To Church

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 318, 31 March 1928, Page 24

To Church

(By GERTUDE LAWRENCE, one of 1 England's leading musical-comedy j actresses.)

H=r; PART from its purely (/r ' religious aspect, I am fe'T/l -sure that no two people Bo go to church for quite Bj; the same reason. No OK! two personalities are alike, and the appeal of the church service is in every case essentially a personal one, writes Gertrude Lawrence in an English publication. With me, as an actress, I find the appeal of the church service curiously complex. I do not go to church just because I want to feel good; church appeals to me in many ways. Six days of my week are spent in the atmosphere of the theatre with all its strange unrealness and artificiality. As an actress, it is very easy to spend the seventh day in a theatrical atmosphere also. But such a condition is very liable to put one out of balance -kith the rest of the world. One can become one-sided and one-viewed. Yet the instinctive demand is always there to be in the balance —to remain a normal human being. Even an irregular attendance at church supplies this demand. It is a mental rest and a tonic at the same time. In church I find myself becoming truly myself once more. That is one of the reasons why I go to church. Then, again, I must confess that I have a liking for the church ritual. It is dramatic, it is artistic, it appeals to the emotions.

So also the theatre, you say! But in an utterly different way. The theatre is stimulating—the church service is pitched in a minor key and takes on a particular grandeur that includes the total of the congregation in it, at the same time retaining that almost perfect atmosphere of calm and peace. The service becomes personal to each individual present, whereas ih a theatre the audience remains essentially spectators and the actors players of a part. There is so much in a church service that-appeals. The notes of the organ, with the curiously thrilling quality that they possess, are a restful change from the music of a theatre orchestra. Possibly one of the chief charms of being at church lies in the enforced inactivity to which one has to conform. Though one is surrounded by others, one is yet perfectly alone. Going to church is a brief getting away from the high pitch and high

speed of modern life. One can let one’s personality have a rest. ini how absorbing a sound and v* delivered sermon can be; it has ■; much grip and fire as anything ok can hear from the stage, yet in i * manner quite its own. Somehow, I ! always feel I want to applaud a gooi > sermon! They say actresses are neurotic ssi | suffer from nerves. Those to whra l this applies should try going to x church!