THE DRAMA LEAGUE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 226, 22 August 1935, Page 6

THE DRAMA LEAGUE.

The Festival of Drama aud its associated functions wliich have begun in Palmerston North and will extend over several days, under the auspices of the British Drama League, afford lovers of this art an opportunity of getting into closer touch with a movement whose aims are most praiseworthy. Since its inception the League has sought to encourage the acting and writing of plays apart from the better known professional ranks, and its objects have not been confined to the scope of the ordinary dramatic society which chooses some well-known production and seeks to interpret it to the best of its ability. In its ideal it has steadfastly kept in view what at one time was a notable subject in British culture. It is setting a definite standard among amateur actors of the drama, and its official recognition of worthy performances has come to be accepted as something worth striving for. Almost from time immemorial this method of expiession and entertainment has found a prominent place in the cultural life of the higher civilised nations. It traces down through centuries with many notable phases, and in its heyday in Britain it proved one of the foremost pleasures of the masses, as well as giving scope for and testing histrionic ability. The true lover

of drama will find in the British Drama League a thoroughly British institution, which in its twenty years of life has done much to encourage the art. It seeks, moreover, to bring forward productions which interpret the British spirit. It is recalled that one of its earliest supporters was Mr Harley Granville Barker, whose name is indelibly associated with the Court Theatre, to which Mr Bernard Shaw owes much of his success as a dramatist. The League has assisted in the production of plays in many parts of the Empire, and has published some of which it can be proud to have acted as sponsor. Its adjudicators, such as Professor Shelley, of Canterbury College, by the standards they .exact and maintain, and the guidance they give, are helping the movement splendidly.- The League is gaining much support in New Zealand, but its aims deserve to be more widely known.