Little Theatre Movement

In Germany, though the Government has not concerned itself specifically with the theatre, there have been various attempts on the part of labour and socialist organizations to gain control of professional playhouses. In some cases, e.g., in Berlin, this object has been achieved, and a similar tendency is observable in Austria. France, Spain and the Scandinavian countries have felt the in fluence of the community movement rather less, although the traveller in France may be faced unexpectedly with the dramatic activities of a university. At Poitiers, for example, the students have built up an artistic section called Le Studio, which, besides helping other local societies, has produced monthly a new play of literary value. As for Italy, Fascismo does what it can to en courage drama in Italian schools and factories under the aegis of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro.

Great Britain.

The remarkable growth of community drama in post-war England is shown by the success of the British Drama League. The league was founded in 1919, and affiliated one small village group at Chaldon in Surrey. Ten years later there were 1,500 societies on the register of the league, the large majority being play-producing societies engaged in the study or practice of community drama. Many of these are humble village groups, attached, as likely as not, to the Federation of Women's Institutes, but there are many bands of village players working on their own, and some have actually won fame far and away beyond their own countryside. Such are the Grasmere players in the Lake district, the Hardy players of Dorchester and the Stoneland players of Sussex. The last named, in a picturesque and ancient farmyard, produce Greek plays in the English versions of Gilbert Murray. Village acting also is specially the concern of the Village Drama Society, while the company of the Arts League of Service founded just after the war, has brought to many a remote hamlet, plays and interludes of high artistic standard, thus setting an example of what can be done on a simple stage and with few material resources.

Urban community drama is, in the nature of things, likely to attain a higher degree of elaboration and permanence than is possible in the country. The Everyman Theatre, founded in Hampstead by Norman Macdermott in 1920, had a great influence in stimulating interest in the Little Theatre movement not only in London but in the provinces. That was a professional under taking. But in cities like Hull, Huddersfield, Manchester, Liver pool, Stockport, Bath, Birmingham, Bristol and Norwich, there are Little Theatres more or less continuously occupied by com-, panies of amateur players. The Unnamed Society of Manchester has found in Sladen-Smith a dramatist whose work is well-known to the Little Theatre players throughout the country, though it is worth while noting that the amateur Little Theatre movement in Great Britain has, on the whole, proved strangely barren in playwrights whose work has been utilized by the professional stage. A note of exception must be made in regard to the Abbey theatre, Dublin, which has been the means of endowing English dramatic literature with the works of J. M. Synge, W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and W. Sean O'Casey. Mr. John Drinkwater also is a playwright who owes much to his early work at the Birming ham Repertory Theatre.

Lastly, the modern movement has not been untouched by reli gion. Modern mystery plays have been acted in many churches,

and there are even instances where a local theatre has been hired for so long as a week at a time for the performance of a religious play or pageant, created and acted by the congregation of a sim ple parish church. Hofmannsthal's Great World Theatre has been performed in a church at Leeds, and the movement may be said to have culminated in the production of an original nativity play by John Masefield in the nave of Canterbury cathedral. The costumes for this play were designed by Charles Ricketts, and the music composed by Gustav Holst.

Reaction from Materialism.

Deep impulses in national psychology must have been at work to account for so striking a revival in so many countries in Europe. The simplest explanation would seem to be that the materialism rampant in life during the World War, and in thought during the period immediately succeed ing it, has brought about a natural reaction which seeks to revive faith in the reality of the human spirit by the objective manifesta tion of it through the medium of drama. This impulse has been unable to find satisfactory or sufficient outlet through the passive witnessing of professional stage plays. Men and women have desired to come to closer grips with the fundamentals of dramatic art.

Take an average town or city ; some social workers may have established a dramatic class in connection with a working men's club. This work becomes known to two or three keen students of the drama, and they determine to establish a little theatre, either in the centre of the town or in a convenient suburb. A meeting is called, a committee formed, and important people in the district give their sympathy, and even a few subscriptions are received. The new society rents a hall, and a programme of half-a-dozen plays is chosen, these to be spread over a season of three or four months, each production to last, say, a week, giving an interval of two or three weeks between each new play. The plays them selves will be chosen by a special committee, which will draw up a list of 20 or more plays, from which the producer will make his own choice, with due regard to the character of the players and the money available. All this may seem easy enough in print, but it is not so easy in practice. With little or no experience to guide it, the society will be at once confronted with countless prob lems. In the first place, the hall or room will almost certainly have to be specially adapted for stage performances. Even if there be electric light, a special stage equipment must be installed. Footlights are useful but not necessary, provided that flood lights can be installed ; these, in the form of lamps placed in five or six empty biscuit tins, with the necessary coloured gelatine screens, can be secured at a cost of L3 or £4. But ingenuity must be shown in their fixture. They must be movable, and easily sus pended out of sight of the audience and just behind the prosce nium arch. If scenery is impossible, it may be decided to play entirely to curtains. And then it must be discovered if the hall is so constructed as to qualify for a licence for the performance of stage plays. When all these difficulties have been surmounted, care must be taken to fulfil the conditions of stage copyright with regard to the plays produced.