"WORLD THEATRE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 426, 22 August 1947, Page 6

"WORLD THEATRE"

Antroducing An Important Series of Broadcast Plays

EGINNING on September 5 at 2YA, the NZBS will present from the main National Stations in coming months a series of radio presentations of world-famous plays, all of them major works of dramatic art and all of them unusual, from the radio point of view, in that they take at least a full hour to broadcast and, in some cases, nearly an hour and a-half. Because of the importance of this series we have asked the Director of Broadcasting, PROFESSOR JAMES SHELLEY, to introduce it by meons of two special articles for "The Listener," the first of which appears herewith.

OR the past two years the Home Service of the BBC has presented under the title "World Theatre" a series of plays belonging to various countries and ages which are in one way or another interesting to students of the theatre. The Transcription Service of the BBC, convinced of the general popularity of these presentations, has selected a group of these plays to record for distribution overseas. So far five have come to hand and they will be broadcast from our stations shortly. The five are: The Trojan Women, by Euripides, which was produced in 415 B.C. in Athens as the first part of a Trilogy which won the "second prize at the annual festival of Dionysus; The Tragical History of Doctor Paustus, by Christopher. Marlowe which Was acted in London about 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada; Hedda Gabler, by the great Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen, which was written in 1890; The ' Man of Destiny, by Bernard Shaw, from ~his early volume Plays Pleasant, of 1898; ‘and L’Aiglon, by Edmond Rostand, ~ which was produced in Paris in 1900. ie * * * "THE broadcasting of this World '" Theatre series affords us a good opportunity for discussing how far we are justified in presenting a work in terms ef one medium which was intended for another. All these plays were written to be acted on the stage with the help of .suitable visual settings in the presence of large audiences. How far can they be "put over" if we are deprived of the ’ movement of actors and the visual stimulus of scenery and that raising of our emotional sensitivity which comes from

the presence of a tense theatreful of people sympathetically attuned? To give an extreme instance of the difference between the possibilities of the two media, the stage and radio, we cast our minds back to the tragic poignancy of the prison-cell scene in Galsworthy’s Justice -a scene so powerful on the stage that it brought about a modification of prison regulations in England. Such a scene cannot be presented on the radio for the very good reason that there is not a word spoken, and a mere narrator’s description would carry no conviction whatever. Consider tco the scene in Shaw’s Man of Destiny where much of the theatrically humorous effect depends on the actual bodily entrance of the Lady in the ‘disguise of a lieutenant, a disguise which Napoleon instantly sees through but dare not at the time admit. Such a scene loses much when we are deprived of all but the voices, although in the case of Shaw, in whose plays a verbal sparring is so important a part, the case of radio is not so desperate. Faustus sees the vision of Helen of Troy in Marlowe’s play, and utters one of the loveliest’ speeches in all drama, beginning: Was this the face that launched thousand ships J ' And burnt the topless towers of Tit: Is the imagination of the listener equal to the quick recognition of Helen’s presence without having seen her enter? As to the vision of Helen herself (played by ‘a boy in Marlowe’s time) maybe the radio audience has the advantage, since a stage Helén will always fall short of the Helen of the listener’s imagination, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) plays were written for the setting of the stage-but then so were the Madonnas of Raphael painted for the setting of church interiors and an atmosphere of sanctity, not for the walls ' of art galleries and an audience of stu- ‘ dents and sight-seers. Can we then absotb nothing of the deeper meaning of — a Raphaei thus torn from its intended setting and robbed of an attitude of mind in us which should provide the light to turn the paint to living spirit? That depends very much on ourselves. _ And in this series of plays the ‘same . applies-we should be wise to make ourselves somewhat familiar with the physical conditions and the mental attitude » of the audience for which the plays were Sabla ery so that we can take these things for granted and be able to concentrate more than usual on the speeches them- _ selves and the fundamental humanity they express. (To assist listeners to this end next week’s issue will contain brief background information concerning the . five plays to be presented in the "World Theatre" series.) \