DRAMA OF TO-DAY

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20250, 30 May 1931, Page 21

DRAMA OF TO-DAY

PROFESSOR SHELLEY'S VIEWS. . ADDRESS TO PARENTS. "Drama and its Relation to Modern Life" was the subject of an address by Professor J. Shelley to members of tho Parents' National Educational Union in the Canterbury G&amber of Commerce Hall last evening. Professor Shelley said that tho talkies wore not far short of their limits, for they could not afford to prosent intellectual productions. In many cases the stories dealt with a woman who was brought up from tho gutter, and who had turned out to be the only decent person in tho play. Of course, in production, they wore remarkable, he said. The talkie was the art of tho close-up—of faces and speech, and was therefore very limited. A talkie audience was detached, compared with an audience in a theatre. When a joke was made, an actor on a stage could wait for tho conclusion of the laugh, but with the talkies a laugh resulted in the drowning of the next speech. The atmosphere of tho ordinary stage play could never bo reached on the screen. The screen art must necessarily be more of a commercial thing than the legitimate stage. The difference was that between a painted portrait and a photograph. Talkies, novcrtheleSs, took away all tho cumbrous scenic mounting that was necessary to tho stage a few years ago, yet they failed in obtaining the theatrical value of the per. sonal touch. Drama had been, and would always bo, the most poignant method of tho expression of the people, said Professor Shelley. The novel stirred its reader according to his nature, but the. drama compensated for imaginative deficiencies. It could be prophetic. Bernard Shaw's Plays. Discussing the last play produced by Bernard Shaw, "Tho Apple Cart," Professor Shelley said that no politician would dare to stand up and say that the minority should rule, yet in a play ono could say what one liked, putting the words into someone else's mouth. The great playwrights were now beginning to write, far more seriously than they had written a few yeara ago. They were turning their attention to history, and looking back upon tho great characters of the past was always a healthy thing. In London some of the talkie theatres had been converted for tho presentation •of legitimate drama, and new theatres for drama were being built. "So you see, the stage is not yet dead," said tho speaker. Bernard Shaw, said Professor Shelley, made people listen to him by extraordinary means, and he possessed a tremendous capacity for absorbing details. It was his very logic that appeared to be paradoxical. Shaw's latest .play was first produced in Poland, in Polish, and then in America. Professor Shelley. then read putt of Shaw's play, "The Apple Cart." Mrs Norton Francis presided over the mooting, and the hostesses of the evening wero Mesdames H. G. Livingstone, Mark Brown, John Guthrie, and B. E. H. Whitcombe.