THE WORKING MAN'S OWN THEATRE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 114, 12 May 1909, Page 6

THE WORKING MAN'S OWN THEATRE.

A NOTABLE MOVEMENT IN BERLIN.

(By R. L., in the Daily Mail.) Almost any Sunday afternoon if you happen to be in a Berlin street after luncheon you will see a. somewhat under-sized, pallid man in a black coat and wideawake hat. He is subdued, silent, abstracted; plainly he is a man-who for his station thinks too much, and his pockets bulge suspiciously ! But in reality he is a typical German skilled artisan. His pockets bulge nob with bombs, but with oranges and butterbrots, and he is on his way to the theatre. At first you will laugh at his butterbrots, and'sum him up as a barbarian. If he is really off for amusement, you will argue, it is to the Chat Noir m Friedrichstrasse, or to one of those numerous "peasant cafes" beloved oi Berliners where city-bred waiters dressed as Saxon boors slap you geni-ally-on the back and ask you for ten ; •pfennige. Thereby you wrong the Berlin workman and accuse him of acting like a mere member of the middle class, which he would rightly resent. He is off to a theatre of his own, and he is the one working man of Europe who can boast, "I provide my own amusement, and it is much better than is provided for you. None of your capitalist . impresarios for me!" The man with the butterbrots is only a type of some thirty thousand Berlin working men and working women who support the society known as the "New Free People's Stage," and in supporting it see the best plays from the best parts of theatres at the hours they choose themselves, and at the lowest prices. Outside the "New Free People's Stage" nobody save a millionaire could unite the first three of these ideals, and he could only do it by having a theatre to himself. That is what the Berlin working man does. The "New Free People's Stage" gives Mm his own theatre, and not only one, but at present eight theatres, and in the future it will give him a greater number still. THE "NEW FREE PEOPLE'S STAGE." The founder of the "New Free People's Stage" was Dr. Bruno Wille, who started with a premise taken from ancient Greece, and still ever in the mouth of Tolstoi, that no nation is artistically saved until its art is the property of all. As regards the theatre, this was a remote ideal in Berlin, because the Berlin theatre goes in for cheap dear seats and dear cheap seats, with the result that the top gallery is generally filled with prosperous tradesmen, and there are no seats at all for the man who can pay only a shilling. Dr. Wille began by starting the "Free People's Stage," the main purpose of which was to take disengaged theatres on Sunday afternoons and produce good plays on cooperative principles for the benefit of the members;of the.society. The enterprise succeeded from "the beginning. The first production, "The Pillars of Society," was produced at ihe Ostend Theatre before a thousand members, each of whom had paid fifty pfennige, or sixpence, for his seat. That was twenty years ago, when Ibsen seemed a doubtful proposition to persons with much greater mental pretensions than the Berlin workman. There was no loss to meet. Equality was observed in the distribution of seats. As each member entered he took his ticket from an urn, or if with a friend from an urn containing double tickets. There was no favoritism, no rush for the best seats, no standing in a cjueue, and no extra charges. How it was done as a matter of finance I do not know. But it was done. Unfortunately c for this original "Free Stage," the idea had been first i

mooted in a Socialist paper, and that, and the fact that it was a workingmen's society, meant trouble with the Prussian police. Denounced as a propagandist institution, the society was set under rigid censorship. There was some truth in the denunciation, for though Dr Wille resolutely set himself against party politics, the Socialists attempted to capture the organisation. Dr. Wille seceded and founded the "New Free People's Stage." The object of this society was the same—to organise first-class dramatic representations on co-opera-tive principles and :at the lowest prices. The new non-political society soon wiped out the old, and it has since then marched from triumph to triumph.

THE INCREASING ACTIVITY. At present the "New Free People's Stage has thirty-one branches and 27,000 members in Berlin alone. It hires every Sunday the two Schiller theatres, the Friedrichwilhelmstadt Theatre, the Oeutsche Theatre, the New Theatre, the Hebbel Theatre, the Berliner Theatre, and the New Opera House, produces the best plays, carefully chosen by its Arts Committee, and has a revenue of £20,000 a year. In the early days the society had its own stock company of actors; but as it took theatre after theatre this became impossible, and it now engages for the afternoon the company of each theatre hired, thereby, of course, limiting its choice of plays. However, the society is not an academic institution, and, though its standard is high, it is not its purpose to force high art upon workmen if they do not want it. Another change was the raising of the price to ninety pfennige, or elevenpence. This was caused by increased theatre rents. But the elevenpence covers wardrobe, programmes, and books of words, so that the Berlin workman gets his drama for what the

average theatre-goer pays for these last conveniences alone. But the greatest merit of the ".New Free People's Stage" is that it is really a people's stage. It has avoided shipwreck on the rock which has destroyed such undertakings in other lauds. To mention only ono instance, St. Petersburg has the best-built People's Theatre in Europe; but the best parts are monopolised by admirals" and Privy Councillors, and the workmen for whom it was built reso- ; lutely stay away. The Berlin Peoples : Stao-'e is essentially a workman s society. On its lists are sixteen thousand men and women who gam j their living by manual labour, lliere , are hundreds of. bricklayers, car- | penters, engineering mechanics, even ; messengers, and nearly a couple oi thousand sempstresses. During the last ten years each member on the average attended a hundred performances, and at these performances saw the best actors and singers in Germany in the best plays and operas of all the nations. . • Why, when London is talking or a National Theatre, should it not follow Berlin's example? The National Theatre will swallow its hundreds of thousands; and—returning to Dr. Wille's premise—it will never be really national if it is merely the pet project of a few art-loving millionaires. A Free People's Stage would swallow nothing—for it needs no building— except the energy of a good .organiser. Of course, it might easily he wrecked against Sabbatarian protest. iiut that is a question for theologians, not for mere students of German institutions. . ,