The art theatre is the direct result of the desire of many young American artists to express themselves creatively in terms of the theatre arts—play-writing, acting, directing, designing, etc.— even more alluring perhaps because a participation in them had so long been denied by Puritan tradition.
The college theatre is the most native and in many ways the most influential of the three forms. It grew out of a fusion of modern educational impulses : an appreciation of the value of the dramatic method in instruction, a desire to stimulate an under standing of the world's great dramas through a differentiation be tween literature intended to be read and plays intended to be acted; the need in modern psychological drama for playwrights and players with enough education to interpret life in the aspects that are more complex than mere situation; the necessity for giv ing students intending to work professionally in the theatre the advantage of workshop training in association with workers in the related arts, so as to enable them to save years of effort and error in a profession in which waste is disastrously expensive; and finally the desire to stimulate the theatre intelligence of the Ameri can audience, so long theatre-starved. Although any idea of such breadth and complexity is always a product of its hour rather than the invention of a single mind, the giant's share in the in ception and realization of the college theatre and workshop is generally credited to George Pierce Baker, for years from 1905 professor of English at Harvard university, who started the course in playwriting known as "English 47" which, under his leadership grew to be the "47 Workshop." College Theatres and Workshops.—The college theatre in 1928 extended from amateur dramatic groups, through the Eliza bethan clubs and dramatic societies, which act as interpreters to the literary and historical courses in drama, to the drama depart ments and theatre workshops, many of which provided their own completely equipped playhouses. Among the courses they include are : general history of the theatre, playwriting, acting, rehearsal and performance, English pronunciation and stage speech, stage craft, scene design, costume, the puppet theatre, stage lighting, dramatic production, etc. In many cases, and increasingly, work done in these courses is counted toward an academic degree. In some cases, as at Yale, where the department of drama is almost entirely devoted to post-graduate work, a special "certificate of proficiency" is issued. In spite of the age-old theory that the only
school of the theatre is the theatre, the entire trend in America is toward a training wherever possible in one of these laboratories. Among the most complete and successful are the departments of drama at Yale university, at the Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh, at Cornell, Vassar, Dartmouth, Wellesley, Smith, Southern California, the State universities of Iowa, Washington, California, Montana. Graduates of these institutions are in evi dence all over America to-day in every branch of the little theatre, at the head of other college theatres or departments of drama, as directors, actors, designers and as successful artists in the pro fessional theatre in New York. For example, among the men and women who have achieved success after working with Pro fessor Baker either at the 47 Workshop or at the Yale department of drama of which he has been the head since it was founded in 1924 are Edward Sheldon, Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, Philip Barry and Maurine Watkins, playwrights; Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Simonson and Donald Mitchell Oenslager, designers; Kenneth Macgowan, Theresa Helburn, Irving Pichel and Sam Hume, di rectors; Robert Benchley, Heywood Brown, Walter Prichard Eaton, David Carb and John Mason Brown, critics; Alexander Dean, J. A. Crafton, Esther W. Bates, Sam Eliot, Jr., and Frederick H. Koch, teachers.
One special phase of dramatic work which the college work shops have developed and which offers great promise in the actual creation of an American drama and a complete American theatre is folk play-making. In the wheat fields of the Dakotas, in the sea-coast centres of the State of Washington, in the mountains of North Carolina, college groups are learning to re-create the history of their States, to interpret the character of their people, the quality and meaning of their life and labour. All the plays in these groups are written by the students on the basis of local material, to carry on a story or to establish a tradition. They are acted by student actors, and increasingly are enlarging their audi ences to cover the people not only of the college town but of neighbouring towns and sometimes of neighbouring States. The Carolina Playmakers of the University of North Carolina, under the direction of Frederick Koch, have built up a large repertory of folk-plays of their own writing, a theatre company and an entire crew which travels in a large touring truck through the cities and towns of a dozen States. In North Dakota, Alfred Arvold, director of drama of the State agricultural college at Fargo, keeps the Little Country Theatre on the second floor of the administra tion building continually busy with productions of plays that range from Shakespeare and Ibsen to modern farce and that play to audiences of grain-growers, cattle-ranchers, miners, who come from miles around. Through the influence of Arvold's work, moreover, hardly a school-house is built in North Dakota to-day without a theatre equipment, hardly a crop is harvested without a pageant of the grain to celebrate and illuminate it, hardly an event of historical or political significance passes without its dra matic interpretation.