No more does the extravagance that crowds the stage of the Winter Garden-last echoes of the Russian Ballet-englamour, with the rich and native nakedness of Slavic genius, the nudity of entertainment there.

IV

However, in that he is sincere, the amateur is more dangerous than the charlatan. It has been his cultivated faith that the difficulties of pictorial stagecraft were to be overcome-simply by ignoring them. Fallacy of fallacies!—to intrust to the latencies of a New York, Michigan, or California audience-intensely modern, inexperienced in picturesque imaging—an empty stage! Whatever their race-memories,-whether of Europe or farthest Asia, can these be conjured into the light by an unadorned drapery?

Rather, with the remote so indefinitely suggested, will the immediate intrude-the strong flavor of the familiar. Can the hanging of linen in folds (with no matter what cunning of stencil or batik) divide the suburbanite from Suburbia? - evoke a faery radiance, a florescence of lost adventure, in minds where before were wall-paper and plumbing, parlors and steam-heat, shouting, bastard religion, and gramophone romance?

The artist

The artist sees with the eyes of the multitude. amateur, in his ungracious arrogance, demands of the multitude the single vision of the artist.

In the fading of its novelty, the studied plainness of the PostCraigites has lost whatever potency it once possessed. Yesterday's grey curtains can no longer fill a vision newly quickened to behold the colors of the world. The majestic background which Isadora Duncan found sufficient (and it was sufficient) has served in turn for Hamlet and the chorus-girls of the Follies. It still remains for Mr. George M. Cohan to ask that we accept them as the New Jersey setting for one of his farces.

To meet the demand of a nervous age, a day of florid possibilities, the artist must assemble all the resources at hand. The present adventure in the Theatre is not so much the attack on futile, outworn conventions, as their redemption for beauty; the invention, the increasing of possible æsthetic material, and its most effective employment.

There is indeed more to be invented than to destroy. Beyond the compromise of the average playhouse, and the tentative, limited experiments of the Little Theatres, the complex problems of stage-lighting have never been met. Here is an utterly undeveloped science, an untouched æsthetic instrument. Light,

the most flexible of mediums, is still as clumsily handled as if the discovery of electricity, over a century ago, and its subsequent perfection of control, had not made of our forefathers' miracle a daily commonplace. In stage-lighting,—the antique compromises being negligible,-the artist finds no false or exhausted systems to overthrow. He stands upon virgin ground. Everything is potential here. The means at hand are scattered and meagre. To obtain an adequate lighting equipment in almost any New York Theatre it is necessary to design special lamps (which can be made only at great cost), or to compromise with stock models. As yet, methods for light-projection are of the most elementary type. Several excellent models with cylindrical projectors have been perfected, but the demand for them has not justified considerable manufacture. Gelatine "mediums" are procurable only in a very crude scale of dyes. Herein lies the only excuse for the blatancy of stage sunlight, for the acid green which is the stage-manager's moonlight. Limited initially by the arbitrary color-character of manufactured "mediums, the artist has little opportunity for the modifying of light-quality to that subtle point where it becomes neither color nor light, but a mingled intensification of both. So far, the important delicacies of light have been sacrificed to technical deficiency. The very potentiality of stage-lighting, the incompleteness of method, has had a considerable effect upon stage-painting.

To the artist in the Theatre, painting is a foundation only; it is primarily regarded as a surface prepared for the reception of light. The scenery is constructed-spaced and angled-for certain degrees and qualities of light. By this, the form and— above all-the color of the scene is brought to life. In planning the distribution and local intensity of color-masses, the source and color of the lighting which is to be used must be kept constantly in mind.

It is obvious, therefore, that a stage-picture should be as sensitively considered and executed as a water-color drawing. For this, the painstaking flat-painting of the traditional scenicpainter will not suffice. A readier invention, a current colorknowledge is needed. Again (and this has marred the work of a certain artist), the indiscriminate use of "stipple painting" does not necessarily produce a brilliant surface. There are possible exquisite subtleties in stage-painting which can be accomplished only by the artist whose ground-work was laid at the easel, whose earlier schoolmasters were Giotto and Dürer, Velasquez and Ingres.

Bringing new life to a jaded craft, he looks upon stage-painting as an art. To his classical schooling he adds the glow, the science, of Monet and the Impressionists, of Gaugin, Van Gogh, and Cezanne. He comes with a close knowledge of his art-of colormeaning and color-science. He comes at the end of a tradition, rich with it, but richer still in the horizon that is before him.

The long tradition of painting is ended. It seems inevitable that, with the passing of the Modernists, the art of painting, as we know it, will become but the memory of a tradition. The conscious complexities of the Modernists cannot truly represent the unconscious complexity of faith and unbelief, the resurgence of hope, which mark the New Age.

The craft of the great masters in painting was largely an inheritance. Each one of them was heir to a definite, limited technique, and dignified in the possession of it. The artist in the Theatre has shed that dignity, although it was his first honor. His equipment includes the Past, but it is the futurity of his technique which indicates his craft's potentiality.

In this futurity, this element of the possible, the "New Art of the Theatre"-the newest art-is a portent, a living symbol of the New Age.

V

Possessing an untried instrument, a sacred medium-it is in this that the artist in the Theatre is gifted beyond his mighty forebears in the studio.

It is as if God had confided the ultimate trust to man when he gave him the secret of fire and, through fire, the control of light. Yet man, from the ages of impotence to the modern era of mechanical celerity, has made only comfort out of this trust, this terrible power to darken and illumine, to draw forth color, to obliterate and define. The benison of light has been so easily accepted—the miracle so little worshipped.

Light is the finest of the Elements, the least material, in mystery the nearest to the Soul. Ineffable, penetrating all life, its solemn recession from the Earth at nightfall is like the passing of a Soul. The blue frozen sky is drained of life, and the stars are like the eyes of the dead. All through the night the Earth lies dormant ; and men forget their misery and rapture in the half-death of sleep. At morning it flows again over the Earth,—the light, the life, and men awaken, like bathers rising out of water.

The ebb and flow, the life and death-so simple, so profound in the human consciousness are these symbols and meanings, that there are daily mysteries of light which can bring tears to

the eyes of the most cynical, the most sophisticated amongst men. Ephemeral, vague moments of atmosphere, like the white faces of beloved ghosts, can bring all sorrow through the eyes. Others tremble across the vision of the solitary with the passionate companionship of pleasure. At twilight and in the silence of the increasing dawn the hills are altars to all men.

The secret of the poignant power of light is that its movement, from day to darkness, rhythmic, incessant, is the Timepiece of mortality.

Light and its shadows can fix all atmospheres, all weathers and moods, upon the stage. The assembling of forms, the laying of paint upon those forms, is the artist's beginning only. For now he takes light in his hands, like a God, and carves from darkness Tragedy's face. With light, he lifts from life the brilliant mask of Comedy. He conjures out of emptiness the Seasons, the Hours; the holy frailty of twilight, the sensuous festival of noon. He paints upon paint with light. He is at the heart of color.

Here indeed is a new Theatre-a creed, a priesthood. If he be exalted, patient, and strong, aflame with the desire of his vision, the artist in the Theatre can create a new spiritual landscape for the eyes of the misery-blinded world.

Standing at the margin of the New Age, he links the Past with the Future in the fervor of the creative Present. Therein is his power to shatter the illusion of Time.

Behind him, gleaming into first darkness, is the tradition of the centuries-from silver Babylon and golden Egypt; from Greece, from Rome and purple Venice; from the teeming cities of Europe to America's shores,-the patient gleaning, the building, the treasure.

He will exploit the vastness of the human inheritance. He will glorify the creative impulse in man,-the golden thread binding the ages,- from the day that it woke in the breast of the First Potter. All art, all mortal knowledge and science, are his to unite in that Theatre which is the essential hope of his young craft-the New Theatre of the New Age.

It will be a common Stage, where the gay and the gravethe songs of hillside and tavern, and the ascending prayers of throngs in grey cathedrals-can mingle in an eventual naturalness; a clear Stage, where the thirst and searching of the RaceDream will find a perfect formation, a solace; a wide Stage, for that Movement which is Life; a concentrated Stage, whereon the quivering Symbol of the Soul can lift, lustrous and free, in light, returned to God.

Six Designs by Adolphe Appia for A&t III of The Valkyrs. These are chosen to illustrate the two essential bases of Appia's theory of stage decoration : first, that the spirit or atmosphere of the play must be realized, rather than a realistically imitative background; and second, that the actor must dominate the scene. The scene is the Rock of the Valkyrs. The stage direction is: "To the right the beginning of a forest of fir-trees; to the left the entrance to a cavern; above, the cliffs attain their highest point; toward the background huge rocks are supposed to lead toward a steep abyss." The drawing on this page shows the structure of the scene.