The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1950. OF DRAMATIC ART

Wanganui Chronicle, 7 October 1950, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1950. OF DRAMATIC ART

ait, like other arts of the highest kind, o'erleaps the boundari'as of insular nationality and makes for a. wider understanding of human nature. The drama of today is international. Shaw writes not for England but for the western civilisation that has rewarded him so well for laughing at it. But Shaw is himself a product of the international spirit. He 'touches the Greek, lie was influenced by German philosophy of Nietehean. he could not escape the influence of the Norwegian Ibsen. From Euripedes to Ibsen is a long stretch but that is precisely what Shaw represents. Because dramatic art is universal it is not sufficient to leave it at that. Some effort should be made to define it. for without definition of terms confusion of thought must necessarily result. In his preface to Lady Julie, August Stringberg. the Swede, wrote: “Dramatic art. like oilier art in general, has long seemed to me a kind of Biblis Pauperum—a Bible in pictures for those who cannot read the written or printed word: and tile dramatic author a lay preacher, who hawks about the ideas of his time in popular form—popular enough for the middle classes, who form the bulk of theatrical audiences, to grasp the nature of the subject without troubling their brains too much. The theatre, accordingly.

has always been a board school for the young, for the half educated, and for women, who still retain the inferior faculty of deceiving themselves and allowing themselves to he deceived: that is to say, of being susceptible to illusion and to the Suggestions of the author. Consequently, in those days, when the rudimentary mid incompletely developed thought-process which operates through the imagination appears to be developing into reflection, investigation and examination, it has seemed to me that the theatre, like religion, indy be on the verge of being abandoned as a form which is dying out, and for the enjoyment of which we lack the necessary conditions. This supposition is confirmed by the extensive theatrical crisis which now prevails throughout the whole of Europe, and especially by the fact that in those civilised countries which have produced the greatest thinkers of the age—that is to say. England and Germany—the d.'»!inatie art. like most other tine arts, is dead.” According to Stringberg. writing in the year IRSB the drama in England was dead and Germany was presumably running in the same direction. Over sixty years have passed since this assessment. Has either religion or the drama tottered into its grave and been either decently buried or allowed to disintegrate’ Not at all! The drama has continued to exercise the minds of men and women for the simple reason that although Pope may not have been completely right when ho averred that the chief study of mankind is man. ho nevertheless came very very near to the truth of the matter. The study of man is necessarily a very important part of mankind’s occupation. It can be said that this is the mainspring of religion. Man wants to know not only what he is but also what ho is in relation to his environment and to where he is heading. Is he heading for extinction or slumber? And here is the query that is so disturbing, in that sleep of death what dreams may come? Shakespeare put his finger on the central fact of religion when he wrote Hamlet. It is not to be wondered at. therefore, that the drama is largely the byproduct of religion.

■Religion doesn't start with God and work down to man: it starts with man and works up to God. Man wants to find out about his environment and soon comes up against baffling thing's. He attributes these mysteries to unseen powers and he seeks out methods of approaching those hidden forces that affect him in important ways. The individual is also soon aware that his immediate position is made either comfortable or uncomfortable by what other men do in relation to himself and it is the awareness of the importance of these relationships which causes him to study society. In the early life of mankind the individual does not emerge, he is at one with his surroundings, living off it rather than making it. He sees no particular barrier in the way of thinking of himself as at one with birds and -beasts and flowers. Later ho conceives himself as a member of a tribe or other group and it. is only later on when his personality emerges as something definite that he think's of himself as an individual. The Greeks by reason of having solved the problem of how to lead a city life developed the social arts to a high degree and from this centre went out an impulse that has affected in one way or another the whole of mankind. The Greeks were perhaps the first to develop 'the drama as it is understood by the modern world, but for all that it would bo unwise to assume that the Greek looked upon the drama through European spectacles. He had a way of his own in this respect and to understand the Greek dramatist it is desirable to come to some understanding of what the drama meant to the Greek. It was certainly not all entertainment.

The early drama of England stemmed from two sources: the naturalistic and the religious. The Nature play, imitative of natural events such as the changes of the seasons, was to be found before Christianity came to its shores. It was the genius of the early Christian missionaries that they took these .Nature plays and transmuted them into Christian festivals. T uletidc had its origin in Druidieal times. Palm Sunday is an adaptation and even Easter had its counterpart in pagan practice. When the monks desired to tell their stories to an illiterate people they enacted the scenes in the monastery hall, in the courtyard of their own establishment and elsewhere as convenience suggested. The moderns were by no means the first io use the theatre to propagate ideas among the masses. But the interest has changed, or perhaps it may be more correct 1o say that the gravity .point of interest lias altered. In drama, man moves according to hidden strings, the strings of fate. And what are these strings of fate? Are they no more than the traits of his own character becoming intertwined in those of another? Macbeth the soldier, honest and brave, is influenced by the ambition which consumes his wife and then follows the struggle against th'? inevitable. 1 lie drama of today is primarily the study of character or, in order words, the destiny of the individual. The infant science of psychology adds but a cutting edge to this enquiry and exposition.

The drama can produce more than can the written word. The word is made flesh and by the aid of the actor the word is combined with voice and gesture to come nearer to ieali.l}. Stringberg mistook the signs of his own times. He was. writing at the end of a long period of lowering prices when men’s minds were necessarily concentrated upon economic problems. The wonders of science were opening up and a new world was coming into being. The middle class, of which ho seemed to lie contemptuous, was a new growing class. They provided the audiences which made for the expansion of the respectable theatre, that is of that part of the theatre which concerned itself with ideas. It w.-i". to lie oxpccled that they would be prominent, at that time in theatre audiences. What"a tragedy it would have been for western civilisation' had they not been so! Today with almost every class of soeietv able to purchase a good book and read at .leisure and to attend'a plav and see the written word come to life tne middle class audience of today is not class conscious. It is individually conscious and that is how it should be.