MUSIC AND DRAMA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19371, 8 July 1937, Page 3

MUSIC AND DRAMA

PROGRESS IN AUSTRALIA VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS (Por Press Association.) WELLINGTON. Inst night. After a comprehensive tour of Victoria, during which he adjudicated at various festivals and lectured on speech training and New Zealand poetry and drama, Mr. Walter Russell Wood, of Dunedin, returned to-da.v by the liner Wanganclla. Mr. Russell Wood's visit to Australia was made under the auspices of the Music Teachers’ Association of Victoria. He explained that the principal aims of the association were to stimulate an appreciation of the best in music and dramatic art and raise the prestige of the artistic professions

Mr, Russel! Wood said that there were 500 drama clubs in and around Melbourne. Referring to group recitations and verse-speaking choirs, lie said that compared with the Australian, the amateur theatre movement in New Zealand was fairly well advanced. In the Australian cities producers were easier to find, scenery and the most difficult and elaborate costumes were to be obtained, and excellent lighting facilities were available, but in individual and team work of the casts interpreting Iho plays, many New Zealand productions were equal to what, he had seen in Australia.