PIONEER STAGE PRODUCER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 630, 27 July 1951, Page 20

PIONEER STAGE PRODUCER

"T"HE modern renaissance in ‘verse drama owes much to E. Martin Browne, actor and producer, who with his wife Henzie Raeburn will visit New Zealand from July 30 to September 7 by arrangement with the British Council. Martin Browne has been Director of the British Drama League since 1948, and as the first producer of the plays of T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry, his public addresses and stage demonstrations will be of the greatest interest to theatre-goers in this country. A feature of the tour of Martin Browne and Henzie Raeburn will be the three Week-end Drama Schools which they will conduct at Timaru, Hamilton and Hawera on August 11 and 12, August 18 and 19, and September 1 and 2. They will also address public meetings in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Palmerston North, Hastings, Balclutha, Rotorua and New Plymouth. Martin Browne pioneered the presentation of contemporary verse drama on the stage. Back in 1934 he took his

courage in both hands and staged a production of T, S. Eliot’s first play, The Rock. ‘Its critical success encouraged him, and the following year he produced afd took part in Murder in the Cathedral, which caught the public fancy and ran for four years. By 1939 Eliot had written another play, The Family Reunion, which _Browne produced with equal success, and at the Edinburgh Festival of 1950 he- staged the most popular of them all, The Cocktail Party. He also produced many of the early plays of Christopher Fry, and most of the poetic plays of younger writers such as W. H.. Auden, Ronald Duncan, Stephen Spender, Norman Nicholson and Anne Ridler. In much of this work he was assisted by his wife, who created the part of Margaret in The Lady’s Not For Burning, and has also played both Ivy and Agatha in The Family Reunion, Miriam in ‘Christopher Fry’s The First Born (at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival), and Ruth in Old Man of the Mountains. Martin Browne made his first stage appearance in 1927, and later toured (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) America. Following his association with many stock companies in that country he was appointed Assistant Professor of Speech and Drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He gave up this position to become Director of Religious Drama in the Diocese of Chichester, Sussex, the first appointment of its ‘kind in Britain. During the war he became founder and director of the Pilgrim Players, the first war-time travelling company, presenting his repertoire in village halls, cathedrals, schools and large theatres, and later moving to the Old Vic and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. Henzie Raeburn was an actress until her marriage in 1924. She has two children, and returned to the stage in 1938. She appeared in the Mercury Theatre series of "New Plays by Poets" from 1945 to 1948, and is the author of The Pilgrim Story and a nativity play, Beginning of the Way. Martin Browne has been engaged by the NZBS to record two talks for broadcasting on The Theatre in the Festival of Britain, and The Amateur Theatre in Britain. He will also record with his wife four illustrated talks on Poets of Today in the Theatre, The Work of T. S. Eliot, The Work of Christopher Fry, and Religious Drama in the Festival of Britain.