W.E.A.

Evening Star, Issue 19856, 3 May 1928, Page 5

W.E.A.

HAROLD CHAPIN The W.E.A. drama and public speaking class held its second meeting this session in Rossbotham’s Buildings on Saturday evening, Mr E. T. Guldens acting as chairman. The evening was devoted to the study of the producer and dramatist, Harold Chapin, and in a lecture Mr Lloyd Ross, M.A., mentioned that, born at Brooklyn in 1886, Chapin was strictly an American citizen, but his mother, an American actress, took him at the age of two to England. At the early age of seven he appeared as Marcus in ‘ Coriolanus, and when sixteen adopted the stage as his profession, his experiences helping materially in the characterisation of his plays. His life was brief; at the early age of twenty-nine he was killed while bringing in the wounded after the Battle of Loos in September, 1915, but what he has left to us is evidence of his abounding vitality. He studied music, wrote much poetry, played many parts in London, including Drury Lane, ana also in Glasgow, and won distinction as a producer and dramatist. Hie keynote of Chapin’s works is as depicted in his one-act plays his sympathy and understanding of the poor, his treatment of them as hsman beings, Ins keen sense of humour and delight, _ as it has been said of him, in every living thing. Ho depicts the cockney not to be caricatured and laughed at, but as a subject for tragedy, pathos, or humour'. Ho presents life with a view not as an after dinner relish, but as it is in all its moods, its reality. He, ts an actor, recognised that words were a dramatist’s first necessity, and one must read not only the play itself, but the introduction to appreciate the art with which his plays are written. To Chapin is given the credit of writing one of the moist poignant of English plays—viz., ‘ The Dumb and the Blind ’ —a dramatic expression of inarticulate humanity, the groping of two people for expression. It instances how the thoughts of the most helpless and dingy can provide raw material for the dramatist. In the reading of the play Miss Newey, Mrs Ross, and Messrs Turner and Flint took part, and in that of “the philosopher of Butterbiggens ” another play by Chapin—in dialect—the cast was taken by Miss Nessie Brown, Mr Gore, and Mr Milnes. Some Cockney impressions by Mr Turner on the type of people that Chapin met and put into his plays were also much appreciated.