A GOOD IDEA.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 985, 21 January 1909, Page 18

A GOOD IDEA.

What is to be the future of popular price drama? This question has been coming to the front with renewed force since fresh evidence is accumulating of the progress of the moving picture invasion of the theatrical field, both dramatic and vaudeville. With repertoire and popular price travelling dramatic companies diminishing in number, and vaudeville and dramatic houses changing to moving pictures in all parts of. the country, the popular price field would seem to be in a transitional or experimental state. Many ideas are being tried out with more or less success. Vaudeville is being combined with moving pictures, moving pictures are being combined with vaudeville, and here and there talking pictures are being introduced, but in these experiments popular drama as yet has had no place. It is not reasonable to suppose that the demand for drama at low prices will ever end altogether. Public taste is constantly changing, and before long there must grow up a new desire for popular drama, but in what manner will this demand be met? The managers first in the field in solving this problem are likely to reap rich rewards. Would it not be a paying proposition for a popular price house to combine moving pictures and drama in the same way that pictures and vaudeville are now combined? By employing a small, clever stock company of seven or eight players, and cutting down the plays to be presented to an hour or an hour and a quarter, three or four performances could be given daily, and between each act a reel of good pictures could be exhibited or an illustrated song could be sung. Two reels and two songs would fill in between the four acts. The price for admission need not be more than is now charged for the best moving picture entertainments. The idea is certainly worthy of consideration.