TRAVEL CLUB

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27373, 11 June 1954, Page 2

TRAVEL CLUB

ADDRESS BY MR R. BOYCE

Two young men provided the main part of the programme at a morning reception held by the Canterbury Travel Club yesterday. Mr Robert Erwin, son of Mrs J. Erwin, an energetic member of the club, was warmly applauded for his singing of songs, for •which Mrs W. E. Olds played the accompaniments. The speaker was Mr Raymond Boyce, an Englishman who came to New Zealand to fill the position of stage designer for the New Zealand Players. He called his talk, “Tit-bits on Design,” and explained that a stage designer was not a creative but an interpreter. The playwright created the play; the designer’s job was to interpret it.

Mr Boyce described some of his experiences at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London, where he studied for three years. There, he said, he had helped in the staging of some plays based on the life of St. Francis, six or seven of which were presented at the school each year because their author, Laurence Housman, was formerly a professor at London University. Mr Boyce met the playwright, now an old man.

Among other famous playwrights whom he had met, said Mr Boyce, was Christopher Fry, whom he described as the most timid man he had ever known. Amusing experiences he had had in Budapest, Scotland, and London were described by Mr Boyce, who admitted that when he received an offer of a position in New Zealand he knew nothing about the country, and could find on the only available map no more than three names— Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

Mrs Cecil Wood presided at the meeting, and Mesdames Sedley Wells and C. Shaw were hostesses.