CHURCH AND DRAMA

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 106, 8 May 1933, Page 9

CHURCH AND DRAMA

APPRECIATION OF ART

CONCERN OF RELIGION

"The appreciation of art must not be- regarded as the privilege of the few: it is a necessity for every man," said Canon Percival- James in his sermon at St. Paul ?s Pro-Cathedral yesterday morning. ■-~..■ "How can you look for idealism or noble behaviour in the man who has not been trained .to understand true and beautiful^ things, whose capacity to appreciate them has been ruthlessly ground down from, his childhood," he proceeded. - "Can you wonder that he flies for refuge from the bleak ugliness of much of our modern civilisation to the thirdrate novel, the sex-saturated magazine, and the, ■ feeble arid suggestive film play. Cb.ristia.ns cannot regard the aesthetic realm as alien ,to their religion. It is clearly the concern of religion that ,art should be true and good, not false and bad. The vast and expanding realm of art must be claimed for the Lord Christ, not surrendered to the nep-pagan." TEACHING AND CULTURE. Commending the endeavours of the British Drama League- to foster community drama, the' Canon spoke of the growing recognition amongst educators of the value of the dramatic method as a normal vehicle of teaching and culture. It seemed to stir imagination and to present great ideas with an emotional appeal often lacking in the bare abstract instruction of the .ordinary school method or the lecture or sermon. : The old prejudice amongst some religious folk against dramatic activity had almost vanished. It must be remembered that this prejudice had its grounds in the coarseness and sensuality of stage plays and other amusements in bygone days; and it was still necessary for Christians sternly to discountenance what was debased and morally perilous in art. "But Christians will be wise to recognise that the public gets what the public demands," said the preacher. "The Church will help most effectively to preserve dramatic art from debasing influences by encouraging and supporting what is worthiest and best, so that the . aprreciation of'the common man and woman may bo guided to better things. It will prove- a slower process, I think, to educate audiences than to train amateur players. MOBAL AND AESTHETIC VIEW. "But the success of a good play demands the essential contribution that the spectators must make, in endeavouring to appreciate the main theme of tho play, and to share the emotion of the players. There is moral and aesthetic value to performers in good dramatic work. It provides exercise in memory and accurate, observation. It discovers and develops the range and flexibility of the human voice—that glorious instrument which some of us misuse and most of us neglect. It is a training in the perception of the beauty of the apt phrase and gesture, of the emphasis and restraint of emotion. ' And it would be difficult to overstate the moral value of learning something of an art which requires the sinking of self in generous team work, which demands that appreciation of fine character which is a sheer necessity for its effective presentation/ and compels you to put yourself into another's place to soo things from his point of view." The Canon went on to speak of the revival of religious drama in England and elsewhere. There were vast possibilities in good religious drama, which might-become a powerful evangelistic enterprise and enlist the services of amateur performers within the churches in a new method of evangelism.