Community Drama

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19626, 21 October 1933, Page 12

Community Drama

(By "Prompter").

Sidelights on the Amateur Stage

The casting of Elmer Rice's "Street Scene,” in which there are more than forty characters, has been presenting some difficulty to the Auckland Garrick Dramatic Society, which will produce the play on November 9 and 11. The principal parts, however, after some revision of the list originally announced, have now been definitely fixed. The whole action of the play takes place on the street frontage of a tenement house in New York.

The Wanganui Repertory Theatre now has quarters of its own in the old public library building in Ridgway Street, which has been converted for the purpose. The first public use to which the new theatre Was put was the staging of the one-act plays in the Drama League Festival last week. The festival had been postponed a week in order that the building should be available. Twelve teams competed, four plays being presented each evening.

Wellington audiences are to have an early opportunity of seeing J. M. Barrie's famous play, “Alice, Sit by the Fire,” specially written for Ellen Terry who played the part of Alice at its first London production in 1905. This play has been chosen for production by the Wellington Repertory Theatre and will be staged in the Concert Chamber early in December. It is proposed to dress the play in the costumes of the period so as to preserve its delicate comedy and its early twentieth century flavour. Mr. W. S. Wauchop is directing the production.

Mr. Erik Wettergren, director of the Royal Theatre, Stockholm, has been travelling about Europe looking for plays for next season's rpertory (says a London interviewer). A recent development of the organisation is the formation of two companies to tour Sweden. Mr. Wettergren has arranged to stage Shaw’s “To True to be Good,” Drinkwater's “Bird in Hand,” and “The Man With a Load of Mischief," by Ashley Dukes. He says that the most successful play produced at the Royal Theatre for years was “Green Pastures,” by Marc Connelly. The author caifie over from New York to see the production, the first in Europe, and the play ran for 100 performances.

Amateur theatricals were give an unusual turn in the forthcoming production in France of “La Poudre aux Yeux” (“Dust in the Eyes”), by Labiche-Martin. It was staged by Mme. Wynfreda Spiers on October 19, i nthe Holy Sepulchre Hall, Auckland in aid of the funds of the Community Sunshine Association. The play, which has previously been staged in two New Zealand towns with success, was interpreted by a cast including Mesdames Wynfreda Spiers, R. Watson and Philip Hall, Misses Mary Pilkington, E. Johnston and K. Harvey, Messrs. Thomas, Mackenzie, A. Mayhlll and P. Costello.

The first production of repertory work in South Canterbury will be staged by the Drama League on November 2, in the Theatre Royal, when Quintero Brothers’ “The Women Have Their Way,” a delightful twoact comedy will be presented. The comedy will be preceded by the first presentation of one-act play entitled “Lantern Light,” written by Miss Manie Inglis.

“New York Times:’’ Princeton University's new theatre will permit the entire audience to see and hear equally. But to avert a complete break with the past, people will still be able to crawl over their neighbour's knees by buying seats away from the aisle and coming in late. (This happens sometimes even in the Auckland Town Hall). “Yellow Dust” and "The Price of Power,” two of the three one-act plays which the W.E.A. Players of Timaru, intend to stage at the Little Playhouse at the end of the month, are by Timaru writers and will be first productions. The former is by Averille Lawrence and the latter by W. J. Parson. The other play “All the Cobbler" has an eastern setting and is by an English author. The casts have been chosen so that no player will appear in more than one play. It is thought that the forthcoming production by the Workers’ Educational Association of Auckland, of Luigi Pirandello's famous play, “Six Characters in Search of an Author," will be the first presentation of the play in New Zealand. Particular interest centres in the production, not only because of the inherent importance of the play in the development of modem drama, but also because of the methods of stage technique adopted. The play is to be presented by an anonymous cast of 15 players, under the direction of Mr. Arnold Goodwin. The title of the play gives the key to its subject matter. The six characters have been created by a man who no longer wished to put them into a work of art, and so are in search ofsomeone who is willing to give them life on the stage. It is the gradual unfolding of the drama which the characters carry within them, before the manager and the actors of the theatre, that gives the play its peculiar originality and power. Most of the fifteen thus involved in the play are on the stage the whole time, and one of the most Interesting problems of the production is that of keeping separate the real characters and the illusory characters concerned. The first performance of the play created something like a sensation, and critics in New York and London have described it as one of the most original productions seen on the modem stage. An American writer recently referred to it as the “Abie's Irish Rose” of the little Theatres.