I found the University of Kentucky's informational page about the Guignol Theatre on fine arts.uky.edu.
On this page it talks about the history of the Guignol Theatre, and the success it has had over the years. Built in 1927, the theatre was named after the popular Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris. The idea for creating the theatre came from a student lead group called the Strollers, who produced their first play in 1910. When first opened the theatre produced five major productions a year and each were only fifty cents, although the number of productions has stayed the same through out the years, the price has risen to fifteen dollars per show. After serving the campus’s needs for 20 years, The Guignol Theatre at the corner of Euclid and Martin Luther King Blvd burned down in 1947. Three years later it was reopened in the Fine Arts Building.
I really want to find more information about the fire in 1947, but I have searched newspaper archives and have gotten know where. Im kind of lost as to what i should do next because i feel like this is a great topic and deserves to be put into a documentary, but the most important part of the ghost story is the fire that started it all. Maybe I can go to the library and actually look in public records to see if I can dig up facts about the fire, and the people that died in it. Why is it so hard to find archives about the Guignol fire of 1947? Is something trying to be kept a secret?
Cool research on the fire! Maybe look for something written by a survivor if you can find it.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAutumn, your topic is very interesting. If you wind up making a documentary about it with your group, you might be able to do some research in our campus archives. We will be taking a class trip there soon. I also suggest you look into some other famous theatre fires to see if there have been similar incidents or similar "cover-ups" of those fires.
ReplyDelete