VISITS TO DOMINIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27572, 14 December 1950, Page 8

VISITS TO DOMINIONS

Commonwealth Theatrical Company Suggested

NGAIO MARSH’S VIEWS NZPA Special Correspondent

LONDON, Dec. 12. Miss Ngaio Marsh, the Christchurch novelist and theatrical producer, in a paper read to the Royal Society of Arts, suggested the formation of a permanent British Commonwealth company that would play in Britain and the dominions “in free competition with any other company, English or American, that took to the roads and the high seas.”

Miss Marsh, who was speaking on the “Development of Arts in New Zealand,” said that between the visit of Sybil Thorndyke and Lewis Casson in the early 1930’s and the arrival of the Old Vic Company in 1948, not one professional company of top rank went to New Zealand.

Although in this period the amateur theatrical movement in New Zealand grew to the largest for its population of any country in the world", the best talent tended to leave the. Dominion for professional opportunities elsewhere.

“In Canada and South Africa it seems that the theatrical position is much as it is in New Zealand, Miss Marsh said. “A Commonwealth theatre company gleaning _ young players as it visited the dominions and bringing them into direct working contact with their English fellows, would be a line of communication that worked both ways. In terms of the theatre Britain may be thought of as the heart from which our life blood is pumped and to which it should return in its changed and local form to be renewed and refreshed and sent out again.” The New Zealand High Commissioner, Mr W. J. Jordan, presided at the lecture.