Untitled

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21180, 29 October 1938, Page 11

Recent events in Central Europe have given topicality to this year’s annual production of the Workers’ Educational Association of Auckland. The piece is “The Insect Play” and not only are the authors, Karel and Josef Capek, Czechs, but in the “ants scene” there is a foretelling of the fate which has befallen Czechoslovakia. The black ants declare there will be war because they have a new war machine, because they still need a bit of the world, and because there is the question of prestige and trade rights of nationality. The play was written as long ago as 1921. The war years had made Karel Capez compare, with a shade of cynicism and disillusionment, men with aimless butterflies, vicious flies, tribes of ingenious fighting ants mechanically obeying orders in their work and battles. With

his brother, he puts his thoughts into a play, in which he has shown men as they often are, no better than insects. Mr Arnold Goodwin is to produce the play, which will be presented in the W.E.A. Theatre, in the Old Grammar School, for a season of five nights commencing on November 5.