National Drama Week
Boddington, Ernest F.
376 T H E C O M M O N W E AL February 9, I927 NATIONAL DRAMA WEEK By ERNEST F. BODDINGTON T ALL depends upon where the accent is placed. This National Drama Week, from February I3...
...but if ever sermon was preached on a stage, and preached on a great topic suggested by certain aspects of American life, it was preached from the text of Craig's Wife...
...They are, perhaps, the indication of impatience on the part of some who have worked hard and expected more immediate as well as more impressive results from their labors...
...If the cities are to appropriate the money of the taxpayers to the support of the theatre, they are well started on a road which stretches inevitably toward censorship, not to enlarge on the fact that the whole question of subsidy and public ownership looms over every step taken in such a direction...
...George Kelly's The Show-Off, Craig's Wife, and Daisy Mayme make them look mechanical and tawdry...
...Divorce was no longer a brand of disrespect as even the best families were vandalized by it...
...Revolution is neither to be expected nor to be desired...
...The "little theatres" which it has sponsored and encouraged have disclosed much dramatic talent to renew and strengthen the American professional stage and playwrights with an insight into true American life which is becoming every day more valuable and interpretative...
...There was a time when America looked to England for really finely balanced casts...
...It is one thing to deplore the loss of the Booths and the McCulloughs...
...But if, instead of a call to the nation to discuss the drama each day for a week from breakfast till the closing of the night clubs, it is an invitation to consider for a week the present status and the future prospects of a national drama, that is something else again-and something very much worth while...
...The fact," says the circular, "that not a single first-rate actor in America is attempting to draw audiences with Shakespeare is a commentary in a nutshell...
...Here surely there has been a development which shows in a manner to put a period to pessimism...
...Again in the later play, Daisy Mayme, there is the same lack of striving for the unusual, the same simplicity and sureness of line of the artist disclosing the full possibilities of the usual...
...This is all very impulsive, not to say hysterical...
...This National Drama Week, from February I3 to I9 inclusive, announced by the Drama League of America, may be just another of those weeks when for seven days the nation is asked to strain itself to live up to a slogan...
...It it not wise to inquire as to the health of any woman's husband, lest she retort: "Which one...
...There is no indication that dramatic art in America is perishing of neglect...
...If any organization has the right to appeal for a combined and careful study of this subject by intelligent Americans in an endeavor to take stock of the dramatic resources of the country, it is the Drama League of America...
...Evangelical disapproval was no more a restraint...
...The League likewise is distressed because "the theatre is left to debauching commercial traffic," and the animals in the municipal zoos receive appropriations denied to actors...
...A somewhat disingenuous commentary if it be founded on the fact that this is the situation of the moment...
...Then came the period when actors and actresses became the target of criticism...
...They have done more---they have made better Americans by making more understanding Americans...
...And if this be true of American actingAand I do not think it can be successfully refuted what shall be said of American playwriting...
...There is no need to rob the zoo monkey of his peanuts in order to rescue the perishing among our promising young actors...
...Once more I return to acknowledgment of the part which the Drama League has played in bringing about these conditions...
...To take three popular successes, they were The Heart of Maryland, Barbara Freitchie, and The Climbers...
...Actually, they detract from an accomplishment which has been far from insignificant, and which holds in it the promise of permanent achievement...
...Not only has it created audiences for good plays, but in raising cultural standards it has quickened the sense of discrimination in regard to politics and the whole social structure of the nation...
...With a record that should be a source of satisfaction and stimulation, the Drama League of America becomes most surprisingly doleful in issuing its call for Drama Week...
...No scarlet letter except as a trimming to a sport blouse was worn upon the breast of those who boasted of a past--so that today, in general society, it is safe to assume that one-third at least of those present have either been divorced or are going to be divorced...
...In view of the latitude of modern standards, this would only provoke a frank admission on the part of many that the parties involved believe in nothing...
...I believe it will play a still greater part in the evolution of a national theatre of the future...
...But why blame "debauching commercial traffic," and grudge their feed to the animals in the zoo...
...munity life and to establish a fuller realization of civic concepts throughout the nation by means of the most democratic and most directly appealing of all the arts...
...it convinced inevitably...
...She has no need to do so today, and in the dressing-rooms of many London theatres the fact is only too well known...
...Memory recalls the gallant efforts made to keep the doctor away during Apple Week, which crumpled on the Thursday night when a hurry call brought him to the house to prescribe for two acute cases of the co!Ivwobbles...
...Divorce has become so common that today it does not even elicit surprise--nor does it seem advisable to discuss this from any religious standpoint...
...The national drama of America will not be a sermon...
...To compare these with three plays by only one American playwright of today, is to visualize the advance that has been made...
...it reminds us of the struggles we had with mankind's closest friend during National Underwear Week, until, with sense of patriotic duty heroically performed, we were able to slip back into our B. X. Vs...
...The only answer is to be found in the fact that remoteness from an object frequently accentuates the sharpness of its angles, and that the impersonal treatment of a mooted subject is at times more reliable than one in which personal feelings and experiences must necessarily play a major part...
...it is another thing to ignore the fact that those who now present for Americans the plays of "the greatest dramatist who ever lived" can offer the whole plays, and not merely one or perhaps two characters in each...
...so that we heard the phrase "a stage divorce" as though it were of a trivial and recurrent nature...
...There is an arresting quality communicated to the commonplace in the scene in which Cliff Mettinger proposes to Daisy Mayme--and that quality is truth, reality...
...The presentation of even secondary parts is now so often informed by insight and interpreted with intelligence that performances by individuals, which no more than fifteen or even ten years ago would have presaged stardom, are now accepted entirely as a matter of course...
...Its suggestions are in most cases sound, as, for example, its insistence on the need for professional guidance in club dramatics and professional standards in all little theatres...
...They are not perishing, they are prospering...
...I believe, however, that it would be unfair to the Drama League of America to take any of these forebodings and implications too seriously...
...I remember vividly the time when a woman who was divorced was regarded socially as "not quite nice," and I can recall the disintegrating progress made when later in a New York fashionable drawing-room, thirteen divorc6es were counted to the consternation of those present who gloried in their respectability...
...Little by little, however, people became accustomed to the new order, and society slowly but surely grew used to the idea...
...DIVORCE AS A PASTIME By ELISABETH MARBURY HE question will pertinently be raised, as my name is attached to this article, why the utterances of an elderly spinster should have any weight in the consideration of the subject of divorce...
...In looking back over the many years through which divorce has gradually assumed an increasing proportion and a decreasing seriousness, I naturally must review the situation with considerable interest, to say the least...
...It is true that nature does not furnish a Booth or a Jefferson or a MeCullough in every decade, and that onenight stands no longer offer Shakespeare with the musical glasses or a minstrel show as in the good old days...
...What am I supposed to know about it ? What value can my opinion have concerning it...
...Its work is broad and human...
...There has arisen a support for the February 9, x927 THE COMMONWEAL 377 stars which is almost worthy of special study as a sidelight on the growth of dramatic art in this country...
...It is confusing, to say the least, to receive an invitation from the League to consider, as one of the subjects for Drama Week, "the evils and absurdities of censorship" in conjunction with such a plaintive bid for finandal support from the municipalities...
...What were the American plays of the last generation, or the plays in which American authors disclosed American life to the rest of the world...
...376 T H E C O M M O N W E AL February 9, I927 NATIONAL DRAMA WEEK By ERNEST F. BODDINGTON T ALL depends upon where the accent is placed...
...That devastating development of the growth of materialism to a point where every spiritual possession had been lost, was a drama--not a mere theatrical effect...
...they are not begging, they are giving...
...That very fine gentleman, Edwin Booth, was not debauched by this wicked traffic which built what is now the Players' Club and his enduring monument...
...It is disturbed because the nation no longer has a Booth or a Mansfield, a McCullough or a Jefferson, to make transcontinental tours and present the plays of "the greatest dramatist who ever lived" in the one-night stands...
...it has aimed always to broaden com...
...On the contrary, there are many evidences that a real national theatre is growing--slowly, it may be true, but steadily...
...But it is a real process of evolution which is taking place...
...The great outstanding stars no longer dominate the stage in the United States, but the average of acting in this country is much higher today than when they reigned...
...It marched inevitably...
...Its efforts have not been directed solely to the cultivation of art for art's sake...
...There is a man who has something to say, and he is not asking M. Scribe or Herr Freytag by what tricks he shall get his message across...
...In fact, it is doubtful if Booth would have felt flattered by a proposition that the city fathers of his day and generation should pass upon the respective claims of the classical drama and the male and female gondolas for Central Park at a meeting of the finance committee...
...an ungracious and unflattering one on the continuous and courageous efforts of Walter Hampden, the recent brilliant contributions of Jane Cowl, Rollo Peters, and John Barrymore, and the original offering of David Warfield...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 14
