HAPPY RETURN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 509, 25 March 1949, Page 6

HAPPY RETURN

Canterbury Student Players : Home Again

An Interview with

NGAIO

MARSH

HERE are several ways of establishing good relations : when interviewing; one of those not. recommended is to borrow money from the person who is to be interviewed, especially if the person happens to be a lady. I had a second-class ticket from Lyttelton to Christchurch. I talked to Miss Ngaio Marsh in a first-class carriage. I had no change and neither did the guard. Miss Marsh lent me the extra sixpence, and a good relationship was immediately established, which says a lot for’: Miss Marsh. : Miss Marsh was on the last stage of her return journey from Australia, where she had produced and toured two plays for the Canterbury College Drama _ Society-Othello and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. The Society thad presented Othello in New Zealand during the long vacation of 1944-45; three of the cast were still available and there was’ less building up required than for the other play, which, Miss Marsh said, was a shot in the dark. Six Characters in Search of an Author is a difficult play. It was first produc- os :

ed in 1921, causing immediate and _ intense controversy. It is, said Miss Marsh,

the direct begetter of the many contemporary plays which ask us to examine the conventions and absurdities of the theatre. Pirandello did not want his audiences to accept sillusion as reality. . The play breaks rules; there are long speeches full of close argument which make terrific demands on the actors’ diction and technique. Success depends on pace, bold experimental movement, and what Miss Marsh calls orchestration; that is, playing as a team. Once these are established, through earnest study and hard work, the play goes well, and it is not so difficult as Otkello, into which one may dig for years and never touch bottom. "The hard work. which had been put into both plays was appreciated by Australian "audiences and the Press, said Miss Marsh.* The audiences were well mannered, enthusiastic and without what Sir Laurence Olivier called attacks of the rheums. If they coughed at all they coughed silently. The Press was perhaps extravagant in its praise. All its criticism of the company was on the professional level. Time and again Miss Marsh felt constrained to "point out that this was a student company, but the fact was seldom mentioned by the papers, and if it was, only in a tone of amazement that students could act as this company did. Miss MARSH gave some account of the work which went into making the tour a success. She herself did three months’ work on the scripts of the plays before the casts weht into rehearsal. She delved, thought and discussed. What was the _ author’s intention? How could it best be put over to the audience? What stage settings, lighting, pace and costume would help the author’s intention most? It is the producer’s duty to concern

himself solely with the author’s intention, not with tinkering and personal embellishments. Find the anatomy of the play, said Miss Marsh, and then articulate orally and visibly. The cast started rehearsals straight after their university examinations were oyer. Most of them had jobs. Phey rehearsed after work for seven weeks, seven nights a week. They built a solid groundwork of diction, mime and movement, the rudiments of — which many of them had learnt at a summer

‘school Miss Marsh had conducted in Wellington earlier in the year. They had long sessions of individual coaching and discussion of particular problems. Miss Marsh explained that the more she’ produces the less she — demonstrates. The

best way to express the author’s intention in a particular situation is not found

by the producer saying, "Here, do it like this," but by discussions and trials with the actor concerned, so that in the end the solution of the difficulty comes from the player in consultation with the producer, rather than from a simple imposition of the producer’s ideas on the player. Gradually the plays were built up, stage by stage, until producer and cast, having established a solid basis, could stand on it and view the plays as a whole, and concern themselves’ with flexibility of pace, the building of tension at climaxes, and the subtler pieces of business. ethis sounds like a lot of work. — It was. But it must also be remembered that the cast on tour was not pampered and served by vast armies of stage hands. They had to do their share of set building and striking, packing, attending to their costumes, and the -million other little irritating details that crowd upon a touring company. Team work extended beyond the production of the two plays. The cast as a whole lost weight. Sometimes there was time for sleep and sometimes there wasn’t. MISS MARSH was not able to see any Australian repertory work, except the Sydney Independent Theatre’s interesting production of Measure for Measure, but she did meet individual society members. She mentioned particularly the Tin Pan Alley Players of Melbourne University, who are lucky to be able to put on their plays in the best small theatre in Australasia; the Melbourne

Union, and the Mercury Players in Sydney, a group run by a refugee pro_ducer. Both these groups have a serious and questing approach to their theatre, and are willing to putin the hard work necessary to make something good out their productions. The conversation turned again to money, this time in the shape of official aid to the theatre. Drama is taught sat Melbourne University by official tutors. This means that student actors can put in more time on their acting, because it is a subject which goes towards the gaining of a diploma, than can the New Zealand undergraduate whose theatre work is extra-curricular: However, there is dissatisfaction over the standard of acting reached at Mel-_ bourne University. Miss Marsh thinks that the appointment of tutors is crucial, and while they may be fairly well off for qualified people in Australia, there is a dearth of them here. The same might be said about the Seren State travelling theatre. quipment is lavish, but it is not easy to get a good producer to work with the equipment. Unassisted New Zealand _ student theftre, Miss Marsh thinks, is ephemeral, Nobody is at university more than a few years and it is impossible to get continuity of effort or build up a high, fixed standard of production. However, change is no bad thing. It means that a clique cannot for long. strangle a society’s activities. Fresh faces appear; talent develops a little, and then moves on. The talented ones go out into the community and join a local repertory -society, sometimes bringing with them a ferment of new ideas. So we came back to the projected, discussed, longed-for National Theatre. Miss Marsh was succinct. A very good thing, she said, on three conditions. It needs a first-rate director, money, and a free hand. And, one might. ae added. hard work. ‘ :

-G, le F

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