The Chicago Little Theatre

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From the standpoint of complete production, The King of the Jews was in many respects the most mature expression of the Little Theatre technique. The emotional lighting, with a superstructure in realism, not only escaped that artificiality which had marred the use of it in Medea: it attained a resource in color, a finesse and control, which placed it beyond any illumination that, as far as one knows, has been devised in the American theatre. With this there came also a more subtle blending of voices, and in the directorship a greater authority and range of movement for choral rhythms. The background, adapted from Raymond Johnson's original design, cramped by a small stage, was a masterly solution of a most difficult problem.

The King of the Jews, the Passion Play, Florence Kiper Frank's Jael, Lou Wall Moore's dramatization of The Happy Prince, and my own play, Grotesques, were each an attempt in the technique of the art theatre from the dramaturgic standpoint. The Little Theatre, in spite of these productions by writers more or less unknown, cannot be said to have shown in the selection of plays the same daring or breadth and incisiveness of vision which it has employed in the staging of them. Apart from those that have been mentioned, if one except the fantasy called An Evening With Columbine, it has staged but three poetic plays: On Baile's Strand and The Shadowy Watersdone during the first season-and two special performances in January of the current year of Deirdre of the Sorrows, a production marred by inadequate rehearsal.

On the other hand, the experiments in realism have shown a wider range, including several plays poetic in content and others, purely realistic, that have forced the Little Theatre to attack this phase of the art-theatre problem from many angles. Beneath, there has also been a substratum, such as no theatre. seems able to avoid, of negligible and, for the most part, worthless "pot-boilers."

Because of the experimental viewpoint at the Little Theatre, these productions in realistic drama have had more than a transient significance. Such plays as Hedda Gabler, Rosmersholm. Anatol, Creditors, The Stronger, The Philanderer, Mrs. Warren's Profession, and others produced there-Gibson's Womenkind, Rupert Brooke's Lithuania, groups of realistic plays by Mary Aldis and by Mrs. Havelock Ellis-are written in a technique that is not consonant with what is distinctively characteristic of the art theatre. It is possible that, by some method yet undiscovered, this conflict may be partially eliminated; meanwhile,

there is only a frank acceptance of realism, or an experiment that will have its basis in compromise. In the Little Theatre this compromise has manifested itself in the acting, which without exception has been naturalistic.

The stagecraft, on the contrary, has varied from stylization to an approximate realism. The most radical example of the former was Mrs. Warren's Profession, where the stage decoration was stylized with subtle skill and unified through the four acts by an emphasis of repeated motifs. Yet this stylization divided the production into two parts-the acting and the mise en scène. A somewhat less radical stylization in The Philanderer was more effective, perhaps because the play is artificial comedy. In other productions unity by the use of a careful system of lighting has been attempted, but without real success, except in Womenkind, where advantage was taken of the opportunity afforded by artificial light in a cottage after sunset. This play was done with a realistic setting, over which the glow of lamp and candles and of the fireplace created a semblance of unity. With this one exception, realistic stage decoration, as in Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm, or an almost entire absence of scenic investiture, has given the most harmonious results.

These productions have had, therefore, a negative significance. The art theatre, by simplification, by bringing a new imaginative quality into the method of production, has been of coöperative assistance, but it has as yet made no contribution of great constructive value to the staging of realistic drama.

Such, briefly, is the record of the best that has been accomplished by the Chicago Little Theatre in the first five years of its development. I have made no attempt to consider the numerous supplementary activities that have been closely a part of its work; nor have I spoken of the marionette theatre, thus far but an amusing divertisement for children.

The hampering of creative strength by poverty, by an immature method of organization, by many failures and blunders of insight, especially in regard to the players, has left even this accomplishment but a beginning. With three years of financial freedom and the knowledge gained through success and error, the Little Theatre will, in all probability, achieve that greater power which has awaited the opportunity. Meanwhile, neither

in the Chicago Little Theatre nor elsewhere has the new art attained maturity; but as far as America is concerned, in the Little Theatre it has made its furthest progress.

How My Plays Should be Acted

By PAUL CLAUDEL

Translated by BARRETT H. CLARK

EDITOR'S NOTE:-This little essay, wherein one of the foremost
French poet-dramatists explains how he wishes the actors to present
his plays, should prove of interest in the widespread discussion of
what is wrong with American acting. The value of musical speech,
especially, cannot be insisted upon too often in a country where un-
poetic and slovenly use of the voice is almost as prevalent on the
stage as in the street. Paul Claudel recently came to the attention
of American drama-lovers through the publication of a translation of
The Tidings Brought to Mary. The following article was published
originally in L'Euvre.

THE actor is an artist and not a critic.

His aim is not to inter

pret a text, but to impart life to a character. He ought therefore so to penetrate into the spirit and feeling of the rôle he assumes that his words on the stage shall seem no more than a form of natural expression. It is not a matter of detail and shading, equally and indifferently throughout the whole rôle; he must cling to each separate scene and attain to the very summits of expression which dominate all the rest.

Oftentimes what moves us the most in acting is not so much what the actor says as what we feel he is going to say. To know an intelligent man and to understand an artist and a creator are two very different things. It is only by a true evaluation of the relative importance of its component elements that a rôle is truly composed.

What is of greatest importance to me after the emotion, is the music. An agreeable voice, joined with clear enunciation and constituting part of an intelligible concert together with the other voices in the dialogue, is of itself a sufficient banquet for the soul, independently even of the abstract sense of the words. Poetry with its subtlety, its sound and accent, its images, its movement, is what allows the human voice its fullest range. My method of breaking up and dividing verses, based upon the necessity to breathe-that is, the illogical unifying of sentences which is none the less required from the point of view of emotion-in my opinion, helps the actor in his study of the rôle. If you listen carefully to someone speaking, you will notice that at a variable point towards the middle of the sentence his voice will rise, and then fall at the end. It is these two tempi and the intermediate modulations which go to make up one of my verses.

Because of the musical principle, I want nothing at first which is too violent, too sudden, too abrupt. You must not break that enchantment which binds the characters each to the other. It seems to me that there are ways of striking at the heart of the spectator, of obtaining sudden and biting impressions, without resorting to violence. Loud cries, for instance, will lose none of their effect if they are sparingly resorted to.

Likewise with acting and gestures-you must avoid all that is brusque, violent, artificial, and never lose a certain feeling for the group in which you appear, and the attitude you must assume. I have a peculiar horror of what is termed the "sequence of scenes": two long steps and a short, followed by a halt!-And no grimaces or convulsions. In moments of pathos, the tragic drawing out of a gesture is preferable to any sort of outburst. But even here you must guard against mannerism and affectation: rather, consult nature.

The principle of great art is scrupulously to avoid what is useless. The continual moving about of the actor who is constantly walking back and forth on the stage with evident intent to fill it, who rises and sits down, and turns about, is absolutely useless. Nothing annoys me more than the actor who depicts in his expression each detail of each emotion which the words of his partner on the stage produce upon him. Let him remain quiet, immobile if necessary, even if he be forced to appear a little stiff: the audience will at heart be grateful to him.

At each point of the play there is a corresponding attitude, and the gesture required should be only the composition and decomposition of that attitude.

These remarks are intended merely to make the actor reflectfor he knows his own profession-and not to hinder him, and make a marionette of him.

He must not act for the public: he must be capable of the disinterestedness of the great artist, and not concern himself with thoughts of success, but rather with the best possible realization of the art to which he should devote his life. And perhaps it is this very neglect of the audience which results in his ability to reach it and move it.

THE Litle Theatre Society of Indiana presented as the fifth bill of its season Rupert Brooke's Lithuania, a new adaptation of The Maker of Dreams, and Suppressed Desires. The final bill was made up of three Irish plays: Cathleen ni Houlihan, The Rising of the Moon, and Spreading the News.

Sam Hume's Adaptable Settings

THERE are many reasons why the first season at the Arts and Crafts Playhouse in Detroit is likely to be long remembered by those interested in the insurgent movement in the American Theatre. Overshadowing all else, perhaps, is the achievement of presenting a series of plays of undoubted artistic merit, with professional finish, in a theatre so well managed that a surplus remains in the treasury to be carried over to another year. This combination of uniformly artistic standard with efficient business management stamps the playhouse as the first successful normal art theatre in the country.

But the most striking single achievement of the season has been the development of a new phase of stagecraft which seems destined to solve one of the most difficult problems in little theatre and art-theatre work. In providing a series of settings far finer in the aggregate than any group yet seen on an American stage, and at a cost far below even the little theatre average, Sam Hume has made a real contribution to the development of a typical art-theatre technique.

Those of us who have been more or less intimately connected with the project at Detroit realize that it is the genius of Sam Hume that has carried the Arts and Crafts Theatre to a position of leadership. But we recognize, too, that in providing him with a stage and equipment of an almost ideal sort, in granting freedom from interference, and in making possible a whole season of experiment in the same theatre, the Arts and Crafts Society brought to Mr. Hume an unusual opportunity. The production of a long and varied series of plays on one stage was the one thing needed to place him securely among the few real theatre artists in this country, and incidentally to make possible the concrete development of his ideas about an adaptable stage setting.

Sam Hume would be the first to give Gordon Craig credit both for inspiration toward a new art of the theatre, and for the principle of an interchangeable stage setting. He would also be quick to absolve Craig from responsibility for any defects which that perfection-seeking artist might find in the practical workingout of the idea. For the system as it now stands represents an independent solution of the problem.

Several books about the theatre have included photographs of Sam Hume's models for a poetic play, which he designed as