THE DRAMA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20976, 12 September 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DRAMA.

AND THE AMATEUR.

BY KOTARE

Life always runs into patterns. It is much easier that way. The " lonely ones of God " who take their own path always find that " man is a soldier and life is a fight."' But if men accept the pattern and are afraid to break it, they arc bound to seek compensation somewhere. We accept what must be, but, however restricted the ring of circumstance, we all possess one gift that enables us to transcend it. If we cannot break the pattern that dominates our actual living, we can spread the wings of imagination and for a time escape. The child manages that escapo moro easily than the adult; he has no false shame about it, and he has not yet come to pride himself on his clear perception of reality. Viewed from one angle art is an imaginative escape from life. Yeats considers that all the things that really matter for the soul of man were discovered and given form in the legends of the childhood of the nations. Go back to the childhood of the race, when the sense of wonder had not been overlaid and perverted by false wisdom, when the vision was clear and the response to life and the world had not stiffened into a stodgy correctness and conventionality, when reaction was direct and simple and natural. De la Mare sees the only hope for man in a return to the child mind. Heaven does lie about us in our infancy, and life's biggest problem is to recapture the simplicities of which life and education and the world's false standards have despoiled us. And the greatest of all the Masters of the soul declared without qualification that " whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." Childlike, Not Childish. There is a world of difference, of course, between childlikeness and childishness. It is the childlike heart, simple, spontaneous, frankly wide-eyed before the wonder and beauty of the world, not yet hardened into conventional patterns, that is meant here.

But art must be more than a means of escape. It may he a necessary function to provide an imaginative way out of the dull and drab monotony that constitutes life for perhaps the majority of people. The slave can walk in kings' palaces for a season, and come back to his chains a better man for it; the man that cannot ran his own little affairs may take his hand at controlling the destinies of the nations, and return to his ineffectiveness with at least the glamour of romance and his brief touch of greatness upon him. Art that is merely escape from sordid reality does not carry us very far. What if actuality as we see it is not the fundamental reality ? if the escape we seek is not from life but into life ? if life itself is far nobler, far more beautiful than we had thought? Then the artist's function would be to interpret the genuine values of life obscured and mutilated by our defects of vision. -Art would give us the power to " see, no longer blinded by our eyes." However this may be, the fact remains that some branches of art are coming into closer touch with life than ever before in our history, and are increasingly providing both escape and vision to a vast number of men and 'women in our modern world. Particularly is this the case with the drama. The race in its childhood, and the ordinary individual child, makes its own world of make-believe. Later, both in the race and in the human being, we take our drama by proxy. The stage becomes an institution, and a few perform for the delectation of the great majority. The players do the work, and the rest of us sit by and passively absorb impressions. The New Age.

But the decay of the professional stage has led to one surprising development. All over England and Scotland and Ireland and Wales there has been an almost incredible expausion of the amateur stage. Thousands are finding a rich satisfaction for themselves and giving pleasure to a great, many more by cultivating the gifts of dramatic interpretation that had lain unsuspected under the long dominance of the professional theatre. In England there is a flourishing Village Dramatic Society which is encouraging self expression along dramatic lines among the population whose festivals and dances once gave meaning to the proud title " Merrie England." Modern conditions had blighted that spirit that formerly made the village green the. social and artistic centre of the simple life of an earlier England; but they had not killed it. It is coming to life again, not artificially, as is so often the caso when a misguided attempt is made to re-establish the long dead folk dances in their ancient, milieu. The conditions have passed that made these the natural expression of the simplicities of English life. But tho village drama satisfies the modern mind, and gives a natural outlet for the love of beauty and the social instinct that have often been stronger in rural England than in the higher reaches of English society. A Local Example.

Scotland has a dramatic movement of even greater extent and vitality. The remotest villages have their dramatic groups, where opportunity is given not merely to see plays but to act them; and a national organisation sifts the best local performances, and gives them their chance before a metropolitan audience in a great national festival.

Here in New Zealand the good work is steadily making headway. Auckland has a vigorous Little Theatre Society which has already done an immense amount of work of the highest value, and whose best days should lie ahead. There are many other isolated groups. But nothing has been done in Auckland in the way of co-ordinating existing groups and establishing now ones. The time cannot bo far distant when that work of coordination should bo taken in hand. So far as L know, only one of the New Zealand cities has realised the possibilities of the modern amateur dramatic movement. Timaru has organised South Canterbury, and the result is not only a splendid tributo to the zeal and capacity of the men and women who saw the vision and made it come true, but an example and an inspiration to all the rest of New Zealand. Timaru has its own theatre; in Timaru itself there are about a dozen small groups all affiliated to the South Canterbury Drama League. There are a dozen other groups connected with the League, some in the neighbouring towns and some in the country districts. The League has just concluded its fifth festival of Community Drama. The festival ran for four nights, and sixteen groups presented plays. The performances were criticised each night by an expert, and at the end the championship for the year was Awarded. In addition, a play-writing competition was held in connection with the festival, and a dozen original plays, some of them of very high quality, were submitted. All honour to Timaru. Her drama enthusiasts have shown New Zealand what courage and faith and enterprise can do. If one of the smaller cities can blaze so remarkable a trail, the other centres should surely be spurred to emulation. Here is a. rich field ripe to the harvest. When will Auckland put in its sickle!