenscrag, where Allan held meetings and rehearsals for the MRT
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.7.1", "Image DateTime": "2014:01:01 12:10:19", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.7.5", "Image ExifOffset": "178", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "729", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "585"}