THEATRE AS DESSERT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1938, Page 8

THEATRE AS DESSERT

TILT BY DAME SYBIL THORNDYKE

CRITICISM OF BRITISH CENSORSHIP.

NEED OF BEING SHOCKED INTO AWARENESS.

“I find' that the majority of people interested in the theatre,” said Dame Sybil Thorndike, in a recent speech, “belong to a past age. The ordinary person who goes to the theatre does so expecting to enjoy it, more or less, after a big meal. The theatre-going public may be divided into those who look upon it as dessert and those who go more or less fasting. You will find that it is the cheaper public that generally goes fasting and is far more alive and responsive. There are outbreaks in London and all over the country, on the amateur side, from people who are not satisfied and want something more quickening in the theatre. The type of thought we get in the theatre is 20, 30 or 40 years behind what any of us people are thinking. Anything that you or I are thinking about seriously cannot possibly be represented on the stage. In America it is quite different. The theatre there is a reflection of contemporary thought. It is very useful for us to have our Shakespeare and our' other classics, but the theatre primarily belongs to the moment. The plays that last are those that come out of the hearts of the people. I believe the theatre has the most wonderful opportunity for releasing all sorts of inhibitions and stifled thoughts. It is artistic psycho-analysis. The theatre ought to concern itself with things that press urgently upon us today, such as religion and politics, but we can only ’get them in the theatre if they were watered down so that they would not hurt. The Lord Chamberlain is desperately afraid lest the tender English people should be hurt. He is so afraid that they may have feelings and susceptibilities. The theatre should exist to shock us into awareness. To be aware is to be alive. Yet the cry of the majority is: ‘Let us be comfortable.’ That is death—absolute stone death. The theatre exists to stop us from being comfortable, from letting our arteries harden.”