AMATEUR DRAMATISTS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 2648, 10 May 1895, Page 6 (Supplement)

AMATEUR DRAMATISTS.

They Have Sung the Same Plaint From Time Immemorial. WORK REFUSED THROUGH ENYT. Glen MacDonough, Author of "The Algerian," "The Prodigal Father," "Delmonico's at C" and "Innocent as a liauib," Gives Advice to Young Playwrights. There is one plaint which echoes forever through the calcuim lighted vales of Stageland. It is the wail of the downtrodden and misunderstood amateur playwright. He has been wronged for centuries— in his own estimation — and the theatrical mag-

GLEN MAC DONOUGH. nates of all time have been leagued against him. Thespis, while making the first of all starring tours through the Grecian provinces with a special ox cart and a company of Athenian favorites, rejected his work through pure envy. Will Shakespeare and Richard Burbage conspired to keep hispro.ductions from the stage of the long vanished Globe theater because the former insisted upon foisting his own paltry work upon an over indulgent public. David Garriek and Colley Cibber were banded together in a base conspiracy to crush his ambition and obscure his talents, while the theatrical managers of today have formed a secret league to keep the glory of the footlights from gilding the master pieces of the amateur. He is «i much wronged and much plotted against person, is the unknown playmaker, and his lamentations will probably continue to rend the air as long as the belief exists that play writing is an excellent amusement for rainy days>, and the art of the dramatist one that may be acquired somewhere within a week. A person absolutely ignorant of architecture would be laughed at should he attempt to design a house. The public at large is content to leave the planning of a new roadway to the civil engineers, but when a man or a woman, who doesn't know a lobby from a star trap, announces that he or she has decided to write a play, no comment is. excited. There are few things which appear easier than to supply a company of skilled actoi'S with a sufficient number of lines and scenes to entertain an audience for two hours and a half. And yet the truth of the matter is that there are few things more supremely difficult. Statistics prove that only one play in ten succeeds. After years of experience such masters of their craft as Sardou, Howard and Pinero have written distinct and immediate failures. The canons of good dramatic construction are as rigid as the laws of the Medra and Persians, but no matter how closely these canons may be followed the success of the play thus written is as uncertain as the final resting place of a newly spun roulette ball. Success in dramatic writing cannot bo achieved without a thorough knowledge of the stage and its requirements, while, on the other hand, the facts just cited prove that even the broadest experience cannot detect nor avert a failure. It is not the purpose of this article to suggest to the amateur the methods by which experience may best be gained, but to define the class of material which is liable to | receive commercial consideration from I managers at present. Three-fourths of the plays from unknown authors which find oblivion in theatrical pigeonholes are entirely unsuited to the times and the current public tastes. What-, ever virtu es a play may possess, it is doomed if it is out of key with the popular fancy. Fashions prevail in theatrical entertainments as well as in dress, and no less a person than Alexander Pope summed the matter up when he wrote these lines: The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, And those who live to pleaso must please to livel Literary qualities, epigrammatic lines, strong characteriKiition, all go for naught if the general fabric be not cut in the reigning mode. Dramatic sermons or poems have no place on the American stage of today. Such works need a leisure class of supereducated and hypercritical theater goers to support them, and such a class does not exist here. It is a nervous, hard working land that we live in, and when we go to the theater we seek and demand entertainment. We pay to be thrilled or amused, and sociological problems or exploits "in psychical analysis pall upon us. Nor do we care particularly for the new type of piece which has burst upon us of late — a type which might be defined as the theatrical photograph album sort of thing. We are asked to like it because it is so exI quisitely real, but unfortunately the theaI ter is the last place in which the public cara ! to encounter the exquisitely real. To them it is the home of the romantic, the ideal, and the amusing, and the play which pi 6 tures the boiling of real corn beef on a practicable stove and sends the villain to congress in the last act— because such things happen in life-7-will not draw over largely. Life is something which we go to the theater to forget. An excellent maxim for the aspiring one ... to pate in his mental hat is, "The time is now; the place is here!" The American dramatist, both known I and unknown, can find in his own country a wealth of material worthy of his pen. Let him leave the London costermonger and the British lordling to Messrs. Simms and Pettit — they understand them, Avoid the dashing Parisian who has long been so deftly handled by M. Bisson, and refrain from levying upon those quaint German char- , acters that have become the peculiar property of Von Moser. Let him look to hia own country for inspiration, and remember that the. theatrical classics of today are in many instances contemporary pictures of the life of yesterday. In Sheridan's time the swells of ' London I laughed at the uncouth antics of Bob Acres, the country clown, as loudly as the New

Yorker of the present at the misadventures of Bertie the Lamb, in "The Henrietta." The great strength of both characters lies in the fact that they were as familiar to the men who created them as to the audiences to which they were presented. In brief, there is a demand from both the managers and the public for romantic dramas dealing with different picturesque phases of American life, and light comedies genially satirizing the same. A real fire engine is not absolutely neces- ; sary in the former, and the latter may at- ! tain flattering recognition without the aid of a flap stick or a flight of mechanical stairs. The British melodrama will soon become a depressing memory. The transplanted French farce has long been upon the wane, and the desire for plays on native subjects produced in the home market grows with each season. A final hint, which may prove of value to the amateur playwright, is the rule which D'Ennery hung above his desk after a lifetime of dramatic writing, "It is as bad a miss to shoot over the target as undei it." Directly expressed this means, "Don't try to educate the public." Study their likes and give them what they want, for it is they who are the judges, and from their verdict there is no appeal.