NORTH DAKOTA'S THEATER IDEA
Boyle, Ruth M.
North Dakota's Theater Idea A. O. Arvold Has Worked Out New Plan of Interesting People in Their Own Progress By RUTH M. BOYLE {From Farm and Fireside) Why Farm' has The Birth of a Nation' beat a...
...Hundreds of old halls, garrets, basements, and schoolhouses throughout the rural districts might be turned into just such a little country theater at small expense...
...The best thing about home talent plays -t : i entertainments is that they bring out all kinds of latent abilities which have lain hidden and unsuspected...
...Swedes, Danes, Englishmen, Greeks, Turks, and Italians...
...I found him at the College of Agriculture in T'argo...
...The play told of a lazy com -try boy who decided to leave the farm and west in search of adventure...
...Sometimes they produce widely popular plays like "The Servant in the House," and often the plays are original...
...They feel that they are capable of something bigger than the round of duties whhh have become mechanical to them...
...The play was a hu i success...
...If they can take part in a pageant or play, and find they can move people—make them laugh and cry— the loneliness and dissatisfaction cease...
...WE HAVE made a discovery that has disclosed what is undoubtedly one of the greatest mineral resources—one that should supply the needs of war, and that for generations to come will enable the United States to maintain its supremacy over the rest of the world as a producer of crude oil and gasoline and incidentally of ammonia as a highly valuable by-product...
...They are hungry for entertainment, for recreation...
...Disabled, became interested for the first time in the cc munity where he was born...
...Writing and acting, it came straight from the soil...
...The young people who take part in these plays and programs have caught the spirit, and^ they have gone back to their widely separated communities and carried the idea with them...
...They were having great difficulty because they had no scenery to go with the play, and they wanted to have a background like the old country where the scene was laid...
...Mr...
...Over the theater in the old garret are the coffee tower and the hayloft...
...Science came and drove Black Rust away, so that Wheat triumphed...
...The circles on the map represented the communities where plays had been given that year by the farmers themselves or by the Little Country Players...
...But, instead of teaching them merely how to recite or debate he has each one manage and put on a program...
...there is a stage with a plain green curtain...
...They have a poetry, a drama, an art in their previous national existence which, if brought to light under the great new American environment, would bring to North Dakota a rural civilization such as has never been heard of in the history of the world...
...Things on the Farm THE stage was made of barn-floor planks, tha draw curtain was of binder cloth, and ter, barn lanterns hung on fence wire furnished the border lights...
...The Little Country Theater idea is the biggest thing that has happened in rural sociological development for twenty-five years...
...Some States might think themselves for'unate to have so much foreign blood—Norwegians, Russians, Germans, Canadians, Scotchmen, Irishmen...
...We have discovered that we possess mountain ranges of rock that will yield billions of barrels of oil...
...The action of the play took place in a country store, a woods, and in the sitting room of a farm home...
...In the story one of two brothers goes to America...
...Hundreds were turned away from the theater...
...The great moment of the play comes when the wanderer finds that the girl has given her heart to the brother who remained at home, doing the humble duties that fell to his lot...
...He joins their hands and tells them he is going back to America...
...He wanted : > study machinery with the aid of a correspo'' ence course because he didnt like going school...
...Thousands of them have found, or are finding, what they craved in the ideas for self-amusement that come to them from the Little Country Theater...
...Arvold found that the people of his State were like people in any other State...
...The other had lingered and bad watered the growing grain in the fields...
...The twenty-five nationalities represented come from the best blood in Europe...
...The play was written by an amateur and presented by amateur actors, but it took hold because it was genuine...
...Every Ship Will Find a Harbor" is a three-act play written by a young North Dakota farmer...
...They had never painted anything more pretentious than a bam in their lives...
...the decorations in green and gold are very simple...
...The dance of "Black Rust and Wheat" is an original dance evolved at the Little Country Theater, and was given before crowded audiences in many different North Dakota communities...
...I could look out of the window every morning when I woke up and see that waterfall on the mountain," said one of the young men wh • i he was complimented on the wonderful naturalness of the scenery...
...One day two young Icelanders came to Mr...
...They want some place to go...
...The play v. a popular one...
...Black Rust pursued and threatened Wheat...
...But they got used to thinking they could do anything Mr...
...Or even in the sitting-room of a farm home...
...1 {{TjACK to the Farm" was a play written by O a student at the Minnesota Agricultural College, and given for three successive evenings during the convention of the Tri-State Grain Growers' Association held in Fargo...
...But remember all of these people come originally from countries whose civilization is ran-h older than our own...
...They painted their own scenes, the mountain backgrounds of Iceland, a cabin the exact reproduction of an Icelandic home...
...Arvold's office to talk to him about a play they were writing...
...They could easily understand its symbolism, because they raise wheat and they know the effect of the black rust...
...In the tower the entertainers and their friends have refreshments after a program...
...Go to the armory and see if you can't find some canvas and paint your own scenery," said Mr...
...They want something interesting to do...
...Is Not Pretentious 'THE theater itself isn't pretentious...
...The daily routine of the farm and the farmhouse does not furnish opportunities for discovering talent for music, painting, drama, or writing, and yet if these talents are discovc-ed and exercised they bring limitless happiness to the person who has them...
...North Dakota's Theater Idea A. O. Arvold Has Worked Out New Plan of Interesting People in Their Own Progress By RUTH M. BOYLE {From Farm and Fireside) Why Farm' has The Birth of a Nation' beat a mile...
...H interested his neighbors, and they staged a home talent play in an empty hayloft...
...The young people who come to study agriculture and home economics at the College of Agri-• eulture attend Mr...
...He led the farmers in co-operative ent-prises, and taught them to live a better so...
...The country people themselves must work out their own civilization,'' says Mr...
...The object of the Little Country Theater is to produce plays and community programs that can be easily staged in the country school or in the basement of the church, in the town hall...
...Through giving their own plays in their own theaters, country people not only come to a greater appreciation of good drama, but th »y also become interested in each other...
...the other remains to cultivate the farm at home...
...They called it "The Raindrops" because the story was based on an old Icelandic legend about the raindrops...
...New Oil Resources By G. E. MITCHELL, (Of the United States Geographic Survey...
...the hayloft serves as dressing-room, rehearsal room, banquet hall, or community exhibit-room...
...It is a rural state...
...Icelanders...
...It is * simply a dingy old chapel at the College of Agriculture remodeled...
...While in the employ of a Western no er company his arm was broken...
...And the idea of plays and enter ainments got up by the people for themselves cemed to me the best way to do it," said Mr...
...All I wanted to do was to help people find hemselves...
...The wanderer returns, and falls in love with a girl whom his brother also loves...
...It is based on legend of the two raindrops, one of whi»h had rushed on swiftly in search of adventure until it reached the ocean and had accomplished nothing...
...A talking m .-chine was the orchestra...
...What the Play Teaches THE play is remarkable, too...
...And then, because he can't talk lore: without talking about North Dakota, which is his second great enthusiasm, he went on: "This is a wonderful state...
...He was sitting at his desk, poring over a map of the State...
...The boys were astonished...
...Wheat was a blonde girl dressed in golden yellow, Science was a young girl in white, and Black Rust appeared in ugly black, with his face made up to represent death...
...Arvold thought they could, and they did...
...Arvold's classes in "public •peaking," as it is called in the college catalogue...
...Talent Springs From Soil...
...Over 150 towns have a population of less than :>00 inhabitant...
...A social vision must be discovered that will keep the great men, who are usually country-born, in the country...
...life and work and plan together...
...So the first opportunity I had I was on my way to North Dakota to talk to this man, A. G. \rvold, who was running heavy competition to •he movies among the farmers, and at the same ; Ime was making the college faculties sit up and look...
...For one thing, it has a rigorous climate—remember the North Dakota blizzards—and that always developes a strong and vigorous people...
...Branches of trees were used a.> a background, and planks resting on old boxes an...
...A young man who had witnessed several the productions in the Little Country Theater h Fargo went back to his community determine, to start home talent entertainments there...
...It was a North Dakota farmer who told me that...
...When the young people on the farm are lonely and dissatisfied, it is because they want to do something different...
...It is just about the size of the average smafl town-hall...
...sawhorses were used as seats...
...For many years travelers going west through the Grand River Valley of Colorado and into the great Uinta Basin of eastern Utah have looked from the windows of their Pullman cars on the far-stretched miles and miles of the Book Cliff Mountains, little realizing that in these and the adjoining mountains, plainly exposed to view, lay the greatest oil reservoir in the country—the oil shales of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada...
...It coesn't take more than two guesses to tell that a college professor said that...
...It may be a play or a festival program, or it may be a demonstration of new methods in cooking or in agriculture...
...Whrn that happens the city loses its pull on the youn* people of that community.—Farm and Firesir' _•, April, 1918...
Vol. 10 • April 1918 • No. 4
