THE DRAMA LEAGUE FESTIVAL

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 184, 21 August 1937, Page 10

THE DRAMA LEAGUE FESTIVAL

The seventh annual festival of the Hawke's Bay Drama League has come and gone; the grease-paint is packed away in the worthy company of crepe hair and spirit gum; Miss Gardner's wisdom — and it was real wisdom — has, I trust, been assimilated, and the good peopl'i who have worked so hard to make the festival a success may at last sit back before the embers of their enthusiasm and survey the results of their toil and thought in perspective.. In all sincerity I should like to know what they are thinking — above all, what is their answer to that first and most obvious of questions: Was it all worth while? -And, please, you godlings of the back benches who brand me as a harsh and un.iust critic, I, for one, have no doubts that the Drama League is well Worth while. It may appear at times that I have critieised harshly, but I have never, nor shall I ever, be unjust to any organisation, such as the Drama League, which aims at the production of goods plays and eneourages people to take a real interest in the living theatre. What I have condemned — and shall continue to condemn — is the attitude of unintelligent toleration which^ eneourages the production of bad plays, often badly acted. This attitude is just as noticeable in audiences as in producing organisations — and in other spheres of life as well. Bad literature, bad music, bad films, all these are treated with an nncritical toleration that can only result in worse literature, worse musie and Worse films. This toleration-sickness is one of the most deplorable ailments of the New Zealand people as a whole. Its symptom is a species of mental inertia, and develops into a dullness of the spirit that diffcrentiatcs between good and bad. It is a slow atrophying of the faculty that distinguishes mankind £rom the beasts cf the fields. Reverslon to Lethargy. New Zealanders and colonists generally have frequently been referred to by -English and foreign authors as »t people without culture. But, instead of remarks such as this stinging them into a sense of their unfitucss, they only complain of the unkindness of their critics and revert to their lethargy, leaving the work in the hands of a few. This intellectual stagnation I must oppose. I shall no£ bc unjust, and I shall not be undulv harsh, but I will npt hesitate to uphqld to the best of my ability the ideal of good plays adequately acted. And that is the point of my quarrel with the Dramb, League festival. Of the eight plays produced, one I should like to see again because it was so well done that during its action my critieal f aeulty* was sunk in my • enjoyment and I now wish for an oppor- ' trinity to discover its several faults a.nd sources of strength. Two others

of the plays I enjoyed, but I have no further interest in them. The other five were in varying degrees wearying. Here, it seemed to me, lay the only weakness of the festivial. Why should an audience have to sit through -two and a-half honrs of dullness to ^experience one and a-half hours of pleasure? Is there no way of overcoming this disproportion of good and bad 1 Eiiminate the Unfit? The first and most obvious method of doaling with the difficulty is to eiiminate ihe unfit before the plays are given publie performances, bnt a moment's thought will show the unfairness of this. It is only by publie performanee that the inexperienced actor can get the across-the-footlights feeling of being in touch with his audience — that he can get the confidence to play to his audience as it expects him to. For every audience is a separate and individual entity, necessitating a trcatmcnt pcculiarly its own, and it is largely by the appreeiation and correct nso of this fact that the actor is enabled. to miake a success of his part; he plays to his audience, not iu the derogatory sense in which the word is generally uscd, but in the sense that ho lias felt the mood of the audience and plays with that mood as a background to his emotions. It follows from this that, if these unfit .players were eliminated,. then their performance would get into a kind of vicious circle — not having played in publie, they are eliminated from the noxt festival for the vory faults which are present through not having played in publie. Elimination, like the lopping-off of a leg, ifl a erippling solution to the problem, the full and correct solution of which is, possibly at the present, unobtainable. Howovor, next Saturday I shall continue this tlieme, and point the way to a possible answer. — Jeremy Collier, jur. .