OF THEATRES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19031, 30 May 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

OF THEATRES.

ANCIENT AND MODERN. BY HON A OOIIDON. In the fifth century before Christ, they were building theatres: we arc building theatres now, and they will build them in tho future, perhaps better, perhaps worse than we. It is inconceivable that theatres will ever go out. They may set a screen where once was flesh and blood, and on to it cast the shadows of life where once was life itself; they may express voices, tears and laughter in terms of music; they may bind the cry of an anguished soul or the triumph song of a conqueror between the confines of the printed word, but—they will still be theatres. Wo must havo them, we have always had them—that is, ever since the Greeks, from rude beginnings, created those wonderful things over whose stones we gaze in awe and admiration, and whose broken seats wo fill, in imagination, tier above tier with the life, the colour, the murmur of their vast audiences of long ago. We shut ourselves up in stuffy darkness with the flash of electric light, revealing at intervals the leafage of our plaster ceilings, the dingy gold and white of columns, the dingier velvet of seats, and the antics of flying cupids about the gallery; but above the Greeks swept the blue sky of heaven, with pure sunshine playing about them over circling hills and shimmering sea, and sleeping upon hewn stone and sculptured marble of seats that would never wear out. Here, in our hundreds, we are for an hour or two often bored, amused, rarely enthralled; there, in their thousands, they sat through the sunlit hours of a whole day, drinking in the words of their greatest poets, offering through them worship to their gods. The theatre is for us merely a place of amusement —music, colour, wit and gaiety —without these it would be empty. For the Greeks it was much more, mainly because it was a national institution, a place of worship, the pride and glory of every citizen. In our theatre there is always something going on—we may go or not, as we please; but the Greek theatre was seldom used. For the greater part of tho year it was empty, and the sun and wind swept o\ r er its tiers of deserted seats; but when it. was open it meant that a great feast day or festival had come round, a day specially set apart in honour of Dionysus, the god of tne vintage and of young life, the great vegetation spirit whose praise the whole free population would join together. It meant in those days, when books were rare and only possessed by the few, that all the citizens, forming a highly educated and appreciative audience, had the opportunity of hearing the best poetry, the highest thought, embodied in the noblest literary art of the day, recited by two or threo actors, aided by a chorus of fifteen or more, who rendered the lyrical odes in song and dance. It meant, therefore, the greatest intellectual event of the time, in honour of tho gods and of Dionysus in —a contest of literary worth and dramatic skill — an occasion eagerly anticipated, long remembered. Worship in the Theatre. Imagine that you are a citizen of Athens, that it is the festival of the Great Dionysia, ( .and, that you tq. "celebrate" the season of spring. In common with 20 or 30 thousand people— Athenian citizens, priests, magistrates, generals, soldiers, Greeks from distant lands, women (placed by themselves in the back rows) —you are going to celebrate the festival of Dionysus, for the three tragedies followed by a satiric comedy voti are about to witness, are all performed in honour of the god. It is then an act of worship in which you are partaking, of which you are constantly reminded by the presence of the thymele or altar in the centre of the orchestra or dancing-place, and by the white marble stalls in the lowest tier which arc reserved for the priests. Above gleam the temples and pillars of the Acropolis, and out beyond, sunny hills slope gently to the sea. The theatre with its 13 wedge-shaped divisions is thronged with a gay and heterogenous crowd, the whole of its great semi-circle bright with colour, full of life and movement. An expectant hush falls suddenly upon the audience, for the chorus are taking their places in the orchestra, singing as they come, and on that narrow platform in "front of what serves as a "green room " tin actor has come forth. He is clothed in a long, striped robe and coloured mantle, the usual festal dress, and wears buskins and a mask. He is not much like tho character lie is supposed to represent, for lie may be a beautiful woman, some well-known heroine of legend, but that is immaterial to tho Greek mind. Possessed of the vivid imagination of children, it needed but the primitive revolving prism to indicate changes of scene, or the strange device for elevating divine beings in the air (deus ex niachina), with the aid of the clear-voiced actor to bring everything before tho eyes of the audience. The Greek Drama. You must not expect thrills, surprises, in the drama you are about to witness, You have not come to hear any new thing, but how the foremost poets of your day interpret a well-known legend. Perhaps the orchestra may bo empty for the opening scene of Euripide's "Trojan Women," and out upon the platform stands a solitary figure. It is the god Poseidon. A deep and reverential silence falls upon the people in the presence of such a divinity, and his exquisite words rise to the outermost tier of the vast theatre — Up from Aegean caverns pool by pool, Of bluo salt soa. whore feet most beautiful Of Nereid maidens wcavo beneath tho foam Their long sea-dances, I, their lord am come, Poseidon of tho Sea . . and you are immediately transported to the battlefield before Troy, whose ruined walls rise out of the gloom, whose fields aro strewn with dead and dying, and whoso god laments over the wreck — . . . How aro yo blind, Y 0 treaders down of cities, ye that cast Temples to desolation, and lay waste Tombs, tho untrodden sanctuaries where lie Tho ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die! . . . To us the Greek stage would seem primitive —there was no realism —but a greater thing—imagination—was possessed by poets and peoplo and thus Athens could sit spell-bound, fascinated, absorbed before her conventional stage, her revolving prisms, and her peculiar looking actors. Could we? Yet the Greek drama, hampered _as it was by convention and its ever present chorus, was the earliest and tho greatest triumph the world has produced. It was responsible for the building of theatres, which sprang up in every important, city of the Greek world; theatres at whose ruins we gaze in wonder and admiration. That of Syracuse, built in tho sth century 8.C., is still used for tho reproduction of tho plays that brought it into existence, and tho Syracusans have not lost their love of Wreck tragedy since their ancestors freed certain Athenian prisoners from lingering death in the, stonequarries nearby because they could recite passages from Euripides. We aro surely progressing, for wo neither keep prisoners of war rotting iu stone-quarries, nor confine our women to tho back seats, nor worship tho primitive god of life, of vegetation, and tho vine. We do none of those things, but—we are dead to (many of their finer sensibilities; we havo no tragedy to compare with that brief 50 years which saw its perfection in Athens, and to-day there is no glory like tho £lory of the old theatre of Greece.