BRITISH DRAMA LEAGUE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 471, 4 June 1932, Page 14

BRITISH DRAMA LEAGUE.

With the object of forming a New Zealand branch of the British Drama' League, a large and enthusiastic meeting was held on Wednesday evening at the Pioneer Club, Wellington. The meeting was called by Miss Elizabeth Blake, a member of the Dominions’ Drama Committee, which has been formed in London with the idea of inaugurating branches of the Drama League in the colonies. Miss A. Kane (president of the Pioneer Club) presided, and the meeting carried unanimously the proposal that a branch be formed in New Zealand.

Miss Blake, after outlining the history of the Drama League, stated that its object was to encourage the art of the theatre, both for its own sake and as a means of intelligent recreation among the people. The various aims of the league were to assist and coordinate the work of existing organisations (the league itself would not produce plays) ; to stimulate by lecturing the formation of other groups; to act as a clearing-house for plays; to encourage the formation of more repertory theatres in smaller towns; and to impress on the schools and universities the educational value of the drama. The various uses of the league, particularly its encouragement of dialect and discouragement of “accent ”, were also enlarged on by Miss Blake, and the promise of practical assistance from the Dominions’ Drama Committee in the form of a scholarship was pointed out.