Television Will Bring Back The Legitimate Player

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1939, Page 6

Television Will Bring Back The Legitimate Player

-MISS WEBSTER

Apart from the social enjoyment, the acting of plays has its educational value, said Miss Anita Webster, adjudicator at the Women’s Institute’s Drama Festival at Whangarei. It should entail the studying of good English and provide a means of natural expression. Players become keen to foster their cultural interests, and this is important to New Zealand especially, because it is so far removed from the legitimate stage, Miss Webster continued.

“And,"’ she added, “George Bernard Shaw has told us that it is the amateur I who keeps the professional actor going.” Although the legitimate theatre might be a little overshadowed by the movies, it will never die, Miss Webster said. Television would bring the real player into his own. While in London, Miss Webster had seen television, and she realised that j it provided the great opportunity for the legitimate artist. It was the personal touch that counted so much in television. In New Zealand, the radio was practically a closed field, she said. A limited few recorded in Wellington, and gradually Auckland artists were being squeezed off the YA stations. “But,” Miss Webster concluded, “the amateur should still maintain a keen interest in plays.”