PLAY WRITING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 708, 6 July 1929, Page 8

PLAY WRITING

Good Advice From Two Good Authors George Cohan, the American, gave advice on the writing of plays a while ago which might be tucked into every budding playwright’s wallet with good results. G. C. probably gathered in more money than any other dramatist in his heyday. He said: “A play should have no more than two or three central characters. The bigger the cast the harder to dispose of the characters, to take them on and off the stage. You must provide somewhere for them to go when they leave the stage, something for them to do while they are absent, and something for the people on the stage to talk about and do, in the interim. Then there must be a reason for evei'yone’s entrance. Every scrap of talk and every particle of action on the stage should have a direct bearing on the plot. “Every playwright should avoid long speeches. Every person who writes a play should remember that one-half of the play is written, and the other half produced. The great, big essential for the playwright Is the dramatic instinct. If he has that there Is no tolling where he will stop.” Now St. John Ervine comes along and tells us how to write a play. He has written a book bearing that very title. He says:“Dramatic dialogue should have the look of literature and the sound of the street. It must bo compactor and tidier than daily conversation, but it must not seem to he too well composed. A novelist’s dialogue is intended to be read, a dramatist’s is intended to be spoken. Dialogue which is merely seen seems to be natural enough until it is said. That is why so many novelists turned dramatists fail to be successful in the theatre. A second reason is that they waste too much of the play on explaining expired events. They deal too largely in the past history of their characters, with the result that the play seldom begins until the middle of the second act.”

Joseph Pulitzer's annual prize for the American drama that shall “best improve the morals and manners” of the play-going public, has been awarded to Elmer Rice’s “Street Scene.” “It is a rather squalid contact of drama with life, full of drab sex and murder, the fragrance of garbage-cans, theatrical hooey, and an atmosphere that is anything but cultural,” comments the New York “Herald Tribune.”

Annie Hughes, a well known English actress, has returned to Australia to play Mrs. Midget in “Outward Bound,” which is being done at the Savoy Theatre, Sydney. She will

appear in other plays later in the year. Miss Hughes was fornlerly Mrs. Mayne Lynton, who has appeared in Auckland on several occasions.

Many in New Zealand will remember the wonderful success of the Jubilee Singers, who delighted theatregoers with their beautiful solo and concerted vocal offerings. Some of the most noted coloured singers have been engaged for the present Kentucky Jubilee Singers, including such highgrade artists as Arthur Gaines and Robert Caver, first tenors; Hinton Jones and Augustus Simons, second tenors; Archie Cross and William Veasey, first basses; Arthur Payne and Matt Houseley, second basses, together with other noted performers.

Hilda Moore, the famous English ! actress, died suddenly in New York | recently, after a six-days’ illness. She I married in 1924 Austin Fairman, also i of the English stage, and their four-1 year-old son, Churton Fairman, is j dangerously ill at Park East Hospital with an infectious disease. Miss Moore caught the disease while nurs- j ing the boy, and it spread through her I whole system.