THEORY OF MODERN PRODUCTION The theatre at any period in history has always provided an immediate reflection of the life of that period, and accordingly, we find in the theatre of to-day splendour, speed, luxury and an eager reaching out in every direction for new ways in which to seize and to communicate every phase of modern life. A brief glance at the illustrations, shown herewith, which are chosen from the designs of artists whose work is characteristic of the theatre of our time, will confirm this statement. Life is moving and changing and the theatre is moving and changing very swiftly with it. We are living in a period of high nervous vitality, of dis content, of restless experimentation, of feverish search for new ideals and new standards.
In the midst of this incessant activity it is difficult to indicate any one precise direction in which the theatre is moving at the present time or to prophesy the forms it may assume even in the near future. A decade hence the theatre of 1929 may come to be regarded as incredibly crude, naïve and amorphous. But it is suggested that at this moment we have at our disposal a new and hitherto undeveloped medium of dramatic expression which dur ing the next few years may profoundly change modern theatrical production. This medium is the talking picture.
Modern psychology has made us all familiar with the idea of the subconscious. We have learned that just beneath the surface of our everyday normal conscious existence there lies a vast region of dreams, a hinterland of energy which has a form of its own and laws of its own, laws that motivate our inmost thoughts and actions. This conception has profoundly influenced the in tellectual life of our day. It has already become a common place of our thinking, and it is beginning to find expression in our art. Writers like James Joyce, painters like Matisse and Picasso, musicians like Debussy and Stravinsky, have ventured into the realm of the subjective and have recorded the results of their explorations in all sorts of new and arresting forms. Our play wrights, too, have begun to explore this land of dreams. In two dramas recently produced in New York, Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and Sophie Treadwell's Machin!, an attempt has been made to express directly to the audience the unspoken thoughts of the characters, to show us not only their conscious behaviour but the actual pattern of their subconscious lives. These adven
tures into the subjective indicate a trend in dramatic writing which is bound to become more general as the laws of the subconscious become more and more clearly understood. It seems strange, strik ing, that just at this moment in the world's history there has come into existence the talking picture, a perfect instrument for express ing the subconscious in theatrical productions. In the simul taneous use of the living actor and the talking picture in the the atre there lies a wholly new theatrical art, an art whose possibili ties are as infinite as those of speech itself.
The dramatists of to-day are casting about for ways in which to express the workings of the subconscious, to express thought before it becomes articulate. They have not seen that the moving and talking picture is itself a direct expression of thought before thought becomes articulate. They are trying to give us in the theatre not only the outward actuality of our lives, but the inward reality of our thoughts. They are seeking to go beyond the everyday life we normally know into the never-ending stream of images which has its source in the depths of the self, in the un known springs of our being. But in their search for ways in which to express their new awareness of life, they have not observed that the moving picture is thought made visible.
This statement is in itself a revolutionary one, but it is true.
The moving picture runs in a stream of images, just as our thoughts do, and the speed of the moving picture, with its "flash backs" and abrupt transitions from subject to subject, is very close to the speed of our thoughts. Here lies the potential dramatic importance of this new invention. The dramatist has it in his power to enhance and elaborate the characters of his drama to an infinite extent by means of these moving and speaking images. Some new playwright will presently set a motion picture screen on the stage above and behind his living actors and will reveal the two worlds that together make up the world we live in— the outer world and the inner world, the world of actuality and the world of dream. Strange Interlude, Machinal and the "talkies" have shown us the way toward this new drama. Within the next decade a new dimension may be added to our theatre.
(R. E. J.)