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Hokitika Guardian, 4 January 1929, Page 3

IIISE OF THE AMATHITK STAGE. “ I do not suppose*' there lias ever in the history of the world been so much fine and ambitions work done by amateur actors as is being done in English towns and villages to-day,” writes Mr. St. John Ervine, in the “ Manchester Guardian.” “Greek tragedies are performed by small tradesmen and agricultural labourers in a village in Kent. Shaw and Galsworthy are commonly produced by suburban societies. Provincial amateurs actually perform plays that West End managers have neither the nerve nor the imagination to produce. The intelligent classes, in short, have rebelled against the tyranny of the empty and’the illiterate and are supplying themselves with fine drama, since the commercial managers no> longer will or can supply it. A no.audience is being created outside the theatre, and presently, as the bankrupt managers totter to their ruin, eiiat audience will some the derelict theatres and fill them again with intelligent plays 'for intelligent people. That single sign of hope atones for all the signs of despair.”