A Plan for the Theatre
Why Not The Theatre ? By Joseph Gordon. Macleod.
Mn. JOSEPH GORDON MACLEOD, the Director of the Cambridge Festival Theatre, has written a iigorous and trenchant pamphlet about the English theatre, in which he suggests how it may best be -raised from ith present Condition of desultory chaos to renewed vitality and social usefulness. His plea is, in a sentence, for the creation of a new com- munity feeling, both within and outside the theatre, which will permit all those who contribute to theatrical activity authors, actors, stage-hands, and audience—to - be united In a valuable corporate experience—as in the drama's greatest 'days they were. In suggesting that recent developments in Russia should provide the model for our own efforts, tie perhaps overestimates the imPortance of actual achieve- ments in that country, though where new original work is 'concerned their example certainly cannot be disregarded. There is nothing strictly new in Mr. Macleod's contentions, but they are put forward with Vigour, conciseness, and an attractive wit, and his pamphlet must be recommended as a • clear and sensible statement of an. unanswerable case.
Mr. Macleod introduces his theme with a distinction between the corporate feeling possible to the theatre and that possible to cinema and ballet. In cinema corporate feeling is reckiced to the minimum. The screen is isolated from the audience. The members of the ,audience are merely spectators of an inutg. inary activity on, another plane. They cannot feel that they have any personal share . in the Per- formance, and it is difficult for them to ,have any corporate feeling among themselves. All that they are likely to have in common is the pursuit of the same personal fantasy, evoked by the film. The same is true of ballet : "ballet is showing —a limb, a turn, a visual moment " ; the audience is again merely a collection of spectators, moved by, or indifferent to, a series of "animated illustrations." -But the -audience in a
(Cambridge : The Taurus Press. ls.) - theatre, assuming that the play is capable of stirring profound
'ehIotlñ1fii1flflmot uetidi thftinits it not merely a collection of individuals, but a corporate person in direct contact with the stain which becomes .merged in the pertnrinance and COntribute.s 411,.essenti,a1 part to the total draipidie experiknie4 Such if ;participation can only be fully realized when- community. feeling and interest is exten- sively present in ordinary social life, and the audience is thereby sensitized to the dramatic effect involved. - Community expression. is a direct and inevitable result of cOMmunity feeling. Thel'greatest periods in drama have been those inwhieh -conanunity ;feeling has been most potent, and those civilizations—such is ancient Egypt or Imperial Rolm—which were deficient in community feeling were without any comparable dramatic achievement. The greatest days of the English theatre (in the popular mind they stand also as the greatest days of England) were those in which community feeling was -Strongest; and the decline of the English theatre dates from the slump in Commtiotty -feeling under James I. In the' Elizabethan theatre-ta_hnilar conditions obtain in the Russian theatre today—the author was in direct contact with his audience andiwas united With' them in con- tributing to a shared experience. The audience was not merely listening and watching, but participating in the drama with its whole being. With the decline in community feeling in patilic • life, the possibility of a co-operative effort in the theatre was destroyed, and detached spectacle, in which the visual element'iraS paramount, was increasingly substituted._ The vaphasis-was -shifted from the authOr to the -actor, and aSifirrnsult in an evil moment the Star system was born. Mr. MaCre* reminds us of some of its more laugh- able acCoMpaniMents Gwynn interrupting the death scene, in Dryden 's TyranniC Love to delarer d Specially coin posed epilogue about herself,'. and MiS.. Pritchard playing Lady Macbeth without hiving read any of the play but her own scenes'. But we have plenty:of exaniplei to hand in-our own time when the coloured lights on 'the theatres in Shaftes- bury •AVeime reSerVe th'eir. 'greatest brilliance not for the author, nor even -for the -Play,: bist for the leading actress whose_ personality is-the star -that guides- theatrewards the -capricious 'footsteps of the public ; e. The Star systeni, with iti biles.' on- seductive -perSonfilitieS;'- is responsible also fur the the problems of ordinary social reality, in the subjeet matter , -
of contemporary" plays—:triangular • iiexr-ielations, costume history, Or garish-exploitations of social questions.' And dramatic criticism, for the same reason, has to detach itself from contemporary reality and remain a watcher's appraise- ment of an isolated virtuosity, without the chance of being, as it should be, a participant's reaction to a shared experience.
Mr. Macleod, perhaps wisely, does not attempt to suggest how the London theatres might be reformed from this con- dition: from that quarter little help can he expected. But he indicates in an extremely convincing way what might be done by organized effort among provincial repertory theatres. In a repertory theatre, where the audience is habitual,- *here a producer has time to make his general outlook and principles known, where the choice of plays is intelligent (and intelli- gently contemporary plays, infrequently though they may be acted, are not so infrequently being written), and where the institution under responsible direction has been established as something more than a place of isolated and unfocussed entertainment, there is obviously the chance of a valuable corporate feeling being formed among everyone -who takes part in its activity. What is still more important, the influence of the theatre will extend beyond the unveiling in its own sphere of new sources of interest, the creation of new sym- pathies; and the formation of new sensibilities, into the rest of social life. Men who regularly share a corporate experience within the theatre will be likely, as Mr. Macleod points out, to adjust themselves more finely to one another outside it. A body of intelligently directed repertory theatres extending all over Great Britain might achieve the community feeling, both cultural and political, which it has been our misfortune to have lacked for so long. There can be few to deny that it is desirable that it should be achieved, but it remains to he seen whether anyone will have the Vision to adopt Mr. Macleod's excellent advice:
..... • • - perpetuation of the same deplOrable sthndards, irrelevant to
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