PICTURE SHOWS AND THE DRAMA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 189, 8 February 1912, Page 4

PICTURE SHOWS AND THE DRAMA.

Cr. King, at a meeting in Stratford, whereat the habit of leaving. Stratford out of theatrical itineraries was discussed, gave voice to . a popular delusion. He suggested that the animated picture machine would Kill the touring dramatic company It would be interesting to have the opinions of the great dramatic actors and actresses or the great playwrights on this matter, and it is certain that the suggestion would be received with amusement and incredulity. The writer writes and the actor acts for tlie approval of the public. The actor is not able to act in order to stir human emotions without an audience. It is grotesque to imagine 11. B. Irvine declaring the great speeches in Hamlet before a looking glass in his bedroom, It is impossible to imagine Melba being content to sing to a gramaphone in order that the public might simply hear her secondhand and it is impossible to conceive actors and "actresses playing with true human feeling to a bare house except for the man witli the machine. If playing direct to the public dies out, the dramatic art in both writing and acting picture. The whole dramatic art is if animated pictures are accepted as the sole substitute for dramatic presentation by living people having human impulses and able to stir them, the orator would be equally effective if shown in a moving pictude. The whole dramatic art is not in* either movement or pose, but in the unexplainable power the great artist has to speak to "the "soul of his audience. We can conceive artists capable of acting nobly for condensed dramas merely shown by moving picture, and yet being quite unable in direct contact with, living people to appeal to them in any way. Indeed, acting for moving pictures has become a distinct branch of art, and is never likely to interfere with the warm human appeal of the actor who gets half his effects by speaking the words of an artist and in making them felt by the hearer. We have to doubt, however, that as it is very necessary to obtain clever actors for moving picture dramas, the histrionic art must improve because of. the competition which is inspired by the machine. The machine, however, is inanimate, although it represents animation. To persist that a pictured story is felt as much as an acted story emphasised by fitting language is to suggest that a pictured battle is as moving as the real thing or that lifeless print stirs human beings as truly as the same matter spoken nobly by a great orator. That the moving picture provides a wonderfully interesting entertainment at a very small price there is no doubt, and that it will increase rather than decrease in popularity seems certain.