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The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools. After a series of acclaimed Broadway productions, the Mercury Theatre progressed into its most popular incarnation as ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air''. The radio series included one of the most notable and infamous radio broadcasts of all time, "The War of the Worlds", broadcast October 30, 1938. The ''Mercury Theatre on the Air'' produced live radio dramas in 1938–1940 and again briefly in 1946. In addition to Welles, the Mercury players included Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Martin Gabel, Norman Lloyd, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart and Everett Sloane. Much of the troupe would later appear in Welles's films at RKO, particularly ''Citizen Kane'' and ''The Magnificent Ambersons''. ==Theatre== Part of the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theatre Project (1935–39) was a New Deal program to fund theatre and other live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States during the Great Depression. In 1935, John Houseman, director of the Negro Theatre Unit in New York, invited his recent collaborator, 20-year-old Orson Welles, to join the project.〔 Their first production was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Macbeth'' with an entirely African-American cast. It became known as the ''Voodoo Macbeth'' because Welles changed the setting to a mythical island suggesting the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with Haitian ''vodou'' fulfilling the rôle of Scottish witchcraft. The play opened April 14, 1936, at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and was received rapturously. That production was followed by an adaption of the farce ''Horse Eats Hat'' and, in 1937, Marlowe's ''Doctor Faustus''〔 and Marc Blitzstein's socialist musical ''The Cradle Will Rock''. The latter received much publicity when on the eve of its preview the theatre was padlocked by the WPA. Welles invited the waiting audience to walk several blocks to a neighboring theatre where the show was performed without sets or costumes. Blitzstein played a battered upright piano while the cast, barred from taking the stage by their union, sat in the audience and rose from their seats to sing and deliver their dialogue.〔 Welles and Houseman broke with the Federal Theatre Project in August 1937 and founded their own repertory company, which they called the Mercury Theatre. The name was inspired by the title of the iconoclastic magazine, ''The American Mercury''.〔Brady, Frank, ''Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1989 ISBN 0-684-18982-8〕 "All the Mercury offerings bore the credit line, 'Production by Orson Welles,'" wrote critic Richard France, "implying that he functioned not only as the director, but as designer, dramatist, and, most often, principal actor as well. To be sure, this generated a good bit of resentment among his collaborators (the designers, in particular). However, in a more profound sense, that credit is, in fact, the only accurate description of a Welles production. The concepts that animated each of them originated with him and, moreover, were executed in such a way as to be subject to his absolute control."〔 Welles and Houseman secured the Comedy Theatre, a 687-seat Broadway theatre at 110 West 41st Street in New York City, and reopened it as the Mercury Theatre. It was the venue for virtually all their productions from November 1937 through November 1938.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Artef Theatre. )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mercury Theatre」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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