Items For Theatre-Goers BRITAIN HAS SCHOOL FOR TRAINING OF YOUTH FOR FUTURE FILM ROLES

Wanganui Chronicle, 8 May 1948, Page 8

Items For Theatre-Goers BRITAIN HAS SCHOOL FOR TRAINING OF YOUTH FOR FUTURE FILM ROLES

The J. Arthur Rank School of Acting, known as the Company of Youth, has the distinction of being Britain's first school of cinema. It is hoped that it will, in the future, become part of a college of cinematography which will raise the youngest of the arts to its rightful place in the culture of our Commonwealth.

At present much valuable experimental work is being done in a large church hall near the Highbury Studios, where an enthusiastic body of students are being trained. There are classes in diction, deportment, drama, script reading and analysis physical training and fencing. The school is to 'have permanent premises as soon as Government permits allow. Then there will be stages and microphones by which means students will be able to hear their own “play-backs” and judge the qualitj’ of their own speech and power of expression. Lectures are also planned for instruction on the many mechanical and artistic aspects of the film. The Connaught Theatre at Worthing has been acquired by the Rank Organisation so that beginners can gain experience by contacts with a body of good stage players and with a living audience. The value of learning to carry a

part straight through a play is apparent. With it contrasts the more difficult task of creating a role piecemeal as has to be done for the screen, where scenes are not shot in their correct sequence but put together later by the film editor. “We are really just now assembling ourselves for the development of the cinema as an art and true I medium of education,’’ writes Evelyn I Hall. “ We need to set up a base ' for this greatest weapon of demo- ! cracy.”

Three factors, he adds, would be of great importance for the realisation of a national school of cinema. They are:—“An over-arching teamwork; the vision and character of the Facutly; the appreciation of the students of how much their own integrity and application can influence their own careers and determine the stature of the actor into which each of them will grow.”