ENJOYING A NECESSITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 6

ENJOYING A NECESSITY

HE young, shock headed Hamlet came on stage barefoot, took a pair of white socks from his pocket, slipped them on and tied his shoe laces. Frederick Farley, Director of the Drama Council’s School for. Producers, smiled up from the body of the hall. "Whenever you are," he said. Hamlet moved to the left and assumed character: "Now I am alone," he moved centre slowly and broodingly, "O! What a rogue and peasant slave am I. Is it not monstrous .. .!" ’ Feet scattered the gravel outside and thumped on the doorstep. A telegraph bay. Half of Hamlet resented the interruption, the other half tried to carry on. The performance lost its reality. "You're working under difficulties," the Director said, when the telegram had been delivered. "Let's take it again." Hamlet dressed himself in his illusion. "Now I am alone. . ." Further right, Harold Baigent, the lighting expert, bumped and pottered with his step-ladder, wobbling about on its summit, only his legs showing under the scalloped, green-edged curtain. "What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba . That he should weep for her?" Baigent came down off his ladder, squinted across the stage at floor level, lining up something, and then started hammering spasmodically near the footlights. ". , . for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver’d, (bang) and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere . this (bang)

I should have fatted all the region kites With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! (bang) Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! O vengeance!" (bang) "First part good," Farley said. "But does your movement fit the words there? I don’t think so, Do it again." 3 Hamlet did it again. " . . Am I a coward? Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? . . ." "Hum," Farley said, in a tone of marked disbelief. "Seems better this time." "Sorry!" Hamlet said wryly. Farley mused, chin in hand, taking no notice

until someone beside him said, "Apparently it isn’t good to be better!" Everybody laughed, and the rehearsal went on. The Scheme This soliloquy, ' one of the gems Olivier left out of his film of Hamlet, was being rehearsed in the hall of St, Matthew’s Diocesan School, Masterton, where the New Zealand Drama Council sponsored a Producers’ School between January 12 and 22. The School was attended by sixty representatives of repertory societies and drama clubs from the Bay of Islands to South Otago. Adult Education. sent tutors and underwrote the Drama Council against loss. Gordon Kirk, of Nelson,

managed the School, Professor S. Musgrove, of Auckland University College, conducted a play-writing course, and Arnold Goodwin, producer for the Auckland W.E.A., held classes in practical scene design. The Listener spent part of two days at St. Matthew’s, talking to members of the School, and watching them work. Some of them hadn’t known what to expect, and they were pleased that the people they met were, on the whole, within the New Zealand convention of uniformity of appearance. "And yet," one of them said, "there must be something odd about us-" " Distinctive’ is a better word," suggested a second. "Well, whatever it is, we’re recognisable. Two of us went. into the post office and the man behind the counter asked how they were treating us up at St. Matthew’s. We’d never seen him before. I don’t know... ." But they were too busy for "much introspection, Whenever two people gathered together there was a rehearsal, or a question, or discussion of an idea: "I thought if I paused then... How’s that? Do you think it’s better that way?" In the corridors and dining room, the lounge,’ the side verandah, about the grounds, in the class rodms, in the swimming pool, the ideas swirled into arguments, and the arguments into demonstrations. xd Management The members of the School were able to concentrate continuously because of their keenness, and because the project had been well planned and ran according to plan. "Ah, the food!" said everybody. "Wonderful. Gordon Kirk laid everything on." Gordon Kirk, the manager, pulled this job down on himself voluntarily. "A residential school has been a pet idéa of mine for a long time," he said. "I’ve

been pushing for it ever since I got on to the Drama Council Executive. Weekend schools had been held before, but the time was too short to accomplish much. This. ten-day school is the first of its kind, and the first attempt in New Zealand to achieve something with advanced students. "Organisational problems? Oh, there were a few. No more than is usual with a set-up like this. Masterton was pretty good to us. They were short of water, but they let us fill the swimming pool. They have their power problems, but after some pleading they let us use the lighting equipment we wanted. We hired army blankets, sheets and pillows, two of the St. Matthew’s cooks gave up part of their holidays to help us out-and that reminds me, I must slip into town and get a case of tomatoes and a dozen lettuces. Go and have'’a look at Arnold Goodwin’s scene designing class." Scene Design In the scene design room, scale cardboard set models were scattered about on desks, That morning, towards the end of the course, some of the models were finished, and the class bore a triumphant, weary air. "We've learnt something, all right," one of them said. "I’ve never used my brains so much in all my life." Scene designing is easy for anyone with universal knowledge; for ordinary people it means hard work, wide research and fixed attention to detail. "We've tried to give them a lead into the practical," Arnold Goodwin said. "So many people are not visualists. They think vaguely of a set, but they have no idea of what they really need on the stage. Designing models teaches them to see. Then we aim at simplicity, first because small stages with few facilities must have simple sets, and also because the modern trend is away from clutter. Here, we are trying to help producers lift their standard, and adopt a courageous, experimental approach." He (continued on next page)

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smileq reminiscentiy. §rroducing 1s a colossal job. The ideal producer is a man who writes the play, produces it, designs the scenery, composes the music, and in New Zealand probably takes the tickets at the door." People were measuring and cutting cardboard, pursing their mouths and calculating. "The secret is to work accurately to scale," a lady said, laying down her compass. "When you have the measurements of your home stage you can make replicas, so that any set can be made to fit any stage." We digested this slowly. She moved a scale cardboard table and grinned, "T’ll take this set home and be so much the wiser, unless the kids get hold of ‘it for a doll’s house," Play Writing "One of the things I’ve noticed," said a play-writing student, "is the frequent use in .everybody’s lectures of three words: balance, conflict, and action, I’m just beginning to find out what they mean." A play-writing tutorial was in full swing under a tree, Professor Musgrove and his students were working on an exercise: a political satire for radio. "Radio only assaults the ears," Professor Musgrove said, flat on his back, staring at the tree above him. "You must establish very quickly the difference between your characters, but at the same time you must build in a balanced

way. You can’t jump into your climax on the first page. It’s the empty phrases that build, the colourless ones that put flesh on the skeleton, cover the baldness of the dialogue. "Those are my chief criticisms of this script. You haven’t established character; any of these sentences could have been spoken by any of the characters. And ydu haven’t built smoothly to your climax. Now let’s take it sentence by sentence .. ." Later Professor Musgrove talked about the course, ; "You can’t teach imaginative writing," he said. "So I’ve tried to keep to practical problems. I’ve found that most help is needed in structure, and with dialogue of a strongly dramatic nature. "But it’s not enough to help playwrights with their construction problems cold, as it were. They must hear their own stuff read or performed. That can be done in a residential school of this nature. And they must also be encouraged in every way to write. Prizes like those offered by the Canterbury Centennial Committee are a worthwhile encouragement to young playwrights." Run Through That evening there was a full run through of a series of excerpts assembled by Frederick Farley, and held together by an interpolated commentary he wrote himself. He calls it World Theatre. Farley is a concentrated dnd animated, progressive but eminently. sensible producer, As a member of the School said:

"He is not a producer who rises in the middle of a rehearsal and cries, ‘No! That is not it at all. Everything must be purple!’ He can relate what he wants to/ the ability and experience of his actors," There were bits from Clifford Odet’s Golden Boy, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Saroyan’s') The Beautiful People, and many more. The audience was a tough one. The producer in each member struggled with the simple, joyful, theatregoer. The simple theatregoer wanted to say: "Yes, I like it. I am convinced and carried away." The producer screwed up his -eyes and wanted to wring more and more out of the actors. Conflicting emotions made it ‘a strenuous evening on and off the stage. But with the strenuousness went the stimulation. Among the last lines of World Theatre were these: Farley: . . . No other art form has the theatre’s imaginative stimulus. Reactionary from Body of Theatre: Ah, ha, here it comes-heré comes the message. When I go to the theatre I want only amusement and relaxation. I don’t want to think. Farley: I see. And in the larger theatrethe theatre of life-do you think there, my friend? Reactionary: Of coirse I do, but the theatre has nothing to do with life. Farley: I believe that the theatre has everything to do with life; that it is a necessity of your existence . . . and you would find that in learning to enjoy the theatre you would learn to enjoy life. The people at the Masterton Drama School seemed to be doing both these things,