WORKERS’ EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20705, 1 May 1929, Page 6

WORKERS’ EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION.

In an effort to provide values and criteria for the judging of plays, at the last meeting of the drama class of the Workers' Educational Association, Mr Lloyd Boss gave an address on the Question, “Should an Actor Tell a Lie?" In order to put aside the argument that the actor was no more privileged than any other person and therefore should not lie. the lecturer said that he was concerned with the actor in a play and not in everyday life. In taking Shakespeare’s a.l- - for example, he was loaded with vices; he duped the simple Mrs Quick!,\ borrowed from her till she had to pawn her plate, but when she appealed to the L.rd Chief Justice, Faletau brazenly declared; “My lord, this is a poor, mad soul; and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you” When gathering recruits, be rejected the sturdy, healthy men, because they had money enough to bribe him, and defend bis choice of the starved-looking men who had been too poor to buy out their service ‘ This same half-faced fellow, Shadow, give me this man; he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim : evel at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat how swiftly will this feeble, the woman’s tailor, run off O give me the spare men and spare me the great ones.” Here was a liar, boaster, fraud, coward, and thief. There were bad characters. To-lie was wrong. People did not approve of it. Was it, therefore, a bad play inevitably? In Galsworthty’s “ Justice,” the leading character was a forger. Was, therefore, the play an immoral or dangerous play? Or would a liar or a forger he permitted only to show that in the end they would be confounded Did we rejoice when either Falstaff oi Balder met their doom? Most, people would not take so narrow a view of a play, but if they judged a play merely on the morality of the characters, they were very near to the attitude of criticising a play if it contained a liar, swearer, or murderer, Plato attacked poets because they told lies or encouraged the emotions. Poetry fed the passions that ought to be killed. Actors destroyed their own characters. If they played evil parts, then these would have an injurious influence on themselves, A similar idea was in tbo minds of people who did' not go to the theatre because they believed the actors and actresses led immoral lives. They could not separate the part from the individual, Plato would, therefore, have no, plays in his Utopia. Others suggested that plays should be. selected, which had in them the elements of beauty, ‘ order, and harmony. This latter method, however, might permit the' inclusion of bad characters. Had we therefore to banish all characters whose actions or words wo did not approve of? Lying, swearing, thieving, and drinking people had to he removed from the stage, If we judged so, there could be few productions of Shakespeare; if we refused to taka the parts of people we disapprove of, then the world’s greatest tragedies would bo ruled out; There were some who refused to act parts where they bad to swear; to be consistent they should refuse to take parts like Lady Macbeth or Grbneril. Very similar to this method of judging plays, were those who used the epithets “disgusting” “morbid” “wholesome,” “ clean,” “ propogaudist." The lecturer contended that in judging a play these epithets were irrelevant. People should be consistent, however, and app., such tpsts not merely to modern writers like Ibsen or Coward, but to the ancipnts, like Shakespeare or the Greek dramatists. Shakespearian plays abound in moral cripples or cranks, morbid psychology, problem sox; plays, and disgusting people. It was an advantage of being a classic that the writer was not censored—and not studied.. As C. IS- Montague ouoo wrote, “This only illustrates the fact that for many people the acceptance of Shakespeare's greatness is. mainly an act of mechanical assent to a valuation which they find nearly everyone taking for granted as part of the natural order of things.” To-day we could feel superior to those who criticised as immoral or “ disgwsting" or prppogQndist, such artists as Ibsen, Hardy, Wagner, Whistler, Shelley, Byron, Keats. Swinburne, and Rosetti, Moliere, Keats, end Oliver Goldsmith. Were so .certain, that.we. were applying -the same standards to,, modern lyriteri?? " ” ,V- ’ TESTS OF A GOOD PLAT. . A good play should have the characteristic of universality. It should be a play not for the passing moment, hut for all time, not for the peculiar or isolated, but for the eternal and universal. Euripides was a propagandist like Shaw, but his plays still lived, In comedy the impression had to be obtained that the play was b«t a part, or a' mere symbol of n Urge world of society beyond it. - We were led into contact with a series of events which themselves were related to the universe without.. There should bo nothing meaningless in the speeches or the plot. If a tragedy, it should be inevitable, given the characters end the situation. -Mr Boss gave examples of his testa, and applied them tp “The Patsy,' He said that an aim of the class was to assist students to apply their studies to the plays and pictures they regularly attended. THE LOG BOOKSome W.E-A, students have a disease called “ Jectureitis.” They attend regularly a number of classes.. They read a little. They sometimes join in the discussion, but they do not make strong efforts to worry out tho problems in the privacy of their koines. They do not relate their studies to other studies, to life itself. They are passive and not. active students. It is a sign of progress that more and more students are actively studying for themselves ■by writing preparing discussion, rehearsing plays, and making speeches. In an effort to give encouragement to more students, some of the classes have started a log hook in which is chronicled all the doings of the class. Different members take charge of the log every week, write a report, apd then read it at the beginning of the next lecture. Already in Hampden, Outram, Oama.ru aud tho Dunedin Drama Class bright and valuable contributions have been made to the . interest of the class and the benefit of the ipdividual. ILLNESS OF SECRETARY, All. W.E.A. students were sorry to hear of the sudden illness of tho secretary (Mr W. M. Bradley). For a while his illnes looked serious, but be is now making a rapid recovery, although it will ha some time before be is again back at work. With the limited staff, and a growing association, more and more work has to be thrown on the secretary, This, Mr Bradley has accepted cheerfully.- The healthy financial condition of the association is due largely to his enthusiasm. His many friends, both inside and outsido tho association, wish him a speedy improvement in health.' THE SCHOOL FOR PLAY. So often is the stress usually placed on the necessity for technically training boys and girls so that they will be able to take their place in industry, that it is provoking to turn to the opinion of Mr Arthur Pound, industrial psychologist, in his hook, “ The Ivon Man in Industry.” He concludes from wide American experience that for the inhabitants of a town dominated by automatic machinery tho educational problem is to train youth for the right use of leisure. “Why waste time,” he says, “ teaching city children how to work, when their chief teed is to known bow tp live? He believes that leisure is tho creom of life, and that with our dull gospel of Work for work’s sake we have tried desperately to build up an immunity to leisure. He urges that n fundamental need is education for leisure, “ a broadened version of the early Victorian ideal of education.” What was once a privilege for, an arrogant aristocracy has become a necessity for ’an arrogant democracy. He continues, “fundamental in education for leisure is inculcation of self-restraint ... but this will not start anything. Its virtue inegative. What the ego-motor needs is fuel, something upon which it can travel, literature, science, art, music.” These tbo W.E.A is trying to provide,