DRAMATIC ART

Southland Times, Issue 25385, 12 September 1935, Page 4

DRAMATIC ART

MISS CRAN’S STUDIES. EXPERIENCES IN ENGLAND. It was at a garden party at Melvern, England, that Miss Ivah M. Cran of Invercargill, met George Bernard Shaw and was privileged to have afternoon tea at the same table as the famous man. “His remarks, which may appear offensive in cold print,” she said in the course of an interview with a Southland Times reporter yesterday, “lose all their sting when uttered by G.B.S. He is full of humour and vivacity and his remarks are all made in good nature and are accompanied by a charming smile and a twinkling eye. When approached by an American visitor who asked it she could shake hands with him, he replied: ‘That is what you Americans come here for!’ He was dressed in a grey suit, hand-knitted socks—his wife’s work —and a panama hat, which might have been a hundred years old as far as style was concerned, and which was clamped on his head regardless of whether it was back to front or turned up or down.” Miss Cran returned to Invercargill recently from nearly two years in England, where she studied at the London School of Dramatic Art and at the Central School of Speech Training, Voice Production and Dramatic Art. At the latter the principal is Miss Elsie Fogerty, the authority in England on speech training and voice production. In speaking of her work, Miss Cran dealt chiefly with the Summer School she attended in the course of which she spent some time at festivals at Oxford, Melvern and Stratford-on-Avon. At Oxford lectures were given in the New College and the heads of the College entertained the visitors at a garden party in the picturesque grounds. Also at Oxford Miss Cran appeared in the chorus of a Greek play produced by Elsie Fogerty. From there she travelled to Melvern, where she saw the first performance of , John Drinkwater’s “A Maris House, ’ and at Stratford-on-Avon a lecture was given in classroom which is in a state of perfect preservation and stands to-day exact in every detail as it was when the playwright was a schoolboy. In the course of the summer school Miss Cran met many interesting people, including Lady Keble, who was formerly Lillah McCarthy, a well-known actress. At the garden partv where she met Bernard Shaw she had tea with Martin Brown, the producer, who has adapted Biblical stories for production on the stage. The host on this occasion was Sir Barry Jackson, the playwright, and founder of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Miss Cran’s study covered an extensive course in eleven subjects, including dramatic work under Martin Brown as well as the teachers’ course at the Central School where Miss Jessie Aitken, formerly of Invercargill, was taking, at the same time, a stage course. A fellow student of Miss Cran’s, Miss Holmes, is a niece of John Masefield. She is a musician and was at that time studying dramatic art. Miss Cran has in her possession a poem of Masefield’s written for a special occasion, and spoken only once by his niece, who gave it to Miss Cran after obtaining permission to do so from the poet. “It was interesting to be told of Masefield by one closely related to him,” she said. “I think we will hear more of his niece.” Although her work absorbed the greater part of her time, Miss Cran attended many theatres and paid a short visit to Holland during the bulb season. She spent another holiday in the Cotswolds visited Yorkshire, her own country. She saw performances by many well-known players, including Elizabeth Bergner, who she considers is the finest actress to-day, Gladys Cooper, Ivor Novello, John Gielgud and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Although she did not see “The Wind and The Rain,” by the New Zealander, Merton Hodge, which was still running when she left England, she saw “Grief Goes Over,” written by him and with Dame Sybil Thorndike in the cast. Its season concluded recently when Dame Sybil accompanied her husband, Lewis Casson, who was head of the representatives of the British Drama League who travelled to Russia for a festival there.