FUTURE OF THE THEATRE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 147, 6 June 1936, Page 14

FUTURE OF THE THEATRE

Back to its Beginnings ANCIENT AND MODERN “I believe,” says Sir Cedric Hardwicke, “that the mechanisation of amusements is driving the stage back to the point at which dramatic art started, just as the motor-car and motor cycle have caused walking to reappear as a poular hobby under the guise of ‘hiking,’ and will leave spectacle and reality plays entirely to the cinema, so that in the theatre they will, in a few years, become a thing of the past.” Sir Cedric was delivering the annual Redo lecture at Cambridge University “What is it about the theatre,” ha asked, “which keeps a few thousands faithful to its traditions against the far-flung millions who give their allegiance to the films? If I answer that the theatre possesses ‘just that something the others haven’t got’ I am not likely to be as convincing as I should like to be “The fact is that from its earliest days the theatre has been a social event, and this alone has been a considerable bulwark against its dissolv tion, particularly, I believe, in these last most difficult post-war years, in which realism has almost driven art and its traditions right out into the street. But I do not hold that the theatre will live merely because it is » social event, because if that wore so various well-defined social trends of our time might very well bo cited agaiusl me. The theatre will survive in its most elementary form, and the audience win be called upon to co operate with tho actors as they did in the days <>f (Shakespeare and Euripides. The socalled ultra-modern productions, wher® no scenery is used and the audience is asked to fall back upon the long idle imagination, are really the most old fashioned form of presentation. “Bar lighting effects,” declared Sir Cedric, “modern invention and science have added nothing of any value to Hostage. All that they have done is te force the producers to regard their work as a form of art, or to die a natural death under the onslaught or films. “This co-operation of the audience with the actors on the stage is a very important thing in the future of the artistic development of dramatic production. It will probably go even further than it did in the earliest days, and will undobutedly bring about a re volution in the minds of the theatre ,-oiiig- du.’ ' . .i. ..I. t.; - stage is attacking the film at what is probably the one weak point in its armour. It is impossible for the audience in a cinema to co-operate with the shadow figures on the screen. “The theatre has another overwhelming advantage over the screen which n will undoubtedly develop in the future, and that is the ability to accord to an audience individual treatment. Every audience is different —Monday night is completely at variance with Saturday night and should be treated differently. “Actors should be, indeed, greet actors are, masters of mob psychology —they are in a sense salesmen, and it is their duty to make the material acceptabel to the audience. Great actors of the past were almost completely independent of their material.”