Blueprint for New Zealand Theatre

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 409, 24 April 1947, Page 20

Blueprint for New Zealand Theatre

(A recent talk by

GORDON

CHATER

from 1Y A Auckland)

FTER touring your beautiful country in probably the most extensive theatrical tour since the coming of the cinema, I find people hungry for straight. theatre. We have had hundreds of inquiries from men and women under the age of 25 as to how, where, and when they can make a start towards a professional career in the theatre; and the public everywhere: demands to know how quickly straight plays will be returning to New Zealand. All this makes me want; to shout what I have been saying quietly for five months: "Why haven’t you got your own prtofessional theatre in New Zealand?" Let me approach the obstacles and defy them. Miss Ngaio Marsh said to me in Christchurch: "If we had a National Theatre would‘we be able to get the theatres to play in?" I replied: "Why not?" If, in the centres, theatres aren’t available, then go and play in the country where there are Municipal Theatres-theatres owned independently -and Town Halls. There isn’t another country in the world which for its size and population can boast so many playable theatres for straight shows as New Zealand does. Take Otautau, for instance. Otautau has a town hall which seats 500. Admittedly half that number have to sit on wooden benches; but they were quite content to do that-even when our own powerful lighting we carry round with us fused the entire district’s lighting system twice in the evening, which meant that they sat there for four solid hours to see Theatre. Not one person left the hall that evening-although it is true that we had some community singing to while away the waits. And again Otautau has good lighting equipment of its own and clean dressing rooms-a great deal cleaner and more comfortable than some I can think of in much larger theatres! . Talent and Money Then there is the difficulty of organising a company. But there’s a centralised Drama Council in Auckland in touch with every Repertory Soicety in New Zealand. Let them make it worth while for a well-known British man of the theatre to organise, first the Drama Council itself so that it becomes as efficient as possible, then the foundations of New Zealand Theatre. Let him judge the choice of plays-appoint good journalists for publicity-and deal diplomatically with possible interference by unprofessional and self-made experts, If necessary let him launch the first pro-‘duction-though I suggest it would be better to contract an established and superlatively good overseas producer to do that; for if- New Zealand talent is to be used (and though a nucleus of Overseas artists at the start would be desirable, it is equally desirable to give New Zealand Theatre a national flavour and impetus of its own)-then that New Zealand talent must be developed; it. probably hasn’t had the opportunity of | studying the technique of acting and stage ages a ge a great deal of teaching would be done during the very birth pangs of professional New Zealand Theatre, but mest important of all the difficulties, is money. Let no one think

that Theatre is so much an art that it can disregard filthy lucre. No theatrical show, with all the artistry in the world, is any good unless it eventually pays for itself. Good Theatre is primarily entertainment. Its instructive — or thought-provoking-power should affect its audience quite subconsciously, But if it is good entertainment-slick, real and enjoyable whether it is hilarious comedy, spine-chilling thriller, or tear-jerking tragedy-it will very quickly stand on its own feet. Nevertheless no theatrical organisation can start from scratch without backing. Comparison with England In England the British Council is authorised by the Government to finance the Arts Council to the tune of £150,000 a year-for*the first-class production of first-class plays. This makes the pick of actors and actresses available and the best directors available-direc-tors who make dramatists like Shaw, Shakespeare and Ibsen (dramatists we probably thought rather dull at school) live with clearness, vitality, and physical action. Scenic artists who would normally wait for the financial guarantee or prestige value of a sponsoring name like Cochran can be put under contract. All the Government demands in return for its cultural patronage is first-class Theatre for the People-theatre of International Value produced as magnificently and entertainingly as the best brains and artists in the land can do it. It even excuses patrons of entertain-ment-tax and the reward has been a series of productions none of which has failed to draw packed houses throughout the country. The Government never interfere with the productions in any way. Drama is a cog in their national programme. They are experts in policy and finance-but they leave this essential cog to its own experts. Through the

Arts Council (formerly CEMA) we have seen Dame Edith Evans and John Gielgud in a dramatization of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, John Clements and Kay Hammond in the Kingmaker; Gielgud with an array of famous names round him in such diversely entertaining plays as Maugham’s Circle, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, and that roaring restoration farce by Congreve, Love for Love, Then again there are "Olivier’s plays. Peer Gynt, Richard III, Arms and the Man, Uncle Vanya, Henry IV (Parts one and two), Oedipus Rex, and Sheridan’s Critic-every one of these plays drew audiences as big as the ones which kept Quiet Wedding and lighter if thoroughly entertaining and ephemeral plays of that calibre running one or two years. And they drew those audiences because they were slick; real; clear, and entertaining: infinitely better entertainment-and of course theatrical entertainment is something quite different-than the majority of stories told through the medium of shadows on’ celluloid-because they are played by real people, in colours truer than technicolour: and a thousand times more appealing to the eye, ear and humour of the people than-shall we say-a film like Getting Gertie’s Garter -or a hundred films a year with a plot which is an almost identical repetition of that one. Repertory in America But that is England-and I readily admit that New Zealand hasn’t the population or yet, perhaps, the demand, for a rich abundance of Theatre to merit such national expenditure. How, then, can the money be raised-and is "it really necessary to approach the Government for any part of it? I have recently been reading the Sunday Supplement of the New York Times on the subject of Eve Le Gallienne’s American Repertory Theatre. As you know, repertory, anywhere but in Australia and New

Zealand, is a professional concern. Miss Le Gallienne formed the American Repertory Theatre, which in America is comparable with the Old Vic Organisation in Great Britain, quite independently of her Government. When she started planning two years before they opened last December she reckoned 250,000 dollars would be needed. That’s about £80,000 in New Zealand. And by a sort of Gallup Poll she discovered that members of a far and wide public were quite prepared to become shareholders in an American Theatre Company. When the wheels for a public subscription were set in motion it took only three months for 250,000 ‘dollars to be’ raised. Among the shareholders are a lighthouse man in Greenland and any number of soldiers in the occupation forces of Europe. One solitary dollar was not too small to be acceptable. And apart from share selling it was made possible for supporters to subscribe in advance for regular tickets throughout the New York seasons and the subsequent States-wide tours. With such backing she gathered around her ten players of note and a small experienced stage. staff-and about 40 inexperienced but trained small-part players and technicians. They were given twoyear contracts and settled down immediately to hard work. Her initial season opened in New York last December with three plays: What Every Woman Knows, by J. M. Barrie, Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, and Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. The American Repertory Theatre has already been received by the public with acclaim and support in spite of a cautious press. America is America with 140,000,000 people and New Zealand is New Zealand with less than two million. But individual wealth is generally greater here than there. It does not, therefore, seem invidious to suggest that. a similar private subscription should be made for a New Zealand Theatre. Or better, because I understand that each Repertory Society in New Zealand already contributes funds to the Central Drama Council in Auckland, why not increase this contribution generously, and of course, willingly, for the unselfish sake of Theatre, and allow the Drama Council to be the financial and artistic executive? It would be pointless to ignore a machine which. could, perform the necessary duties when it is already in existence. By this time you may well be saying, "What a messy blueprint!" But until public feeling and enthusiasm bursts from smouldering interest into the flame of definite and deliberate action, however clearly I can see what I would do personally, I can only make suggestions with limited detail. A Question to Schoolboys . _ Perhaps t can precipitate the importance of your necessity for professional theatre in New Zealand by repeating a question’ I asked an audience of boys at Scots Collegé, Wellington-boys ranging from 10 to 17-when I was asked to speak to them about Theatre, "Supposing," I asked them, "one of found you were happiest when you were expressing yourself in the performance of a school play? Supposing you felt, after you’d performed in one or two that you were and would be more talented at acting than at any other occu-pation-that for personal happiness, if

nothing else, you must continue to act for a living when you left school? Supposing, in fact, one of you is a potential James Mason or Gary Cooper-and the idea is not laughable because both of them were schoolboys, too, once-what outlet to the stage or films have you got in New Zealand-unless, of course, your parents are so well off that they can send you to Australia, or London or New York to train-or unless you have the courage to work your passage to another continent, get a job and pay your way through the training for professional show business?" The answer is none. My present company has absorbed two clever and potentially first-class stage artists-a boy and a girl, both from New Zealand: they are working as understudies. But very soon our tour will end and they both want to continue their profitable beginning into a secure and regular stage career. But how can they in New Zealand? Must they, like so many other New Zealand brains and talents, export themselves for recognition? It is incongruous when there is a demand for their talents in numerous theatres throughout their own country.

People in New Zealand are thrilled with flesh-and-blood theatre-particu-larly people who have never seen it before. Recently the cast of a school play came to see our productions. Seventeen boys. Only one of them had seen a professional straight play before. At Cambridge, in the Waikato, there were three members of the Borough Council over 50 years of age who had never seen a professionally-acted play before we went there. In the South Island an attractive and amusing young woman was sent by one of the papers to write a back stage story about us. She asked if Mr. Parry and Miss Robinson were professionals! But in each of these cases I wish you could have seen and heard their individual exultations after seeing the show. | As my charlady in London used to say, "It did the ’eart good." They experienced for the first time the same inexplicably thrilling experience I have every time the curtain rises on a flesh-and-blood play, and I spend the evening watching incidents build into a story that could very well in most cases compare with many parts of my own life -anyway, with conclusions that I have found profitably applicable in almost every case, After the lean years, when for entertainment you have been fed on celluloid, of which-let’s be honest-only a proportion sends you out of the cinema really refreshed, your country is now conscious of a different, absorbing, and hundred times more’ mind tickling medium of entertainment. True, companies will come from overseas if you support them adequately. But they cannot come in too continuous succession. Why not start now and really get cracking with your own theatre-your own. professional theatre?-and let the latent talent of one of the most overall highly educated and appreciative countries express itself. Let it give you the intense pleasure Londoners have at their fingertips in Shaftesbury Avenue or St. Martin’s Lane and then you never need to say again: "I wonder when we shall be able to have another real evening of theatre like that!"