MISS DOROTHEA SPINNEY.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2428, 6 April 1915, Page 2

MISS DOROTHEA SPINNEY.

AN EXPONENT OF GREEK PLAYS. To those in Wellington who knew of her coming, the projected visit of Miss Dorothea Spinney has been looked forward to with the keenest interest, fc>r Miss Spinney is doing pioneer work in introducing audiences in this country to Greek plays. To read them and to see them enacted as Miss Spinney, with her exceptional gifts, enacts them, is to bring home to her audience with greater force their nobility and the heroic mould in which their characters are cast. "They are great," said Miss Spinney in th» course of an interview yesterday, "because they are universal for all time, for all people, 'l'hey are of the living spirit, vital, full of thought, passion, and human nature; modern, though two thousand years old. We get go little that is unlimited in spirit. One can return to these plays again and again, always to find more light and deeper meaning." Perhaps of them all the Euripidean play of "The Trojan Women" is the one that at the present time would most fit in with the present mood of people all over the world, for it has its modem analogy in the sufferings of the Belgian people and brings into being all that is most heroic, most enduring in human nature. The translations which Miss Spinney uses are those by Gilbert Murray, and it need hardly be said that Miss Spinney is not in sympathy with nny movement that would leave altogether on one side the studv of Greek language and literature as being useless in the modern educational curriculum. The Language of Gesture. In answer to the question as to what first drew her to the enacting of Greek plays, -Miss Spinney told her hearer that while doing educational work some years she also stvdied singing for four vo.d's under Marie Fillunger, and while doing so she was asked to take part in a mystery play. After her perfonnanot'S :-;iio was told that she should go 011 with acting. Later some friends, including herself, were gathered t9* gether one night in the study of Sir Oliver Lodge's home, and part of a play of Euripides, the Hippolytus, was read. The next night the second part waß read, and Miss Spinney was so impressed by tho mobility, the vitality, and the beauty of the play that she almost at once began to study them and later to give recitals in England, America, and several other countries inclusive of Australia and now in New Zealand. Miss Spinney do;s not believe in the teaching of gestures for the expression of emotions. Tliev must come from within, from the soul's need, and the body must bo trained in relaxing and building up exercises so that it may be supple and able to oxpress emotions readily, the exercises to bo taught side by side with the work to bo studied. In tho study of rhythmic movement with rhythmic sound we were turning back to the old Greeks, though a vast amount of knowledge must necessarily be lost. Jacques Dnlcroze had grasped this union and had founded his college in ■Hellorau upon its teachings, but now there was in Mrs. Arthur Watts one to bo found who had outdistanced him. Poses of some of the old Greek statues which had been declared w have been perfectly unnatural and impossible to hold for any length of time she, although over forty, had mastered and had shown were absolutely natural. With the drawback of a bunion on her foot she had studied and exercised herself, insisted in walking on the balls of 1 her' feet, and after about three years' work she had mastered the art of posing as the Greeks had posed to a marvellous degree, so that she was now known practically all over the world, bhe had even grown the little side wings 011 the foot that were characteristic of the Greeks who saw that, even with the childron, special caro was taken to make them walk well. "America's Createst Statesman." Miss Spinney has twice toure'd America, and has spent three mouths with' that wonderful American woman, Jane Addams, "America's greatest statesman," as Mr. Roosevelt has described her. Something of the wonderful work which is, carried on at Hull House in Chicago was touched upon, and probably nothing approaching the worship which is poured out for this woman by thousands and thousands of people has ever been 6een in this century. The most simple and most unassuming of women, she has the gift of attracting the love of-the people with whom she has come into contact, and the effect of the influence of Hull House in years to come will be immeasurable. In Hull House, which is now a huge block -of buildings covering a very large acreage, Miss Spinney said that Greeks, Italians, .lews, l'oles, and practically every nationality that arrives in New York by thousands finds a refuge and a home at a very small cost. There are clubs for parents, sous and daughters, language classes where the immigrant may learn to speak and write English, and there is also every aid to be found for child life, even to children's courts. Practical aid is given everywhere, and above all companionship for the lonely stranger who has jugt arrived in a totally unknown country. The fight against the social evil is also waged, and in countless ways Jane Addams has made for herselC' a niche in America's House of Fame.

Miss Foote, matron of the Rawlingstone Private Hospital (Auckland) has como to Wellington to see her sister, who is leaving this week with the nurses for service abroad.

Miss Dorothea 3pinne,v is staying at Miss Malcolm's, and will probably be here for the next three weeks.

The engagement is announced of Miss Olive Oxley, younger daughter of Mr. F. A. Oxley, Waikawa Road, Picton, to Mr. Wilfred Walton, of the Bank of New Zealand, Blenheim.

Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, of Masterton, are visiting Wellington.

Mrs. G. Macmorrau is visiting friends in Mastcrton.