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THE ONE-ACT PLAY TODAY
The One-Act Play Today
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THIS book has fyeen written to
a strong levival of mteiest in the
short play. Today, the one-act play-
wright need no longer depend solely on
school and amateur groups for produc-
tion. With radio drama well estab-
lished, with television looming nearer,
with the films looking to it as** a possible
answer to the u double feature " prob-
lem, with the commercial theatre <*c
last awaking to its possibilities, the
one-act play is returning to the theatre
with renewed vigour. Fieer from
restrictions than the full-length drama,
adaptable to experiment in form, it
gams increasing favour with the makers
of our contemporary theatre.
Here fourteen authorities offer in-
struction and critical comment on
every conceivable aspect of the short
drama. Percival Wilde, Sydney Box,
and Walter Pnchard Eaton discuss its
construction ; Val Gielgud (Drama
Director of the B.B.C.) explores the
possibilities of radio and Gilbert Seldes
does the same for television ; John
Bourne writes on the one-act play in
England ; John W. Gassner considers
its place in the revolutionary theatre ;
and other experts discuss its scope >wid
CONTENTS
Introduction by William Ko-zlenko 3
PART I: TECHNIQUE AND FORM
The Construction of the One- Act Play 17
by Percival Wilde
What Are the Chief Faults in Writing One-Act
Plays? 33
by Walter Pnchard Eaton
The Technique of the Experimental One-Act Play 51
by Sydney Box
The Construction of the Social One-Act Play 73
by Michael Blankfort
PART II: SCOPE
The One- Act Play and the Radio 95
by Val Gielgud
CONTENTS
The One-Act Play and the Films in
by Isaac Goldberg
The One-Act Play and Television 127
by Gilbert Seldes
j.ne One-Act Play in the College Theatre 137
by Virgil L. Baker
The One-Act Play in the Church 153
by Fred Eastman
The Use of Poetry in the One-Act Play 169
by Alfred Kreymborg
PART III: HISTORICAL SURVEY
Where Does the One-Act Play Belong? 1 85
by Barrett H. Clark
The One-Act Play in the United States 195
by Glenn Hughes
vi
CONTENTS
The One- Act Play in England 219
by John Bourne
The One-Act Play in the Revolutionary Theatre 243
by John W. Gassner
A Bibliography of Plays Mentioned in This Volume 287
Index 311
THE ONE-ACT PLAY TODAY
INTRODUCTION
FROM its antecedents as a convenient curtain raiser, the
one-act play has grown to maturity as an adult form in
the contemporary theatre. Once again as once before, in
the ebullient days of Strindberg, Lady Gregory, Yeats,
Synge, the Theatre Libre, O'Neill, and the Provincetown
Theatre the one-act play has become an impressive form
with which creative dramatists seek to forge new ideas and
to project exciting, vivified characters onto the stage. More-
over, experimentation in the drama has been effected re-
cently not in the three-act play, which has long been used
as a laboratory of experimentation, but in the short drama,
especially the social drama. Look, for example, at Odets'
Waiting for Lefty, a short multi-scene play of vigorous
impact, utilizing for its swiftly contrived episodes a film
technique of dissolves, black-outs, flash backs, and fade-ins,
and at Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead, a singularly trenchant
play combining fantasy with realismr
This tendency on the part of our young venturesome
writers to experiment with new forms is significant, for it
augurs well of the future drama that the dramatist work-
ing within the frame of the one-act play should be anxious
to broaden the scope of his material and to try to circum-
vent the rigid laws of his craft.
*lt is an undisputed fact that, for many years, the one-
act play has been hindered by antiquated laws of construc-
tion, scene, and characterization. For some strange reason,
INTRODUCTION
undisclosed even to the initiate, the writer working in the
one-act play form was compelled to pledge greater al-
legiance to some of its outmoded laws of craftsmanship
than the writer working with the three-act play who, al-
most invariably, was allowed more freedom to experiment
and develop new technical devices. In order, therefore, to
keep pace, even in a small way, with the advanced work
being accomplished in the longer play, the progressive one-
act playwright was constrained in many instances to abro-
gate some of the effete technical formulas encumbering the
short drama, formulas which, if adhered to closely, in-
variably circumscribe action and .compress movement into
one scene (an obvious mistake, far a one-act play does not
necessarily mean a one-scene play). He thus stroVe by re-
vision and, in some cases, cancellation of old rules to sub-
stitute a more athletic technique, and this helped to facili-
tate greater elasticity in characterization and exposition'.*^
"A one-act play that has any pretensions to literature,"
writes Miss Helen Louise Cohen, "must be looked upon
as a law unto itself and should not be expected to conform
to any set of arbitrary requirements."
Read any orthodox textbook on the technique of writing
one-act plays (there are, to be sure, several volumes which
encourage experimentation and the pursuit of originality in
expression) and you will be astonished to perceive the pre-
ponderant emphasis on either dogmatic or arbitrary re-
quirements which, when applied, have made the one-act
play for a long time a stilted, precious, and frequently
tedious vehicle of dramatic interpretation. Indeed, it has
been this inexorable stress on established dogma that has
aroused either rebellion or distaste in the creative drama-
tist towards working in this medium. He has been taught,
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
with almost clerical severity, that any deviation from or
experimentation with this form was tantamount to inviting
critical abuse by the diehards and courting disaster by
"tampering" with the "fragile" craft of the short play.
No license, little freedom allowed! These, in effect,
were absolute edicts hurled forth by rigorous instructors,
conservative writers of textbooks, and certain graybeards
writing one-act plays. Fortunately, there were some, like
Strindberg, Pirandello, O'Neill, and Odets, who loved the
one-act play more than they feared a boycott and who
proceeded to challenge these apparently inexorable pre-
cepts by showing all the wonderful possibilities in thq ftex-
iblejMie-act Pl^y-'As a result, their own plays, when con-
sidered as models of innovation, brought the short drama
another step nearer to the bounds of our own responsive
contemporary theatre.
Hence, it was imperative that the "experimenters," in
order to participate fully in the expression of our rich,
pliant life, should invade the academic citadel of precious-
ness, clean house, or, as an alternative, introduce a new set
of forms and devices closer to and more expressive of our
own times. These particular gentlemen, among others,
found it necessary to include even more variety of mate-
rial in order to avoid the traditional monotony. This is a
rule which applies as forcefully to the writing of poems
and plays as to the composition of quartets and sym-
phojiies.
This variety of characterization, incident, plot, episode,
exposition, scene sprang from the need to reveal to the
audience certain factors in the action which until now were
invariably implied but hardly ever showntlt was, from the
spectator's point of view, singularly ilJHHy^?8 anc * ex ~
INTRODUCTION
citing to know more about certain characters - y to see sub-
sidiary forces brought adroitly into view, exposing condi-
tions and incidents which used to be mentioned in passing
or signalized by innuendo but hardly ever presented fac-
tually before our eyes. Obviously, with quick-moving
devices such as, for instance, black-outs this additional
material, when used, did not tend to obstruct the move-
ment of the play. Instead of being, as it often was, leisurely
and slow, the one-act play suddenly became swift and agile,
flexible and responsive. Instead, too, of concentrating, as
heretofore, on one or two crucial episodes, the larger
breadth of form and elasticity of technique enabled the
dramatist to show more than before (without destroying
the inherent form of the one-act play) and introduce, if
need be, related problems of plot and character, all of
which tended to bring to the content of the short play a
new kind of theatrical excitement.
The one-act play was, as I have already mentioned,
found especially suitable by many of our young dramatists
for the dissemination of social propaganda, wherein a series
of episodes complete in themselves yet related to the cen-
tral theme were projected swiftly on the stage, and the
play, with its several subplots, continued to move on, as
a unified dimension, to its inevitable climax. The social
dramatist discovered the one-act play, as it has been dis-
covered by other persons in different endeavors, to be in-
dispensable to his special needs. In this kind of play, with
its use of multi-scene, he found the perfect answer to his
needs. It was a swift medium, almost like that of a motion
picture, with which to project and heighten his message;
and the audience reacted to it with enthusiasm, for it was
not only exciting and vibrant, but realistic and authentic.
6
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
Some writers and critics may disavow the purposefulness
of this kind of drama and resent the uses to which these
"brazen" men and women have put the one-act play. But
none, I am certain, can deny that these uses, when once in-
troduced and proven to be valid, have helped bring fresh
excitement and vigor to the contemporary theatre. What
is more important: these devices are now an integral part
of our dramatic technique. They are as modern as elec-
tricity. The one-act play cannot return to its outmoded
forms, for now it has become, in the hands of these ad-
vanced writers, a flexible instead of a rigid and sometimes
sluggish medium.
ii
We know what place the one-act play occupies in the
present scheme of the theatre. What, briefly, is its future
position? If the seeds of the future are usually sowed in
the present, then we need not go far afield in our specula-
tion, to determine its ultimate place.
Radio and television the latter, at this tiiAe of writing,
still in its experimental stages will have even greater need
of the short play form, primarily because of its brevity,
concision of movement, swift characterization, and economy
of production.
The movies, too, will discover in the one-act play a
rich source of story material. All films, curiously enough,
are one-act plays (directors, I am told, could not possibly
screen an actual three-act play, with its three different cur-
tain climaxes, because it would take too long), but owing
to some deeply ingrained prejudice the film companies are
loath to use the regular one-act play, which is, as can be
seen, ideal for filn> pjjqjoses. This reluctance to tap a rich
INTRODUCTION
dramatic mine will soon give way, I feel, to an enthusiastic
desire and a profitable one, too to film one-act plays as
they were originally conceived, i.e., as one-act plays.
Little Theatres, university and church theatres, ama-
teur and industrial dramatic groups will continue to pre-
sent regular bills of one-act plays as they have always done.
First, because of more variety in dramatic fare and, second,
because of economy in staging and production.
We arrive now at the one-act play in the professional
theatre. Its position, in the eyes of many managers who
have long been proven to be somewhat myopic is still
that of an illegitimate child. This is curious, for if they
were to study the records of history they would find an
immediate answer: we know that the plays produced by
the ancient Greeks and those presented by the Commedw
dell* Arte were all one-act plays in one form or another.
Two dramatists, Clifford Odets and Noel Coward, have
done much to make Broadway audiences one-act play con-
scious. Odets aided the movement by contributing Waiting
for Lefty and Till the Day I Die, two one-act plays which
were produced by the Group Theatre and which ran for
many weeks on Broadway, thus doing much to dissipate
the legend that short dramas especially of a social nature
would make no money. Noel Coward and Gertrude
Lawrence, in Tonight at 8:30, brought the one-act play,
as it were, into high society. Refuting the Broadway "ex-
perts," who considered the short drama to be an amateur
drill exercise, a sort of romping, frivolous, precocious ado-
lescent whose outpourings were intended for the delecta-
tion of a small, high-brow audience, Mr. Coward helped
dignify the one-act play by presenting it with a pair of
long trousers and a cutaway.
8
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
Mr. Coward, of course, has not been the first to recog-
nize the artistic and commercial benefits of producing, act-
ing, and writing one-act plays. He has had notable prede-
cessors. We can cite such pioneers in this field as Eugene
O'Neill, George Middleton, Percival Wilde, James Bar-
rie, St. John Ervine, Susan Glaspell, Percy MacKaye, Paul
Green, Holbrook Blinn, and many other distinguished
names.
Commercial managers, usually hailed as astute fellows,
have not yet revealed that proverbial sharpness for track-
ing down a hot tip by starting to produce one-act plays in
the Broadway theatre.
Despite their attitude, for or against, however, one-act
plays will continue to be written, not as exercises for the
dramatist but as a precise and mature dramatic form. The
time is not too distant this is not intended to sound like
an oracle when the one-acter will be used as solid grist
for the theatrical mill.
One great advantage which a bill of one-act plays has
over a single three-act play is variety. This is something
not easily to be despised.
Ivor Brown, leading English critic of the drama, asks in
some dismay:
Why is it that people who are paying for their seats at a
professional show resent the idea of getting three separate one-
acters instead of three acts of one play? . . . They will take
the triple bill from the hand of Mr. Coward, but his example
is not followed.
And anticipating the usual vocal objection, Mr. Brown
continues:
INTRODUCTION
Is it that readjusting yourself to three new starts is a strain
and that playgoers are so lazy that they will not face even so
small an effort? After all, if you reckon up your chances of
entertainment, the three one-acters is really the safer invest-
ment. In the case of a three-acter, you may realize before the
first scene is over that the show is "not your cup of tea" and
has no likelihood of becoming so. In that case, your evening
and your money are wasted. In the case of three one-acters,
dislike of the first effort need not utterly dash your expecta-
tions for the evening. You may heartily enjoy the other two.
In a variety bill, however feeble the start, there is always hope
of something turning up, and it usually does. The evening of
one-acters applies the variety principle to the legitimate stage.
The maturity and growth of this brief form does not
necessarily mean the decline of the other. Dramatists will
persist always in writing long plays. The mistake has been
that, with the gradual relegation of the one-act play to
amateur circles and its decline as an appropriate curtain
raiser, professional writers have evinced indifference to the
form. These dramatic gentlemen saw in the one-act play
only small lucrative returns, only one future, and that, it
appeared, was somewhat blighted. Like canny race-horse
bookies they refused to play on what seemed to them to be
a foregone loser. Therefore, by turning away from the one-
act play, they took with them a certain professional dignity,
and it was left, in many instances, to the amateurs the
shock troops of the theatre to continue writing one-act
plays, keeping these alive and exciting by interesting ex-
perimental productions within their own immediate circles.
In many other cases, however, professional dramatists
have turned completely to writing one-act plays for the
amateur or little theatre stage.
10
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
As Ivor Brown says:
For the dramatist, this market may prove lucrative: it is
creating authors of its own who rarely, if ever, write three-
acters for the "pros." Mr. Harold Brighouse, for example,
seems now to be concentrating mainly on the amateurs, and
Mr. Sladen-Smith, Mr. Sydney Box, and Mr. Joe Corrie, the
Scottish miner-playwright (and Mr. Percival Wilde in
America), are among the first favorites whose work is eagerly
awaited and taken up by the various groups and societies. . . .
In any case, the author of a short play, if unluckily it does not
eal ^ouch or make a large appeal, has wasted far less time and
effort than if he or she had toiled over three acts. I am not
despising the one-act drama if I describe it as a good field for
graduation. Rather am I putting its value very high. Its tech-
nique is not easy: brief exposition, concentration of effects and
quick reaching of the vital point are essential. (Barrie is here
a model. )*Of course, the rewards of a long play, if success-
ful, will be very much greater; but it is a big "if."
Industry, no doubt, will be, as it has been, the major
force compelling a change in the writing and production
of short plays. Radio, for one, has done much to revive
the one-acter, helping at the same time to devise new
technical forms. For radio shapes drama to its own special
circumstances, and, as it increases its cultural range and
extends its influence, it will create a new era of specialists
working in dramatic composition.
After radio, we will have television, which is discernible
already on the horizon. If, therefore, these new industrial
and mechanical innovations and there will inevitably be
others create change, then it will be that, from these
powerful influences, the one-act play will begin with a re-
newed and extended lease on life: encouraging young tal-
II
INTRODUCTION
ent, insisting upon new technical standards and forms of
expression and challenging established dramatists to mas-
ter these forms.
The outlook, then, on the whole is most encouraging.
One would hesitate to place implicit trust only in the radio
and television, for these are only two new outlets, and the
one-act play, as a dramatic form, belongs to the theatre ;
but where there are impetus and encouragement and profit-
able returns, there are bound to be favorable results. If we
can be certain that the short play will come into its right-
ful domain, then we can be assured of plentiful produc-
tions and profitable consequences. From present appear-
ances it seems that it has come into its own. It is now en-
gaged in the process of proving how lucrative it can be to
its writers and its producers.
in
A word about the present volume.
This book emanates from the current need to consoli-
date in one volume a multiplicity of professional opinions
about the scope and function of the one-act play, as well
as constructive advice to the young playwright who wishes
to employ this form. The opinions, which reflect various
authoritative points of view and interpretations, have one
thing in common: they are written by men who regard
with enthusiasm the one-act play as a vital, breathing form
of art. The fact that these men each a specialist in his
field are represented by contributions is a manifest ad-
mission that, to them, the one-act play must be and is not
something intended for relegation to the library shelf or
for the delectation of the historian, but an active, contem-
porary dramatic form designed for the playwright, ama-
12
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
teur or professional, and for the general reader interested
in dramatics.
My work as editor of a one-act play magazine has
brought me face to face with certain major problems con-
fronting those who write short plays and those merely
interested in them as another significant phase of contem-
porary drama. It has occurred to me, therefore, that a sin-
gle comprehensive volume not too academic to dismay
the amateur and not too general to discourage the student
containing all the vital information necessary to the
writer and to the playgoer would be welcome and in-
structive.
I had one purpose in mind when collating the material
for this volume: to do away with the cumbrous necessity
of having to go to several books for what the reader should
be able to find in one. In fine, to include everything pur-
poseful and essential about the one-act play in a single
volume.
There are numerous books on the one-act play, some
covering in greater detail what has been so thoroughly
epitomized in each of the present chapters. But, and I am
in this instance thinking specifically of the writer, the man
who is impatient to get to work on the composition of plays
has little time to peruse all the lucubrations dealing with
the various problems of his craft. I subscribe to the belief
that, if he is to be a competent or even an informed writer,
it is imperative that he be acquainted with all the angles
of his work. Familiar not only with the principles pertain-
ing to the technique of the one-act play but also with its
scope and its history. Familiar not only with the most out-
standing one-act plays but also with the men who wrote
them.
13
INTRODUCTION
It is obvious that, welcome as such knowledge is, it is not
often a writer has the time or the leisure to indulge in
long reading or study. Therefore, a book that would give
him all that he wishes to know about his work is a book,
I believe, of timely value. Part of the aim of this volume
is to enable him to glean all the technical and historical
information essential to his creative development, and, if
he wishes to extend his knowledge, to go from here to
larger and more detailed appraisals.
I must insist, with some emphasis, that this book has
no intention of serving as a short cut to learning. Its pur-
pose is to consolidate rather than to displace, to concentrate
rather than to generalize. I can state with certainty, how-
ever, that each of the chapters is complete in itself, touch-
ing upon one or more important angles of the one-act play.
A man familiar with all the ramifications of his craft can
easily compend a complete essay on most of his major
problems, that is, technical errors, problems of construction,
history, criticism, relationship of one form with another,
uses of the one-act play, all of which are treated usually
at length and in divers books. By eliminating parenthetical
discussion and avoiding profuse illustrative exposition of
what is or what is not correct (all of which can be sum-
marized to touch the very marrow of his appraisal), much
can be stated in a comparatively brief chapter.
I have tried also to look ahead regarding the role of the
one-act play (as in the movies, radio, and television), and
I hope that my foresight will be rewarded by making this
book not only an indispensable item for study to the con-
temporaneous playwright, but a timely reference book to
the playwright of tomorrow.
I feel particularly fortunate in having been able to se-
14.
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
cure the services and collaboration of all the present dis-
tinguished contributors. No evidence is needed to show that
it is really their book, not mine, for it is they who give this
collective volume authority and distinction.
If this book succeeds in stimulating greater interest in
and understanding of the one-act play, if it helps to ex-
pand the technical knowledge of the student, the writer,
and the playgoer, then all of us will find ample reward in
our gratification. For underlying the technical plan of the
book was a manifest desire on the part of every contributor
to inculcate a greater love for, encourage a more intelligent
reaction to, the short drama today.
WILLIAM KOZLENKO
New York City
PART I TECHNIQUE AND FORM
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ONE-ACT
PLAY
PERCIVAL WILDE is the author of over one hundred
one-act plays, which have been performed all over the world
and translated into almost every language. He has also written
The Craftsmanship of the One-Act Play, considered one of the
best textbooks on the short play, and has edited the recent
anthology, Contemporary One-Act Plays from Nine Countries.
Mr. Wilde has established himself as one of the unquestioned
leaders in the one-act play form.
He was born in New York in 1887, and was connected
with the banking business from 1906 to 1910. He began
writing as book reviewer for the New York Trnies y the
Evening Post, and other publications. When his first story was
published in 1912, Mr. Wilde received many requests for dra-
matic rights, and he thereupon turned to playwriting. Except
during the War, when he served as an officer in the United
States Navy, he has continued to be active in writing plays,
novels, stories, and essays*
THE CONSTRUCTION
OF THE ONE- ACT PLAY
by Percival Wilde
LET us reason together.
We are about to write a one-act play.
We are "moderns," meaning by that that we dedicate
our work to our contemporaries and (we hope) to posterity,
exactly as did Shakespeare, Moliere, and Aristophanes.
For us "rules" of playwriting survive merely as curiosities.
An inductive psychology based on a study of our own
times and conditions leads us to results that square with
sonje of the "rules," which we therefore tolerate ; but it
leads, also, to direct conflicts, hence we jettison whatever
"rules" disagree with our first-hand investigations. We do
so with excellent precedent: Aristophanes, Moliere, and
Shakespeare did the same.
We may begin by disregarding tradition 5 but we cannot
begin without setting up, even if they are only targets at
which to shoot, identifications of some kind. They serve to
assure us that we are discussing the same subject, and the
reader is at liberty to reject what he pleases.
A play is an orderly representation of life, arousing
emotion in an audience. A one-act play is characterized by
superior unity and economy } it is playable in a compare-
19
CONSTRUCTION
tively short space of time j and it is intended to be assim-
ilated as a whole. 1 ^
^hese are broad definitions, intended to be interpreted
even more broadly $ and the second, particularly, is but an
effort to identify for the sake of convenience a form so
various that it defies anything short of the most general-
ized description. The one-act play, therefore, may be al-
most anything that its authors, critics, and students desire
it to be a few minutes or a full hour in length j ended by
the only fall of the curtain or punctuated by a series of
curtains j in one scene or in many but that its gesture is
toward unity, that it can run no longer than the period of
time during which an audience can give it steadfast, unin-
terrupted attention, and that it dispenses with the lengthy
intermissions whose psychological function in the full-
length play is so important are characteristics so self-
evident that they may be granted.
A play on the stage, where alone it reaches its full stat-
ure, differs from other forms of literature in its use of in-
terpreters. The poem, the novel, the story, may be read
aloud, and that reading may or may not increase the lis-
tener's enjoyment \ but the play and only the play is spoken
and acted by two or more individuals who, for the time
being, are identified with the characters they represent. The
play is storytelling by impersonation. The actor speaks,
when he is most interesting, in the first person, and he is
not merely relating a tale but is living it. ^
1 While Mr. Wilde's essay is entirely new, especially written for thii
volume, some of his definitions and summations of principles are quotec
from his The Craftsmanship a/ the Qne-Act Play, sixth ed., with the
permission of the publishers, Little, Brown and Company, and frorr
his article on "Playwrighting" in The National Encyclopedia, with th<
permission of the publishers, P. F. Collier and Son Corporation.
20
PERCIVAL WILDE
That immediacy of portrayal brings with it both gain
and loss. There is vividness of a kind which can be obtained
in no other manner j there is, according to the abilities of
the actor, his director, and his author, a high degree of per-
suasiveness 5 there is an appeal to the emotions, frequently
so overwhelming that logical discrepancies are overlooked
or forgiven. The audience knows that Gielgud is playing
Hamlet, that Gielgud is Gielgud, that Gielgud is also
Hamlet, that he is at one and the same instant himself and
somebody else; and it surrenders to the fact which, for an
hour or two, is even more important: that the play is on
the boards, and that actor and audience are co-operating in
a fine, spiritual adventure. When the curtain rises Gielgud
has stepped out of today into the Middle Ages 5 when it
falls he steps back. That is the miracle of the theatre.
The gain does not end here. An audience will react in a
manner more extravagant than would any single member
of it. It will weep openly ; it will laugh to excess; it will
shout mass approval or disapproval in fashions more pro-
nounced than those possible or appropriate for solitary in-
dividuals. Its emotion is contagious, for mob psychology is
compelling over the units of a multitude: Gielgud cannot
be Hamlet, yet he is 3 and his auditors, knowing what fate
is to befall him, knowing by heart many of his speeches,
comparing his performance, perhaps, with those of Howard
and Sothern and Forbes-Robertson, find themselves never-
theless stirred. They see men and women die and not die.
They see catastrophe approaching and they do nothing to
avert it. They see it eventually crush a being who has no
being, and they experience that pleasurable discharge of
emotion which Aristotle, so many centuries ago, called
"catharsis,."
21
CONSTRUCTION
Immediacy of portrayal imposes limitations. Whatever
cannot be convincingly shown or suggested is beyond the
scope of the play. The time factor is important: while the
speed of action may be accelerated or retarded, it must not
be so far from that of life, as conditioned by the mood of
the drama, that it is wholly rejected. Since the auditor,
unlike the reader, cannot turn back to a page whose con-
tent is obscure, dialogue, while progressing at a natural
pace, must possess such complete clarity that it may be
understood as rapidly as it is spoken. The play itself must
"build," becoming more interesting as it develops, or the
audience will be bored j and it must end, finally, at a mo-
ment which is neither too early nor too late, and with a
state of affairs which is psychologically correct and satisfy-
ing.
There are implied obligations. Since the stage does cer-
tain things superbly well, it is the duty of the craftsman
to make use of its capabilities from one end of the key-
board to the other: To appeal to the emotions, since that is
its natural gesture j to be vivid, powerful, and direct. He
has chosen the play form because it can cope with his ma-
terial $ it is for him to exploit it with the touch of the artist
who commands his instrument.
H
Technique may be defined as the art by which the play-
wright adapts his play to the conditions of his tiinei he
conventions which his living audience accepts or can be
made to accept are useful; those which it rejects are dan-
gerous ground. An old-fashioned convention may be ac-
cepted for the sake of a play seeking to create an old-
fashioned atmosphere, exactly as a new-fashioned conven-
22
PERCIVAL WILDE
tion, not known before and not likely to endure, may be
accepted for similar reasons j but no device which suggests
only inept playwriting ever has a place in the drama. The
play is to produce a certain effect. Technique, shaping its
action into a form which may produce that effect, dictating
construction, so that the story may unfold persuasively, co-
ordinating details so that the whole may be well knit and
unified, and, as a final step, effacing every trace of itself,
is the means to that end.
The audience cannot pay intelligent attention to a story
if it is not first acquainted with the antecedents upon which
the story is based. They are dealt with in an initial ex-
position, made so interesting and so natural that it may be
accepted for its entertainment value without arousing the
suspicion that it has other functions as well. It concerns
itself with the setting^ making clear whatever is not self-
^Tanatory. It fixes time and place. It introduces the char-
acters, identifying them and indicating their relation^ to^
each other. It sets forth such facts as must be known at the
beginning. 1 ^
The initial exposition, in a solid play, is likely to be brief
and to the point: the action is to rise to such a pitch of in-
terest that the audience will resent its interruption by foot-
notes. In a work either of lighter vein or of more subtle
character it is frequently extended, built upon, and inter-
,woven with the fabric of the play. When a piece depends
upon charm, delicacy, fine shades of meaning, psychological
distinctions, footnotes may be inserted almost anywhere
provided only that they are in key.
^Any sound exposition is less an art of answering ques-
tions than one of making the audience ask the questions
,one wishes to answer. The modern dramatist does not
23
CONSTRUCTION
thrust information upon his auditors. He does not raise his
curtain on servants, who simultaneously dust the furniture
and the family skeletons, nor upon visitors, who tell what
they know and disappear. He uses his actors and his scene
to create curiosity. By placing on the stage one person who
shares that curiosity and acts as a temporary representative
of the audience, he is able not only to tell what he pleases,
but simultaneously to suggest further questions which will
permit him interestingly to proceed with the action of his
play. If he selects characters who are not equally well in-
formed upon every subject with which he proposes to deal,
it is obvious that he may use any of them or each of them
in turn to convey the information he desires.
Simple principles, demonstrable psychologically and evi-
dent when we study examples of sound, effective writing,
suggest themselves when we consider exposition.
The exposition being necessary for a right understanding
of the play, action should not be allowed to accumulate too
great force before the former is complete.
If an action is to rise early to a high plane of interest,
exposition should be compact and rapid or should be ac-
complished through the beginning episodes of the action
itself.
If an action is to rise deliberately and if the expository
material possesses or can be made to possess great interest,
action and exposition may be closely interwoven, the latter
terminating at a point comparatively late in the play.
Finally, in order to exposit interestingly, it is preferable
to convey first not the fact itself but a question to which it
is an answer. If the audience can be made to demand the
exposition, it will be interested in it.
24
PERCIVAL WILDE
III
The exposition, looking backward no more than it must,
has set the stage: the arrival of the dramatic situation, in-
dicating that the present state of affairs, whatever it is, is
transitory and that the coming change will be expressed
in terms of human happiness, faces the audience about and
sets it to looking forward with mingled apprehension and
suspense. Plot has come into being, and plot means only
an action which moves.
The audience is flesh and blood. It is interested in flesh
and blood because it cannot respond emotionally to any
other subject. Whether farce or tragedy, melodrama or the
politest drawing-room comedy, it is the destiny of human
beings which counts. The writer has suggested that a "dra-
matic" situation may be defined as any state of affairs that
arouses concern for the happiness of the persons involved
in it. It is a definition so flexible that it applies to dramatic
literature of every variety, from the humblest "black-out
sketch," which, if good, succeeds in giving its audience un-
easy moments before it explodes, to productions as uncon-
ventional as The Living Newspaper (Works Progress Ad-
ministration, 1936), whose sponsors proudly declared that
it violated all possible principles of playwriting, yet over-
looked that the audience, instead of being filled with con-
cern for the happiness of one or two individuals, was
merely filled with concern for the happiness of an entire
nation.
A state of complete happiness, free from every threat,
is desirable in life. Because it is not a "dramatic" situation
it is not desirable at the beginning of a play. The curtain
may fall upon it, dismissing the audience with the assurance
25
CONSTRUCTION
that the characters will live happily ever after; but if a
happy home is the scene upon which the curtain rises, the
dramatist must introduce menaces to its peace if his audi-
ence is not to lose interest. His characters must face prob-
lems; it is only when they do so that the human beings on
the other side of the footlights can worry about them.
For exactly the same reasons, a state of complete un-
happiness, lacking every hope, is no "dramatic" situation.
"Drama" conveys with itself the thought of change. Where
the state of affairs is fixed, once and for all, where the
happy are secure and the wretched are hopeless, the in-
terest of an audience finds nothing upon which it may lay
hold. Both heaven and hell are void of the "dramatic":
the playwright and his audience would troop to purga-
tory for entertainment. It is apprehension for the future,
the certainty that change is to take place and the assurance
that it will be expressed in terms of human happiness and
human destiny, that make the "dramatic" situation en-
grossing.
A dramatic situation which too obviously carries its solu-
tion within itself lacks interest; hence complication, the im-
pact of a second situation, a second point of view, a second
theme, is introduced, intensifying the interest of the audi-
ence, causing the initial situation to press for solution, and,
incidentally, making that solution less apparent, hence
more entertaining. In homely terms, situation and com-
plication are the roots of the plot and the subplot; from
a more dignified point of view, they are a look at life, a
recognition of a situation to be found in life, and then a
second look which takes account of, and brings into the
play, consideration of one or more of the crosscurrents
which impinge upon the central subject.
26
PERCIVAL WILDE
This is no trickery. On the contrary, if an author, hav-
ing recognized a dramatic situation, does not also recog-
nize other angles from which it can be studied and other
actions and forces which will arise by their own power and
enmesh themselves with it, then he lacks penetration and
his play or story will be thin.
Life is a great organism. Situation without the back-
ground of life, without regard to the multiple secondary
situations which entangle themselves in any one that may
be cited, results inevitably in cheap, one-dimensional writ-
ing. The majority of the newspaper comic strips illustrate
the dramatic situation which lacks complication, hence can
produce neither the semblance of life nor a powerful, last-
ing effect.
IV
Through a development, a logical working out accord-
ing to the mood of the play, the action rises to a crisis
the point at which solution can no longer be delayed; and
to a climax the most emotive point, wherever it occurs;
and closes in a resolution a recasting which satisfies the
interests aroused earlier. In any survey so brief as this little
attention can be paid^to^usg^nse^the quality in a play
which compels the audience to look forward with growing
interest and anticipation; to "preparation," the art by which
the dramatist answers in advance the questions which will
be asked later, thereby increasing the persuasiveness of his
action; and to the minor but extremely important details
which suggest how the dialogue may be used to accelerate
or to retard, so that each scene may give the audience as
much as there is in it.
The beginning erects a situation. It is added to, de-
veloped, made more interesting, and treated in such a man-
27
CONSTRUCTION
ner that the final solution, be it happy or tragic, brings
with it satisfaction and a sense of correctness. If that solu-
tion merely consigns the unmarried characters to the bonds
of matrimony, considering that the end of all things, the
degree of satisfaction to the audience and the quality of
the play cannot be high. By extension, if it merely brings
its actors to deaths which lack inevitability and dramatic
fitness, it can be no better. It is only when the solution
brings with it satisfaction and illumination, the realization
that it has been given to the dramatist to see keenly and
revealingly into life, that the play is worth while.
In the construction of the play the characters may be
merely typical superficially drawn, naturally diverting at-
tention from themselves, because there is nothing new in
them, to the plot, which promises better. But they may
possess depth, indicating psychological study, and that
study may be photographic, portraying what is plainly
there, or it may be searching, lighting up the inner recesses
of the soul. In the unambitious play the character is a cog
in a story, conditioned by it, and without motive power of
his own. In more serious writing the story evolves from
the study of character, arises directly out of it, and acquires
superior validity. In one form of dramatic writing a killing
is the most important action that can take place on a stage j
but in the forms that are more likely to endure, to kill a
man is an accomplishment less notable and less interest-
ing than to cause him to change his mind. Violent action
has natural interest, attracting the curious, the simple-
minded, and the ingenuous, both as author and as auditor j
but the dramatist who has only violent action to offer neces-
sarily conveys the impression that his observation of life
has been haphazard and superficial. The things that are
28
PERCIVAL WILDE
permanently interesting do not lie on the surface. They are
to be found only by the student who looks deeply, atten-
tively, and sympathetically into himself and into his felJow-
man.
At all times the mental attitude of the writer is impor-
tant. Is it his object to write a play, whether or no he has
anything worth while to set on paper? Or has he discovered
something which demands to be told, and can be told best
in the play form? If he can and will hpnestly answer that
question before he begins to work, he may achieve the feat
which ranks second only to writing a good play: he may
stop himself from perpetrating a bad one.
Notes on the Technique of a Few Contemporary Dramatists
EUGENE O'NEILL: Commencing with The Moon of
the Caribbees, The Long Voyage Home, and Bound East for
Cardiff y the one-acts show extraordinary technical skill.
"Preparation" is used boldly and with virtuosity. Exposition is
usually in the first person and is accomplished at length by
making the character so interesting (lie, The Emperor Jones)
that he can talk about himself. Backgrounds are established
with power. All of the one-acts deal with variations of the
same theme: conflict between an individual and an environ-
ment.
O'Neill's weaknesses are to be noted: (i) educated women,
when not engaged in violent action, are unconvincingly por-
trayed (The Hairy A$e)\ (2) there is never a vestige of
humor; (3) the longer one-acts are overwritten, a fault which
becomes more pronounced in the full-length plays,
PAUL GREEN: Faithful depiction of a locale which th&
author knows thoroughly. Green's approach is nearly always
that of the poet, both in his conceptions and in the language
29
CONSTRUCTION
in which they are expressed. Few living writers are so sensi-
tive to the audible quality of their dialogue or so successful in
creating speech that is both natural and musical.
As a body, Green's plays give the impression that he has
lived with his themes a long time before venturing to set them
on paper. One result of that process of incubation is that his
actions become so real to him that technical problems almost
solve themselves; another is that the persuasive quality of his
writing, because of its complete fidelity to life, is high.
J. M. BARRIE: No writer has made more use of visible
stage business, both as expository material or as the substance
of the play. The eye is never forgotten. The characters possess
degrees of picturesqueness, and their pantomime is important.
The plays, therefore, give talented actors scope and are diffi-
cult for less able interpreters.
His approach is frequently that of the novelist, and the ex-
tremely lengthy stage directions indicate how much expository
and descriptive material that would be detailed in a story
version is flung at the actors, to be conveyed by them as best
they can.
The actions are delicate, hence the expositions may be
and are lengthy. The resolutions are invariably based on a
reorientation with life, hence the endings are quiet but im-
pressive.
G. B. SHAW: In the one-acts the technique is inclined to
be sloppy, studded with false preparation, dragging in refer-
ences to subjects which are the reverse of helpful to the play.
Shaw is a natural-born orator, who talks well but too much.
The dialogue is consistently interesting and quite as consistently
untrue to life: the person who lacks an education is likely, in a
Shaw play, to speak with more brilliance, wisdom, and wit
than his employer. Shaw's mentality is visibly behind every
character a serious fault.
Exposition is profuse, inclined to become tangled with
30
PERCIVAL WILDE
verbosity. There is probably no Shaw play which could not be
improved by cutting.
NOEL COWARD: A satirist whose skill in writing
dialogue that possesses the natural tick-tock of life is astonish-
ing. His construction is extremely sound, but it is marred,
often, by the introduction of songs and dances which have no
place in the play and which were written in to please the
actors.
His psychological insight is profound, and his understanding
of human nature and human reactions impressive. Because of
his extraordinary dialogue he is able, "sometimes, to make much
out of weak initial situations. He is far more successful at
writing comedy or satire than when preoccupied with "dream"
plays whose composition calls for a temperament more poetic
than his.
As satirist, as student of psychology and in particular of ab-
normal psychology, he is possibly superior to all other living
dramatists.
HAROLD BRIGHOUSE: An excellent technician who
uses simple themes. His point of view is direct, his stories well
digested, his insight keen. He is at his best in his dialect writings,
making adroit and successful use of visible stage business.
His actions are likely to rise slowly. His construction is solid.
His endings sometimes possess much force; sometimes, how-
ever, his development fails to carry through, and there is
danger of anticlimax.
His use of dialect to enhance the effect of his situations
and to achieve a natural quality is masterly.
CLIFFORD ODETS: The actions are violent, hence
are introduced by brief expositions. The developments are ex-
tensive and are used to "build" with great skill. The steady
increase of interest in Waiting for Lefty and in Till the Day
I Die indicates how effectively the author exploits his material.
The dialogue is extraordinarily harsh and grating: it is almost
31
CONSTRUCTION
intentionally nonmusical. It possesses great vigor and is alto-
gether suitable to the violent character of the actions portrayed.
Outstanding among recent one-act plays are The Valiant
(Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass), a fine, poetic
vehicle for a "star," lengthier than it would normally be
because of oratory; and Bury the Dead (Irwin Shaw), a work
with a splendid initial situation, a powerful complication, a de-
velopment which is repetitious, long-winded, and none too
skillful, and a glorious ending.
WHAT ARE THE CHIEF FAULTS IN
WRITING ONE-ACT PLAYS?
WALTER PRICHARD EATON has been since 1933
Associate Professor of Playwriting at Yale University, suc-
ceeding the late George Pierce Baker as instructor of the
famous "47 Workshop," the pioneer course in play writing
from which Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, George Abbott,
Philip Barry, and many more were graduated. Mr. Eaton
began his work in the theatre shortly after his graduation from
Harvard, as assistant to William Winter on the New York
Tribune, he was later dramatic critic of the New York Sun.
Mr. Eaton has published three collections of criticisms and a
volume of historical papers called The Actor's Heritage. In
1923 the Actors' Equity Theatre produced in New York a
play by him, in collaboration with David Carb, called Queen
Victoria. He has also written several one-act plays, one of
which, The Purple Door-Knob, has been acted in almost every
State in the Union. He is a member of the advisory board of
the Dramatists' Play Service and a former secretary of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
WHAT ARE THE CHIEF FAULTS
IN WRITING ONE-ACT PLAYS?
by Walter Prichard Eaton
IT often seems to me, in reading or witnessing the one-
act plays which get published and produced, that their chief
fault is insignificance. No one can say of the short story
that it is insignificant because it isn't of novel length. A
considerable number of short stories are written every year
which impress the reader as significant. But the number of
such one-act plays is lamentably small. The reason for this
may be, in part, that the editorial standard for the short
story is in general higher than the standard set by those
who pick and produce one-act plays. I very much fear it
is. But the reason in part may be found in the technique
of the medium j and that is all which can concern us here.
First let me make clear what I mean by significance. In
a letter to Henry Arthur Jones, Shaw once said, "The best
established truth in the world is that no man produces a
work of art of the very first order except under the pressure
of a strong conviction and definite meaning as to the con-
stitution of the world. Dante, Goethe and Bunyan could
not possibly have produced their masterpieces if they had
been mere art-voluptuaries. It may be that the artistic by-
product is more valuable than the doctrine j but there is
CHIEF FAULTS
no other way of getting the by-product than by the effort
and penetrating force that doctrine braces a man to. Go
straight to the by-product and you get Gounod instead of
Wagner."
These words should not be taken as a plea for propa-
ganda in art; and certainly I don't mean tiiat. What I
take Shaw to mean, and what I mean, is that the significant
artist is thinking about life, trying to say something about
it, and the entertainment values of his work are a by-
product of his putting what he has to say into dramatic
form. In the significant one-act play, no less than the long
play or story or novel, we are intimately more aware of
the W(^rld_behij^_and_beyond the play, in its envelope of
lUe^ th^TjM^j^ji^^tujjLl^ Jas_taKen place^onjtEe stage.
The insignificant play may be amusing for the moment,
but it has no envelope, it exists in a vacuum. And most one-
acters are in just that condition.
Consider a few short plays which will generally be ad-
mitted to have significance: The Old Lady Shows Pier
Medals and The Twelve Pound Look by Barrie; The
Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet by G. B. Shaw; Waiting for
Lefty by Odets; Bury the Dead by Irwin Shaw; Riders to
the Sea by Synge; yes, that good old war horse of the
young American amateurs, The Valiant by Middlemass and
Hall; White Dresses by Paul Green; or for comedy al-
most any of Lady Gregory's plays or Neighbors by Zona
Gale or Noel Coward's Fumed Oak if it is a comedy the
one of all the nine in Tonight at 8:30 which, in the summer
theatres, without Coward's own acting, has most effectively
reached the audiences. Here are plays of totally different
styles; some are propaganda, some are completely without
any remotest idea of propaganda. But each, in its way, looks
3 6
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
forward and back, each has an envelope of life which gives
it significance. Behind the fooling of The Twelve Pound
Look is an infinite pity for all wives of such men as this
about-to-be knight, and the play creates in imagination the
entire drama of this particular wife's past. What is behind
Odets' brilliant Waiting for Lefty is obvious. Behind such
a comedy as Lady Gregory's Workhouse Ward is a smil-
ing recognition of a phase of Irish character j we translate
the actions of these two old men into a thousand human
relationships. Behind that hushed and moving tragedy
Riders to the Sea is the hard life of an island peop^ seen
through the lens of a temperament which disclosed its sim-^
pie and pathetic beauty, as Robert Flaherty did in his Aran
Island photographs. (For Flaherty is an artist who puts
an envelope of life around his pictures.) , In Fumed Oak*
in spite of the fact that Coward to some extent indulges
in the ancient trick of building up a straw man for the pur-
pose of joyously knocking it down, audiences recognize,
wistfully perhaps, sometimes, the_revolt of
human spirit against the dullness of routine and nagging
domesticity and J^ w gi^mj^le-class iMejy^ectual^nd^jemo-
tional poverty. The play lingers in memory not for itself
Eut for what it represents in human society.
To see any such play as one of these well performed is
to experience satisfaction, a satisfaction quite as complete,
in its way, as that experienced at a long play. We sense the
envelope of life which encompasses the little drama and,
sensing that, we have, actually, a greater drama stirring in
our imaginations.
Now it is not enough to say, and certainly no help to
say, that we don't have more such plays because such plays
are only to be written by men or women with strong feel-
37
CHIEF FAULTS
ings and convictions about life. A good many people who
have, I am positive, strong feelings and convictions about
life write piffling one-act plays. Others, who attempt to
use the form deliberately to express those feelings or con-
victions, make a mess of it and write plays which are not
successful on the stage. There must be an explanation in
the form itself.
Rip Van Winkle is a short story, and one moreover
which contains hardly two hundred words of dialogue.
After more than three decades, in which many attempts
were made to convert it into a play, it was at last success-
fully dramatized by Boucicault and Jefferson, becoming
one of the most popular plays in our entire history. But in
no case was the attempt made to keep it a short play, in
conformity to the short story form of the original. In less
than ten thousand words Irving covered a time span of
twenty years, with atmospheric suggestions of antecedent
and subsequent years as well, and in his narration gave us
the meat of no less than three obligatory scenes i.e., scenes
which our curiosity would demand to see on the stage 5
namely, the expulsion of Rip from his home, the meeting
with Hendrik Hudson's crew, and the scene which con-
tains, of course, the eternal stuff of the story Rip's return
after his long sleep. Here, then, is an eminently successful
short story which cannot be converted into a short play.
Even the short story can have a range which the short play
does not possess. I have seen many attempts made to con-
vert the Book of Ruth into a one-act play. It is one of the
shortest of classic short stories, but so far, in my experjr
ence, has defied all student attempts to dramatize it. A
one-act play, we may safely say, presupposes a single set,
even though (like Mr. Coward) you don't play quite fair
38
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
and drop your curtain to indicate a time lapseTSuppose you
choose the barn for your set almost a necessity if you are
to dramatize the major situation of the story of Ruth. If
you bring in Ruth in the darkness to lie at the feet of Boaz,
without the proper amount of explanation, you run into
all kinds of danger with an audience. But how are you to
manage the necessary explanations or exposition? The ob-
vious suggestibn is for Naomi to bring Ruth to the barn
in advance and tell her what to do. But that is not only
clumsy it takes away most of the suspense that might be
in the play could we see poor Ruth come creeping into the
dark stable alone and unsupported. As a matter of fact, we
need to see Ruth, sick for home, standing in tears amid
the alien corn, in order to establish the necessary emotional
background for the climactic scene. And we come to the
conclusion that it cannot be accomplished in a one-act play.
Not, at an y rate > by a beginner.
*! he one-act play, by its nature and the rigid restrictions
of the medium, has to confine itself to a single episode or
situation, and this situation, in turn, has to grow and de-
velop out of itself. To be sure, it is charactenstigjt^all
cj^majt^.i^must^grow anci^evelopoQTSfltself ; that is
just as true of a long play. But In tKe^Tong play there is
time for exposition to make the past clear and room for a
series of episodes, covering perhaps years of time and miles
of space. The one-act play must be relatively 4SY^ Q ^
exposition and confined in time and space. The first prob-
lenrwffich" confronts the would-be authorof a one-act play,
then, is the selection of an episode, or situation, which when
put upon thelitage will be at once largely^elf-expTanatory,
or in which explanation can come during, and without de-
laying, the action j and which, secondly, can by its own
39
CHIEF FAULTS
growth and development create suspense and emotion.
Whether or not such an episode, when chosen, will make
a significant one-act play is dependent on how truthfully
and deeply it fits into a larger life pattern.
The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, though the curtain
is dropped twice to indicate two time lapses, may be classed
as a one-act play. It needs very little actual exposition,
even today with the Great War more than twenty years
behind us. Four old charwomen are taking tea; one of
them, who we soon guess has no son, displays the letters
her "son" has written to her from the front. (She has
written them herself.) And then the "son" appears! Here
is a situation. The poor old lady never banked on this when
she began her heart-hungry deception. The growth of this
situation, in characteristic Barrie fashion, is the play; and
behind it are smiles and tears and the sense of all England
bravely at war. The situation fits into a larger life pattern
and is so nearly self-explanatory that the story gets under
way almost at once. *
^ Riders to the Sea has complete unity of time as well as
place. It is half an hour in the lives of certain Aran Island-
ers. The sea and the perils of the sea are around it, behind
it. When the play begins the two girls are opening a bun-
dle of wet clothes to see if they belong to their lost brother,
Michael. One sister, examining the stitches in a stocking,
cries out, *j.t*s Michael's. Nora!" and you have in that
heartbroken cry all the antecedent information you require.
Anyone can grasp it instantly and be moved by its emo-
pional implications. The situation now develops j a second
son must, through the hard necessities of existence, undergo
the same perils, though his old mother tries to restrain
him. And the outcome is tragedy, Man against the sea. The
40
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
drama, of course, owes a great debt, for its effectiveness, to
the beautiful and haunting rhythm of the speech and its
folk metaphor 5 but structurally it is sgund and it would
be a significant one-act play were the dialogue much less
poetic.^
^At first glance, Waiting for Lefty may seem much more
complicated and indeed may not seem a one-act play at all.
But certainly it is a short play, and there is no curtain. It
contains a series of extremely brief plays, or episodes, each
concerned with one of the chief characters in the major
play. A number of men are on the platform at a labor
meeting, debating whether or not to strike. Several of them
make speeches to set forth, by their personal experiences,
tj]ff neec^for drastic action. And as each gets into his per-
sonal confession, as it were, the general stage illumina-
tion goes down till the half-circle of men on the stage is
dimmed to vague shadows, and in a pool of light on the
forestage the speaker and the necessary other characters
(who have slipped in from the wings) enact the episode
which has made a potential striker of him. No exposition
is needed. J[he few preliminary words of his actual speech
to the meeting have supplied that; besides, we know this
is a labor play, and we have the necessary background from
the start. The accumulated weight of these several acted
episodes makes the pmntjflna.1 pnwpr behind the c;]j|r>aY nf
the play, when everybody on the stage (and many actors
planted in the audience) are crying, "Strike! Strike!
Strike!" as the curtain falls. Actually the play is not at all
complicated. But it is significant because it fits into a life
pattern which, we feel, is passionately accepted by the
Let us now assume that the would-be author of a one-
41
CHIEF FAULTS
act play has realized the necessary limitations of his me-
dium and accepted the fact that his play must be concerned
with a single epi^^e or situating that he cannot indulge
in any considerable exposition T and that his situation, easily
and quickly grasped, must be one which can develop out
of itself T by a process of internal .gro.wth.JHLe wants, we
also assume ? to make his play significannWhat happens?
In nine cases out of ten, in my experience, he discovers that
most of the situations which come to him, and are recog-
nized as potentially significant, require much more exposi-
tion than is possible, or at any rate theatrically effective,
in a short play, and probably also call for variations of
time and place in order to bring out their significance. They
are too complicated for him to handle. He either tackles
one of them, and fails, or turns to some situation which can
grow into a theatrically effective climax, can have a begin-
ning, middle, and end, largely because it has no significance
beyond itself and is therefore free from complications. Such
were hundreds of the old-time "afterpieces" which used to
cap every bill, even Hamlet, before the audiences would
go home. And such today are hundreds of one-act plays
published by the houses which supply amateurs. I well re-
call a farce in which I used to act more years ago than I
like to confess. It was called AP^^fil^L^unaf^ and I
think was originally produced by George Alexander as an
afterpiece or a curtain raiser. A man and a girl, each nor-
mal, met in a lunatic asylum, and each thought the other
was a patient. You can perhaps imagine what silly asses
they made of themselves before the final discovery of their
mistake. And do you also surmise that ultimately they
supposedly fell in love? Gentle reader, you are right!
Well, in its day, this was a theatrically effective one-act
42
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
play. It amused hundreds of audiences in the English-
speaking world and it was totally devoid of significance.
How is the ambitious young dramatist to avoid, on the
one hand, the mistake of developing a situation which
tempts because it is complete and can be effectively han-
dled but which really leads nowhere, has no significance j
and to avoid, on the other hand, the mistake of selecting
a theme which seems to him important, which has an en-
velope of life, but which cannot be made effective in the
theatre because it calls for too much exposition or too
spreading a canvas?
The difficulty is perhaps not so great as it seems, if the
dramatist, when he selects his theme, will at once ask him-
self, first, "Isitjjj some,significang?" and, second, "Is it
of such general interest or does it so chime in with gen-
^ . Q^, < . -* x_ ~ i^, \_ O-
eral knowledge jhat the background^ is 'created for me be-
'fore~T start?" The background for ^urjTtfieDead was
created for the author by the horrors of the Great War
and two decades of peace propaganda which followed the
war. It is doubtful if his play would have succeeded prior
to 1914. But in 1936 he was able to assume not only a
complete understanding of his basic situatiQfi, hut imn^ji-
ate_ emotional sympathy. He could at once let his situa-
tion begin to develop out of itself, out of the refusal ol
the dead men to lie down in their graves and be buried,
Thebackground for The Twelve Pound Look is jiot pri-
manly an English social background, but a domestic one
readily grasped by anybody. The stupidly tyrannical hus-
band is, when the curtain rises, doing a silly rehearsal of
his knighting ceremony, and that gives us all the social
background we need, while diverting us by itsjjjimfir, and
it sets the characters of the couple so vividly, by action, that
43
CHIEF FAULTS
we sense at once the gulf between them and know that
because of it something is going to happen. Our sympathies
are with the wife as any woman, not merely as the wife
of a nowveau riche knight.
But I must warn the reader against taking anything but
the start of The Twelve Pound Look as a first model. The
start is admirable to follow j amusing pantomime which
both sets the characters and gives us needed background
information, while so diverting the eye that we are not
aware of it as exposition. Thereafter, however, the little
play becomes almost Ibsenesque in technique, because the
wife does not reappear until the very end and the actual
drama of the husband and the stenographer took place
long ago and is brought to us through their conversation.
Only a skilled dramatist can hold an audience by this re-
trospective method. Do not, at first, attempt the retrospec-
tive method. If you find you need even one of those "Do
you remember" speeches, go back and try again. Keep your
play moving in the present. ^
To get back now to the simple situation and the wide
and readily understood implications. In a certain, play-
writing course the first assignment is always the adapta-
tion of a short story, and almost invariably at least one
student chooses that vivid and moving conte by Prosper
Merimee, Mateo Falcone. This, you may recall, is the
story of a Corsican patriot who shoots his ten-year-old son
because the boy, tempted by the bribe of a watch, has be-
trayed a Corsican refugee to the soldiers. The story is sim-
ple, vivid, and direct 5 it seems highly dramatic and tempts
the beginner. But he runs at once into two grave obstacles.
The first is, of course, that what is pathetic on the page can
be shocking on the stage. While it is quite possible to tell
44
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
about a father shooting down his ten-year-old son as a sac-
rifice to family honor, it is terrifically difficult to show him
doing it in the flesh without causing revulsion. The other
obstacle (and it must be surmounted before there is any
chance of surmounting the first) is how to put your audi-
ence into an understanding frame of mind regarding these
people. What do most of us know about the Corsica of a
hundred years ago? What audience knowledge can the
dramatist assume about the fierce prides and codes of honor
belonging to these alien people? Very, very little. The
short-story writer can sketch it all in a paragraph, and the
reader gives intellectual assent. The playwright cannot.
Nor is mere intellectual assent ever sufficient in the thea-
tre. In the theatre seeing is believing. But the young dram-
atist, reading this story and sensing the drama to begin
when the father and mother depart, leaving the boy to
tend the house, nine times out of ten there begins his play.
As a result, we do not really know a thing about this fam-
ily, we have no idea what fate the boy is storing up for
himself when he later betrays the fugitive (hence there is
no emotional suspense in the scene), and above all we are
bewildered and revolted when the father returns, discovers
what the boy has done, and kills him. Here, then, is a
story which does not have, after all, readily understood
and easily grasped implications and background, to make
it effective for an audience here and now. It needs full
and enormously persuasive exposition. The first job of the
dramatist is to supply this exposition ; that is, to invent a
start for his play which he will not find in Merimee at all.
There is excellent practice to be had in dramatizing
short stories or studying such dramatizations. I spoke a
moment ago of the lack of emotional suspense in the dram-
45
CHIEF FAULTS
atization of Merimee, because the audience did not realize
in advance how seriously the small boy's fault would loom
in his father's eyes. Many short stories, particularly by
O. Henry, Saki, and the writers of "short shorts," depend
for effect on a surprise ending, and it is a common error
of beginning playwrights to suppose that surprise is equally
effective in a short play. It is not. Quite the contrary. Sur-
prise in the theatre is worth very little, ever 5 and in most
cases can be achieved only at the sacrifice of far more im-
portant values. One of your primary values, of course, is
a situation which will rouse emotion. The play which does
not rouse emotion is a dead thing. Now, to take a crude
situation, suppose you saw a man teetering on the edge of
a hole which you had no reason to believe was more than
a foot deep. You'd be quite unmoved by the sight. You
might have a shock of horrified surprise if he fell and the
hole turned out to be a hundred feet deep, but the pre-
liminary teetering would have had no emotional suspense.
Your character in a play is teetering on the brink of some
act, but whether the consequences will be serious or not
we, the audience, have no idea. Indeed, you may perhaps
deliberately have led us to assume they will be trivial. Do
you suppose that the audience is going to be emotionally
excited as they watch the character becoming more and
more involved? Certainly not. And if you ultimately fool
thejn, they will probably be resentful,
^ake The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. If you in the
audience did not know clearly, in advance, that the old
lady has been pathetically bluffing, that this hulking Scots-
man who suddenly appears is not really her son but has
come to demand a showdown and spoil her little game,
do you think for one instant that you would have the tingle
4 6
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
of expectation you now have as you watch impatiently the
departure of the other characters and lean forward to see
the first clash between these two? There is no surprise
here for us. We know. The surprise is for the old lady andl
the soldier, and the dramatic excitement for us comes ben
cause we do know more than they do, and hence can un-
derstand and sympathize with every move they make^The
emotional suspense comes from our great desire to see the
old lady win him over, our wonder how she will doJt, our
recurrent chuckles as we watch the process. The beginning
dramatist too often does not realize that suspense in the
theatre does not consist in keeping your audience in the
dark, above all not in fooling them. It consists in giving
them the fullest possible knowledge of how the land lies,
and then letting them enjoy the spectacle of the characters
working themselves out of their predicament.*"^*
Avoid the trick ending. Avoid the "short short" tech-'
nique. Never think that surprise is of any value on the
stage. As Dunsany once said, after the solution of a play,
short or long, we should not exclaim, "How surprising!"
but rather, "Why, of course!"
A word about dialogue. If, like so many novices, you
start your play by seizing pen, ink, and paper and com-
mencing to set down dialogue, you will soon discover
that you have consumed half your space to accomplish
what your play should do in the first three or four minutes j
and your dialogue, moreover, will not only be prolix and
much of it irrelevant, but the chances are that much of
it will be "literary." That happens over and over. You
have a painfully small number of words with which to
accomplish a large effect for effects must in general be
large on the stage. Therefore, every word must count. You
47
CHIEF FAULTS
must first have, either in your head or in a scenario, a clear,
definite skeleton of structure worked out for your play, in
which the line of progression is never lost and in which the
relative importance, and hence the length and weight, of
each little scene is predetermined. To that pattern you cut
your dialogue, using nothing which is irrelevant, nothing
in excess, paring down your speeches to the minimum, and
making each lead inevitably to the next. And yet your
characters must all seem to speak naturally and in their
own idiom! It is a hard task, not lightly to be undertaken.
That so many one-act plays are full of speeches without
dramatic meat, without emotional bite, without contribut-
ing to the march of the play, is too often the result of the
"literary" approach, the jailure to build the play firsLand
to regard dialogue not as the fundamental of the drama
but as the final clothing of the^essential frame. Get your
frame built first, for you cannot very well tack on dialogue
where there is no stud to nail to.
It would be tempting to go on, and talk of writing dia-
logue for the actor, patterning it so that he can give it
variety, break it up with motion, "let the play come
through." That is vastly important, but perhaps only to be
learned from actual practice in the playhouse. However,
space does not permit me to discuss it. Doubtless others
will. I shall close by reiterating that the significant one-act
play should have a simple situation, with a wide and easily
grasped application. The theme, or situation, may be sen-,
ous or comic or ironic, but it must be simple. The beginner
is only too likely to believe that simplicity means insig-
nificance and to think that because he cannot compress a
social theory for ending depressions, say, into a short play,
therefore he must sink to a farcical skit. Nothing could be
48
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
more mistaken. On the contrary, simplicity and strong
emotion in the theatre generally go together. Establish two
or more interesting characters in an easily understood situa-
tion, which requires little or no explanation, and whether
that works out, grows, into a significant short play pretty
much depends upon the truth, the applicability to life, of
the situation. Of course, if you are not interested in writ-
ing significant plays, but only actable plays, you won't
bother to ask whether your situation is true only whether
it is workable. But if you have somewhat higher ambitions,
you will inevitably ask yourself that question, nor will you
be satisfied till your conscience has answered it.
There is, to be sure, no crime in writing insignificant
one-act plays. But^ neither is there any credit, or prob-
ably much cash.*The one-act plays which endure and have
many profitable productions are usually the work of con-
scientious authors, who at the least are trying to illuminate
character and give you a sense of life outside the theatre.,
George Kelly, author of such long comedies as The Show-
Off* began his career as a writer of one-act plays for vaude-
ville. They were popular and successful and the situa-
tions which they developed were humanly true. ffNeill
began his career as a creator of one-act plays, plays of the
sea, chiefly, and the very first criticisms spoke of the en-
veloping atmosphere, the brooding sense of something
above and beyond the stage. Yet their j
ple 3 their characters uncomplicated. In He a dogged whal-
ing captain drives his ship on into the arctic for another
year, in order to fill his hold, though his wife who is
aboard pleads to be taken home. What will come of this?
She goes insane. That is simple enough. Years later O'Neill
saw her wandering through the streets of Provincetown
49
CHIEF FAULTS
and conceived his play. He needed five hours to tell the
story of the Mannon family, but this story could be com-
pressed into less than half an hour. It is no less significant
and moving on that account not so long as in this world
th$ self-willed anfl fanatic ambition of one person can bring
misery
We cannot go on laboring the point with illustrations.
Let the beginner read for himself a number of success-
ful and significant one-act plays and study for himself
the speed with which the author gets his story going, with
the minimum of exposition, because his situation is simple,
readily grasped by an audience, and recognized by them
as humanly true. Then let him ask himself, "Is the situa-
tion 7 have chosen simple, can I, too, begin to let it de-
velop without the need for complicated exposition and
explanation, and will my audience feel it to be humanly
true and hence respond to it emotionally? Do I, myself,
respond to it? Do I really care what these people of mine
do and say, how they get out of their predicament, be-
cause I like them warmly as people or because their pre-
dicament seems to me of social significance?"
If the beginner answers these questions right, he will
at least start his one-act play with a good one-act situa-
tion. What he does with it thereafter, I very much fear,
is more dependent on the gifts God has given him than
on anything he can learn from a book.
THE TECHNIQUE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL
ONE-ACT PLAY
SYDNEY BOX is one of the best-known writers of one-
act plays in England. In an article, Mr. Box says: "I am
really a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. ... In the early morning,
when the dawn is yawning dismally over the roof of the rabbit
hutch opposite, or late at night, when the candles are guttering
like drunken men, and drunken men are guttering, I write
those brilliant plays that have graced so many stages and dis-
graced so many societies. In the more conventional midday
hours, I am by way of being a commercial doctor.
"Nothing, be it noted, to do with medicine. My job is to
diagnose the deep-seated ailment which is causing a newspaper
circulation to decline, a company's turnover to decrease, the
sales of a product to drop. Diagnosis complete, I prescribe
amative or preventive treatment and often dispense the medi-
cine I prescribe."
THE TECHNIQUE OF THE
EXPERIMENTAL ONE-ACT PLAY
by Sydney Box
TO begin with, I must disembarrass the reader of the
hope, perhaps inspired by this chapter's title, that there
exist laws of technique which apply only to what is loosely
termed the "experimental" one-act play. It would be
dangerous, indeed, to let pass the assumption that there
is such a thing as an experimental play. For it is obvious
that today's experiments in technique, if proved successful,
are tomorrow's commonplaces, and that those which miss
their mark are either quickly forgotten or lie in that
limbo which it is the curious historian's occasional delight
to disturb.
The audacious medieval playwright who first intro-
duced the vernacular into his Church Latin "mystery"
was certainly an experimenter in his day and was equally
certainly rewarded by the malediction of authority for his
pains. The Elizabethan author who was first to see the
dramatic possibilities of the penthouse on a fixed stage, and
wrote his drama accordingly, was an innovator of great
moment. Some theatrical diehard of the seventeenth cen-
tury must have bubbled with indignation when he took
his seat in the theatre and found that the newfangled
53
TECHNIQUE
apron stage had considerably altered the technical presen-
tation of his plays. And Tom Robertson's now disregarded
comedies of manners were highly successful simply be-
cause this author accommodated his technique to the up-
and-coming demand for realistic sets in which doors
slammed, windows opened, and a ceiling overtopped as
faithful a reproduction of a drawing room as the stage
carpenter could put together. Innovators all, to this day:
but experimenters only so long as their innovations were
untried or open to argument.
Any experiment in presentation is, therefore, nothing
more than an accommodation^ of existing technique to
changing ideas, twists of taste, and improvements in stage
machinery (this last, of course, the most fertile source of
successful innovation). For the practical playwright, what-
ever the form of his inspiration, is bound to take into con-
sideration two things over which he has little control: his
audience and his theatre. Unless he is content to write his
plays for the printed page alone or (to quote a currently
fashionable tag for an old disease) is satisfied by the per-
sonal idiom of surrealism, he knows that his first job is to
make himself understood to his potential listeners. He
must speak a communicable language in a communicable
idiom. He must obey certain conventions which make that
communication possible. His innovations should be made
not only with reason, but with some regard for the fact
that since they are innovations, his audience should be
given the chance to assimilate them easily. The playwright
must, in fact, obey the technique of his craft. He must
learn the elements of his job: must know how a play is
put together, why it is put together in such a way and in
no other, and where and why he can dispense with any
'54
SYDNEY BOX
one trick of his trade when occasion arises. It doesn't matter
whether he is experimenter or traditionalist j the play-
wright must have a profound working knowledge of his
craft. The same rules of technique apply to all, and the
same opportunities of developing them.
Therefore, before noting a few examples of experiment
in the technique of the one-act play, it is necessary to have
some idea of those elements of craftsmanship which must
be mastered if the author is to produce sound, actable work.
Mistrust at once the superior person who tells you that a
play is "an act of inspiration," or is too frightfully bored
for words by the mention of the word technique. Unless
he is a genius, you may safely write him down as knave or
fool. In all probability he possesses a drawerful of re-
jected manuscripts which he reads over lovingly to him-
self behind closed doors. For playwriting even one-act
playwriting is an act accomplished only by blood and
sweat and tears. It is a craft which has to be mastered by
considerable practise} its principles must be learnt just as
the plumber's mate must patiently experiment on his work-
shop waste pipes until he is competent to repair those of
his neighbors. Judging by the annual output of published
one-act plays, this last principle is almost universally ig-
nored. Technically, the majority of plays which see the
light each year are of such poor quality that their authors
appear to imagine that the craft of playwriting, like their
inspiration, is vouchsafed from above. True enough, in
sorpe fortunates it is. But in very, very few.
In a preface to one of his plays, Percival Wilde has
written of the one-act play: "Unity is its inspiration; unity
its aim; unity is its soul." w -*"* > "
The unskilled writer of one-act plays could absorb na
TECHNIQUE
better first principle than that. For inherent in it is the
practical corollary: discipline your inspiration $ discipline
your objective j discipline your construction, "'there is no
time in the brief passage of a one-act play to follow up
this or that incidental issue, however profitable of explora-
tion it appears. No time for the five or ten minute byplay
with telephone or cocktails in which authors of three-act
plays may excusably indulge themselves. The maid and
the butler have no place in the short play for those brief
interludes of cushion patting and table clearing in which
they either fire off a few of the author's best epigrams to
ease the tension of a dramatic scene or expose the fact
that their mistress is deceiving her doting husband. Such a
trick is well enough for playwrights who know that half
of their audience invariably arrives ten minutes after the
curtain has risen and lingers in the bars after each inter-
val. But the one-act playwright, with some forty minutes
of playing time at his disposal, must forgo all such tempta-
tions to pad. Once his curtain is up, he must write in no
line and may create no situation that does not carry his
chosen theme or plot forward to a resolution.^or, be it
[added, is he at liberty to display the many-sidedness of
[character by evolving various situations which will Jest
Ithe reactions of his characters. The one-act play form is
not one which lends itself easily to much su btletyof^ char-
acterization. It is essentially concentrated and single of
purpose, and for this reason imposes the strictest discipline
upon the playwright who makes use of it. Characterization
is the touchstone of all drama, whatever its scope or inten-
tions. A play is as effective as its characters are credible
and may not rise above the degree in which the audience
is ready to be convinced by the characters presented to it.
SYDNEY BOX
Therefore, the one-act play, which may never be discur-
sive, must weld characterization and situation most firmly
together. Through situation essential to the forward move-
ment of the play alone is it possible for the playwright to
bring his characters to life.*"*"'
*Tt is for this reason that singleness of purpose is the
one-act playwright's first principle. If it were asked, "What
are the qualifications of the one-act play?" the answer
might well be that it should have singleness of theme,
should aim at making a single impression, should possess
singleness of situation, and should concentrate its interest
on a single character or group character. *^
'Inspired by his theme, a dominant character, a strong
situation, or a ready-made plot, the playwright tackles the
job of putting his play on papen He has come to grips
with the problems of applying his knowledge of play con-
struction to his inspiration and probably wishes that it was
all as simple as Lewis Carroll's instruction to "begin at the
beginning, go right on to the end, then stop."
If hitherto I have appeared dogmatic about certain as-
pects of one-act play construction, I must ask the reader
to forgive me on the ground that a short essay allows of
little scope for the niceties of precise definition. But in con-
sidering the play's construction, there need be no apolo-
for laying down certain rules which must be followed,
All one-act plays may be divided into definite periods,
eachwith its own technical problems^ They may be named
as follows":^! ) opening j( 2; exposition j (3) development;
(4) climax j (5) ending. These periods may, of course^
vary in length, may coincide one with another, and may
be further subdivided on a more detailed examination than
I have space to give them here.
57
TECHNIQUE
The chief, perhaps the only, quality of the short play's
opening is that it must capture the audience's interest. This
does not imply, as is commonly stated, that the one-act play
should plunge without more ado into its story. On the
contrary, some short plays (i.e., those whose chief interest
is in characterization) need careful preparation before the
plot may safely be got under way. It means simply that
the moment the curtain is up the audience must be brought
into the world of the author's imagining. In a play where
plot is all, a violent attack may serve, in which no sooner
is the opening made than the playwright has passed on to
his exposition. He may choose to create his opening effect
entirely by the directions he has given to scene-designer
and stage-manager, leaving it in their hands to build the
atmosphere necessary to his exposition. Again, he may be-
gin with pantomimic action or spend several minutes in
building his atmosphere while he is also getting on with
the job of exposing his characters and his situation. About
his methods in beginning the play there are no laws: about
his employment of these methods only one that he claim
the audience's immediate attention and direct that atten-
tion so that it is attuned for what follows.
Having made his initial attack, it is the playwright's task
first to justain it, secondly to make his premises crystal
clear to an audience which knows nothing about his char-
acters and is always apt to care less! Before undertaking
any development either in his characterization or in his
story, the audience must be made aware of every detail oij
character and situation that has any bearing on his ultimate!
resolution. It is here that the author first invites his au-
dience to ask questions, prepares the way for the quicken-
58
SYDNEY BOX
ing of his action, raises in the minds of his listeners a desire
to know "what happens next."
Only then can he move forward to the principal period
of his play its development. Here it is necessary to note
that what most commonly wrecks the novice's work is the
tendency to digress and to work out what appears to be a
profitable side issue. Nothing should take place in the
play's development that does not
opening and exposition^. But, it may be objected, this is a
confinement of inspiration beyond reason. It is a negation
of the casual disorder of events as they occur in real life.
The answer to that is that it is the dramatist's job to make
order out of disorder: to select precisely those incidents
from the mass of material available to him which satisfy
the logic of cause and effect,, If he presents on the stage an
effect for which he has omitted to provide good cause, his
audience will quite rightly reject it.
Out of development, the climax. Here the craftsman is
summing up the conflict, spiritual or physical, that he has
stated in his exposition and has argued in his development.
It is the moment at which his audience is closest to him,
waiting for his resolution. It is to this point that he has
been patiently building throughout the play, and the point
atjvhich all the threads of his action are drawn firmly to-
gether. Then follows the last phase: the play's ending, its
resolution of all the questions and problems the playwright
has asked. The playwright, having claimed the audience's
attention, must now reward it with a satisfactory explana-
tion. It may not be "logical" in a common sense of that
much misused word. That is to say, it may not be a con-
clusion that everyday life would lead us to accept as valid.
But one thing it must be: it must be true to the author's
59
TECHNIQUE
ownloglc and must complete the proposition that he has,
witli a considerable display of ingenuity, led us to accept in
the early stages of his play. It is worth noting in this con-
nection that the so-called "surprise ending" is not, as some
imagine, a sort of knockout blow directly at variance with
all that has gone before. True, an ending may surprise the
audience, but if it merely astonishes, the playwright is in
error not his audience. The dramatically unexpected reso-
lution again must be inherent in the preliminary stages of
the play, and, while it surprises, must satisfy the audience's
sense of reason no less than the ending which is accepted
at once as inevitable.
So much for the elements of craftsmanship. How, next,
can the playwright apply these elements to plays which in-
troduce novelties of technique?
The one-act play is a form of drama particularly suited
for technical experiment, since it is almost entirely the pro-
vince of amateur players and producers rather, of those
whose interest in the theatre is not bound first and last to
the problem of making profits. The professional theatre,
being what it is, does not take kindly to experimental play-
wrights: it has to consider dividends first and experiment
a long way after. Since it is almost exclusively in the Little
Theatres that the one-act play is produced, the playwright
with new methods has every reason to make his experi-
ments in the one-act play form.
Again, the one-act play is brief and soon told. The Au-
thor who desires to introduce some novelty of technique
is therefore at liberty to use the one-act play as the archi-
tect does his small-scale model of an important enterprise,
or the artist his preliminary sketches. If his experiment
fails, it has failed with a considerable saving of his laboF
60
SYDNEY BOX
and of expense to the management which supported the
enterprise.
The one-act play has no such heavy burden of precedent
and convention laid upon it as has the longer play. The
professional critics (and the one-act playwright may re-
turn thanks for it) have not endowed it with a literature of
conventions. On the contrary, they have for the most
part left it to its own devices. In its modern shape still a
youthful form of dramatic writing, those audiences which
have come to look upon it with as much affection as on the
longer play are catholic enough in their tastes to encourage
the writer of one-act plays to experiment.
It is an intimate form of drama. It asks of the audience
not only cnat tney associate themselves more closely with
its author, but also that they should bring a keener percep-
tion to bear upon it during its brief recital. Therefore,
since forty minutes of close attention is all the playwright
asks, he is given an ampler freedom to draw his audience
with him along unfamiliar paths. An unsuccessful innova-
tion in technical presentation would drive the most patient
audience out into the night were it billed to continue for
three hours 5 but the most impatient audience will endure
a failure when it knows that the agony will only last for
some forty minutes.
A playwright's inspiration may come to him in a variety
of ways. For instance, he may be inspired by a theme
(money is the root of all evil)j a character (an old lady
with a gift for clairvoyance) ; a situation (a concentration
camp commandant recognizing in a new prisoner his
younger brother) j an atmosphere (a dictator's vision of
hell) and so forth. Whatever the inspiration, it mi&t then
be given shape through character, situation, and plot. And
61
TECHNIQUE
then follows the technical problem: how may this shape
most effectively be presented on the stage?
To take a concrete example. We will suppose that the
playwright decides that there is promising material for a
short play in the proposition: overweening ambition sooner
or later overreaches itself. By itself the statement contains
little hint of dramatic action. It must be restated in terms
of the particular, embodied in character and situation.
Sooner or later the character is evolved in the play-
wright's mind a newspaper seller who is determined one
day to be the financial genius of the skyscraper at whose
foot he now sells evening papers. So far, so good. It is
now necessary to know something more about this char-
acter, so that the most effective moment of his career may
be portrayed in action. A chain of events suggests itself.
We will suppose that the newspaper seller works his
way into the skyscraper as a junior clerk, advances rapidly,
makes himself first master in his own office and subse-
quently the biggest manipulator of shares on the market.
He overreaches himself, gets caught in a slump, goes mad,
and is finally released from a lunatic asylum to return to
his original pitch as a newspaper salesman where last act
of all he is knocked down while running across the road
to greet one of the men he knew in his boom days still
dreaming of a conquest in high finance.
In considering how this mass of material may be pre-
sented as a one-act play, a score of possibilities will present
themselves to the playwright. Obviously, in using conven-
tional methods of construction only one phase of this char-
acter's life-story may be presented, and much of the origi-
nal chain of events must be scrapped. It might be most
profitable to show him at the moment when his world is
62
SYDNEY BOX
beginning to crash and, perhaps, to illustrate the tragedy
of his ambition by introducing a wife who married him
only for his money. One might see dramatic possibilities
in the lunatic asylum episode: the character tortured by the
uneasy ghosts of his past and the specters of his future.
At any rate, rigid selection must be made if this character
and the chosen theme are to be presented with success
within the limits of the conventional one-act play.
At this point the playwright sees that with a good switch-
board and the use of simple, representational scenery, he
need jettison nothing of his original material. Instead, he
may make the experiment of writing an episodic play in
which every significant phase of his character's career is
displayed within the space of forty minutes. The use of the
black-out and a spotlight or two has left him free to con-
centrate attention entirely on his chief character, on the
drama of his rise and fall, and on illustrating his theme by
the most economical of means.
Such is the outline of a simple experiment in expression-
istic technique. It formed the basis of one of my own
experiments with the one-act play form an episode play
entitled Self-made Man.
The episodic play is liable to failure on the grounds that
interest in a rapid succession of short scenes is easily dif-
fused. In the case of Self-made Man this danger was to a
certain extent overcome by focusing all interest upon the
central character. Not a very simple problem to solve, I
might add, when costume changes and scene shifting have
to be taken into consideration. Therefore, I will examine
in more detail a similar play Cedric Mount's Twentieth
Century Lullaby which, while it is essentially an episode
play covering the life-story of one man from cradle to
63
TECHNIQUE
grave, satisfactorily solves the problem of creating unity
of time and place.
The scene is a nursery. In the firelight a mother, Mary
Smith, rocks a cradle and sings a lullaby to her sleeping
child.
(Presently she begins to talk to the sleeping infant as mothers
Will.)
MARY: There's my precious! Sleep well! And soon you'll
grow up into a fine big boy, won't you, my darling? And
everyone will say: 'Look at Peter Ulric Smith isn't he the
bonniest boy you ever saw?' And then you'll go to school and
the master will teach you all sorts of clever things. And you'll
learn them all so quickly! Teter Ulric Smith,' he'll say, 'you've
got a brain in a million. If all my pupils were as easy to teach
as you are, my job would be a pleasure/ he'll say . . .
(At this moment another voice a man's starts sfeaking
from the other side of the room, and in a fatch of light
among the shadows we see the schoolmaster standing,
dressed in mortar-board and black gown. He seems to be
talking to someone we cannot see> and Mary takes not
the slightest notice of him, but goes on whispering to her
baby. The only difference is that now we cannot hear
her because of the schoolmaster's loud and rather sarcastic
voice. )
SCHOOLMASTER: Peter Ulric Smith! There's a name to give
a boy! Did you ever hear anything like it?
(He pauses for a moment with rather a sneering smile on his
face, and in that second we hear MARY saying to the
baby . , .)
MARY: It's a very nice name, really but you needn't tell
the other boys what the C U' stands for if you don't want them
to know.
SCHOOLMASTER: I could forgive the name if you had any
64.
SYDNEY BOX
brains, but really you seem to be even more woolly-witted
than most boys of your age and that's saying a great deal.
God knows why I should spend my life teaching you and a
hundred other brats like you, when I might have been doing
something really useful sweeping the streets or coal mining,
for instance. How I'm going to cram enough knowledge into
your brain-box to get you through your beastly little examina-
tions, I can't imagine. . . .
MARY (still talking to her baby): And my clever son's
going to pass all his examinations right at the top of the list
isn't he? Eh?
Technically, this is a most interesting opening. The
scene is set. Lullaby and flickering twilight arouse the
audience's interest at once. The brief passage of opening
dialogue is capable of introducing anything, but with the
repetition of the name of the child the audience is being
guided towards recognizing it of importance: the unusual
second name raises a question in the listeners 5 minds. Then
with the entry of the schoolmaster the situation of the play
is at once made clear with the utmost economy of means,
By skillful manipulation of the dialogue we are at once
launched into the future, while our eyes still hold us to the
present, where Mary whispers her dreams for the future
over the cradle. The playwright has hinted at his theme,
impressed us already with the tragic irony of a situation
familiar to all of us r and has carried us straight into his ex-
position in three or four passages of dialogue. Further-
more, he has prepared us for a succession of episodes which
do not take us out of this half-lit nursery and which al-
ready imply a climax and a resolution when Mary's dreams
clasJQvith reality*
In a similar way, a series of ironic scenes pass. Peter
65
TECHNIQUE
Smith's baptism, his first job and his first glimpse of mod-
ern business ethics, his marriage.
Here the playwright, by this time certain that his au-
dience is following his method, has no need to emphasize
it as he did in his opening scene. He can now make a
more audacious leap, demand more participation from his
audience in the narration of his play.
The brief marriage scene is ending:
CLERGYMAN: Till death us do part
BRIDE: Till death us do part
ANNOUNCER: The number of marriages solemnised in
churches during the past six months has declined by forty per
cent., states a report
CLERGYMAN: Judith and Peter, you have just taken the
most solemn vows a man and a woman can take. You have
sworn in God's house to love and cherish one another till
death parts you. I hope you realise sincerely the true signifi-
cance of that vow, and that you will fulfil it, come what may
ANNOUNCER: On the other hand, the report records that
the total number of divorces granted during the same period
was more than sixty-five per cent, above the figures for the
previous six months.
(During the last six or seven speeches, MARY has been hum-
ming Mendelssohn's Wedding March. Now she breaks
off and speaks to the sleeping baby.)
MARY: Then you must be very kind to her but you must
try and be firm, too. Remember, a man must always be a
hero to his own wife
(The BRIDE has taken off her veil and orange blossom^ and
now she bursts into a tirade of abuse.)
BRIDE: A hero! My God! A fine hero you'd make. Why
on earth I was fool enough to tie myself up to you for life I
can't imagine. Look at the Robinsons they've got a car. Look
66
SYDNEY BOX
at the Browns they've got a radiogram. Look at the Joneses
he takes his wife to Brighton every week-end.
In a few significant flashes the tale of Peter Smith is
carried forward. Here the playwright is using precisely
the technique of the movie camera which establishes a
scene or a lapse of years with three or four well-chosen
shots. And the simile is not without its significance.
The play continues with the consummation of Peter
Smith's divorce. He is dismissed from his job, the poli-
tician appears making demagogic speeches calling on the
unemployed to fight another business-man's war, and
Peter Smith joins up to the concerted applause of school-
master, business man, and clergyman, who have hitherto
regarded him with either contempt or indifference. His
death is announced over the radio and at once the play-
wright's climax is upon us.
A long passage of declamatory speeches closes in this
way:
SCHOOLMASTER: Peter Ulric Smith! Write his name on the
war memorial! What a tribute to the training of the old
school! Fourteen of our boys have laid down their lives
already
CLERGYMAN : Peter Ulric Smith ! Greater love hath no man
than this: that a man lay down his life
BUSINESS MAN: Peter Ulric Smith! He used to work for
me, but this is the best day's work he ever did. I mean to say,
look at my dividends
ANNOUNCER: The Royal trumpeters will now sound the
Last Post . . .
(During these speeches MARY has risen to her jeet and she
is now standing, facing the other characters. She is
trembling and suddenly she shouts:)
TECHNIQUE
MARY: No! You shan't do it! Stop, I tell you! Stop it!
ALL: What?
MARY (shrieking): Stop!
ALL: Stop?
MARY: Yes, stop! It mustn't be like that! It mustn't! Is
that what I've suffered agonies for? Is that the best you can
give my son? If that's all the world can offer, then I'd rather
kill him now before he's had time to learn what a mockery
it all is. I'd rather kill him, I tell you, than let him grow up
for that! I won't have it, I tell you. Do you hear that? I won't
have it. (All of the other characters begin to laugh derisively.
MARY listens hopelessly for a moment. Then she shouts de-
spairingly.) Stop it! Stop it! (The baby in the cradle begins
to cry.) There! Now you've wakened him.
(She turns and 'picks up the child. Holding him in her arms y
she turns again to find that the others have all gone.)
Here is the climax, in which nightmare reality interrupts
the dream of the future. It is the moment towards which
the playwright has been working throughout the play and
which now demands a resolution. Cedric Mount ends his
play by introducing the figure of the Madonna in the
place of the figures which have vanished, who brings to
Mary Smith a message of comfort saying that the secret
of motherhood is hope: hope that every child is a potential
savior of mankind. And the play closes, as it began, with
the mother singing a lullaby to her child in a half-lit
bedroom.
In some ways the resolution is unsatisfactory, since it
conflicts with the bitterness of the satirical scenes. At the
same time, it is true to the author's own logic and follows
naturally from the first peaceful scene and from Mary's
subsequent lines, which continually interrupt the bitter pic-
ture of Peter Smith's probable future.
68
SYDNEY BOX
1 have dealt with this play in some detail because it does
illustrate very clearly the point I made at the beginning of
this essay: that the construction of all one-act plays is es-
sentially the same and that certain laws of technique apply
to all, whatever their form. Twentieth Century Lullaby
is an experiment in presentation episodic, making use of
cinematic technique, introducing in the Announcer an
equivalent to the Narrator or Chorus of an older form,
and successfully even audaciously mingling refllJSR 1 wtf H
fantasy. But it is faithful throughout to the elements of
good craftsmanship that I have already noted.
Today the observant playwright-innovator has a wealth
of new ideas and technical improvements in stage machin-
ery to make use of. As regards such innovations as the re-
volving stage and recent improvements in lighting systems,
it is noticeaBle that in the professional theatre technical
equipment is at least thirty years in advance of most of
the drama it is exercised upon. Go to any large theatre
which possesses a revolving stage, and you will see that
it is merely used to send the same old scenery decorating
the same old situations a little faster round the stage. Yet
here is one outstanding instance of a technical improve-
ment which, used by a playwright-innovator, could con-
siderably alter the presentation of the drama and could
infuse new life into worn-out modes and conventions.
But writers of one-act plays have themselves hardly be-
gun to take advantage of all their opportunities. For the
most part they are content to work to the convention of
the picture stage with its fixed fourth wall and its con-
ventional pattern worked out from curtain rise to curtain
fall. But improvements in stage lighting have dissolved the
fourth wall, if only playwrights had the sense to see it.
6 9
TECHNIQUE
The intimacy of the Little Theatre has given them the
chance to restore the vitality of close contact between au-
dience and players j to draw the audience into the action,
if need be, as Odets has done with such success in Waiting
for Lefty. With this intimacy, the soliloquy is once more
a natural and powerful part of the playwright's equip-
ment |t can make its direct appeal without appearingun-
real. The cinema is daily teaching a score of technical
tricks that the playwright could well adapt to his own
medium. And there is the radio at once the least used
and most opportune of mediums for the craftsman who
wishes to accommodate his technique to new materials.
In the preface to his brilliant verse play The Fall oj
the City (the only play, to my knowledge, whose theme
and technical presentation could have been put over by
radio and through no other medium, and one which is
packed with extremely interesting technical innovation)
Archibald MacLeish argues eloquently in favor of the
verse dramatist's use of radio as a new stage. His argument
is that, in the first place, the word alone must convey
atmosphere, setting, color, gesture, mood, and even cos-
tume, and in the second that since the foolish prose writ-
ers have merely used the radio as they would their plat-
form stage, it is up to the poets to show them that radio
has perfected new tools which need revolutionary methods
of application. Radio drama is, of course, the poet's great
opportunity. But there is no reason why the prose dra-
matist should ignore it or treat it (as did the first films
in silent days and as the majority of English films still
do) as just another "vehicle" for conventional theatrical
methods. The radio makes its appeal to ear alone. There
are no extraneous aids to imagination such as the theatre
70
SYDNEY BOX
provides in abundance. Through the spoken word alone
can the imagination be captured, held, excited, and satis-
fied. When one considers the appalling poverty of lan-
guage to which the prose playwright has been reduced by
more than sixty years of the "realistic" play, there emerges
a strong argument in favor of the study of radio technique
by any playwright who wishes to experiment. Radio will
never wholly compensate the prose dramatist for the loss
of color and the loss of contact between the players and a
vigorous and responsive audience. But mastery of its tech-
nique should assist the dramatist in evolving new forms for
his theatre and will certainly help to bring back to the
stage the color and vitality of language it has so long lost.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL
ONE-ACT PLAY
MICHAEL BLANKFORT, who is in his late twenties,
is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and was for-
merly associated with the Psychology Department at Prince-
ton. His activities in the theatre have been numerous. He was
one of the organizers of the now defunct Theatre Union j
directed Stevedore, and adapted Friedrich Wolf's Sailors of
C attar o, both Theatre Union productions; wrote lyrics for
New Gulliver, contributed to the Theatre Guild's production
of Parade, and is the author of The Crime, a one-act play pro-
duced by the Theatre of Action, and The Brave and the
Blind. He is co-author with Michael Gold of Battle Hymn,
which was presented by the Experimental Theatre (WPA).
Mr. Blankfort was, until very recently, an instructor in play-
writing at New York University. He is the author also of the
successful novel, / Met a Man.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE
SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
by Michael Blankfort
TO the average critic, a social play is something he can
write an extended Sunday column about.
To the hot, ardent, and newly fledged social critic, a
social play is something that calls for the directing genius
of a Piscator, Stanislavski, and Lee Strasberg. Hejjg-
mands a revolution in form as well as in content. A prole-
tarian horse needs a proletarian stable. There used to be a
time when anybody who thought of writing a social play
a revolutionary play with a first and last curtain was
considered as conservative as Clyde Fitch.
In short, there has been a lot of wholesale nonsense
written about the construction and purpose of the social
play. It is a sprightly subject, and a few additional dicta
more or less cannot hurt the dramatist who, at this mo-
ment, in coal camp or New York apartment is writing the
next great social play that will do what it wants with con-
struction.
If you are looking for blueprints in these few pages,
stop here. It would be far better if you studied the head-
lines and a few choice social classics, statistical as well as
dramatic. The social world is exciting enough for you to
75
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
write your social plays with such heat that the form will
almost take care of itself. New material will make its own
demands for new construction. Whenever there was an
addition to the timeworn, rutted conventions of play con-
struction, there were additions to timeworn, rutted conven-
tions. That is the way it works: the world changes and so
does the drama. The theatre and Bourbonism are mutually
exclusive.
There are still tolerably intelligent people who, when-
ever the subject of the social play arises, hasten to put on a
Lazarus act and raise from the grave the decomposed
corpse of an old controversy art versus propaganda. It
has never been my purpose to aid and abet such vandal-
ism. However, inasmuch as I am writing about the con-
struction of the social one-act play, and someone else is
writing about the construction of any old one-act play,
social, antisocial, a-social or bi-social, some effort must be
made to separate the propaganda wheat from the artistic
chaff. The corpse has arisen $ let the responsibility be on the
head of the editor.
Among the choice bits of nonsense written on this sub-
ject, none has been so meaningless as the statement that
all plays are propaganda. Meaningless only because not
everybody walks around with a dictionary, and it is a
waste of energy to define your terms every time you use
a good word. (I must state here that in articles in the
New Theatre magazine and elsewhere, I have written my
share of the above nonsense.) "Propaganda" is a nasty
word used to describe what you do not like. In all truth, it
has been knocked around so much it will be no good for
another twenty years. Let us leave it where the New York
Times dropped it.
76
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
Nor is there much more light in the statement that only
those plays which reflect their times are social playsMSfoel
Coward is one of the be{ f^fl^gtprg nf hk tim^s- he isjiot
what I should call a writer of social plays. All plays, like
all newspapers, reflect the times in which they are written^
The question is how?
The third bit of critical lackluster which ought to be got
put of the way is the opinion that only social plays have
something to say. Other serious plays, I suppose, are writ-
ten because the author has nothing to say.
Let it be said that every serious playwright thinks he
has something important to say. That is the only way you
can distinguish serious playwrights from those who write
in order to buy a home in Beverly Hills. Every serious
playwright believes in what he has to say even if, like
Maxwell Anderson in Winterset> he believes in the futil-
ity of the belief that anything can be said.
The simple mark of difference is this: what does the
belief consist of? what is the playwright saying in his plays?
Any other standard is painting stripes on zebras -, they will
come off in the first rain.
Some beliefs, or doctrines, if you will, are basically out
of touch with the reality of the situation in the play, as
well as the framework of the world in which the play is
written. They run counter-clockwise to the movement of
their social epoch. We laugh when Glenn Wilbur Voliva
says the earth is flat. But we seem to take seriously Mr,
Anderson's statement that men are helpless before an un-
just world. (I do not want to appear to strike unreasonably
at an able play and an abler playwright. I agree with John
W. Gassner who in a considered piece, "Catharsis and the
Modern Theatre," appearing in the August, 1937, issue
77
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
of The One Act Play Magazine, said: "For two acts Win-
terset is a stirring indictment of injustice j then the third
act resolutely fronts the verities in a lather of bathos.")
^ihere are other beliefs and doctrines, however, more
understanding of their epoch, more realistically appraising
of the forces of their times, therefore, more progressive,
truer, broader. They are the ear to the ground and the
heart to the heart of tt^e n^ovement of peoples and classes,
of wants and wishes. Those who hold such beliefs are not
merely men of good will; they are men of active will.
These men are the social playwrights of their times; Jthey
reflect^ their society and their yearg in a
^
their beliefs are progressive in every sense of the word, eco-
nomic, philosophical, and political, frightening as the last
is to most Americans who look on art and politics some-
what the way the Archbishop of Canterbury looks on the
ex-king Edward. V
ii
There are a few other misconceptions with which the
mind is burdened , that is, the mind of novices in the so-
cial playwriting field and of Joseph Wood Krutch.
No one has said that social plays are necessarily good
plays. A progressive idea in the hands of an incompetent
or semiskilled playwright turns into an incompetent or
semiskilled play.
Social plays can deal with other things than strikes} they
can be written about other heroes than strikers, workers,
farmers, slum children j they can incorporate other ideas
than unionism, anti-fascism, and William Randolph
Hearst. There are no horizons of character, situation, or
ideas beyond which the social dramatist is forbidden. He
can, if he is able, handle material that would make Noel
78
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
Coward's seem positively proletarian by contrast. He can,
as in You Can y t Change Human Nature by Philip Steven-
son, write a broad farce about the iy76-ers or a fine poetic
and symbolic masque as in Archibald MacLeish's Panic.
Social plays have more in common, by way of construc-
tion, with other plays, present and past, than they have
differences.
Social plays are not necessarily simple plays. Unfortu-
nately plays are only as rich as their authors.
Social plays can and must deal with values as wqll as
events.
Social plays demand Asocial mind. The social mind of
the -playwright is the key to the construction of the social
flay.
On this last point, John Howard Lawson has an elo-
quent paragraph in his book, Theory and Technique of
Playwrighting:
If the playwright's scheme of thought is irrational it distorts
the laws of the drama, and inhibits the will to create meaning-
ful action. He must either conceal this weakness by obscur-
antism or pretense ; or he must overcome it by the slow laboi
of thought.
Clarity is as necessary to a social playwright as conflict
to the social pky". """
in
The hardest thing in the field of playmaking is to write
a social play. The reason is that you have to have a genuu
for clarity. Well, at any rate, you should have a taste foi
it. The playwright's social mind, quite unlike other minds
has to be replete with clarity. He has to be clear aho^it the
world he liveoti, the world he writes about, the world he
79
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
for. Then, and only then, will he be clear about
what he wants to say. Such clarity is indissolubly linked
with the plot action of his play, his characters j in short,
the construction of his play will not be taken for granted,
but wilh, I hope, be satisfactorily illustrated later in this
piece. ^
In addition to dramatic logic, the social writer must be
possessed by a remorseless social logic and a realistic eye
to the world. The reader may ask, "What will he seer"
My answer to the curious interrogator I am limited by
the function of this book is to study carefully the impli-
cations of the plays mentioned in this article.
Social clarity is a pure and simple technical demand of
the art of social writing. Why?
"A dramatist," wrote George Pierce Baker, "must study
his characters until he has discovered the entire range of
their emotion." "A social playwright must study the en-
vironment of his characters until he has exhausted every
possible use to which it can be put, for the social play is
based on this truism, that drama is the result of a change
in equilibrium between people and their environment,
which includes, of course, other people. Just think of the
drama implied in a man working in a factory which he
once owned. Or see where a lack of such study will lead,
if you want to write a social play about coal miners with-
out ridding your mind, so carefully cultivated in university
sociology, of its romantic reformism, in which the substitu-
tion of plumbing for outhouses will transform a company-
owned town into a proletarian
gnpal rlanty is a fprhmrgl
^'Starting from one or more disparate experiences, a play
needs a unifying idea to give it meaning. (I cannot help it
so
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
if you have seen the unifying idea called by other names,
"the spine" or "the theme" or "the root idea." Without
their own vocabulary critics and dramatists are lost.) The
unifying idea affects the construction of the play $ it is the
daughter of social clarity and the mother of the play.
An example: A dramatist feels strongly about war. He
wants to write a play about how and why wars are made.
His general intention is clear. Perhaps he has some char-
acters in mind, a good scene or two, and a curtain that
will bring the audience to its feet. Consciously or uncon-
sciously his mind reaches out for the conception or idea
which will bring unity to his intention and his material.
He sits down at his desk with a copy of McDougall, the
psychologist, at his left hand, and perhaps Karl Marx on
his right. McDougall is easier to read than Marx. Thus,
after some study, our playwright is persuaded that wars
are the result of the combative instinct in man. Ah, a con-
ception that will unite everything in his play. Suddenly,
he feels that his exposition is clear. He will have some
young men talking about the last war. They will pledge
themselves never to go to war again, for they are con-
vinced that wars are made for the profit of a few rich men.
He jumps, naturally enough, from exposition to climax.
A new war has come and the same young men forget their
wise pledges and, carried away despite themselves and
their hatred for war, join up. They are victims of an in-
stinct to fight, of the combative urge.
In this rather extreme example, based vaguely on the
play, Men Must Fight, the tightly knit correspondence
between social clarity or rather unclarity and the unify-
ing idea is visible. Did the unclarity affect the play? Cer-
tainly, for nowhere, in play, platform, or laboratory, can
81
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
an instinct to fight be credibly established. But the author
based his entire play on it. Certainly, that is why it had no
validity, neither incidents nor characters nor climax.
, IV
The old dramaturgic saw that the action of a play must
advance the story is true, of course, for all plays. But^in
social plays it has to do more {han that^ it has also to ad-
vance the, unifying i^e^^
The social play is interested in boy meets girl. It is a
situation which no one can or wants to avoid. But the social
playwright has to decide whether boy meeting girl best il-
lustrates, in a dramatic way, what he wants his play to re-
veal. In that way, the writer of social plays has a principle
of economy all his own.
^Tn Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead, for example, the unify/-
jng idea is tn pvpnsp the fundamental insanity of war. A
brilliant dramatic action was selected by the author to
dramatize his idea the refusal of dead soldiers to be bur-
ied. There are, however, several scenes, well written in
themselves, which tend to choke up the play. The average
audience entranced by Bury the Dead must feel a slacken-
ing or diversion of interest in several spots, notably the
scene with the prostitutes and one or two of the colloquies
between the soldiers and their women. It was precisely
these scenes which were not at all integrated with the uni-
fying idea. "The slow labor of thought" would have elimi-
nated themX''
Stevedore y although a full-length play, is an even better
example. More clarity brought to the play would have re-
sulted in a construction far more economical. The play
tried to say too much. It had several themes, each given
82
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
equal importance: (i) Negroes should fight back against
their oppressors j (2) white and black workers must unite
in order to win security for themselves - y (3) unionism
rather than individualism is the way out for workers.
The fact that the resultant confusion misled critics as to
the authors' exact intentions is less important than the fact
that the overabundance of themes, each given major em-
phasis, made it impossible within the time of the play to
develop the characters with sufficient roundness and depth.
LO sum up: social clarity in the playwright's mind helps
does more tlian help, determines to a large extent the
selection^ his unifying idea, the incidents and actions, and,
therefore, characters which dramatize this idea; and,
finally, it assists him in bringing forth his drama in the
most economical and in the most effective way. ^^
Without dramatic logic, any play is a bad play $ without
social logic, a social play is confused, misleading, and some-
times unintentionally reactionary, i.e., not a social play.
There has been a singularly modern development in the
social play which has worried most social playwrights
worried their sympathetic critics aswell. It has been desig-
nated by some unknown hero as*$he call to action." The
need for a call to action grew out of the situation of our
times in which the social artist felt called on to do more
than expose the cruelties of modern capitalism. He was
impelled to do something about them. He demanded that
his audiences do something about them. He wanted not
merely indi visual rebellion but organized social prptest.
And he wanted to incorporate a call for that protest in his
play^ whether it be a call to join a union or to organize
83
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
against war or to stand up with your fellows against moral
corruption or to revaluate life with new and humane and
revolutionary valuesr*^
Unfortunately but as was to be expected the call to
action in the early plays toojc the forms of slogans without
much integration to the play and therefore without much
human warmth. But they were exciting. The audience, it-
self, brought the excitement to the slogan~-not the play-
wright. v Tne early calls to action were very explicit and
concrete, but see how they have developed from such mass
chants as Dimitrof (Kazan and Smith), Newsboy , Angela
Herndon, and America, America (AlfredJCreymborg)
to Hymn to the Rising Sun (Paul Green). They have de-
veloped from the explicit to the implicit, from the call
to concrete action as in Odets' Waiting for Lefty to the call
for a revaluation of tjje conception of the heroic in The
Brave and the Blind. And yet . . .
The call to action, technically, may still be used to de-
scribe the -final curtain of almost every well-known social
play. ItJ^ Agate's l^L^^hJi^Waitin^ for Leity^ It is
the victory of the longshoremen in Stevedore, the turning
out of the power plant in Marching Song, Rubin's sum-
mary in They Shall Not Die, Gruber's answer to the priest
in This Earth Is Ours, the triumphant march of the dead
snlHjgj-s in ftrr/ry /A/? D/g^J^thp last eleven speeches in
Private Hicks, the clarification of the meaning of war by
Benda in The Trumpets of Wrath, the proselytizing of
Zets by Reynolds at the end of Transit ("Reynolds:
Organr-eye-zation . . . I'm tellin* you"). It is the sur-
prise speech from the audience in The Crime, the last three
speeches in Give All Thy Terrors to the Wind, the lights
going out in The Secret. And when God's in His Heaven^
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
an exception to the above plays, was published, a foreword
suggested that the play be supplemented by a program
note outlining the ways and means of combating the con-
ditions exposed in the play.
There is a very good reason for the fact that the most
recent plays have the most implicit calls to actions, rely-
ing not on slogans nor on program notes but on the in-
digenous quality of the play to make its point. The last
seven years have been years of vast education. The new-
ness of organized protest is no longer new. The audience
knows how to act, or, at least, its isolation from action has
been broken.
There is a second reason. Social playwrights, new ones as
well as old, have increased their command over their craft.
They do not have to be crude and oversimple to say what
thev^want to say.
^T'here is also a third reason. The call to action, explicit
and sloganized, was part of the very honest and necessary
compulsion of the social writer to look at his plays and
characters dynamically. He saw movement in the world
around him. He saw his heroes and heroines (although
there were too few of the latter) moving forward from
one environmental relationship to another j being con-
verted from scab to striker, from pacifist to revolutionary,
from do-nothing to do-something. He wanted his audience
to do the same his prime object in writing social plays
and wanting it, he gave jj>irth to the conversion pl^y, the
modern equivalent of the old moralities.
The foremost and best example of the conversion drama
ran be found in Waiting for Lejty.
That the simple conversion play, rich and satisfying
and exciting as it was, contained the seeds of its own de-
85
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
struction (from a construction point of view) may bejter
be illustrated when we talk about characterization.^
The conversion play after a while gave justice to the
charge that the social playwright was building his plays by
rote and formula. But what was really meant was that the
social playwright was still cutting his teeth, still crude and
unsure of himself.
There is a great past as well as a great future to the
conversion play. Society has not sloWed down in the last
decade. Men are still moving. But hereafter where a play-
wright chooses to deal with conversion material, he will
not be awkward and sometimes beyond credulity, and he
will deal not with slogans but with human values no less
dynamic.
In the last sentence, I used the phrase, "where a play-
wright chooses." The phrase was deliberate. I believe the
time has passed when a social playwright feels that he has
to deal with conversion material and have a call to action
or be less a social playwright. On the other hand, it must
not be understood that such dramatic elements as conver-
sion or call to action have anything to do with a social play-
wright's being more or less an artist. That such a miscon-
ception is still widespread is shown by an essay on Hymn
to the Rising Sun, which appeared in the August issue of
1937 of The One Act Play Magazine, written by Percival
Wilde, an otherwise discerning and sensitive critic.
It has, I think, everything that a great play should have.
Its theme, man's inhumanity to man [I wonder whether Paul
Green would agree that this was his theme], is broadly con-
ceived. It is dealt with objectively, calmly, massively. Its sus-
pense is created at the rise of the curtain. It is increased by
masterly touches. Its action is terrible, but utterly logical. It
86
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
marches to tragedy with the resolute step of a Greek classic,
but it does not end there; it asks the question, "What are you
going to do about this?" and with a final touch of artistry,
it offers no answer. (Interpolated comments and italics are
mine.)
The quotation speaks for itself as well as for me.
VI
It is not my intention it is not the scope of this essay
to analyze the ways and means of characterization. Un-
doubtedly, the question will be raised in other parts of
the book. Lawson has a brilliant chapter in his Theory and
Technique of Playwrighting on this subject. There are,
however, certain special problems in characterization which
the social playwright has to face. These problems have been
so considerable that, up to the present,* the one major tech-
nical fault of the general repertory of social plays, has been
their ^schematic and inadequate characterization.
First of all, the social playwright has been and is a pio-
neer. Not until They Shall Not Die and Stevedore in a
full-length play or Mighty Wind A'Blowin? (Alice Hold-
ship Ware) in a short play has the Negro been shown on
the stage other than as a servant, comic j-glief, or a spiritual
singing stepanfetchiting levee loafer. Taxi drivers jwe
minor gangsters_until .Waiting fnr Lefty ~ Who knew a
chain gang and a chain-gang boss until Hymn to the Rising
Sun? Or the C.C.C. campers until The Young Go First?
Or a sharecropper until Bernice Kelly Harris's His Jewels?
Or the inside of the mind of a young National Guardsman
whose father is a worker until Albert Maltz's Private
Hicks? Or the pain and sacrifice of an underground worker
in Nazi Germany until Clifford Odets' Till the Day I Die?
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
Where on the American stage can the American sailor be
found, the farmer, the white-collar worker, the small
tradesman, the industrialized backwoodsman, the miner,
the steelworker, the immigrant, the bindle-stiff , the unem-
ployed, the American hero of the past, and the slum child,
except as they were poeticized or lampooned or were
stooges for a laugh and a gag? They can be found char-
acterized with varying degrees of success in such plays as
Give All Thy Terrors to the Wind (the Siftons), Black
Pity 1931 y Ingot City, 1 V -ansit , and God's in His Heaven
(Philip Stevenson), Battle Hymn, Money , Let Freedom
Ring (Albert Bein), This Ewth Is Ours and The Trum-
pets of Wrath (William Kozlenko), The Cradle Will
Rock (Marc Blitzstein), Dead End (Sidney Kingsley).
I have not even scratched the surface of that new cast
which the social playwright introduced to the American
audience. The playwrights, themselves, have not even
begun either. And the importance of this pioneering is
self-evident when you realize that these characters repre-
sent ninety percent of the population.
^Pioneering had its own headaches. Bringing new people
to the stage in new situations was enough to engulf the
playwright. Because he had to learn about even the most
external aspects of their lives, he forgot, for the moment,
that workers are first of all human, that even tosses love
their wives and children. It is a strange fact that the social
playwright, above all people, took a long time to find huh
manity in his characters. And a social play cannot jive by
melodrama alone. ^
The writer of social plays became aware of his deficiency.
He had to face the fact consciously that his job was not
merely to entertain his audience, not merely to give it
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
pleasure necessary as both these elements are but also
to instruct it. He began to see that instruction or "enlight-
enment," as John W. Gassner has put it in a splendid piece
in The One Act Play Magazine f must be translated into
human terms. For only in this way could credibility be es-
tablished.*"!^ for example, Paul Green wanted to expose
the cruelty of a chain gang, he did not make the cruelty
unbelievable by making his "villains" inhuman. Nor did
he make the cruelty palatable by glossing over or blunting
it with crude melodrama. But by an understanding insight,
Green made it sharper, believable, and dramatically true.
To his villains as well as to his heroes he brought a pro-
found human sympathy. One derived the feeling that there
are deeper and more fundamental sources for the insensate
barbarism of the chain gang than the bestial whims of any
particular chain-gang boss.
Here is an example of such characterization from Hymn
to the Rising Sun.
CAPTAIN (to the convicts): That's right, boys, you remem-
ber how Runt liked to hear the trains blow. What you say?
Shall we take him up there and bury him? (The convicts look
at him with dull cold eyes.) Well, I don't blame you for feel-
ing bad over it. I do myself. All right, we will. It's his last
wish and the wishes of the dead are sacred. We all know that.
(Now standing over RUNT and looking sorrowfully down on
him.) You know me, Runt. I didn't have no grudge against
you. It was the law said to do it. ( With sudden blinding rage. )
Yeah, the law!*/
Pioneering had still another headache. The social play-
wright was, for the most part, a newcomer into the realms
of social clarity. He had not yet integrated the fresh and
1 August, 1937.
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
Balboa-like discoveries of his world the outside world
with his own interior philosophy of lifeJHEverything was
good, that is, progressive, or bad, that is, reactionary. He
became a great classifier of things and men and deeds . . .
and history. Justly, he disliked the tortuous, "there-are-
two-sides-to-everything" attitude of the liberal. He failed
to realize that his job was to illuminate the high sources
of human action in a cojmj}l^e^ay__a^^ way.
In shortjTTe^overlooked that most obvious fact (oEvious
to him now) that the eternal conflicts of life birth, death,
love, fear are closely and indissolubly tied to the tempo-
ral or topical conflicts of classes and nations and that the
greatest realistic illumination of the headlines comes via
the heart lines.
There is no wonder, then, that his characters were
merely schemed out and sketched. It is no wonder, then,
that frequently his plays were mere pendulum plays in
which half men, albeit for the time sympathetic and excit-
ing men, swung pendulum fashion from one extreme to
another without fully revealing, in human character as
well as environment, the reasons for the swing.*/
The marriage of the playwright to his social material
was, contradictory as it sounds, first a divorce.
The great importance of this is clear when you realize
that the author's ideas are real to the audience only when
they are stated through character and not merely through
the hanging participles of dialogue, if I may borrow a
phrase from English grammar.
v Lawson, in referring to Agate's last speech in Waiting
for Lefty, says, "One is swept along, swept by Agate's call
to action at the end c Stormbirds of the working class.' But
the developnent which leads to this speech is not CWYM*-
90
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
latively logical, not based on flesh and blood realities."
The fault, he points out later, "springs from the gap be-
tween the immediate impulses of the characters and the
wider trame-work of: events."
The social play demands such a cumulative logic. With-
out it the force of the playwright's ideas is nullified in
the drama; it is incompletely realized. In characteri-
zation, this means that there must be no obiter dicta, no
Charlie McCarthyisms, nothing spoken or done which does
not flow immediately and truly from the logic of the char-
acter and his relation to the environment. Otherwise, the
audience will feel justifiably that the play has stopped
and the author has stepped onto the stage to give a preach-
ment and that does not work unless you are George Ber-
nard Shaw.
A social playwright demands that his ideas be effective.
Let him write pamphlets, if he is incapable of dramatizing
his ideas in the medium of the theatre, which means in
the heart and humanity of his characters.
VII
The one-act play used to be invariably a one-scene play.
Today the one-act play, more accurately described, is a
play which runs anywhere from five minutes to an hour.
The shift in definition may be traced to the new freedom
given to this form by the social playwrights. Bury the
Dead has the fluidity of a movie; so also Waiting for
Lefty. Till the Day I Die is a compact three-act play, yet
taking a third of the time. The Brave and the Blind is
composed of several scenes; so are The Crime, The Young
Go First, This Earth Is Ours, and The Trumpets of
Wrath.
91
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
This "cinematic^ technique," as it has been called, has
its perils as well as its^proftts. Fluids sometimes run too
thin to have consistency. The breadth of freedom in this
form frequently leads to such diffusion that the play suf-
fers^ The Crime is^rrBxaitTpt^ofthis. It has nine scenes
ten when produced. The effectiveness of The Crime wai
weakened because of its lack of compactness.
v/The social one-act play, I believe, will tend to leave be-
hind the multiscened structure. Originally, this form wai
the result of new material in the hand of the playwright;
new material that seemed to cry out for many scenes. But
the playwright's vision is becoming more disciplined j his
treatments are becoming more intensive. He is, as pointed
out before, concerned with ideas through character rather
than with ideas through slogan. It is likely that his new
concern will call for compactness.*/
VIII
Social dramatists have a responsibility not only to them-
selves as artists, or to the ideas which enrich their view of
the world, but also to the audience which comes to see
their plays.
The social playwright is an artist, therefore he writes to
please not only himself but also an audience. This does
not mean that he writes Mother Goose tales because they
happen to be popular. He writes for an audience in the
sense that he is giving dramatic expression to the darkness
and light of its life as lived in society. Without that he is
not a social playwright. He is acting on his audience as
well as being acted upon by it. His audience a working-
class audience, frequently is seeing, for the first time, its
hopes, frustrations, tragedies, and accomplishments set
9Z
MICHAEL BLANKFORT
down before it. By its own immediate experience, it can
test the truth of what it sees. It is an exacting audience. It
does not worry about what form the play is cast in poetic,
fantastic, realistic, satiric as long as it is conceived from
a realistic and progressive philosophy of life.
But the social playwright does not necessarily have to
write with a working-class audience in mind, nor, as
pointed out previously, deal with working-class subjects.
His audience, then, may shift from one class base to an-
other. Being clear about whom he is writing for, the play-
wright realizes that the dynamics of the audience-play-
wright relationship has likewise shifted. He cannot expect
a fundamentally sympathetic ear. He must compensate for
that by the way he writes the play. His wit, his talent for
theatrics the conventional attractions for this kind of au-
dience may negate an antagonism.
Too long has the art for art's sake objection to writing
with an audience in mind prevailed. The social playwright
has helped break it down, for his vision is meaningful - y he
has purpose and direction to his work.
IX
Without entering into a discussion of the mechanics of
dramatic conflict the heart of play construction there are
a fe^r things that can be said.
i he social playwright has brought toth^ stage new and
rich variations on old human conflicts. In Private Hicks
he has dramatized the struggle between a boy's will to do
the right thing for the sake of his integrity and the forces
of a world which would forbid him that. To as old a dra-
matic conflict as that of brother against brother how many
Civil War plays there have been which utilized this
93
THE SOCIAL ONE-ACT PLAY
Waiting for Lejty has given new meaning in the scene,
short as it is, between the striker and the stool pigeon. The
same play has given another kind of meaning to the fight
for the right to love as old as Romeo and Juliet, if not
older which places that conflict irretrievably in our own
times as much as Shakespeare's play was in his. The eternal
philosophic conflict of life against death can be found in
such different plays as Bury the Dead and The Brave and
the,Blind.
The conflict between loyalties, the struggle for the right
to live, to think freely, the conflict between men for power
are all old human conflicts. The social playwright has used
them too, but he has translated them, in a sense, and given
them, fittingly, the meaning of our times. Love versus
duty, as theatre-worn a dramatic conflict as there is, be-
comes revived and renewed in the hands of a playwright
who sees, as in Black Pit, that in our world love and duty
are not inimical to each other's interest. Rather, it is pos-
sible that one can be satisfied only by the satisfaction of the
other. Joe Kovarsky must inevitably and tragically lose the
love of his wife when he forgets that he has a duty to his
fellow-men. '
^T he social playwright looks upon conflict in the theatre
with a dynamic vision. He is not content to accept the tra-
dition that certain loyalties and values are by nature the
antithesis of each other. He has brought to these old con-
flicts a synthesizing touch which derives from this accept-
ance of a unified, progressive, and humane world point
of view.
94
PART II SCOPE
THE ONE-ACT PLAY AND THE RADIO
VAL GIELGUD is Drama Director of the British Broad-
casting Corporation, and as such especially qualified to write
on the subject of "The One-Act Play and the Radio." He has
himself written several one-act plays which have been pro-
duced widely in England, and is the author of a technical
book on how to write for the radio. Besides his professional
connections with wireless and playwriting, Mr. Gielgud has
written a number of detective novels.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY AND THE RADIO
by Val Gielgud *
TO the writer of one-act plays, the radio has opened a new
and in many respects a very fascinating field. At the risk of
seeming to insist upon the obvious, I feel that any article
dealing with this subject must begin by emphasizing one
fact: that play writing for the stage and play writing for the
microphone are two very different things. The broadcast
play is, of course, the Cinderella of the drama. In com-
parison with the play of the theatre, with its honorable
lineage stretching back to Aeschylus and even beyond, or
even with the cinema, which has crammed birth, adoles-
cence, and at any rate quasi-maturity into something like
forty years, the broadcast play is an infant in arms. In-
deed, it is doubtful whether it can be claimed to have had
any serious existence at all for more than four years at the
outside. It would therefore be ridiculous to pretend that
the moment has yet come either to compile a history of
broadcast drama or to lay down a code of hard and fast
rules for its writing and production.
The author who is looking to the stage is dealing with'
1 Although Mr. Gielgud, being English, naturally relies on the Brit-
ish Broadcasting Corporation for statistics and on English plays for ex-
amples, what he has to say about the short radio drama in this chapter
is basically applicable to the American scene. Editor.
97
RADIO
an audience in mass, essentially susceptible to mass reac-
tions of emotion. The author who is writing for broadcast-
ing is dealing with an audience infinitely larger but an
audience mainly composed of individual units. His ap-
proach therefore must be far more personal, more inti-
mate. He cannot count on the help of his audience to do
much of his work for him, as a stage author, for example,
can count on one or two members of his audience to start
his laughs for him. And this qualification must continually
be borne in mind with regard both to subject and to tech-
nique of construction and dialogue.
There is the further point that the radio audience covers
every section of society. The radio play must cater for the
tastes of a potentially nationwide audience j as opposed to
the very limited potential audiences of theatregoers, whose
tastes can pretty easily be gauged and summarized.
The principal problem of the would-be radio playwright
is of course how he shall overcome the fundamental handi-
cap of being deprived of his audiences' eyes. People are ac-
customed to the idea of "seeing plays," as opposed to
hearing them. Therefore it is essential that the attention of
listeners should be immediately caught at the opening of
the broadcast play and their curiosity aroused.
It is doubtful whether the broadcast play leaving tele-
vision possibilities for the moment out of account can
ever have the widespread popular appeal of the film, for
the simple reasons that people find it easier to use their
eyes than to use their ears and that a medium which ap-
peals to two senses simultaneously can achieve its object
more simply than a medium which can only appeal to one.
Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence to show that the
invisible audience for radio drama is steadily increasing j
VAL GIELGUD
and what is the primary motive of this chapter there
are apparently sufficient people interested in the question
of writings plays for broadcasting for an average of some
forty plays a week to be submitted to the British Broad-
casting Corporation for production on the air.
The radio play can afford no "padding." It must make
its points clearly and distinctly. It is probably elementary
to insist on such points as the need for limiting characters
in number to a minimum and for differentiating them as
strongly as possible in type to give scope for easily distin-
guishable voice casting by the producer and for the fairly
frequent insertion of the names of the characters in the
course of their dialogue to make sure that the audience is
not growing at a loss over the various speakers' identities.
These things are the A B C of writing for the microphone.
If the author begins with the assumption that his work
can be given to the microphone either because, although
written for the stage, it has failed to achieve stage produc-
tion or because he wants practice in writing for the stage
and thinks that writing for the microphone will keep his
hand in, he is strangling his work at birth. There is, of
course, a place in radio dramatic productions for the
adapted stage play. But such adaptations are quite a differ-
ent type of work from the original play written for broad-
casting. It is on one common ground only that the stage
and the microphone meet. That ground is, of course, a
vitally important one. Both demand that the author should
be able to write and have something to say. But in techni-
cal methods they have nothing in common. The stage has
one set of limiting conventions^ the microphone has an-
other and a quite different set.
If a play is unsuitable for stage production, the odds
99
RADIO
are a hundred to one that it will be even more unsuitable
for studio production. It is possible that the theme may
be unsuitable for the stage and yet suitable for the micro-
phone. But if that is so, the theme should be treated a sec-
ond time strictly from the microphone point of view. It
is, practically speaking, useless to submit a rejected stage
play for broadcasting.
The newcomer to writing for radio is only too often mis-
led by a curious legend that has grown up on the subject of
"sound effects." For some years, in Great Britain at any
rate, a quite disproportionate importance was given to the
activities of the Effects Staff at Broadcasting House, with
their specially surfaced tables, their electric resistances,
their mixing panels for phonograph records of effects of
all kinds, their tin baths and roller skates. It has been
proved by harsh experience that the best radio plays are
far from being those which employ the greatest number
of sound effects. On the contrary, the fewer sound effects
there are in a radio play the better. And any experienced
radio producer will point out that while one good effect
will, in the true sense of the word, be "effective," a multi-
tude serve only to confuse the listener and fog the outline
of the play.
Radio should come sympathetically to the experienced
writer of short plays because of his training in handling
the limited time. It is true that in England the average
length of the radio play tends to be considerably greater
than the length of an ordinary one-act play. This is partly
because the British Broadcasting Corporation has always
maintained a considerable proportion of adapted full-
length stage plays in its dramatic output adaptations
whose average length works out at an hour and a quarter.
IOO
VAL GIELGUD
I understand this is not the case in the United States, where
the normal length of a radio dramatic piece is half an
hour. And even in England it has been fairly convinc-
ingly proved that the best original radio plays written for
the microphone take from forty to fifty minutes.
It is, on the whole, true to say that the ideal length for
a broadcast play has tended to grow steadily shorter, ex-
perience showing that an audience finds listening to the
spoken word for more than an hour and a half at the out-
side too much of a strain. An exception can be made in the
case of adaptations of full-length novels, such as Carnival
or Jane Eyre, or in the case of familiar classical plays such
as those of Shakespeare, but if the original radio dramatist
aims at a length varying from forty minutes to an hour
and a quarter, he will probably not be very far wrong.
Listening to a radio play has not yet become an automatic
habit, and the radio play runs without intervals. A play
cannot be appreciated from the loud-speaker with that
vague sense of lazy entertainment so widespread amongst
theatrical audiences. People are not used to relying on their
ears alone, therefore the radio dramatist demands an ex-
traordinary degree of concentrated attention for his work,
and this quality of concentration must not be unduly or
unreasonably strained.
The writer of one-act plays is therefore at an advantage
as compared with the ordinary playwright, who is accus-
tomed to his three acts of preparation, development and
climax, and explanation or retrospection. He is used to a
choice of subject which can be handled within a compara-
tively brief time limit j to the need for a rapid establish-
ment of essential characterization; to the requirements of
strong and simple plots. Not only this. He is freed from
IOI
RADIO
one of the greatest problems of the writer of the one-act
stage play. He is not hampered by having to get along
without changes in time and space. The radio theatre has
the freedom of the cinema, perhaps an even greater free-
dom, in regard to changes of scene and sequence.
This leads us immediately to the consideration of the
next practical point. For precisely the same reasons that
the radio dramatist cannot afford to be too lengthy or,too
verbose, he must also avoid obscurity of treatment. He
must never forget that his listeners, while having eyes,
are yet for his purpose blind. Development of plot, careful
distinction of characters, even limitation of number of char-
acters, and definite stamping of time and place must all be
emphasized without being stressed to absurdity, or labeled
to monotony.
For this essential clarity of treatment, two methods can
be employed. The simplest a method more frequently
used a year or two ago than at present is the use of link-
ing narrative to form, as it were, the spinal cord of the
play. This has the great advantage of solving the problem
at a single stroke - y but it brings with it almost equivalent
disadvantages of tending to a certain unreality and crude-
ness of construction. It cannot hope to satisfy a really con-
scientious dramatic craftsman, although, again in the case
of radio adaptation of novels, it is occasionally justified,
and will probably continue. But where this slightly pedes-
trian method is not employed, the author must contin-
ually bear in mind that he has nothing but his dialogue
with which not only to tell his story dearly and unmis-
takably but also to indicate changes of scene, physical traits
of his characters, and the essential details of their back-
ground.
102
VAL GIELGUD
It is obvious, therefore, that the simple plot, involving
few characters, and those few characters of a type to be
simply and immediately distinguished by innate differences
in their individual voices, is the best for the dramatist's
purpose. The fact that much has been written of the tech-
nical complications of radio production has led a good
many people to believe that the best radio play is also the
most elaborate radio play; that the simultaneous use of
many Studios, various ingenious effects, and a quantity of
music are the essential ingredients of the ideal broadcast
play.
This is simply not the case. The somewhat elaborate
machinery which can be placed at the disposal of the pro-
ducer must be the servant of the play and not its master.
Complication for its own sake is as bad in the case of radio
drama as it is in the case of anything else. Both for author
and producer the golden rule is that a complicated method
should never be employed where a simple one can achieve
the desired result. Mere ingenuity has covered far too
great a multitude of sins in the history of the broadcast
play. There may be occasions when such technical ingenu-
ity is both desirable and necessary. Such occasions should
be the exception and not the rule.
But, as in all playwriting, two things are essential to the
microphone author. He must have something to say, and
he must be able to say it. In other words, he must have
the gifts of imagination and of dialogue. And I fear that
these gifts are literally gifts. I doubt if they can be ac-
quired, though it is a pathetic belief of the organizers of
the scenario departments of various film organizations that
dialogue can be achieved as it were synthetically, if only
enough mixed brains are put onto the job. An exhaustive
103
RADIO
knowledge of the technique of microphone production is
by no means necessary. It is of course helpful. But the
microphone is like any other medium. It should be the
servant, not the master, of the artist. The play that is writ-
ten merely to exploit the tricks of the radio producer's
trade will be a second-rate play. The limitations of the
medium must of course not be neglected. But with that
qualification kept firmly in mind, the actual bringing of
the work of art to the listener can safely be left to the pro-
fessional radio producer, whose daily business it is.
ii
In entering upon the vexed and difficult question of
suitable subjects for the radio dramatist, it should be estab-
lished that authors should in the first place write micro-
phone plays round subjects rather than attach subjects pain-
fully to microphone plays. More explicitly, because the
machinery of radio offers the dramatist certain particular
advantages and attractions, it is a mistake to make use of
them regardless of whether the subject is suitable for this
type of treatment or not.
While it is true that, as compared, for example, with
vaudeville programs or concerts by military bands, broad-
cast plays are program items of relatively minority appeal,
nevertheless, the mere fact that a play is broadcast as op-
posed to being presented in a theatre makes it necessary
that its basis be, from one point of view or another, a popu-
lar one. This is not entirely to shut out from approach to
the microphone the play which appeals to a strictly limited
audience. There is, and should be, a place for such plays.
To attempt to broadcast nothing but plays that would
104
VAL GIELGUD
please every listener would result only in failing to please
any listener.
The best that it could be hoped to achieve from a policy
of broadcasting nothing but entirely popular drama would
be to avoid hurting anyone's feelings: an ideal conflicting
seriously with the classic definition of the value of drama
the purgation of the emotions of its audience by arousing
in them pity and terror. Nevertheless, it is absurd for the
radio dramatist to think of his audience in anything ap-
proaching the same terms as does the author who hopes
that his work may face an audience in the West End of
London.
First of all, he must remember that his audience is not
in the strict sense of the word an audience at all. It is not a
corporate body, it is a cross section of society made up of
individuals, for the most part by their firesides and in the
company, not of strangers interesting or irritating as the
case may be, but of their relatives and friends. Secondly,
it is an audience comprising all sorts and conditions of
men and women. It would be absurd to carry this second
point too far. Unless he is an author of the first rank, in
which case he can certainly dispense with these various
well-meant hints, the dramatist cannot hope that his work
will appeal equally to children and grownups, dukes and
dustmen, clergymen and charwomen, philistines and intel-
lectuals. But it is a great mistake to forget the vast size of
the target aimed at and to ignore the implications of that
factj and this particular point may perhaps be summed up
in the axiom that on the one hand the subject of a broad-
cast play should be as broad based as possible; on the other
that such subjects must be limited by considerations of
105
RADIO
tastes and common sense, from the point of view of what
can desirably be broadcast for one and all to hear.
Needless to say, this question of subject has not yet been
finally solved. It has gone through various phases parallel
with the development of the broadcast play. At one time,
for example, it was considered that owing to the peculiar
facilities offered by its machinery, abolishing limitations of
space and time, the most promising field for the radio
dramatist was in the fast-moving story of adventure, cov-
ering miles of country and years of time, and involving
every type of mechanical sound device to give variety and
diversion. There probably remains a place for this kind of
broadcast play, the play of colorful action and adventure,
particularly if music is one of its essential ingredients. Per-
haps the most successful example to date is the play written
by W. Rooke-Ley and Christopher Martin on the subject
of the composer Chopin's tragic love affair with Maria
Wodzinska.
in
It is, incidentally, almost impossible to overemphasize
the importance of music to the broadcast play. It stands to
reason that as people are trained by habit and custom to
listen to music, while they are not so trained to listen to
plays, the addition of music to a play which is heard but
not seen is bound to make it more varied, more pleasant,
and easier to listen to. But this is not all. If music is used
as one of the ingredients of a broadcast play, it cannot by
any means be regarded as "incidental" music. The conven-
tional overture and indifferent entr'acte, which we all know
so well as being the signals for the male members of a
theatrical audience to leave hastily for the bars, have no
1 06
VAL GIELGUD
counterpart in radio drama. Any music which is used im-
mediately becomes if so facto of the first importance.
I do not think that it is too much to say that the music
of a broadcast play is quite as important as its actors. There
may be much of it, there may be extremely little; but
whatever its quantity, it is always an essential and never a
mere accessory. It is difficult to put limits to the various
ways in which it can be used. It may be employed merely
for emotional purposes, as in Mr. MarvelPs Across the
Moon> when various tunes, impregnated with the strongest
sentimental associations, were deliberately wedded to vari-
ous parts of the play and produced an astonishing effect j
an effect rather cheap and easy, perhaps, but none the less
perfectly legitimate. Again, it may be used, as in Mr.
Harding's special broadcast version of The Tempest, to in-
dicate changes of scene and to stamp clearly the entrances
of different characters by providing them with musical
themes, almost after the fashion of a Wagner opera.
It may be used, as was the case in Cho-pin, as practically
the central core of the play. It is unnecessary to multiply
examples, but the dramatist who neglects the musical ques-
tion when he is deliberating the problems of subject and
method is simply tying one hand behind his back. Prophecy
is seldom a grateful or successful pursuit, but in this con-
nection I feel that the first radio playwright who can do
for the microphone what Rene Clair has done for the
screen, by the combination of the rhythms of music and of
the spoken word, will win a high place for himself. And
unless theatrical production entirely distracts his attention,
I should be inclined to point to Tyrone Guthrie as
the most likely individual to succeed on these lines, if he
107
RADIO
fulfills the expectations that were aroused by Squirrel's
Cage and The Flowers Are Not for You to Pick.
IV
This consideration of the problem of subject could ob-
viously be expanded at indefinite length, but perhaps it
will be sufficient to conclude here with a few words on one
more point: the question of suitable characters. This ques-
tion of characters must be immediately related to a proper
sense of the audience for whom broadcast plays are writ-
ten. As I mentioned before, this audience is essentially a
cross section of individuals. It is not like an audience in
the theatre, susceptible to mass influences and mass emo-
tions. It is not even primarily expectant of entertainment,
and therefore prepared for the sake of entertainment to
dismiss most considerations of common sense and reality.
Therefore the author, whose invention produces characters
who from their essential humanity convince listeners of the
real existence of themselves and their circumstances, starts
at a tremendous advantage. In this sense, perhaps, the
radio dramatist can borrow from the technique of the nov-
elist rather than from that of the playwright.
The characters in a broadcast play are much closer to
their audience than the characters in a play or a film.
There is no visual barrier of silver screen or golden foot-
lights. The radio audience is at the actor's elbow. If that
actor is a marionette or a dummy and if the circumstances
and the scenes in which he moves are composed of the
painted "flats" of stage convention, the listener will be un-
convinced and apt to grow first disappointed and then
exasperated.
The truth of this is very clearly demonstrated by the
108
VAL GIELGUD
fact that while the plays of Shakespeare in the theatre are
most magnificent examples of classic tradition and must
be watched in a certain conventional manner somewhat
comparable with the way in which a reader turns the pages
of Milton or a traveler regards the Parthenon or the Sis-
tine Chapel, a Shakespeare play broadcast becomes an in-
timate thing, a thing less severely majestic, less esthetically
dignified, but one, from the point of view of the average
man, far more immediately comprehensible, even more
dare one claim it? absorbingly interesting.
And while in the theatre the play about the common or
garden person, the play of the mean street or the suburban
villa, is apt to be rather a bore and to achieve merit in pro-
portion as it is related to somewhat pseudo-Russian sym-
bolism, the same type of play from a microphone and loud-
speaker has an immediate and unqualified appeal.
In conclusion, I would add one last practical piece of
advice in relation to the question of subject. If he is wise,
the radio dramatist will not choose that type of subject
which most readily springs to his mind as being suitable
for a broadcast play. Such subjects as deal with remark-
able scientific inventions, monstrous natural cataclysms, and
in general the type of thing of which H. G. Wells wrote
so brilliantly in the days of The Invisible Man and The
War of the Worlds are more easily conceived as radio
drama than written also, there have been too many of
them. At first sight they are attractive. They offer unlim-
ited scope alike to the imagination of the radio dramatist
and the ingenuity of the radio producer. They fulfill one
of the canons that has been laid down in this article, in
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RADIO
so far as such subjects are quite outside the capacity of the
normal stage.
But the dramatist who knows his business and who prides
himself on being craftsman as well as artist should to some
extent aim at supplying a demand. There is at present a
great demand for the writing of comedy for broadcasting.
So far the demand has not even begun to be met. It is
probably not an exaggeration to say that the most success-
ful humorous dramatic writer who has been broadcast (in
England) is Oscar Wilde. It has occasionally been made a
reproach to the Productions Department of the B.B.C.
that their tendency has been to produce plays either mor-
bid or sensational. Unfortunately, it is impossible to manu-
facture humor synthetically, or by formula, and make a
good job of it. A wireless Wodehouse, a broadcasting
Barry Pain would be beyond price, could they be found.
Miss Constanduros and Gillie Porter have proved in
their several ways that it is perfectly possible to write
humor indigenous to the microphone, but so far no one
has emulated them in the field of the broadcast play.
This field of broadcast comedy lies practically virgin be-
fore all aspirants to honors in writing plays for broad-
casting.
110
THE ONE-ACT PLAY AND THE FILMS
ISAAC GOLDBERG, distinguished essayist, translator,
and critic, was born in Boston in 1887. He evinced an early
interest in the arts and for a time was seriously determined to
become a composer. But, at the behest of his parents, he entered
Harvard, paying his way through the university with annual
free scholarships and prizes, and specializing in languages.
Music, drama and letters remained, however, an absorbing and
vital fascination. He received his Ph.D. in Romance Philology.
Mr. Goldberg is a varied and prolific writer. He has written
books on Gilbert and Sullivan, George Jean Nathan, Havelock
Ellis, George Gershwin, H. L. Mencken, Spanish-American
literature, drama and many other subjects. His forthcoming
books are The Wonder of Words y a popular treatment of lin-
guistics, and American Drama Today.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY AND THE FILMS
by Isaac Goldberg
IT is always useful, in discussing an art and its products,
to keep in mind the materials out of which the product is
made. It is especially useful for those to whom the sound
of the word "product," in connection with art, vibrates with
overtones of sacrilege, or, at least, of gross materialism.
Art is made not by angels for God but by man and
woman for men and women. It is made, to be sure, in
the travail of the spirit 5 but it must find, for that spirit,
an expression in terms of concrete material. It is a great
triumph for the human soul to hack away marble and re-
lease from its depths an inspiring significance for human-
ity. We must not forget, however, the hand that does the
hacking and the marble that is hewn. We speak poetically
of "releasing" significance from the depths of the marble.
What we are really doing is sculpturing ourselves, not the
marble ; the significance comes, not out of the marble, but
out of our sculptured selves.
The essential nature of the marble or the granite, never-
theless, has a determining influence upon the form that
our expression is to assume. This is natural. One cannot
do in stone what can be done in wood. One cannot do with
music what can be done with poetry. This is not to say
"3
FILMS
that a certain amount of interfusion cannot take place
among the arts; Wagnerian opera or, to be more pre-
cise, Wagnerian music drama was a brave attempt at such
an interfusion that sometimes resulted in confusion. There
is far more music in poetry, for example, than many poets
and many musicians seem to discover. Poetry and music
blend very naturally, since it is possible indeed, unavoid-
able to sing and speak at the same time. Speech and song
probably began together and have never become truly sep-
arated. That is why the conventions of opera achieve so
ready an acceptance. Speech-song is not altogether a "con-
vention"} it is fundamentally natural. It is more primitive,
of course, than the relatively songless speech of such lan-
guages as English 5 Chinese, on the other hand, and not
Chinese only, incorporates the pitch of words as an essen-
tial phase of their meaning.
Opera, again, moves at a slower pace than drama. This
is necessary because in opera the duplex nature of the dia-
logue (at once song and speech) requires more effort from
both singer and spectator-auditor than does the concen-
trated nature of dialogue upon the stage of the playhouse.
Too much action in an opera can be as troublesome as too
little. Often it is hard to choose between the nervous tempo
of an Italian opera and those long-drawn episodes in Wag-
nerian music drama that only a too too perfect Wagnerite
can endure without weariness of the flesh and the spirit.
The one is irritating $ the other is exhausting. Neither rep-
resents the most effective use of the material at hand, nor
the most subtle appreciation of what is called the psychol-
ogy of attention.
All of this has its pertinency to the problems of the short
play as contrasted with the long, and of the short play on
114
ISAAC GOLDBERG
the stage as contrasted with the short play in the movies.
Perhaps that last phrase is fantastically optimistic. The
movies really have no short plays; maybe they will never
have any. Maybe the "short," as we know it on the screen,
will always remain short of reason, of sense, of anything
that has appeal for a half-civilized spectator. However, if
I really believed such a thing I should not be writing these
lines.
Oh, yes. ... I have heard the statement, and have re-
peated it, that the movies after all are made for persons
with a mental age of thirteen or fourteen or was it
twelve? I dare say that most of them are. It does not hap-
pen to be "most of them" that I am interested in. Nor is
it the part of a critic to accept the lowest standards of an
art. (You see, I regard the movies as an art, and as a most
important art.) I was the more astonished, then, to read in
the New York Times (September 26, 1937), shortly after
the broadcast of a half-hour play by Maxwell Anderson,
the following comment from an anonymous writer:
In 1937 noted dramatists have recognized "the ether" as
a dramatic medium as never before, with their experimental
broadcasts revealing deep thought and preparation. They have
yet to discover, however, that simplicity is the key-note of
success; that they are aiming at an audience the average intelli-
gence of which is estimated at the thirteen-year-old level, the
same which Buck Rogers and Bobby Benson strike.
This is discouraging. For it shows that the radio critic
has taken over from the movies a dangerous half-truth.
I do not deny that the movies aim, generally, at the thir-
teen-year-old audience or at the adult audience in its thir-
teen-year-old moments. Surely, however, the radio is in
"5
FILMS
somewhat different case. And that difference is important,
especially for the Andersons and the MacLeishes who are
trying to establish a new dramatic form.
To clarify this issue will help to clarify the particular
problem that suggested this chapter.
In the first place, the radio deals in presentations that
range from fifteen minutes to one hour in length, with the
half-hour as the favorite period. The movie demands an
hour as the minimum that is, the feature picture does}
frequently it runs beyond this length. It may be offered in
rejoinder that the radio, concentrating upon sound alone,
demands more in the way of attention than does the movie,
with its wide variety of sensuous appeal. There is some-
thing to the point. It is not conclusive, however. One may
switch from this program to that on the radio 5 we have
to take our movies as we find them.
On the radio there are special programs for the symbolic
thirteen-year-old. There are programs, too, that seek to
appeal only to this symbol's father, mother, and elder
brothers and sisters. Only the other day a Hollywood di-
rector was discussing with an interviewer the advisability
of having certain showhouses specialize in certain types of
film, so that persons with special tastes might know just
where to go for the kind of product that they felt like see-
ing. Maybe this is a dream, but it is the dream of a hard-
headed Hollywood director, not of a soft-headed, high-
brow critic. It may also be a mere coincidence that at the
very time this director was being interviewed, the proprie-
tor of a New York movie theatre was announcing that
thenceforth his house would specialize in the showing of
horror films and Westerns.
The age level of the radio, then, is not so constant as is
116
ISAAC GOLDBERG
that of the movie. It fluctuates, which is a contradictory
thing for a level to do.
Now, nobody could convince me that Messrs. Maxwell
Anderson and Archibald MacLeish are aiming at a thir-
teen-year-old audience or that they should be doing so.
Indeed, they have come to the radio, they have been
asked to participate in the establishment of a new form,
just because the radio companies wish to appeal to an audi-
ence distinct from the characteristic audiences of the com-
mercial programs. If we are to continue indiscriminately to
appeal to the thirteen-year-old mentality, 'why trouble the
MacLeishes and the Andersons, when the regular script-
writers are doing well (that is, ill) enough?
If the writer in the New York Times cannot see the
point, how are we to expect better of the radio listener?
It is somewhat discouraging. The more so, indeed, as the
anonymous writer, in the course of his comments, pro-
nounces Amos V Andy not only "tops among radio ac-
tors" but "master playwrights." One had thought that
Ibsen, with whatever faults his writing may show, was a
master playwright. One had reserved such extravagant
phrases for Shakespeare, Goethe, and few others. Now,
because Amos W Andy can appeal to child mentalities with
their "simple, common, and homely" material, the Mac-
Leishes and the Andersons must not aspire to complexity,
uncommonness, and beauty for an adult audience.
Such comment is not criticism. It is lack of discrimina-
tion 5 it is even corruption by the very medium that one
is called upon to improve.
I am not undervaluing such virtues as Amos *n* Andy
may possess. Myself, I find these men dull, or, rather,
meaningless. That is simply a matter of personal interest.
117
FILMS
Amos V Andy haven't the slightest desire to appeal to
me. Why should they have? They probably laugh them-
selves into knots over their masterful playwriting, but not
on radio time with the microphones turned on.
Why Anderson and MacLeish should have to go to
school to these pseudo black men, I fail to understand. It
was a very proper question that Sir Toby asked: "Dost
thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no
more cakes and ale?" But one might have asked of Sir
Toby, "Dost thou think that because there are cakes and
ale there must not therefore be virtue, on occasion?" In
other words, if Amos V Andy have their place, must there
on that account be no place for Maxwell Anderson and
Archibald MacLeish?
I discuss this matter at length because I am visionary
enough to look for an improvement of "shorts" in the
movies j so impractical, indeed, as to look forward to a
time when, even on the screen, there will be a place for
the Andersons and the MacLeishes.
Yes, what I venture to suggest is the adoption of one-
act plays, whether singly or in groups, by the movies, as
part of their regular offerings.
Is the idea so fantastic, after all?
The short film supplies a need, in the movie programs,
that is quite similar to the need for short stories in the
magazines and the newspapers, to the need for short plays
in the amateur and the commercial theatre, to the need for
short plays that has begun to be felt by the radio. It is
not merely that brief tales are required to fill odd spaces
in the dailies, weeklies, and monthlies, or that brief ma-
terial is required to fill odd time in cinematic programs.
Certain material simply does not lend itself to long treat-
118
ISAAC GOLDBERG
ment, just as other material demands a broader canvas for
its most effective presentation.
We used to hear a great deal about the reason for the
vogue of the short story. We were a hurried people, ran
the explanation. We had little time for long tales, such as
the Victorian three-decker. Then along came Anthony
Adverse and other mastodon fictions, reaching a climax in
Gone with the Wind. I fear that Gone with the Wind, re-
gardless of its deficiencies as fiction, must have buried the
old short-story theory deep beneath the sod of Gettysburg.
Dost thou think that because thou art in a hurry, no one
else shall have leisure for long fiction? Or that because
thou hast plenty of time everybody else must read books
a thousand pages long? No. It takes all kinds of people to
make even the world of the movies, and some of them
have stopped being thirteen years old.
It is too bad that none of the short afterpieces of the
Greek theatre was preserved. Had any been saved for pos-
terity, brief forms would have achieved precious academic
sanction, together with the comedies and the tragedies. As
it is, the one-act play is still a left-handed sister of the
longer form, and brevity, in general, seems by a queer
psychological twist to imply inferiority.
If this is still appreciably true of the theatre, despite the
efforts of a Chekhov, a Lady Gregory, a Synge, or a
Schnitzler, what can we say of the radio and the cinema?
Yet the cinema has had, from the beginning, a marvelous
opportunity that so far has been neglected sadly.
The opportunity still points, like a many-armed Hindu
deity, in a number of directions. It might even be seized
upon to solve some of the problems associated with the
curse of double billing, and that strange habit movie people
119
FILMS
have of setting out, with deliberate intention, to create an
inferior, class B, picture. I shouldn't be surprised if an-
other classification appeared, to take care of "bank-nites."
So that the grammar of the cinema would recognize, as its
scale of positive, comparative, and superlative values, the
terms Class A, Class B, and Bank-Nite: positively terrific,
comparatively colossal, and superlatively pediculous, re-
spectively.
It has been the custom, up to now, to regard "shorts" as
stopgaps, as irresponsible fillers, devoted either to cheap
slapstick, to vaudeville, or to melodramatic nonsense. First-
class actors and actresses would be insulted and rightly,
under present conditions if they should be asked to take
part in one. The "shorts" are made with little conscience
and are received, generally, with as little pleasure.
They add up, thus far, to so much waste. Yet this need
not be. The proper exploitation of material for "shorts"
could serve a number of valuable purposes, altogether aside
from the chief purpose, which is entertainment for semi-
civilized creatures.
There is no reason and at this point I shall probably
be accused of unreason why even the top-notch stars
should not take part in the one-act films that I have in
mind. Greatness in acting is not synonymous with length
of footage j besides, a happy idea for a cinematic action
might actually prove more effective when presented as the
brief impression it is than when dragged out to fill an
hour or an hour and a quarter.
I remember, from the days of the old Yiddish Art
Theatre, a performance of Andreyev's Seven Who Were
Htwged. A certain gifted actor he was a star even then
had been entrusted with the role of an army officer who
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ISAAC GOLDBERG
comes to bid farewell to his son on the eve of the boy's
hanging. The officer was on the stage for but ten minutes,
but into those ten minutes he distilled the concentrated
essence of hapless, hopeless good-by. Those ten minutes
became a play within a play the tragedy of misunder-
standing between father and son, between generation and
generation, between old regime and new, the tragedy of
final parting. The name of the actor was Muni Weisen-
freund, now known to the films as Paul Muni.
I do not suggest that our leading players go en 'masse
into short cinematic plays. However, when a first-rate
short play is written for the movies, a first-rate cast should
go into it. I do not suggest, either, that the proposed one-
act plays for movies (with their naturally more varied
backgrounds, more elastic action, and cinematic tempo)
should be regarded with condescension, or as a corner into
which to throw material discarded from longer films. Yet
the briefer form could make an excellent training ground
for players on the way to deeper abilities. It could provide,
so to speak, a "little-theatre" department of the cinema.
It could employ minor talents but talents, nevertheless
in a sort of school for finer things. It could serve the same
purpose for directorial talent. It could offer opportunity,
too, for the kind of experimentation that could be applied
profitably, in time, to the film of regular length.
These are all side issues, however, and secondary to the
chief purpose: the presentation of the best material avail-
able, not as Class B or Class C fillers, but as Class A
material of naturally restricted scope.
Is this really so fantastic? Is it any more fantastic than
three series of one-act plays on three different nights in
the theatre, during a single week? But, I seem to hear
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FILMS
someone say, it was Noel Coward and Gertrude Law-
rence who drew the public to Tonight at 8:30. I'll not
deny that it was the stars, not the plays, that attracted the
patronage. This makes all the more practical my proposal
for the movies, since it is the star rather than the play that
attracts the chief attention from the movie public. An eve-
ning of one-act plays in a movie house may sound alto-
gether insane, until somebody has the courage to try it
out and make a success of it.
Let me consider but one technical problem of many
that the cinematic one-act play could help to solve: the
matter of numerous scenes. It is not a rare experience to
discover a long play with a single set and a short play
with many. In the long play, when the single set is not
dictated by the action, it is a measure of practical economy.
In the short play, more often than not, the plurality of
visual scenes is a confession of dramaturgic inadequacy. It
corresponds to excessive words in writing and to inept com-
position. Unity of impression, of course, takes precedence
over such a shallow unity as that of location j a play with a
single set may be badly disjointed, while a short play in
several scenes may possess a very tight unity. I recall a
notable epigram by Manuel Gonzalez Prada, a Peruvian
libertarian whose spirit should be better known in our
own country. "One may be concise in a volume," he said,
"and garrulous in a line."
The movie has its own way of dealing with scene and
tempo and impression. It has its own way of dealing even
with subtle, introspective, subjective material a way im-
possible to the stage. Many of the plays written for the
stage appear to have been thought out in cinematic rather
than in dramatic terms. Nor do I refer to those dramatists
122
ISAAC GOLDBERG
who write with both eyes upon eventual purchase of their
product by the movie studios. The classical stage of Eng-
land and Spain, for example, is far more cinematic in this
sense than is the French.
Madness, in cinematic terms, could be made much more
mad than the stage makes it; battle scenes, pageantry,
magic, lend themselves admirably to treatment on the
screen.
The screen is more contrapuntal, so to say, than is the
stage. It has a command over time and space, which it can
telescope at need, that the stage can never hope for. This
does not mean that the dramatist must always hope for
such a command, or that his values are the values of the
screen. They are not. It does mean, however, that the
screen supplies, for the nervous tempo and the subjective
matter of much contemporary writing, a remarkable me-
dium. It does mean that many of the polyscenic short plays
that we read could achieve their maximum effect as movies,
where the unity of impression (with the proper direction,
naturally) could be made to persist despite the shifting of
scene from one locale to another.
This must not be misread as a suggestion that the stage
go out of business and that all aspiring dramatists become,
instead, aspiring scenarists. It means only what it says: that
in the movies there is a remarkable opportunity for the
presentation of brief material in highly effective, artistic
fashion and that a time may come when even the movie
people will discover in the one-act play a profitable staple
of popular entertainment.
When some of the sentiments in the preceding para-
graph were first printed in my department of The One Act
Play Magazine (issue of July, 1937) a commentator upon
123
FILMS
Hollywood replied cheerfully that my criticism of Holly-
wood "shorts" was quite justified. They were, indeed,
"junk," but, he went on, in this business you can't junk
junk so easily. Irving Hoffman, who writes the "Tales of
Hoffman" column for the Hollywo'od Reporter, knows his
junk. The whole matter, he agreed, had begun to smell
like a corpse concealed somewhere on the premises. In
simple Anglo-Saxon, the average movie "short" smells.
Who is to blame? Oh, yes . . . that thirteen-year-old
scarecrow, who takes all the whippings for the industry.
Well, the thirteen-year-old seems to bear up pretty well
under such films as The Injormer and Pasteur and Zola
and Mutiny on the Bounty and Captains Courageous. He
responds quite nicely to the Walt Disney animations, many
of which are one-acters of a highly fantastic sort.
Now that vaudeville has returned to the screen in the
shape of Big Broadcasts, Vogues, Scandals, Follies, and
what not else, how about trying out a real one-acter as part
of such a long entertainment? By a real one-acter I don't
mean a slapstick sequence devised in impromptu fashion in
the studio. I mean a dramatic narrative (tragic or comic)
composed by a dramatist with a flair for the movies. The
public does not need to be educated for this type of enter-
tainment. The newsreels, the travelogues, even the fashion
"shorts," have paved the way from the beginning. These
all contain elements of the one-act play. I am not a mind
reader, but it seems to me that many a first-rate performer
would prefer an appearance in a strong brief film to an
appearance in one of those dreary full-length affairs that
adds nothing to the actor's reputation, the enjoyment of
the audience, the prestige of the studio or the contents of
the box-office till.
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ISAAC GOLDBERG
I'll wager that right now the Noel Coward pieces m
Tonight at 8:30, which are hardly examples of the dra-
matic art at its best, could be filmed to run several in suc-
cession, as a single bill, making altogether a film of slightly
more than average length and appealing successfully to the
typical film public. It would be more like Hollywood, how-
ever, to buy the whole nine and make full-length films of
each.
Before doffing my prophet's robes, let me repeat: Holly-
wood one day will discover the finer possibilities of the
short play. When it does, it will be a happy day for all
concerned, except the bad dramatist. Who knows? We may
even discover that the thirteen-year-old has added cubits
or, at least, a year of I.Q. to his stature. To tell the truth,
I don't believe that the mythical creature exists. I know
many thirteen-year-olds. But I know, too, that they have
elder brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers.
In the movie house there are many publics. The short
play could be made to appeal to all, or most, of these. And
if, as compared with other films, it had no other virtue to
recommend it, it would at least be shorter than they.
And, yes . . . that thirteen-year-old public. . . . The
problem is so bound up with numerous considerations of
class rule, censorship, theology, and politics that it would
take a book to elucidate. I have never believed that it was
the public who dictated to the manufacturers of the movies.
Not altogether j not nearly altogether. For those who have
been deluded into thinking so, I recommend a reading of
Horace M. Kallen's essay, "The Censor, the Psychologist,
and the Motion Picture," which is to be found in one of
his best books, Indecency and the 5 even Arts. This is a
book, incidentally, that I should mark as obligatory for all
125
FILMS
who are interested in the theory or the practice of the
drama in any of its forms.
I recommend, especially, the final paragraph of Dr.
Kallen's essay:
The responsibility is on the financial masters of the motion
picture. The public does not know what will satisfy it. The
public simply feels hunger and unrest. Any one of thousands of
possible pictures, well-made or shoddy, may serve to allay that
hunger, to still that unrest. The public has no initial power of
choice. If its gratifications are provided through a poor picture,
it will accept that for want of a better one. If a better one is
provided, it will flock to that. The decision is not in the box
office at all. The decision is in the makers of motion pictures.
126
THE ONE-ACT PLAY AND TELEVISION
GILBERT SELDES' talents are so varied that it is difficult
to keep up with all his activities. He is reputed to be the only
writer who has ever contributed steadily and simultaneously to
both The Dial and the Saturday Evening Post.
Mr. Seldes was born in New Jersey in 1893, and was edu-
cated at Central High School in Philadelphia and at Harvard.
In 1929 Mr. Seldes became dramatic critic for the New York
Evening Graphic; in 1931, columnist for the New York
Evening Journal.
His adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata in 1930 was one
of the high lights of the dramatic season. He is the author of
many books, among which are The Seven Lively Arts, The
Movies Come from Amenca y Mainland, and Your Money and
Your Life.
At present Mr. Seldes is director of Television Programs
for the Columbia Broadcasting System.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY AND TELEVISION
by Gilbert Seldes
THE first impulse of anyone preparing to experiment in
television programs is to fall down on his knees and thank
heaven (and a few hundred dramatic writers) for the one-
act play. Without being too sure of the ultimate nature of
television programs, the experimenter assumes that the
drama in one form or another will be an important ele-
ment j and at once he shrinks back from the unpleasant
necessity of compressing the contemporary full-length play
to his requirements. He shrinks also from the physical and
financial difficulties of producing a play with several sets
and a large cast of characters, under conditions parallel in
many important respects to those of stage production, for
a run of one night. The one-act play relieves him of his
troubles. It presents its own difficulties, but it is simple,
compact, and complete.
Yet the dramatist who wants "to get in on the ground
floor of television" and is already planning a group of one-
acters against the coming demand, should be forewarned.
No one can tell how much of its time television will be
able to give to dramatic programs. So far as we can see
now, a sight-and-sound program will have three major
elements: direct transmission of events at the moment they
129
TELEVISION
occur (an inauguration, a tennis match, a riot); second,
moving pictures any movie can be placed before a film
scanner and transmitted to the television receiver ; and
third, programs originating in the studio. This third sec-
tion has to be subdivided because eventually it will include
all of those programs now being broadcast which require
or can easily use a visual counterpart, and in addition a
certain number of programs which will be created because
the television screen has enormously widened the range
of available material. So that our studio work may include
ballet dancing, lessons in cooking or higher mathematics
(unlikely), symphony and jazz orchestras, demonstrations
of gymnastics, musical comedy and the drama.
To balance this warning, there is the promise that tele-
vision, like radio, will probably use up its material very
rapidly.
Tentatively and almost timidly, I suggest that the use
of dramatic material in television will be governed by an
unstable factor the intensity of attention which the tele-
vision screen will demand. A year ago I made a sort of
rule-of-thumb guess, as an operating basis, that you would
have to be five times as attentive to television as you are
to current broadcasting. It is not merely sight, but motion
which catches and holds the eye, that has been added to
sound. This precisely reverses the experience of the mov-
ing pictures when sound was added; we know in effect that
sound slowed up the movies because directors had not
worked out the correct principles governing the relation
of microphone and camera. The moving picture still does
not develop its material as rapidly as it did in the silent
days, but of course it develops it far more completely.
In radio the amount of creative material used for each
130
GILBERT SELDES
quarter or half-hour of drama is extremely small. (I am,
of course, not speaking of legitimate plays adapted to the
use of radio but of material specifically written in the radio
dramatic form.) The serial dramatic sketch has established
a sort of norm or standard which is probably adapted to
the capacity of the audience; that standard develops in
fifteen minutes a tiny part of an episode which may take
five or ten quarter-hour programs to be rendered com-
pletely ; and that episode in turn is only a part of a com-
plete dramatic action which may take half a year. (The
Rise of the Goldbergs and Amos V Andy are examples
of this development; in the latter, one event, the breach-
of-promise suit, was the sustaining interest of several
months of broadcasting which consisted of five fifteen-min-
ute periods a week.)
That television can make its points more rapidly is obvi-
ous from the nature of the medium itself. There will be
no waste of time in making the spectator aware of objects
(doors or daggers) which are used in the dramatic action.
Moreover, the action itself, being visible, will be self-
explanatory; as things seen are more impressive than those
heard, less emphasis will be required, and to avoid being
repetitious and dull a dramatic program for television will
have to proceed more rapidly than one adapted to sound
broadcasting alone; television will possibly approximate
the tempo of a stage presentation.
I said above that the intensity of attention demanded
by the television screen will be a variable factor. The rea-
son for this is that I do not know how absorbing the action
on the screen will be ajter we have become accustomed to
it. At the beginning I should think it likely that the owner
TELEVISION
of a television set will sit before it and refuse to be dis-
tracted y but a good television program will have to in-
clude in its variety certain things which any particular
spectator will not find of primary interest. He may be
an enthusiast for sport and after the novelty of television
has worn off, he may turn away from the screen when
music is being played and merely listen ; an enthusiast for
dancing may not be interested in the visual portion of a
program of current events. We have to face the possibility
that since television will be received in the home (as
opposed to the moving picture seen in a theater where
there is no opportunity for distraction) it may get the
variable attention which radio now gets. The difference
will still be that when the attention is acute, the auditor-
spectator of television will be receiving far more impres-
sions than the auditor of radio. Even if people do not let
their fascinated eyes cling perpetually to the television
screen, the dramatic sketch on the screen will have to
assume that they do.
I want to repeat that these judgments are still largely
guesswork. Always in the back of my mind there are the
two dangers of prophecy in this connection. I recall on
one side the dogmatic assertion that Marconi's signal
would never cross the ocean ; and, on the other side, the
fantastic promise made by a reputable scientist that by the
end of 1938 we should be able to sit in our homes and
watch the efforts of a mountain climber up Mount Everest
or a deep-sea diver at the bottom of the sea. Between
saying that television will never be able to handle a full-
act play and saying that it will be able to offer the equiva-
lent of a movie musical there lies the limited field in which
132
GILBERT SELDES
we can judge by what has been done and make tentative
projections into the future.
Actually a full-length play was produced for television
for the first time on the eleventh of November, 1937, by
the British Broadcasting Corporation ; the drama chosen
was Journey's End and it would be superfluous to dwell
on the defects of that production because none, so far as
we know, points to any permanent disability in the me-
dium itself. The characters in the dugout seemed to jostle
one another that is because the range of the scanners is
still limited j the scenes of the action in the trenches were
more impressive and they were moving-picture film.
What we know in general is that in this early stage of
development a full-length play was done and in the minds
of many spectators was at least a praiseworthy attempt.
On the other hand this does not prove that a full-length
play is ideal material for television j it may be good ma-
terial now and prove unsatisfactory later on, or new meth-
ods and new equipment may make it possible for us to
produce even more ambitious long plays.
Nevertheless, at the beginning, the one-acter is pecul-
iarly available for us. The dramatists who have learned
to write in this form seem to have anticipated our require-
ments of compression and our capacities to present a sus-
tained action in a brief time. Particularly during the ex-
perimental stage the one-acter relieves us of the necessity
of building many settings and it reduces the variety of
costumes \ moreover, our players will not require too long
a time to memorize their parts and will therefore reduce
the number of rehearsals. Further, until the field over
which the television camera can operate is extended, the
comparatively small number of actors will be an advan-
133
TELEVISION
tage to usj we have worked out methods by which we can
use larger numbers, but they are still expedients, and
temporarily an action which is in the hands of only three
or four people simultaneously in our visual field is ideal
for us.
Oddly enough this limitation brings to us two entirely
different types of material: melodrama and the play of
intense psychological interest. Both of these, of course, are
highly individualistic: they are based on an intense feeling
of the value of private lives. The Grand Guignol type of
melodrama, for instance, reflects our concern for our bodily
safety in a world of violence and accident; and the amo-
rous trifle or the quick study of a single powerful emotion
reflects our interest in the sanctity of our own psycholog-
ical processes.
There is nothing more private than a sprained ankle
or an Oedipus complex, and the passion with which we
regard ourselves has been nourished for long generations
by artists in every field. This means that we have a sort
of backlog of material available from the delightful oper-
ettas, with three or four characters, of the late eighteenth
century, down to Schnitzler and Noel Coward. But we
note that our physical limitations exclude a theme which
has become more and more significant in the past few
years the mass. In other words the social drama to be
adapted to the use of television has to be personified and
individualized and certain theorists of both social and
dramatic structure believe that this process of personifica-
tion (which brings us back to the hero and the villain)
corrupts the theme of mass action which it is attempting
to express.
Since I have been so hesitant about the future of tele-
'34
GILBERT SELDES
vision, I am certainly not now going to say that we will
be unable to use themes of great social significance. I am
only pointing out to any dramatist aware of the questions
of our own time that he will have to discover ways of
using contemporary themes by placing people in a new
framework. The moving picture, the radio, and the the-
atre (using new techniques in the last generation) have
all been expansive. Dramatic presentation has broken
through all sorts of limitations, some of them natural and
some of them highly artificial. Now we approach with tele-
vision a great freedom in some directions and severe phys-
ical limitations in others.
The dramatist who wants to create or adapt one-act plays
for television will for a long time be compelled to study
not television itself, but radio and movies, and he will
have to guess in what proportion these two forms will
influence the emerging techniques of television. I have
suggested a sort of guide line in the tempo of the moving
picture as compared to the speed of purely verbal broad-
casting. Reducing this contrast to a practical principle
would bring us back, I think, to some essential ideas about
the theatre. Since the listener will also be a spectator, he
will want movement 5 there the lesson of the motion pic-
ture will be important. The dramatist who still thinks that
words are his principal instrument will have to discover
ways of using speech and movement in counterpoint.
There will be moments when the passion of his play can
be expressed only in speech $ yet it would be a fatality if
the movement of the drama should stop while the speech
is being uttered. (I recommend The Life of Emile Zola
to students of these problems $ the long speeches delivered
135
TELEVISION
by Paul Muni do not actually hurt the inner action, the
essential movement of the picture, and there is just suffi-
cient superficial movement to keep the eye of the spec-
tator satisfied.)
The dramatic writer who has gone from the stage to
the moving picture has seldom recognized the essential
fact that the movies have presented to him a new way of
expressing dramatic action j and in the rare cases where
the dramatist has seen this, he has usually rebelled against
it. The result is that our movies are woefully overwritten $
the dramatist in Hollywood is still writing his dialogue
for the tempo of the stage. Sometimes his infatuation with
words cannot be curbed even by those good directors who,
having had experience with silent films or laconic West-
erns, know the actual requirements of the movies.
Because a great many items in the ordinary television
program will be short, I think that we will have to de-
velop writers who understand the true relation between
speech and action j those who can invent a plausible but
not too striking series of movements when words of great
significance are being uttered and who can face the neces-
sity of making the words themselves secondary at times
to a sharply defined movement. The writer of one-acters is
in a good position because his experience has already been
with a medium which offers him more difficulties than
opportunities. It is a hard saying of Goethe's that the
master can only prove himself when he works within
limitations 5 it is hard, but it is also inspiring.
136
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE COLLEGE
THEATRE
VIRGIL L. BAKER is Associate Professor of Speech and
Director of the University Theatre at the University of
Arkansas. The University Theatre was organized by him in
1932 and has produced six plays each season besides a large
number of one-act plays. During the last four years he has
built up a group of playwrights who are centering their atten-
tion about folklore and historical and social material peculiar
to Arkansas and the Southwest and who produce a regular
schedule of original one-act plays.
Mr. Baker spent a year (1936-1937) at the University of
Iowa, where he held a fellowship in playwriting. He is the
author of a number of one-act plays, among which are Of
Capain y Witchm* Racket and Spanish Diggings.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE
COLLEGE THEATRE
by Virgil L. Baker
THE nonprofessional theatre in colleges and universities
the Theatre of Youth like youth, is a challenging
reality. There is much of the adolescent in it, with result-
ing confusion, maladjustment, and fumbling, but it must
also be admitted that there is inherent in it the character-
istics of a rapidly approaching maturity. It has already
demonstrated its ability to solve problems and to achieve,
and at present it feels that it commands sufficient insight
and resourcefulness to assume creative leadership. In this
vein it takes as its slogan "The Theatre of Youth, the
Theatre of the Future," This goal, somewhat startling,
may cause maturer and more conventional minds to fear
that the gap between aspiration and realization is too wide
for youth to bridge. Still, these same minds do not ignore
this theatre and, usually, upon closer acquaintance encour-
age and counsel it.
That leadership is rapidly being created to meet the
demands of this Theatre of Youth is attested by the phe-
nomenal rise of dramatic departments and dramatic or-
ganizations in colleges and universities during the present
139
COLLEGE THEATRE
generation. Barrett Clark summarizes the achievements of
this theatre by saying:
There are approximately 700 colleges and universities that
offer dramatic work and make regular dramatic productions.
. . . Every night of the year from October to May it is possi-
ble in almost any state of the Union to see plays of every con-
ceivable kind; there is no part of the country where one can-
not see some sort of performance of a play by Ibsen, Chekhov,
Shakespeare, Moliere, Shaw, O'Neill, Howard, Kelly, Barry,
Anderson, Rice, O'Casey, Synge to mention only writers
whose plays were mentioned in one issue of a local magazine
that lists a few of the current attractions in colleges for one
month of the past year. ... In the colleges and universities
alone there are probably 35,000 to 40,000 students regularly
enrolled in dramatic departments. 1
Among the thousands of performances each year in this
theatre, one notes a proportionately large number of one-
act plays. The longer play, of course, is, and has long been,
the featured form; but along with it in recent years the
shorter play has come into general use, not because of its
novelty but because it fills needs. The one-act play has
become rooted in this theatre, for it amplifies the conven-
tional program by supplying a flexible, varied, and stream-
lined type of recreation now increasingly demanded by
college audiences} and it helps to solve the problem of
combining theory and practice in classroom instruction.
The one-act play adapts itself easily to many semi-
public and public production needs. One of these needs
arises in the dramatic organization itself. Its organization
is composed of a large number of students with their own
1 Barrett H. Clark, "Some Reflections on the Nonprofessional Thea-
tre," New York Times> October 27, 1935.
140
VIRGIL L. BAKER
officers. Regular meetings are held to conduct the business
of the society and also for entertainment. The one-act play
fits well into this semipublic program. It is short and gives
many members opportunities to participate, thus solving
the problem of keeping its membership active. Such per-
formances also serve as a training ground for a large num-
ber who are not yet ready for appearance before the public.
It stimulates interest in the organization and helps to keep
the morale at a high level.
The one-act play also, because it is short and dramati-
cally intense, adapts itself readily to numerous public pro-
duction situations. The "variety" or "amateur night" pro-
gram, a feature of which is a short play, is proving popular
in many theatre programs. Other theatres present matinee
programs: a short program consisting of a single one-act
play offered in the afternoon after the rush of school hours
is over. Such programs fit well into the swing of collegiate
life and offer a period of relaxation and stimulation at-
tested to by the students themselves.
Bills of one-act plays, appearing periodically on the
regular public production schedule, are widely used. In
some theatres, audiences, after having become accustomed
to the more conventional program of the long play, are
slow to respond to the one-act bill of plays. As a rule,
however, they accept it on its own merits, finding in it
novelty, variety, and dramatic intensity. Programs of this
kind may take a wide variety of forms and present stimu-
lating projects for the producing group. The plays on the
bill are often chosen to provide a variety of play types,
such as comedy, tragedy, farce, or melodrama. Other bills
are built around a theme which the plays carry out from
HI
COLLEGE THEATRE
different points of view. Still others provide not several
plays, but one play produced in different modes, such as
realistically and expressionistically.
Another need which the one-act play supplies is that of
furnishing suitable programs for extension service. The
theatre is often asked to provide programs for local
groups, and sometimes it travels beyond the borders of its
immediate community. These types of production pro-
mote good will for the theatre and at the same time moti-
vate it to establish a program flexible enough to be both
adaptable and serviceable to the community. They en-
courage a wide choice of plays and resourcefulness in pro-
duction. The play must be fitted to the needs of the com-
munity group. The actors must learn to adjust themselves
to varied settings, as the invitation often takes them to
schools, churches, banquet halls, clubrooms, and now and
then may even take them into homes. Many times scenery
must be dispensed with and the actor must stand upon
his own resourcefulness. Community groups, however, are
far less interested in securing literal settings than they are
in securing good plays $ they show remarkable willingness
to dispense with the externals of production.
Among the most recent and potential activities which
the one-act play has made possible are tournaments and
festivals. College and university theatres have taken the
lead in promoting these activities and have as a result
broadened tremendously the opportunities for the use of
the one-act play. Beyond the educational advantages re-
ceived by those who participate in tournaments and festi-
vals, there are a broadening of outlook and a unification
of aims which point the way to the realization of soli-
142
VIRGIL L. BAKER
darity in this theatre. The fact that festivals encourage
creative writing is also of significance in this connection.
The one-act play thus adjusts itself in many unique
ways to production demands both in and out of its theatre.
This, however, is only one of the needs which the one-act
play satisfies. Another need, and a very vital one, is the
educational need.
Dramatic theory and practice, particularly in relation to
the one-act play, is accepted by educators as sound edu-
cational discipline 5 in fact, the educational philosophy now
most generally accepted is one inviting to the arts on the
grounds that they furnish active educational techniques
which are basic in the process of individual maturation.
Contemporary educational objectives are, more often
than not, stated in terms of activities; the learning process
is defined as growth in the acquisition of knowledge, atti-
tudes, and skills. It is recognized that there is apt to be
no learning unless there is immediate expression in the
individual's behavior. Emphasis is placed upon those ac-
tivities which will produce an integrated personality. Cul-
ture is defined in terms of the level of refinement which
the individual actually achieves in living. William H. Kil-
patrick maintains that it is what the individual does and
how well what he does actually works that educates him,
He says:
What counts for most is what we do actively by reaction or,
better still, by creative initiative. Experience fully considered
has both a passive and an active side. Both are necessary. Both
teach us. But it is in the active willing, doing side that we
reach our highest living. . . . This active willing, doing side
of experience is what we here demand. Only as it is practiced
will it grow. In education properly conceived the growing use
143
COLLEGE THEATRE
of such experience is both end and means to end. This active
experience the new school must supply. 2
In the same vein Dean Max McConn points out the
superiority of learning by activities over learning by read-
ing. He states that the perusal of the printed page "is
only one way of learning; it is not even the best way; the
best way is undoubtedly by living with those who have
learned and done. The book method comes off a bad third
among the desirable ways of learning." 8
If these educational methods are sound, and the direc-
tor of a college or university theatre, through his direct
experiences, has every reason to believe that they are, then
this theatre program, in theory as well as in practice, is
well grounded. The study and production of dramatic
literature gives insight into experience, not only at its
intellectual but also at its emotional best; it establishes
truth and exposes shams; it provides both direct and
vicarious experience and not theory and abstractions alone;
it encourages art, not for art's sake nor because it is fash-
ionable, but art for the sake of rounding out a fuller design
of living. The tremendous student demand for this type
of educational experience created this theatre and continues
to maintain it and is, indeed, tangible evidence of the
validity of the educational methods that underlie it.
Since in the majority of colleges and universities the
theatre is closely allied, if not directly sponsored, by the
department of speech, educational considerations become
important factors in its activities. The productions of the
2 William H. Kilpatrick, Education for a Changing Civilization,
Macmillan Company, 1926, pp. 114-115.
8 Max McConn, "The Problem of Going to College," Our Childrtn,
Viking Press, 1932, p. 247.
144
VIRGIL L. BAKER
theatre become laboratories in which the theories evolved
in the classroom are put into practice. Here the true learn-
ing process begins. Production is entered into purposively
and sincerely. The day is gone, if it ever existed in this
theatre, in which the cast approaches rehearsals as a holi-
day from work. Also the day of the director who attempts
to be a dictator is gone. Results are gained by directors
who have insight into the problems involved and who have
the ability to suggest and to guide rather than to dictate
and command. Both director and cast work toward a defi-
nite end, and the pleasure that comes from production is
that of having reached a high standard of achievement.
As Hallie Flanagan so aptly says of the work in this
theatre: "The college theatre is no longer in the lime-
light, it is in the searchlight; the elocutionary manner, the
arty pose, the stage-struck young lady on all these mani-
festations of the Theatre Sentimental the curtain fell ten
years ago." *
Since this theatre is founded upon educational prin-
ciples, it centers its attention upon those activities at its
command which will best fit the individual to take his
place normally in the life of the community and to help
him find a worthy use for his leisure time. It does not
consider itself to be a direct training ground for the pro-
fessional stage, but this does not mean that it tolerates
inferior work or sets its standards low. Its work in the
past has been at a sufficiently high level to make it pos-
sible for many of its actors and technicians to go either
directly or indirectly into the professional theatre. High
standards In this theatre are in line with the demands of
4 Hallie Flanagan, "Theatre Experiment," Theatre Arts Monthly,
Vol. XIII, p. 543.
COLLEGE THEATRE
modern youth. Actors themselves are becoming more and
more critical of their own work. Audiences and the college
press provide standards of criticism that are continually
rising. Many stages are becoming so well equipped phys-
ically that they can match the best in production anywhere.
In this milieu the one-act play adjusts itself naturally.
It is peculiarly adaptable to classroom and laboratory
methods and as a result it has come into the theatre to
stay. It has both practical and cultural values. The greatest
of the modern dramatists have used the form repeatedly.
It offers instantly intelligible lessons in design and vicar-
ious emotional experience. In its unity and economy it
embodies the typical and the representative ; in its ex-
pressionism, the poetic ; and in its bold strokes and vivid
flashes, the universal.
The one-act play offers opportunities not only for a
sound but also for a diversified training. It is short, usually
the cast is small, anH as a result many plays are studied.
Any individual is given a chance to study many roles as
well as to train himself in the techniques of different types
of acting. Type casting is discouraged $ the learning proc-
ess encouraged. Furthermore, a large number of persons
are given opportunities for training through the technical
work which the production of a number of one-act plays
provides.
The short play is the logical form for developing the
dramatic powers of beginning actors. The tasks assigned
and the tensions set do not overtax the abilities of the
novice in their resolution. It is true that in many one-act
plays a particular role may be more difficult than the
average role in a longer play, but the very fact that the
play is shorter gives the beginner more of an opportunity
146
VIRGIL L. BAKER
to key his nervous energies to the tempo of the part and
to sustain it throughout than does the longer play. Ex-
perience has proved that the actor who begins with the
one-act play is better fitted to take his part in the longer
one with its more complicated plot and subtle character
developments.
One of the errors many theatres make is that of offering
publicly one-act plays which do not measure up in acting
to a sufficiently high standard. There will always be indi-
vidual differences in the capacities of actors. Some will
never become proficient enough to warrant their appear-
ance in public, and should, therefore, be allowed to appear
only in classroom or semipublic productions. There is al-
ways the temptation to rush into public production too
hastily, and when this happens injury is done both to the
actor and to the status of the one-act play itself in audi-
ence acceptability.
The one-act play also serves an educational need in the
training of directors and technicians. With the rapid
growth of dramatic instruction in the elementary and
secondary schools, constant demands are being made upon
dramatic departments for directors and technicians trained
adequately to carry on such work. In order to meet this
demand, courses in acting, directing, and stagecraft have
been multiplied in departments throughout the country.
It has been found that under proper supervision student
directors can be given heavy responsibilities, particularly
in the production of one-act plays, and high standards still
be maintained.
As a means of training technicians, the one-act play does
not offer any particular advantages over the longer play
which has several settings. Many modern plays, because
147
COLLEGE THEATRE
of the playwright's attempts to extend the walls of the
theatre by the use of a very large number of settings the
technique of the moving camera tax every resource of
the well-equipped stage and present technical problems
impossible of solution on many average or poorly equipped
ones. Such plays would be harder to set than any con-
ceivable bill of one-act plays. Under average conditions,
however, a bill of one-act plays will not present unsolv-
able technical problems but will present problems suffi-
ciently difficult to provide excellent training.
By far the most important need which the one-act play
can help to supply in this theatre is the need for creative
writing. It is significant that the movement which resulted
in the establishment of this theatre in practically every
college and university in the country had its inception in
playwriting. The theatre in its actual development, how-
ever, took a different course. It achieved its reputation, at-
tracted its following, and developed its leadership through
its revivals of plays rather than through its premieres.
That it did develop more rapidly as a producer than it
did as a creator is both natural and logical under the
circumstances.
Now that it has established itself through production,
it is showing more and more an inclination to become a
living theatre by developing its creative function. It re-
alizes that it justifies its existence even though it does no
more than revive plays, but it also realizes, or is beginning
to realize, that it has within itself the potentiality to be-
come creative in a more vital sense. It is showing signs of
restlessness under conditions that would continue to keep
it an absorbing theatre} it wishes to release its energies
and become a radiating theatre. It believes that history
148
VIRGIL L. BAKER
may repeat itself: it points out that the Renaissance uni-
versities had their share in the establishment of the Eng-
lish drama, and it believes that it may have a hand in
contributing to the establishment of an American drama.
In the characteristic manner of youth it believes itself to
be the theatre of the future.
This theatre has given serious consideration to creative
work only during the last few years. Yet there are indica-
tions from many quarters that it is becoming conscious of
its full powers and responsibilities and that it will, in the
future, depend less upon popular revivals for its success
and more upon its own playwrights.
In the conscious strivings of this theatre for a fuller ex-
pression, the one-act play has led the way. When it began
to use this form it could not hope to capitalize on the popu-
larity of the play itself in the same sense that it could
capitalize on the popularity of the longer play. One-act
plays have never been "hits." The professional theatre has
only given passing attention to them. Thus in choosing its
one-act plays this theatre had to depend almost entirely
upon the merits of the play for success 5 but it had the
courage to make this venture, and audiences accepted it. As
a result, a great market for the one-act play has gradually
been formed, and a number of new playwrights have been
produced. Its venture into the use of the short play has
been truly creative and has contributed to the enrichment
of dramatic literature.
The emphasis upon the one-act play has encouraged the
student playwright. It has opened up to him a new channel
of expression and enabled him to see opportunities that
he had overlooked with his eyes fastened on the revival
of the long play. Thousands of one-act plays are being
149
COLLEGE THEATRE
written each year by local playwrights in this theatre.
Premiere productions of short plays have multiplied to
such an extent that the movement can no longer be labeled
as a fad. This movement is a definite indication of the de-
velopment of the creative side of this theatre.
Conditions existing in this theatre are on the whole con-
ducive to work that is experimental in nature. It is com-
paratively free from box-office worries j in many cases it
is completely subsidized. Specialized leadership is rapidly
being developed to direct its work. In many colleges and
universities experimental theatres are being established for
the sole purpose of giving trial productions to new plays.
A large number of theatres conduct contests and offer lib-
eral prizes to encourage playwrights. Once a playwright
with talent is discovered, he is provided with a training
ground, an actual living theatre in which his plays may be
given trial productions, and if they prove to be of merit
they are given public production. It offers guidance that
stimulates his best achievement without pushing him be-
yond his powers. It usually advises him to begin with the
one-act play. Walter Prichard Eaton says on this score:
Though, in all conscience it is not easy to write a good one-
act play, it is easier than to write a good long play, because
only one situation has to be handled and a single mood sus-
tained. ... It is still the form in which experience has proved
the students of playwriting can best start their practice, indeed,
so to start is almost essential. 5
It throws around him a congenial atmosphere and provides
him with healthy criticism, thus allowing him opportunity
8 Walter Prichard Eaton, Yale One- Act Plays> Samuel French, 1937,
Vol. II, p. vii.
150
VIRGIL L. BAKER
to follow the bent of his talents no matter what turn they
may take. All of these considerations, of course, will not
make a playwright of everyone who may wish to become
one, but they do furnish an environment in which he can
mature and one that he cannot find elsewhere, and cer-
tainly one which he cannot find in the professional theatre.
Many college and university theatres are emerging here
and there over the country that are already pointing the
way to creative and distinctive work. Thus far, the contri-
butions have been largely in the exploitation of the dra-
matic possibilities of folk materials of the section in which
the theatre is located, but this development does not ex-
haust the possibilities for contributions to the American
drama. Surely the conflicts that are fundamental in the
lives of thousands of men and women in our country today
suggest rich leads for the young playwright and for the
building of a theatre with individuality.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE CHURCH
FRED EASTMAN, while attending Union Theological
Seminary, used to slip away to Columbia University two or
three hours a day to take courses in drama and sociology. He
skimped on board money to attend theatres. After graduation
he made sociological surveys for a year, directed a religious and
social work project at Locust Valley, Long Island, for five
years, did editorial work in New York for another five, and
since 1926 has been Professor of Biography, Literature and
Drama at the Chicago Theological Seminary.
He has written many articles and books on drama, motion
pictures, and biography. His most recent works are Plays of
American Life, Drama in the Church, Books That Have
Shaped the World, and two volumes of short biographies en-
titled Men of Power. Three more volumes of the latter are in
preparation.
During the past ten years he has been interpreting through
drama some of the major social conflicts in American life.
Dramatic groups in colleges, high schools, and churches have
given more than three thousand productions of these plays.
His favorite ones are The Tinker, Bread, Our Lean Years^
The Great Choice, and The Examination.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE CHURCH
by Fred Eastman
IN three great periods in the history of the western world,
the one-act drama has played an important role in the
religious life of mankind in ancient Greece, in medieval
Europe, and in modern England and America. In each of
these periods, religion sought to develop the imaginative
and creative life of the people, to direct religious impulses
toward ethical ends, and to challenge the will of human
beings to make right what was wrong in the world. It tried
to deepen the understanding of the spiritual forces that
struggle in men's souls. It called drama to its aid because,
of all the arts, drama has most to do with the struggles of
the wills and emotions of men.
In ancient Greece the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles,;
and Euripides were all essentially one-act plays. They were'
produced in the Temple of Dionysus the most sacred spot 1
in Athens. They were presented at the most sacred season,
the one corresponding to our Easter. They were done in
honor of Dionysus, the god of fertility. During their pro-
duction the poets who wrote the plays, the actors who took
part in them, and the managers who directed them were
all counted as ministers of religion and their persons held
155
CHURCH
inviolable. The State paid the bills l for the plays and re-
ligion sanctioned them and made them the most impor-
tant event in the religious calendar of the year. While these
dramas were being presented all places of business were
closed. Law courts were adjourned. The jails were opened
and the prisoners led into the temple so they might re-
ceive the ethical and spiritual stimulus of the plays. The
audiences were almost incredibly large. The population of
Athens was only about thirty thousand, but twenty thou-
sand^oF these atter^edjthe^lays. The chief seats in the
Temple were reserved for the priests and the leading cit-
izens of Athens, and the statue of Dionysus was placed in
the center of the orchestra so that the audience and players
alike might do him honor.
The themes of the plays were distinctly religious.
Through all the dramas of Aeschylus runs the emphasis
upon righteousness. Those who break the moral law will
suffer even to the third and fourth generation. Those who
keep it will ultimately be justified. Sophocles stressed the
same themes and applied them more specifically to the
social and ethical problems of the day. For example, in
Antigone he centers the action of the characters around this
eternal question : In time of war when loyalty to the State
1 In an old book, The Tragedies of Sophocles , published in 1788 by
Thomas Francklin, "late professor in the University of Cambridge," I
have just come across this astonishing statement: "All the expenses of
the theatre were defrayed by the State, and were indeed so considerable,
that nothing but the purse of an opulent republic, could possibly have
supported them, as it is confidently affirmed by historians that Athens
Spent more in dramatic representations than in all her wars. . . . This
assertion which seems rather hyperbolical, is notwithstanding supported
by the grave Plutarch who, speaking of the Athenians, assures us, that
the representation of the Bacchanals, Phoenissae, Oedipus, Antigone,
Medea, and Electra, cost them more money than the defence of their
own liberties in the field, or all their contest with the Barbarians."
156
FRED EASTMAN
and loyalty to the gods come into conflict, which shall the
citizen obey? His answer is: He must obey the gods rather
than the State, for upon loyalty to the gods all other loy-
alties depend. Euripides went further in the direction of
humanism and concerned himself more with the relations
between man and man and less with the supernatural, but
he was still reverent and never let his audience forget that
man's ultimate destiny is with the gods.
Through all these tragedies the dramatists looked at life
from the standpoint of eternity. They saw man as in-
finitely small and yet infinitely significant. They portrayed
life as a moral struggle in which man's victory had cosmic
importance. They saw strife in the heart of man's moral
life and insisted that the very essence of the heroic consists
in man's power, even in the midst of conflicts that threaten
to destroy him, to stand "outside of the prison of the ma-
terial present," and to merge himself "in some life that is
the object of adoration or desire." 2
Again, as Gilbert Murray says:
What is really characteristic is that from the very beginning
the tragic conflict has in it an element of mystery derived ulti-
mately from the ancient religious conceptions of Katharsu and
atonement. The contest takes place on a deeper level of reality.
It is not to be estimated in terms of ordinary success or failure,
ordinary justice and injustice, but in those of some profounder
scheme of values in which suffering is not the worst of things,
nor happiness the best. 8
The character who ultimately triumphed in these Greek
plays was always the one who adjusted himself to this pro-
founder scheme of values.
2 Gilbert Murray, The Classical Tradition in Poetry, Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1927, p. 51.
8 Of. cit., p. 66.
157
CHURCH
The chief result of these one-act plays of ancient Greece
was twofold: they developed the dramatic form to a per-
fection seldom, if ever, surpassed $ and they stimulated the
inner life of their audiences until the very name of Athens
became synonymous with spiritual sensitivity. The little
town of Athens, with its population of thirty thousand, pro-
duced more great poets than America has produced with a
population of a hundred and thirty million. Does that seem
a trivial thing? In the last analysis, the only enduring thing
in any civilization is poetry. A people may build its tem-
ples in stone and its machines in steel, and they all crum-
ble in time to dust. But when a man can be so true a poet
that he can capture the hope, the courage, the spiritual in-
sights of his generation and imprison them in the poetry of
words or line or color or music, he may be sure that the
everlasting hills will melt away before his poem dies. The
material civilization of ancient Greece has crumbled, but
the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are as
vibrant with life today as they were twenty-four centuries
ago. Long after the last American skyscraper and steel mill
have decayed and blown away in some future dust storm,
mankind will still be repeating the poetry of the Greek
dramatists.
ThejeomdjDeriod when religion called the one-act play
to its aid was during the Middle Ages in Europe, particu-
larly in England. There, in the ninth^ century, the priests
found themselves in this peculiar situation:" they were al-
lowed to use only Latin in the service of the Mass. The
common people of England did not understand Latin.
The priests wanted to make clear to them the story of Jesus
and his challenge to a better way of life. So they dram-
atized the story. They began first with a simple dramatiza-
158
FRED EASTMAN
tion of Good Friday and Easter. On Good Friday they
took the crucifix from the altar and hid it away in a tomb
while the choir sang Misereres. Then, on Easter Sunday
morning, they brought it out from the tomb and put it
back on the altar decked in flowers while the choir sang
Alleluias. Thus they taught the people that Good Friday
and Easter had something to do with this man who had
been hung on a cross by human hatred and been buried as
if he were done for, and then had come out of the tomb,
somehow triumphant over death. His triumph meant that
they, too, could conquer hatred and death.
Th^geople wanted m<^^ojtJhLO-Stpry. So the priests
dramatized otheFmciSents in the life of Christ: his birth,
his trials, his parables. Still the people wanted more, so
the priests went back into the Old Testament and drama-
tized the story of the creation of the world, the Garden
of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, the lives of
the patriarchs and prophets, and on into the New Testa-
ment and the lives of the apostles and saints. Folklore was
mixed in considerable quantities with biblical material.
Each of these dramatizations was a little one-act play in
itself. Ultimately, they were strung together in cycles,
twenty to fifty plays to a cycle, dealing with the whole
history of God's relation to man. The cycles centering
around scriptural events were originally known on the
Continent as mystery plays j those around the lives of the
saints as miracle plays. But in England both types came to
be called miracle plays.
These simple one-act plays began in the chancel of the
church with only the priests as actors. But by the time they
had developed into cycles, that is, by theeleventh or twelfth
century, they had been taken over KyTayrnerT and^were
159
CHURCH
acted by the craft guilds. Each guild sponsored the play
that called most upon its peculiar skill. Thus, the Masons'
Guild presented The Creation of the World play, the Ship-
wrights' Guild, the play of Noah and the Ark, etc. This
change from priests to laymen as actors and producers was
paralleled by a further change in the place where the plays
were performed. They moved from the chancel to the nave
of the church and then to a great outdoor platform built
in the doorway of the cathedrals. At one end of this plat-
form was a representation of the flaming jaws of hell; at
the other end, the pearly gates of heaven. At the conclusion
of the cycle the bad characters went into the flaming jaws,
often chased there by Satan and his devils; the good char-
acters went to heaven, led by some angel of the Lord. It
was all very naive, but it made a profound impression upon
the huge crowds that came. Rich and poor, prince and
thrall, old grandfather and young girl, stood for hours
watching these stories unfold before their eyes. They were
more than stories. They were the dramatized_sgiritual
history oJF the human, race as they understood it.
As an offshoot from the mystery and miracle plays,
rather than as a development of them, came the moralities.
These, too, were one-act plays, dramatizing not history but
sermons. The characters were virtues and vices instead of
human beings. Everyman is the best example extant. These
morality plays make dull reading today, but in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries they were probably more inter-
esting than the dry homilies of the priests.
The mystery, miracle, and morality plays in medieval
England never achieved either the artistic form or the
spiritual depth of the Greek tragedies. Perhaps the lack
of the competitive element was responsible. Whatever the
1 60
FRED EASTMAN
cause, the fact remains that the plays attained neither lit-
erary nor dramatic excellence. In time someone thought
up the idea of putting wheels under the platform which
served as a stage and rolling it out into the market place.
Ultimately, it came to rest in the courtyards of the inns,
where it became the predecessor of the English theatre.
The character of the plays underwent a corresponding
change. The farther the platform moved from the church
the farther the plays moved from a sense of mission to the
human spirit. Folk characters took the place of biblical
ones. Comedy supplanted tragedy. Pontius Pilate and
Judas Iscariot finally degenerated into Punch and Judy. 4 "
The innkeepers got control of the plays and produced them
for revenue only. Finally, the Reformation swept them
away.
Nevertheless, in the three centuries during which the
mystery and miracle plays were under church auspices,
they made a lasting contribution. They taught the people
to think of life not simply in terms of the here and now,
but of eternity. They kindled imaginations to see far be-
yond the horizons of local provinces. They touched human
hearts with the immortal drama of the life and defeat and
triumph of Christ. They lifted men's minds above petti-
ness and set them to contemplating the grandeurs of the
lives of the prophets and heroes and saints of Hebrew and
Christian history. Thus, though they contributed little to
the technique of drama, they made England a nation of
actors accustomed to presenting great themes and heroic
struggles. They prepared the way for Shakespeare.
4 There are, of course, various other explanations of the origin of
Punch and Judy. Whether or not this one is historically accurate, it is
at least a figurative description of the decline of tragic drama to the
status of a puppet show.
161
CHURCH
The third great period in which religion and the one-
act play have worked together to develop the inner life of
men is the period which began about 1900 in America. No
one can say just where and when it started. But any presci-
ent soul, half a century ago, could have predicted that
when religion began to put less stress on creed and more
on understanding, less on sectarianism and more on social
ethics, drama would come back into the church. That is
exactly what has happened. Tentatively, at first, religious
educators began experimenting with pious pageants and
simple Bible stories. Unlike their predecessors in Greece
and medieval England, they began with children rather
than with adults. This is probably one reason why the
productions at first were so amateurish, even puerile. In
fact, the quality of most of these early one-act religious
plays in America and England was so low that an argu-
ment for the indestructibility of the church might be made
from the fact that it survived them.
In spite of poor dramaturgy these plays had a spark of
life in them. That spark kindled the imaginations of young
people who were starved for something creative to do.
They had already become drama-conscious as a result of
the movies and the teaching of "dramatics" in hundreds of
high schools and colleges. Here was an outlet for their
creative energies. They and their more alert teachers
seized upon it and within a few years, throughout the
North and East and far West in America and among the
more progressive churches in England, drama groups
began to form.
One might wish that the story from here on colild be
one of steady progress toward a type of religious drama
comparable to that of the ancient Greeks. But the facts are
162
FRED EASTMAN
otherwise. The propagandists for church agencies saw in
these eager dramatic groups a means of promoting their
own various causes. Thereupon, a flood of so-called re-
ligious plays, pageants, dialogues and what not began to
pour out from mission boards, church-extension societies,
budget-raising committees and a score of similar organiza-
tions. Commercial play publishers added to this flood a
stream of "cheap and easy" plays written in off moments
by well-meaning but sentimental persons who wanted to
"help the cause," but who had never taken it seriously
enough to discipline their own talents by a study of the
basic principles of dramatic structure. Here and there an
occasional good play appeared, but by and large the bulk
pf the output of one-act religious plays of the period from
1910 to 1925 was sentimental trash.
To the lasting credit of many of the dramatic groups
in the churches, they refused to produce this stuff. They
demanded better plays plays that had reality in char-
acterization, honesty in treatment, and skill in construction.
This demand became so strong that in 1924 the Federal
Council of Churches appointed a committee to survey the
available religious plays and select a few that could be
recommended. The writer of this chapter happened to be
chairman of that committee. We read scores, even hun-
dreds, of so-called dramas and finally chose about ten that
we thought worthy of being bound in a single volume.
Among these were Kenneth Sawyer Goodman's Dust of
the Road; Percy MacKaye's The Pilgrim and the Book;
Phillips E. Osgood's A Sinner Beloved; and Mary P.
Hamlin's The Rock. These plays were welcomed by the
more serious groups in the churches and provided models
for better playwriting. About the same time many church
163
CHURCH
organizations sought to raise the standard of play produc-
tion in churches by introducing courses in that subject in
their summer schools and conferences. Two theological
seminaries established chairs in Religious Literature and
Drama, and other seminaries also undertook advanced
work in the field.
Meanwhile, in England, a similar development was tak-
ing place. A Religious Drama Council was formed with
Laurence Housman (known on Broadway as the author
of Victoria Regina) at its head. Mr. Housman's charming
Little Plays of St. Francis and Bethlehem were among the
first English contributions to better plays for churches.
John Masefield followed with his The Coming of Christ
and Easter.
Thus far the content of these plays, both in England
and America, had been largely biblical or dealing with the
lives of saints. But if religion means anything it means it
for today, as well as for two thousand years ago. It must
speak to the present or die. The struggle between good and
evil, between the Golden Rule and the Rule of Gold,
between the Law of Love and the "jungle law of fang and
claw," is just as fierce now as ever. Therefore, it was in-
evitable that the plays in the churches should become more
and more modern in their content j should visualize pres-
ent battles as well as ancient ones. Laurence Housman,
addressing the Religious Drama Council of England, put
the matter thus:
If you are to have live drama, it must touch modern prob-
lems and conditions, even somewhat controversially perhaps.
If the churches are to be alive they must show fight. . . . The
question is: How can you set up live drama which will also be
religious drama?
164
FRED EASTMAN
The real problem you are up against is a moral, a spiritual,
problem. Is Christ still the Great Adventurer or is he only a
reminiscence? Is to be Christian still the greatest social prob-
lem of today, or is it only a tradition? Are you going to put
into your religious drama only those versions of Christianity
which fit into our social system, which Caesar accepts and can
make use of 5 or are you prepared to give Caesar the lie and
to give institutional Christianity the lie when they bear false
witness against what Christianity should stand for? On your
answer to these questions depends whether or not you can have
live drama in your churches.
If you mean to have live drama you must have the courage
of your convictions and be ready to do the unfamiliar and un-
expected thing. Put to yourselves this as a test: You are willing
to have in your churches a mystery play, or something similar,
from past ages; but are you equally willing to have a modern
play, not merely a goody-goody play of pious, blameless charac-
ters, but a play of social conflict, like Strife, or a play ex-
posing legal cruelty, like Justice, by Galsworthy? I do not
mean necessarily those plays in particular, but plays generally
as socially alive to our own times. . . .
If you ask me how to come by religious drama, take any-
thing in the present social system you believe to be wrong and
unchristian, tackle it ruthlessly and uncompromisingly, as you
think it ought to be tackled. Show it up, make it as modern
as you like, as controversial as you like; and if you have the
dramatic gift and if your solution is a Christian solution, you
have religious drama. You ask me for subjects? War, capital
punishment, the soul-destroying system of our prisons, sweated
labor, prostitution, the hardness of heart of the self-righteous,
the color problem out of all these you can get religious drama.
Just so! But to do this without going off into propaganda
on the one hand or into preaching on the other is no easy
matter. To present such subjects honestly, keeping char-
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CHURCH
acterization real and solutions convincing, is the difficult
task of the modern playwright whether he works on Broad-
way or in Piccadilly or in the church. An increasing num-
ber of dramatists, both in England and in America, are at-
tempting it. Witness Pawns, Confessional and The Finger
of God by Percival Wilde, Neighbors by Zona Gale, Tid-
ings of Joy by Elizabeth McFadden, Monsignofs Hour
by Emmet Lavery, The Deathless World by J. M. S.
Tompkins, Prize Money by Louis Wilson, Twentieth Cen-
tury Lullaby by Cedric Mount, and the present writer's
Bread and The Great Choice. These plays deal with such
themes as war, unemployment, nationalism, the farm prob-
lem, and the struggle for roses as well as for bread.
In this transition from biblical and ecclesiastical plays to
modern plays of social ethics and of spiritual power a new
definition of religious drama has evolved. We have come
to see that it is not the material of a play that makes it
religious or secular but the effect upon an audience. A play
may draw all its characters from the Bible, as in the story
of Jephthah's Daughter, and yet send an audience away
with no deeper understanding of its own struggles and no
impulse toward righteousness or helpfulness or brother-
hood. On the other hand, a play may take its characters
from the slums or a battlefield or a farm and deal with
them in such a way that the audience goes away exalted
in spirit, with enlarged sympathies, a greater sense of fel-
lowship, a new understanding of the spiritual forces of
human life. When it does that it is a religious drama.
At first such plays were presented on week nights amid
the same surroundings as plays whose only purpose was
entertainment. They opened "cold" without any prelim-
inary effort to establish a mood in the minds of the audi-
166
FRED EASTMAN
ence. But the more we have come to see the essential na-
ture of the religious play as distinct from the entertain-
ment play, the more we have come to see the necessity of
giving it a religious setting. So, today, most religious
dramas are presented on Sunday evenings, sometimes in
the main auditorium of the church, more often in the parish
hall. 6 They are set in a service of worship, with a prelude
of organ music, hymns, prayers, and responses calculated
to lift the minds of the audience, unite them, and prepare
them for a serious contemplation of a great theme. The
drama takes the place of the sermon as the climax of a
religious service. If well done it is more effective than the
usual sermon.
Thus, from a small beginning as a device for teaching
Bible stories to young people the one-act play in the church
has evolved into a medium for ministering to the spirits
of men through a great art. It has withstood the opposi-
tion of those who felt that anything dramatic was of the
devil. It has survived misuse by propagandists and pro-
moters. In thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of
churches it is now being used to develop the creative and
imaginative life of the players and the congregations.
Through the one-act play, drama groups are seeking to
portray the social and the spiritual struggles of modern life
in vivid terms of characters in action.
These groups have not yet attained the skill of profes-
sionals. They suffer from lack of adequate equipment and
8 A recent survey of 451 typical churches with a membership of 200
or more disclosed these facts: 411, or 91% of the 451, were using one-
act plays. They had produced a total of 1,518 of them during the pre-
ceding year, or an average of 3.7 plays per church. Adults had pro-
duced 37%, young people 25%, mixed groups 21%, children 17%.
Nearly half of the plays had been presented in the Christmas season and
a third of them at Easter.
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CHURCH
of intelligent criticism. Nevertheless, they are gradually
developing discrimination in their selection of plays. They
are acquiring better equipment. The quality of their pro-
ductions, though in no way comparable to that of the an-
cient Greek religious dramas, is steadily improving.
The modern religious dramatist has a theme greater
than the Greeks had. He has characters to portray whose
stature dwarfs the pagan and the medieval heroes. He has
titanic social conflicts to interpret conflicts on the outcome
of which the very life of civilization depends. If, through
the one-act play, he can interpret these conflicts with in-
sight and understanding and portray these characters hon-
estly and convincingly, he will make an enduring contribu-
tion to dramatic art, lifting it to the place of dignity and
power it held in the days of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides. More important yet, he will minister to the
souls of a confused and troubled generation.
1 68
THE USE OF POETRY IN THE ONE-ACT
PLAY
ALFRED KREYMBORG was born in New York in
1883. Aside from writing poetry and plays, Mr. Kreymborg
has had two outstanding loves: music and chess. He has been
affiliated with many artistic ventures, being one of the organ-
izers of the famous Provincetown Theatre, editor of numerous
magazines, the most successful being Broom and Others.
Mr. Kreymborg has always been interested in experimental
dramatic art. His Poem-Mimes, as they were first called, or
Puppet Plays, were first produced at the Provincetown Theatre
and later by hundreds of Little Theatres and dramatic clubs
all over the world.
With Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, and Paul
Rosenfeld, Alfred Kreymborg initiated that notable miscellany
of American literature, known as The American Caravan y
which first published the work of many writers who are now
famous.
Mr. Kreymborg's best-known plays are Manikin and
Minikin, Lima Beans, Plays for Merry Andrews, and Com"
mencement (a full-length play). His poetry has been published
widely in books and magazines.
THE USE OF POETRY
IN THE ONE-ACT PLAY
by Alfred Kreymborg
DURING the past year or two, renewed pleas have been
made in behalf of poetic drama, and the speeches have an
air of confidence lacking in former appeals. In the earlier
years of the century, the appeals were defensive and drew
a pessimistic line between the great classic eras when poets
ruled the stage and our own time with its glorification of
show business. The old apologist was reasonable. He spoke
well and wrote well, but he had few or no poetic plays to
illustrate his demand for a new theatre. Now and then
such a play made the boards, from the days of William
Vaughn Moody to the Provincetown Players. In the first
instance, showmen and audience preferred Moody's pot-
boiler, The Great Divide, to his poetic drama, while the
Provincetown group owed most of its success to realistic
thrillers in realistic prose. The average play in verse lacked
reality. It was written by specialists for specialists, high-
brows for high-brows, poets for esoteric audiences. In the
days of the Greeks and their descendants, the poet be-
longed to the race and developed familiar racial themes
on the broadest scale, his speech raised, not in some ivory
tower, but out of the fields and language of the people.
J7I
THE USE OF POETRY
And this man, through many centuries, was a man of the
theatre: the man, in fact. He directed and acted in his own
plays and was even their entrepreneur. Thus it was from
Aeschylus to Euripides, from Shakespeare to Moliere, and
with men approaching our time, Strindberg, Wedekind,
Yeats.
Today the average author has been driven off the boards
and his play, if accepted, is put on with a view of express-
ing the producer and his hirelings and behind these, the
box office. All we ask of the show is that the show suc-
ceed and outrun its rivals. Nor is there a single Broadway
group, however progressive at birth, which doesn't suc-
cumb to business in time. This charming hydra has three
heads now: the stage, the screen, the radio, each with its
wholesale appeal to the classic moron. Here and there the
vicious circle is broken by a good play, a good film, a good
skit, and all three draw a good audience. Then the circle
tightens and grows more powerful, and once more farce,
gangster, and wisecrack sweep the land. There is nothing
more dismal and wasteful than American business and the
destruction or perversion into which the arts are driven.
And yet
On very little praise
and still less money
the poet persists
and the bee makes honey.
Why does the fellow persist? First of all, he can live
no other way. Secondly, he knows humanity. He knows
that humanity will follow the artist in the long run and
that the artist survives evil and temporal things. And
thirdly, since he has to exist, he knows that art pays.
Though he doesn't earn a sou, his conscience is clear and
172
ALFRED KREYMBORG
richer than any deposit in a mundane bank. He also knows
that as far as money is concerned, great works of art are
priceless, and the older they grow the younger they are in
the minds of succeeding generations. It is impossible to
compute the cash value of the Parthenon, the Venus of
Milo, the Taj Mahal, or the cathedral of Chartres. Or
of such epics as The Iliad, The Divine Comedy , and Para-
dise Lost. The greatest of dramatists is also the most popu-
lar and Stratford an empire. These are mere facts and "the
fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows." A man with
an eye to figures applied to cash values recently computed
that the works of Van Gogh, who sold nothing at all while
he lived, are now worth forty-eight millions. It wasn't very
long ago that Vincent shot himself and said to his brother:
"Misery has no end." He was certainly referring to the
flesh, not to the spirit. Or to the people who adore him
now.
Call the people what you will, they aren't morons for-
ever. Appeal to their cheapest instincts and get rich quick
there, they'll still escape you in time. Banish the poet as
Plato did$ run him out of town like Dante 5 run him into
jail like Villon $ see that he starve like Whitman j see that
his grave is unknown like Mozart's. Pile on the torments
of indifference and let stupidity rule your hour: what is
Greece if it isn't Homer } Italy if it isn't Dante j Austria
if it isn't Mozart 5 France if it isn't Villon; America if it
isn't Whitman? And what is England or the whole world,
real or theatrical, if it isn't Shakespeare?
To come down to modern cases and to our own land,
the note of poetic revival has risen in the short or one-act
play, and we owe this movement first to the Provincetown
Players, then to the Little Theatres of the land, and finally
173
THE USE OF POETRY
to the poetic conquest of Britain by an enigmatic American,
T. S. Eliot. The Provincetown group had the virtue of
bringing the Greeks to a barn on Macdougal Street. They
wrote and produced their own plays; the plays were short
and dealt with life. This is as far as an old member dares
to carry comparison. For their devotion to the untried,
their resistance of commercial temptation, their horrendous
labors for what they believed in, the group deserves last-
ing praise. And it developed Eugene O'Neill, not to men-
tion a number of lesser lights. The Players succumbed to
Broadway when O'Neill's destiny carried him there and
the country gained what the group lost. But the short play,
as germane to the American temper as the sprint, the
lyric, the short story, found welcome in the Washington
Square Players, forerunners of the Theatre Guild, and in
the many amateur theatres dotting the nation. As long as
these groups encouraged the native playwright and sought
their material in native soil, the movement prospered. But
when it succumbed to Broadway by reproducing seasonal
hits, the movement lost its indigenous soul. Happily, some
of the groups carried on the original vein and became self-
supporting without too much compromise. They were
joined by experimental university groups like the ones at
Harvard and Yale, Cornell, Smith, and Iowa. But we
heard less and less of purely poetic drama, notwithstanding
the fact that our prewar poets, rising at the most unex-
pected time in the most unexpected places, led an American
renascence which affected all our cultural energies. The
influence of Robinson and Frost, Lindsay and Sandburg,
Masters and the Imagists, and finally the Waste Land
Eliot, penetrated everywhere and developed our arts, out-
side the theatre. I'm afraid the poets themselves are to
174
ALFRED KREYMBORG
blame, rather than producer and public, for the so-called
neglect of the theatre. Maxwell Anderson, surely no great
poet or dramatist, sold the poetic drama to Broadway and
made quite a fortune for all concerned. But his plays do
not touch, either in poetry or drama, the best of Eugene
O'Neill. And O'Neill wrote in prose, not in verse.
For twenty-odd years, ever since the Provincetown days,
I've harangued my fellows in an effort to lure them into
the theatre: even to a window or a doorstep. But they feel
more at home in themselves and their neighborly books j
and so far as drama is concerned, in their dramatic lyrics
or narratives. They have reason for skepticism: the argu-
ment is against Broadway or was before Max Anderson.
Revivals of Shakespeare, some in modern mufti, should
have convinced the skeptic that great poetic drama has a
place in the box-office world, providing it is stirring enough.
It was always the province of the poet to surpass himself,
to reach out toward the utmost horizons of consciousness
and communication 5 and the ideal theatre takes in both.
We are always arguing about the age: the age is ready for
this, the age isn't ready for that. But this is sheer nonsense
or an evasion of major problems.
Every age is great enough to command our best powers,
and not just one power perfectly achieved and repeated,
until it becomes a rubber stamp. The age we are entering
now, and God knows what hells worse than Satan's, is
possibly the greatest ever, the most tragic and difficult.
Is it blind, tortured, divided, wretched, insane, half-dead
and hopeless? Is there nothing for a man to grasp and an
artist to reduce to paper? Even so, this and nothing less
is the artist's job. If some glib soul maintain, with history
behind him, that our best work comes at the end of an era,
175
THE USE OF POETRY
with peace and perspective behind us, are we to run from
the present scene and dream of old lands or new where
the artist is more at home? Since when has he had time
for slippers and an easy chair? Books are born of the great-
est travail even in times of bucolic serenity. Thus it is with
the theatre, toughest of all the literary arts. Though there's
no theatre that even approaches the ideal, we have to work
in advance, like inventors of old. With one hand Dante
created The Divine Comedy and with the other the Italian
language. And Bach created the musical alphabet alongside
the musical universe. Nothing is made to order for the
poet. He may have models to work on and carry on cer-
tain traditions, but the noblest of all are the demons who
recreate the world again. We had such a fellow in Whit-
man. Thanks to Emerson. Thanks to Carlyle. Thanks to
the Germans. And wherever they go back to. WeVe car-
ried on Walt and added to him. No one man does it all.
And this is theatre too.
Meanwhile, what have we done in the theatre, real or
ideal, to revive our faith in the poet or to, waste our speech
on an essay? I have to return to Tom Eliot, and to dis-
ciples of his who are disciples no longer. This involves ex-
amination of a certain vice and virtue to which all races
are prone and ours most of all: individuality. And this in-
volves in turn those dear old twins: self-expression and
communication. Eliot was a Yankee individualist who re-
belled against those immediate forebears in whom self-
expression ran riot and almost ceased to communicate. A
brilliant scholar, he set himself the deliberate task of an-
alyzing a lost world and recreating a classic past. In his
impassioned labors, tempered with the dispassionate, he
brought about a neoclassicism in esthetics and religion with-
176
ALFRED KREYMBORG
out losing sight of his own world, the postwar era of
despair and disillusionment. Nor did he lose sight of the
common man: he let the vernacular elbow the grandilo-
quent. One fine day the report arrived from overseas that
Canterbury Cathedral, looking for a poet to celebrate the
death of Thomas a Becket, had turned to Thomas Stearns
Eliot. Then we heard that the play, Murder in the
Cathedral, was to open in London at a poets' theatre di-
rected by Ashley Dukes.
In the course of events, this play came to America via
Yale and the Federal Theatre, just off Broadway. Thither
the people went at a fifty-five-cent top and in the hun-
dreds and thousands. I'll never forget that audience, and
I mean this in several ways. First of all, Pd sat out front
ever since my New York boyhood and had never expected
to find this. Secondly, I was a member of the Federal
Theatre, intensely aware of its egregious problems, and
had never expected to find this. Thirdly, the plot and char-
acters of the play couched in exalted language faith
blended with satire and skepticism these I had expected
of Eliot, but not a responsive audience. And the play was
short: it said what it had to say and sang what it had to
sing and then, curtain. Further, the production came out
of the economic depression. Broadway producers had closed
their shops to experiment, and the unemployed put it on,
the relief people. This gave a man food for some hopeful
thinking and action. I went to work on the Federal Thea-
tre. Here was our place and our future. This theatre was
playing to the millions and playing at popular prices. And
Americans paid the price, all on a level twenty-two mil-
lion so far. So I started the Poetic Theatre assigned to me
as supervisor and laid out a breathless plan. But I reck-
177
THE USE OF POETRY
oned without my superiors: only one play saw the lights,
W. H. Auden's The Dance of Death. The title sounds
rather symbolical.
I wish I had time for the infinite ramifications of the
Federal Theatre, but time, they say, marches on. And, in
a world as messy as ours, one has to dwell on constructive
or hopeful things especially in an argument. The Dmce
of Death introduced several new values. Here was a savage
satire on the British Empire by the most brilliant young
hand in Britain ; here was a madcap affair which employed
American vaudeville and jazz as though they'd been in-
vented else where 3 and here was a denunciation of de-
cadence that made the Adelphi rock and sounded like a
youthful Swift in modern arms. Auden, like Eliot, was not
yet a man of the theatre, but, in collaboration with Chris-
topher Isherwood, his dramaturgy is growing up. Other
members of Auden's generation first inspired by Eliot,
but no longer his disciples have entered the theatre:
Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, and Louis MacNeice. The
Tories have dubbed them dreadful names: leftists, rad-
icals, Marxists. If we know what patriotism is we may
safely assume it's the Tories, not the young Britons, who
are unpatriotic. And these young Britons, caught up in
growing favor, have mastered the microphone. Their
plays, along with the Becket tragedy, are being broadcast
over the air. And the air brings us back to America.
In a year rather poor in theatre and more and more lack-
ing in experiment, a dramatic event of the first order
struck the whole country in the course of a mere half hour.
Since Americans are always a surprise, even to Americans,
where did this event take place: on the stage, on the screen?
No, where it was least expected: on the air in a national
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ALFRED KREYMBORG
hookup. I refer to Archibald MacLeish's The Fall of the
City as produced by the Columbia Workshop under young
Irving Reis. Not long before, another young man, Orson
Welles, had put on MacLeish's one-act study of the bank
crash, Panic but the entrance fee was $5.50 per head. Mr.
Welles was here again, playing the Announcer, and at
seven P.M. of a Sunday, just after some good old wisecrack
tuned off, young Welles, young Burgess Meredith, and a
company of two hundred actors, playing in an armory,
began their conquest of air and theatre. What we listened
to and what we actually saw was a poem dramatically ren-
dered. The high-brows among us, who had always run
from radio plays, discovered that radio is capable of in-
finite things, that radio is a great medium appealing di-
rectly to the imagination. The theatre of the mind was
completely alive to what transpired over space. One was
absolutely undisturbed. New York disappeared.
In the profoundly moving story, symbolical of dictator-
ship in any time or place, one was conscious of a deliberate
mind calculating the effects of each line. The Announcer
was used as an impassioned commentator, not alone on
the actions of the characters and mob, but on the scene
itself. One never lost sight of the great city square, of the
hot sky dotted with hawks, of the surrounding mountains
and of towns already burning in the footsteps of the Con-
queror. In the midst of one's private emotions, the mind
was respected and appealed toj the mind was open and
alert 5 the mind could reflect on the tragic movement of
the heart. There was nothing personal in the process j
everything was objective. Words were picked out in space
and projected over a microphone: a symphonic drama,
precise and subtle, beautifully timed. And a thing in which
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THE USE OF POETRY
characters played upon a mob and the mob upon the au-
ditor. For I was a member of the mob and trembled for
myself among them. And trembled for my brothers among
themj trembled for civilization. As the mob turned to each
old leader (minister, priest, general) and sought the old
liberties there, I turned with them, made aware, however,
of a growing premonition that the mob would turn to
someone else, that one by one the old leaders would fall
and unconsciously prepare for the oncoming dictator: a man
in the image of the mob, created and minted by them.
When the dread silence came and the mob lay prostrate
on the square, one lay prostrate with them. One was not
surprised that the Conqueror came in iron armor, with a
visor on his head. And that no one dared raise his own
head when the monster raised its arm. Nor was one
amazed that when a hand raised the visor and all of us
waited for the opening speech, no speech sounded. There
was no head inside the visor, no body inside the armor.
No one saw the image he had created, but worshiped it
even so. A sudden fanfare blared and the curtain de-
scended. And one had heard not the tale of one city, one
land, but of all cities and lands that have lain under an
iron heel or may lie there again. Everything had been
timed to perfection: the half hour was over.
Enthusiasts among us were certain Eldorado had come
at last. But we reckoned without the entrepreneur. Other
short plays were put on, actually based on social material,
and then less and less. Tripe and the tawdry returned
to their former estate, and commercial chicanery ruled the
air as of yore. Worse than this, the Puritans and Tories
among us, whose wives are always discovering that the
kiddies are in danger of hearing too much for their little
1 80
ALFRED KREYMBORG
pants and petticoats, tugged at official sleeves and the offi-
cials nodded. If anyone did any thinking over the air, the
common man might follow, and this would never do.
And so the air, for the most part, like the film, for the
most part, appeals once more to the twelve-year-old mind,
and business is at home again.
Now what is this common man we are always ad-
dressing and trying to coerce and capture or enslave?
There are two ways of eying the fellow. We may eye
him with an eye to fortune or with an eye to culture and
art. The first course, in the field of letters, led to such
giants as George Horace Lorimer, the glue manufacturer
who rose to the ownership of the Saturday Evening Post.
When someone asked Mr. Lorimer for the secret of his
success, the great man replied: "I was always an ordi-
nary man." In the realms of theater, screen, and micro-
phone, similar replies would doubtless emerge from the
hearts of our princes there. These men are undoubtedly
of the people and know to a certain degree what the
people want. If we care for the people at all, we have no
right to quarrel with their taste, direct or perverted.
There are other leaders who are of the people, and by and
for as well. There was a tall, grave figure who addressed
the nation at Gettysburg and who described government as
of the people, for the people, by the people. And there
was a man who wrote Leaves of Grass who had much
the same notion and still appeals to the common man. It's
more than a democratic principle. It applies to the ages,
and its impulse was recognized by the revolutionary Shel-
ley when he closed his Defence of Poetry with the magic
line: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the
world." By poets he meant the creative spirit. It was this
181
THE USE OF POETRY
kinship, leadership, and response the Greeks enjoyed. They
were fairly good business men too. Their plays had long
runs and are running still. And in more than the language
common to Athens.
Our failure as poetic dramatists lies in too great a di-
vorce from our people. We're too easily annoyed with the
soft success of the fakers among us and of those whose
vast popularity is based on an honest approach to the
market. The various types of escapism employed by artists
at odds with their environment may be found in the lan-
guage employed. Even in the plays I've been raving about,
much of the speech is disdainful or precious and clings
more to clouds than to earth. And yet these plays had an
audience flatteringly large in proportion to audiences of a
dismal yesteryear. We have universal problems these days
in every turn of the news and newspapers. Events no
longer affect one people, one nation, but all people and
nations, America among them. We belong to the world as
never before, tragically, comically, or tragi-comically. The
man with the concentrated powers of vision, speech, and
communication has powers far beyond those which lay
in the circle surrounding the Greeks, the Romans, the
Renaissance. His job is infinitely more complex and diffi-
cult, infinitely more uncertain. And he hasn't the faith
of his fathers: that has to be hewn with the rest of the
new world. But somehow or other, he has a certain sub-
stantial essence which, for want of a better word, we call
Opportunity. You'll find it in every business house: it
fills us with nausea. Nonetheless, it knocks at the door
of the artist, along with his fellows. It is no longer a ques-
tion of who will put on our plays and where. The question
is simply who will write them. They'll get on somehow if
182
ALFRED KREYMBORG
they're great enough, and people will attend. An audience
can also be great. Or we shouldn't have had what we had
in the past.
In between the Greeks and our own time, many leading
playwrights, whether poets or prosemen, have set them-
selves to the concentrated forms of the one-act play. The
forms are as varied as the themes and tempers of their
creators and backgrounds. Further, a man doesn't have to
write in verse in order to achieve a poetic work. No plays
are more truly poetic than the prose plays of Maeterlinck,
of Synge, and of our own Conkle, Green, and Basshe.
Poetry, after all, is a heightening of human consciousness,
and there are many pages in novels which are closer to
poetry than the blank verse dramas of Stephen Phillips.
So are the essays of Van Wyck Brooks. A play like Riders
to the Sea, lasting but twenty minutes, is a poetic reflection
of an entire race caught in the tides of the tragic sea. And
yet the play is as quiet as a stone and as simple as human
bread. Its peasants are universal, though their speech has
an Irish tang and inflection. Poetry is speech with an in-
evitable tone and rhythm. Riders to the Sea and other
great lyric plays could not have been written in any other
form. Synge was happy in the Aran Islands and the
Islands in Synge. And on the strength of a few short
plays his name and people are world-wide.
The poet of the people today is another John Synge
confronted with international themes. There are so many
themes and so many races involved that the author,
whether he knows it or not, addresses the entire human
race. He has no time for private ills or privacy unless those
ills reflect something larger than himself and the lonely
ego. It is possible that the world at large was never so
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THE USE OF POETRY
lonely as now, and never so lost and out of love. His love
song then or what he's in love with must go out among
the streets and spheres, lonely on high or on earth, and
show how human they are, however distorted in their re-
lations. He may be a realist who shows things as they are,
or the new romanticist who shows things as they ought
to be. Either poet, realist or prophet, will bring about
human relations the world is in need of. There's no art
as communal as the theatre in setting forth every shade
and variation of human activity. The swift short forms are
always inclusive enough. They were good enough for the
ancients and ought to suit our dizzy age.
184
PART III HISTORICAL SURVEY
WHERE DOES THE ONE-ACT PLAY BELONG?
BARRETT H. CLARK received his schooling in several
outstanding colleges and universities. At various times he has
been an instructor and special staff lecturer at Chautauqua
Institution, Bryn Mawr College, and Columbia University.
He became affiliated with the theatre in 1912 when he acted
as assistant stage-manager and actor with Mrs. Fiske. Since
that time he has been engaged in writing and editing articles
and books dealing with the drama.
Mr. Clark's activities have been numerous, and a list of
them would cover more than a page. But some of his out-
Standing accomplishments as an author are The Continental
Drama of To-day; The British and American Drama of
To-day (these two books were rewritten and brought up to
date in a single volume, A Study of the Modern Drama) ;
Contemporary French Dramatists; European Theories of the
Drama; Eugene O y Ne'dl> the Man and His Plays; An Hour
of American Drama.
He has written editorial prefaces to plays by Paul Green,
E. P. Conkle, Lynn Riggs, Virgil Geddes, Martin Flavin,
Albert Bein, and Samson Raphaelson.
From 1918 to 1935 Mr. Clark was associated with Samuel
French,
At present he is Executive Director of the Dramatists Play
Service of New York.
WHERE DOES THE ONE-ACT
PLAY BELONG?
by Barrett H. Clark
I AM afraid I have never altogether made up my mind
about the one-act play. I mean as to just where it belongs,
either in the theatre or in the vast hierarchy of art; not
that it needs to be put into a category of its own, or de-
fined or classified as we define or classify orations and
odes} but it would be convenient to be able to say that the
one-acter performs this function or that, that it is limited
by such and such boundaries, and that its aim is to sup-
plement the full-length play in such and such fashion. Th_
thing, seems, however, oftener than not, to be a stepchild,
an exercise, a shadowy waif of the -legitimate theatre Brit-
ten in vacuo, without ja_defmite_ objective - y a promise or
preparation for something else that is rarely even hinted
at.
In other countries it has here and there been evolved
into a distinctive thing, a form existing independently for
its own sake, like the Grand Guignol thriller or farce, or
as a curtain raiser. In France, England, Germany, and
Spain, for example, at various times during the past fifty
years, the one-acter has been used to entertain the early
comers before the chief play began. In Spain and Germany,
187
PLACE OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY
as well as in France, whole bills were made up of short
plays, very much as we now offer continuous showings of
weekly newsreels; and occasionally a revue, probably an
outgrowth of the cabaret or night-club entertainment,
would include several "shorts" as integral parts of the pro-
gram.
The most famous of all the short-play theatres was the
Grand Gmgnol of Paris. For a generation and more this
institution offered bills of six plays each, three thrillers
and three farces or comedies. Almost without exception
these were designed to produce quick and striking effects j
they were a series of dramatic cocktails, clever, sophisti-
cated, risque.
The Grand Guignol created a demand both in France
and elsewhere for the type of play which it required of its
authors, and so ably produced.
In the United States, since 1910, several attempts have
been made to transplant the Grand Guignol idea, but the
public was not interested. It was not that we had no use
for short plays, we just did not want them served alone j
we refused to dine on hors d'oeuvres. We had, nonetheless,
and for some thirty or forty years, patronized the dra-
matic sketch as a feature in vaudeville. In earlier days
the farce or "afterpiece" (shorter than the main play, but
often of two or three acts, and occasionally one act) had
been widely used, and then after the middle of the nine-
teenth century dropped j but when some sixty years ago
vaudeville became "refined" we used a modified type of
"afterpiece," the one-act sketch. This reached the height
of its development and popularity about the time of the
beginning of the World War. One of the classic sketches
that played throughout the English-speaking world was
188
BARRETT H. CLARK
the famous thriller of Austin Strong, The Drums of
Oude. In the great days of vaudeville the one-act play
was an almost invariable feature of every bill.
When at last vaudeville was superseded by the pictures,
the demand for short plays for use in the professional
theater practically ceased. Nevertheless, on occasion an
actor demanded a sketch for some special use, either as a
curtain raiser or for a starring tour in vaudeville, where
it still existed, and some of the finest examples of the form
were written to order, such as Little Italy, The Valimt y
and The Little Father of the Wilderness.
Some years before the established playwrights had
given up writing for the vaudeville market the experi-
mental, "Art," or "Little" Theatre had begun to flourish,
and because short plays were easier to write and produce
than long, the nonprofessional playwright made tentative
efforts to express himself and his world. Nearly forty
years ago Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland and Percy Mac-
Kaye first wrote and published one-act plays in which we
recognize a desire to express ideas and depict scenes and
characters far different from those that had been the stock
in trade of vaudeville j but it was not until about 1910 that
the one-act play, as distinct from the vaudeville sketch,
came into its own. The so-called Little Theatre offered a
chance to the nonprofessional writer to see his "experi-
mental" plays acted. The "one-act" playwright, a new fig-
ure, flourished widely between 1914 and 1925. Percy Mac-
Kaye, Susan Glaspell, and Eugene O'Neill had, it is true,
written long plays, but these writers were for years bet-
ter known as the authors of such famous "shorts" as
Gettysburg, Suffressed Desires, and y lle; others, like
Percival Wilde and Alfred Kreymborg, excelled as writers
PLACE OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY
of one-acters. In the hands of these writers, and such play-
wrights as Philip Moeller, Alice Gerstenberg, Colin Cle-
ments, Mary Aldis and at least a hundred others, the
short play became a widely popular theatre form, and as
the Little Theatre developed, it depended almost entirely
upon that for its chief fare.
For the past jifteerry ears, however, one-acters have been
turned out in ever-increasing quantities, and this in spite of
the absence of what I may call a "natural" market such as
existed in vaudeville or for a time in the Little Theatres.
Of course, some market does exist, or short plays would
not be written to any extent except as exercises. The dra-
matic departments of most colleges and universities, the
producing classes in most high schools, women's clubs, and
the almost innumerable odds and ends of "dramatic clubs,"
do indeed use one-act plays. Neither the Little Theatres
nor the important college and university theatres use one-
acters except for "studio" or private showings, yet our
educational institutions go on encouraging young men and
women to write them.
On the other hand, there is some evidence that the one-
act play has a place in the modern, theatre, that a persistent
demand f orjt exists. There is jirst the very lar
market in churches and schools, a demand that is satisfied
by the publication annually of several hundred new plays,
most of them intrinsically worthless 5 there is the radio,
which on rare occasions challenges a writer to use to the
fullest extent its technical possibilities; there is the profes-
sional revue (the modern counterpart of vaudeville), the
motion picture, and the Labor or Left Wing Theatre,
which on special occasions calls for a Waiting for Lefty
190
BARRETT H. CLARK
(Clifford Odets), a Hymn to the Rising Stm (Paul
Green), a Private Hicks (Albert Maltz).
The more interesting and important and economically
attractive the medium for which the play is required, the
better the product. It should be clear that Archibald Mac-
Leish would not have written The Fall of the City but for
the chance that was given him to send his dramatic poetry
over the air to hundreds of thousands of listeners} and the
same thing is true of Maxwell Anderson's Feast of the
Ortolans. Neither of these poets has anything to say in the
black-out form, and it is hardly likely that any play from
their hands would interest the Grangers.
Likewise Clifford Odets was moved to say his say to au-
diences gathered at Sunday night meetings because he felt
sure that they were ready to listen to him; and Paul Green
took time off from writing long plays to sing his Hymn
to the Rising Sim y knowing that that devastating play
would find the public it was intended for.
The revue sketch, or black-out, may have its counterpart
in theatrical history surely the ancients must have had
something of the sort but at its contemporary best it is a
highly specialized, original, and effective form. Though
shorter than the shortest Grand Guignol farces and come-
dies, it somewhat resembles these, inasmuch as it is an epi-
sode or joke told briefly for the sake of the "point." Marc
Connelly's The Travellers and George S. Kaufman's The
Still Alarm, though somewhat longer than most, are first-
rate examples of the form.
We live in a world that is governed by considerations of
interest, largely economic interest; and allowing for a few
exceptions and granting the existence always of mixed mo-
tives, we should realize that the law of supply and demand
. -fr^ A~A- -*
191
PLACE OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY
is the law of our civilization. The one-act play, like the
full-length play and the sonnet and the automobile
flourishes at its best when and where the paying public is
ready to patronize it.
Whether or not the one-act form can be used for the
expression of ideas or the revelation of a character or group
of characters, and used in some way peculiar to itself only
apart from the full-length play is a matter for argu-
ment. At its very best it surely can offer, within its narrow
limits, a kind of miniature drama which might, if forced
into the longer form, prove too slight for full-length
work; its originally sharp outlines might be blurred, over-
emphasized, or probably lost. The exquisite point in The
Valiant seems to be the sort of point that belongs only
at the end of a half-hour play; the drama of a lifetime that
is so ably presented in the fifteen minutes of E. P. Conkle's
Minnie Field could scarcely have been so admirably set
forth in any other medium; and O'Neill's y lle and Moon
of the Caribbees are beyond any doubt complete within
their necessarily restricted limits. The same thing can be
said of other undoubted masterpieces: Paul Green's Hot
Iron; Lady Gregory's Rising of the Moon; and two or
three plays each of Sir James Barrie, Percival Wilde, J. M.
Synge, Harold Brighouse, Alfred Kreymborg, Austin
Strong, and Susan Glaspell.
At this time, and in our country, the one-act play seems
to be in need of a home and a legitimate reason for exist-
ence; in short, a market. It is not quite enough to claim
that it is an exercise, unless we know for what the exer-
cise is intended. Surely it is not a very useful exercise for
the young writer who aims at the full-length form: I don't
think that any young playwright, even after having written
192
BARRETT H. CLARK
a trunkf ul of shorts, is any better equipped to write a three-
act play than if he had written only one, and there is some
danger that too constant application to the short form may
even make the other more difficult to master.
And it is not enough to go on filling up anthologies
with new plays in the hope that some particular use may
be found for them.
If the one-act play isjo flourish and mean anything at
all, we must find a pla^ for"Tt =: outside the study, the
workshop, the magazine, and the textbook a placejnther
in Jjiftjirnfgggional theatre nr jJigjnnprof eggjoggj^ where
some considerable part of : diejsayjng. public will go because
they want to go, in order-lOLwitness and be moved by work
of a particular form and character, essentially different
from the long play because of some inherent and necessary
inner compulsion.
If the one-act play has a future in our country, I believe
it will be in the special Labor groups, or among the ex-
periments now tentatively begun by the dramatic poets ;
in the revues and over the radio and in a one-act theatre.
Meantime our exercises in playwriting courses and in the
schools and colleges will have fully justified themselves,
if these possible markets are actually going to become as
important as I believe they will.
193
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE UNITED STATES
GLENN HUGHES was born in Nebraska in 1894. In
1912 he entered Stanford University, from which he gradu-
ated in 1916. In 1919 he was granted a fellowship at the
University of Washington, Seattle, and in 1920 was given his
M.A. degree in English. At the same time he was admitted
to the faculty of that institution and immediately began the
development of a curriculum in dramatic arts.
In 1928-29 Mr. Hughes spent a year in Europe as a Gug-
genheim Fellow, making a study of the Imagist movement in
poetry. During the academic year 1929-30, he served as Pro-
fessor of English at Scripps College, Claremont, California. In
the autumn of that year he returned to the University of
Washington as Professor of English and Director of the
Division of Drama, a position he still holds. Since 1930, when
he effected a complete reorganization of the curriculum, staff,
and activities of the Division of Drama, he has developed one
of the largest college drama departments in America, with a
theatrical library of nearly twelve thousand volumes, two
public theatres operating every week of the year, and a
thorough five-year course of study.
In addition to his activities as a teacher and executive, Mr.
Hughes has written a standard textbook, The Story of the
Theatre, has edited several volumes of plays, has collaborated
on dramatic translations from the French and Japanese, has
contributed critical articles to magazines, and has published
thirteen full-length and twenty-four one-act plays.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE
UNITED STATES
by Glenn Hughes
THE history of the one-act play in the United States is in
effect a history of the decline of the professional theatre
and the rise of the amateur, and the present vitality and
importance of the short play indicates clearly the strength
and scope of the amateur movement. For in this country
the short play has never been taken seriously by the pro-
fessional theatre. In the nineteenth century and during the
first decade of the twentieth, one-act plays were employed
only as curtain raisers and, in some instances, as afterpieces,
for audiences which expected long programs and for whom
even a five-act Shakespearian tragedy was insufficient re-
turn for the price of admission.
The curtain raiser and the afterpiece both inclined to-
ward the farcical for the simple and good reason that the
curtain raiser had the responsibility of putting the audience
in a pleasant mood and the afterpiece was intended to send
them home happy. Short plays of strong dramatic quality,
most of them melodramatic, were composed chiefly for
use in variety shows, where they served as starring ve-
hicles for well-known actors. Then came changes in thea-
tregoers' habits. Legitimate theatres trimmed their pro-
197
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
grams to the length of a single three-act play $ vaudeville
and revue gave way to films and radio. Professional per-
formances of short plays are nowadays extremely rare.
But if the short play was unimportant in the professional
theatre of the nineteenth century, it was even less im-
portant in the amateur theatre. Professional curtain raisers
and dramatic vaudeville sketches did at least earn credit
and financial return for the author, whereas short plays
written for the amateur market seldom earned either.
Amateur groups of that period were neither as numerous,
as businesslike, nor as active as they are today. Colleges
and secondary schools had not taken up the drama as an
educational project, community theatres were unknown,
and home-talent performances were sporadic, sociable af-
fairs devoted to the presentation of operettas, minstrel
shows, rural character sketches, specialty dance numbers,
and, where the group possessed literary interests, famous
plays of the past Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and
the like. If a short play was required there was always
a professional curtain raiser available usually one by
J. M. Morton, the prolific British author of Box and Cox.
As in the case of full-length plays, the American stage
before 1900 depended for its short plays chiefly upon
Europe. There were, however, several American authors
who composed in the one-act form Bronson Howard, for
example, whose Old Love Letters was produced in 1878.
This is the only one-act play he contributed to our theatre,
but it is of some significance because Bronson Howard was
the most distinguished native playwright of his period and
is frequently referred to as the father of the American
drama.
During the same decade Edward Harrigan, of the fa-
GLENN HUGHES
mous comedy team of Harrigan and Hart, composed a
large number of one-act pieces for his variety shows ap-
proximately seventy-five of them between the years 1870
and 1879. These hastily written, low-comedy sketches are
not, of course, in the same tradition as the literary one-act,
but they belong in our general survey, and they are im-
portant as precursors of our modern revue sketches.
The professional playwright of the nineteenth century
who contributed the greatest number of one-act plays to
the professional legitimate theatre was Augustus Thomas.
Beginning with Editha's Burglar in 1883, Thomas pro-
duced twelve short plays by 1898, all of which were per-
formed on the professional stage and several of them with
distinct success. He injected into these pieces the same skill
at characterization and plot which marked his full-length
productions, and although they have not survived as speci-
mens of literature, they nevertheless were creditable dra-
matic compositions and helped to establish the American
one-act play in our theatre.
Contemporary with Thomas was Clyde Fitch, whose
artistic and financial success as a professional playwright
set a new standard in the American theatre. And although
Fitch did not make extensive use of the one-act form, he
did compose three short plays, all of which were success-
fully produced. First, and best, was Frederick Lemcfitre
(1890)$ the others were Eettfs Finish (1890) and The
Harvest (1893).
Of that period, however, the American author who
rendered the greatest service to the one-act play was Wil-
liam Dean Howells. Howells was not primarily a play-
wright. He was a magazine editor, essayist, novelist, and
playwright. Although he composed several full-length
199
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
plays (chief among them being The American Claimant,
done in collaboration with Mark Twain), the bulk of his
dramatic writing was in the shorter form. This predilection
is explained partly by the fact that one-act plays are suit-
able for magazine publication, and Howells found that his
readers enjoyed them immensely. It is therefore under-
standable that between 1876 (the publication date of The
Parlor Car) and 1916 (The Night before Christmas and
Self -Sacrifice) he composed twenty-five short plays, in-
cluding such well-remembered favorites as The Mouse
Trap, Five O'Clock Tea, A Likely Story, The Albany
Depot, Evening Dress, The Smoking Car, and The Gar-
raters.
It was Howells who introduced the literary note into
the American one-act play. Written particularly for culti-
vated readers of The Atlantic 'Monthly and Harper's
Magazine, his plays possessed a grace of expression and a
refined humor which set them apart from the rough-and-
ready pieces written directly for the theatre. And yet they
were not by any means impractical when transferred to the
stage. Several of them became favorites on the amateur
stage. Two of them, The Garroters and The Mouse Trap,
were played professionally in London, where they at-
tracted considerable attention, and were hailed by critics
(one of whom was George Bernard Shaw) as a welcome
change from the typical curtain raisers of J. M. Morton
and other British farceurs.
At least two other eminent literary men of the period
were impelled to try the one-act form both, no doubt,
influenced by Howells. These were Brander Matthews and
John Kendrick Bangs. Matthews, professor of dramatic
literature, critic, and historian, was, like Howells, only
200
GLENN HUGHES
occasionally a playwright, but alongside his half-dozen
full-length plays are to be found four one-act pieces: This
Picture and That ( 1887), In the Vestibule Limited (1892),
The Decision of the Court (1893) anc ^ Too Much Smith
(1902). Bangs was one of the most popular humorists of
the period and was the author of many successful stories
and sketches. He also served as editor of several magazines,
one of which was Harper's Weekly. Like Howells, he
wrote literary farces suitable for publication but at the
same time suitable for the stage, and between 1896 and
1909 ten of these were published, the most popular being
The Bicyclers and A Proposal under Difficulties.
We may therefore think of the period from 1870 to
1900 as the era during which the American one-act play
was created and established. The next decade (the first of
this century) did not witness any great development of
the form, although several new playwrights contributed
to it. One reason for the lack of notable development was
the passing of the curtain raiser from standard usage. The
use of short plays as vaudeville acts was the only effective
stimulus toward their creation.
Typical of professional playwrights who wrote short
plays for the theatre of that decade was William Gillette,
revered actor and author of Sherlock Holmes y Secret Serv-
ice, and other famous melodramas. Gillette wrote five
short plays, all of which were performed professionally:
The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes (1905),
The Red Owl (1907), Ticey (1908), The Robber (1909),
and Among Thieves (1909). Another writer, though only
secondarily a dramatist, of this period was Richard Hard-
ing Davis. He composed six short plays, the best-known
of which is Miss Civilization (1906), a melodramatic
201
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
comedy which illustrates very well indeed its author's em-
phasis on human interest and story value. Rachel Crothers,
a highly successful playwright today, had her first profes-
sional production in 1902 with a one-act play, The Rector ,
but moved quickly on to full-length productions, pausing
in 1909 for two short plays, Katy Did and Mrs. Molly,
which were published in The Smart Set. A considerable
number of competent playwrights rose to fame in the
American theatre between 1900 and 1910 (George Broad-
hurst, George M. Cohan, James Forbes, Charles Klein,
William Vaughn Moody, Edwin Milton Royle, Edward
Sheldon, Winchell Smith, Eugene Walter) but one
searches the records of their work in vain for one-act plays.
The form was neither popular nor important.
The year 1911 marks the change. In that year and in the
years immediately following, events transpired which
brought the one-act play into extraordinary prominence.
In that year the Irish Players from the Abbey Theatre
of Dublin brought their plays on tour to America, and with
the captivating short pieces of Synge, Yeats, and Lady
Gregory they fired a great many Americans with the desire
to establish artistic repertory companies and to create folk
plays of American life. The Drama League of America
(which had been organized in 1910 at Evanston, Illinois,
as a development of women's club activities) took on im-
mediate life and began to establish chapters throughout the
country, many of them dedicated to the writing and acting
of plays. The Wisconsin Players were founded (1911) at
Madison, with Thomas H. Dickinson of the University of
Wisconsin as guiding spirit} Mrs. Lyman W. Gale founded
the Toy Theatre in Boston (1912)5 Maurice Browne and
Ellen Van Volkenburg founded the Chicago Little Theatre
202
GLENN HUGHES
(1912)5 Professor George Pierce Baker of Harvard Uni-
versity established his famous 47 Workshop Theatre
(1912)5 in short, the Little Theatre movement was
launched. And with it, inevitably, toward a place in the
sun, rode the one-act play.
Some of the specific results of these pioneer organiza-
tions were as follows:
The Drama League of America took over the publica-
tion of The Drama y a quarterly magazine (founded in
1911) and through it promoted literary drama, both for-
eign and native. Considerable emphasis was laid on the
one-act play, and both translations and original plays were
regularly published. In 1919 the magazine was changed
to a monthly, and from that date until its suspension in
1931 it was customary to publish at least one short play in
each issue. Many of these plays, chosen with a view to their
amateur usefulness, found their way into the repertoire of
producing groups throughout the country. In addition to
its publishing activities the Drama League promoted lec-
tures, exhibits, and national conferences, all designed to
further the amateur theatre movement. Eventually the
work of this pioneer organization was taken over by other
agencies, chiefly educational, but its influence during two
decades was considerable, and the development of the
one-act play owes a great deal to its sponsorship. v
The Wisconsin Players, with one producing group at
Madison and another at Milwaukee, stimulated the crea-
tion of many excellent short plays, several of which were
published under the title Wisconsin Plays, the first volume
appearing in 1914 and the second in 1918. The first vol-
ume was distinguished by the inclusion of Zona Gale's
The Neighbors, which immediately became and still is a
203
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
Stand-by of amateur groups one of the most popular
short plays in the English language.
The work of the Chicago Little Theatre is well-known
to all students of the modern American theatre. For five
years after its founding it continued under the inspiring
direction of Maurice Browne and Ellen Van Volkenburg,
emphasizing the short play and particularly the poetic
short play. Much of its repertoire was drawn from Eng-
lish and Irish sources, for Mr. Browne, an Englishman,
had come straight from the Little Theatres of Great
Britain , but native playwrights were encouraged, and it
was in this theatre that -Alice Brown's immensely success-
ful comedy, Jomt Owners in Spain, had its premiere.
After their Chicago venture Mr. Browne moved westward
to Seattle, where at the Cornish Theatre he continued his
career as a Little Theatre enthusiast, consistently promot-
ing the artistic short* play.
The story of Professor Baker's 47 Workshop Theatre
is also an oft-told tale. But in chronicling the development
of the short play in this country it is necessary that we re-
mind ourselves of the part Professor Baker played in that
development. Not only was his course, from its establish-
ment in 1912 until his retirement in 1933 (though it was
moved from Harvard to Yale in 1925) the most effective
play laboratory in the country, but it was also the progeni-
tor of many other college courses with similar aims. In ad-
dition, therefore, to the hundreds of short plays written
directly for Professor Baker by the many students who
flocked to him from all corners of the United States, we
must add the thousands which have been written for other
college instructors, most of whom would not be offer-
204
GLENN HUGHES
ing such courses had it not been for the example set at
Harvard.
Four volumes of one-act plays were published under the
title Plays of the 47 Workshop (1918, 1920, 1922, 1925)
and two volumes under the title Harvard Dramatic Club
Plays (1918, 1919). They included such favorites as The
Florist Shop by Winifred Hawkridge; Three Pills m a
Bottle by Rachel Field j Two Crooks and a Lady by Eu-
gene Pillotj and The Good Men Do by Hubert Osborne.
To read a list of Baker students in playwriting is almost
to read a list of successful contemporary playwrights. Some
of them did not tarry long in the field of the one-act play;
others, such as Eugene O'Neill, served a considerable ap-
prenticeship.
Among the colleges which followed Harvard in the
creation of dramatic laboratories and which have promoted
the writing of short plays as well as long, are: the Car-
negie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh, whose labora-
tory theatre was founded in 1914 under the direction of
Thomas Wood Stevens, himself the author of several ex-
cellent one-act plays ; the University of North Dakota,
where the Dakota Play makers were organized in 1914 by
Professor Frederick H. Koch, a group which was among
the first to strive consciously toward an American folk
drama; Cornell University, where Professor A. M. Drum-
mond has for many years directed the writing and produc-
tion of interesting short plays, ten of which have been pub-
lished under the title Cornell University Plays ; the Uni-
versity of North Carolina, where since 1918 the Carolina
Playmakers, under the direction of Professor Koch, have
earned an international reputation as creators and inter-
preters of folk drama, with four volumes of plays in print
205
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
and a. Pulitzer Prize winner, Paul Green, as a notable
member 5 Yale University, with a curriculum formed by
Professor Baker in 1925 and carried on since his retire-
ment by Professor Allardyce Nicoll, assisted by Walter
Prichard Eaton and others, with a theatre devoted to the
production of original plays and with two volumes of Yale
One- Act Plays in print; the University of Washington at
Seattle, where the present writer has offered a course in
playwriting since 1920, and where three volumes of short
plays have been published under the title University of
Washington Plays; the University of Iowa 5 Northwest-
ern University; the University of Utah; and dozens of
other institutions of which detailed mention is here im-
possible.
Connected with the university dramatic movement but
inspired also from other sources was the creation in 1914
and 1915 of two experimental theatres whose history pro-
vides the most exciting chapter in the narrative of the
American one-act play. These theatres came into being as
a result of the organization of two producing groups, the
Washington Square Players and the Provincetown Players.
The Washington Square Players, whose first production
was made during the autumn of 1914 on an improvised
stage in the rear portion of a store in Washington Square,
New Ynrfc pt-yi, with Robert Edmond Jones as designer,
dedicated itself to the performance of European and Amer-
ican short plays. Its activities attracted writers as well as
actors, and presently it moved into the Bandbox Theatre,
where for two seasons it continued its original policy. In
1919 its leading spirits formed the now famous and pow-
erful Xhfia&eGuild. Among other plays on its early pro-
grams are f ounSTFhe Clod by Lewis Beach j The Last
2O6
GLENN HUGHES
Straw by Bosworth Crocker j Helena's Husband by Philip
Moeller j The Shepherd in the Distance by Holland Hud-
son; Overtones by Alice Gerstenbergj and Another Way
Out by Lawrence Langner. These names and these titles
suggest the dramatic talent which the group embraced.
The fact that the playwrights of the Washington Square
Players so quickly forswore the short play for the long,
the informal production for the pretentious, indicates
merely how swiftly their abilities were recognized. This
group offers but one of many examples of a general rule
in the American theatre: namely, that the Little Theatre
is but a steppingstone to the large theatre the short play
but a preliminary to the long. In certain parts of Europe
this rule does not obtain, but in America it regrettably does.
The Provincetown Players were a tougher breed. Or-
ganized informally at Provincetown, Massachusetts, dur-
ing the summer of 1915, where they gave their first per-
formance in a disused fishhouse at the end of a wharf, they
adopted as their ideal the presentation of original Ameri-
can plays, particularly short plays. They emphasized the
element of originality, and they clung during their cor-
porate existence to the concept of the experimental. After
two summers in Provincetown they opened a playhouse in
the Greenwich Village quarter of New York City (first in
a remodeled dwelling, later in more ample quarters) where
they gave regular performances until December, 1929,
when they succumbed to the financial crash. During the
fifteen seasons of their existence they stimulated the crea-
tion of an extremely large number of good one-act plays.
Many of these plays were published and became popular
with amateur groups throughout the country; some of
them are contemporary classics. For example, these authors
207
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
and these titles: Eugene O'Neill: Bound East for Cardiff ,
y lle y Before Breakjast y The Long Voyage Home, In the
Zone y Where the Cross Is Made y The Moon of the Carib-
bees; Floyd Dell: Sweet and Twenty, King Arthur's
Socks; Edna St. Vincent Millay: Aria da Capo, Two Slat-
terns and a King; Alfred Kreymborg: Lima Beans y Mani-
kin and Minikm; Susan Glaspell: Trifles; Susan Glaspell
and George Cram Cook: Suppressed Desires, Tickless
Time; and a host of less famous titles by Harry Kemp,
Djuna Barnes, Michael Gold, Neith Boyce, Theodore
Dreiser, John Reed, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Hutchins Hap-
good, Rita Wellman, Bosworth Crocker, Lewis Beach,
and Lawrence Langner.
O'Neill was, of course, the great discovery of the Prov-
incetown group, and a considerable portion of their fame
is due to his subsequent fame. But even without O'Neill
the group would have more than justified its existence*
Not only did it enrich our dramatic literature by the crea-
tion of a score of short dramatic masterpieces, but it also
furnished us with the best proof to date that a theatre
cam operate in America with short plays as its principal
offering.
Had there been more theatres like the Provincetown,
with a firm faith in the artistic validity of the one-act play,
more playwrights of talent would have essayed this form.
But the Provincetown was in a class by itself, and most pro-
fessional playwrights saw no good reason for writing short
plays for mushroom theatres with amateurish standards.
There were, however, two notable exceptions: George
Middleton and Percival Wilde. Both these writers adopted
a serious professional attitude toward the short play.
George Middleton, an excellent craftsman, was a real pio-
208
GLENN HUGHES
neer in the Little Theatre movement and brought forth
his first volume of short plays in 1911 (Embers and Other
One- Act Plays). This was followed by other collections in
1913, 1915, and 1920. But shortly after the appearance of
the 1920 volume he grew discouraged with the prospect
and abandoned short plays for long. Percival Wilde, on
the other hand, with his first collection of one-acters pub-
lished in 1915 (Dawn and Other One-Act Plays) has con-
tinued for more than twenty years to supply the Little
Theatres of America with effective short plays. Nine vol-
umes of these have been published, and many of the indi-
vidual plays have appeared in anthologies. Wilde is prob-
ably the most successful as well as the most consistent
American writer in this field. When Margaret Mayorga
edited in 1937 a revised edition of her anthology, Repre-
sentative One- Act Plays by American Author s y and in-
cluded Wilde's play. Pawns, the author wrote to her as fol-
lows: "It may interest you to know that your 1919 anthol-
ogy was the first volume of the kind in which I was in-
cluded. Your new one will be the fiftieth."
Wilde's work could not have been included in an earlier
anthology of one-act plays because Miss Mayorga's 1919
collection was the first in the field. An astonishing fact to
many of us. And all the more astonishing when we con-
sider how many similar collections are now available. As a
matter of curiosity the present writer paused long enough
to count the anthologies of short plays on the shelves of
the Division of Drama Library at the University of Wash-
ington, and found one hundred and two. This collection is
Hot complete, but it represents most of the anthologies pub-
lished in English since 1919. Not many of the volumes are
restricted to American plays, but the majority of them con-
209
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
tain American plays. And these volumes are of course dis-
tinct from the collected one-act plays of individual authors,
which are fairly numerous.
If we examine the product of professional American
playwrights during the past twenty-five years we find, as
we have indicated before, that many of them have written
no short plays and that nearly all the others have em-
ployed this form infrequently. A quick survey of the rec-
ords gives us, however, the following one-act plays:
George Ade: The Mayor and the Manicure and three
other titles; Zoe Akins: The Magical City and Such a
Charming Young Man; E. P. Conkle: Minnie Fields ,
Sfarkin', 'Lection y and a dozen more titles; William C.
de Mille: Food, and In 1999; Beulah Marie Dix: Allison?*
Lad, Across the Border, and ten other titles; Martin
Flavin: Brains and five other titles; Kenneth Sawyer
Goodman: Dust of the Road and a dozen more titles, in
addition to Ryland and Holbein in Blackfriars written in
collaboration with Thomas Wood Stevens and The Won-
der Hat and The Hero of Santa Maria written in collabo-
ration with Ben Hecht; Rupert Hughes: The Ambush and
On the Razor Edge; George S. Kaufman: The Still Alarm
and // Men Played Cards As Women Do; George Kelly:
Finders-Keepers and four other titles; Clare Kummer:
So's Your Old Antique and five other titles; Elizabeth
McFadden: Why the Chimes Rang and five other titles;
Percy MacKaye: Napoleon Crossing the Rockies y Sam
Average, and ten other titles; Kenyon Nicholson: Bedside
Manners, Meet the Missus, The Marriage of Little Eva,
and sixteen other titles; Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty
and Till the Day I Die; Elmer Rice: The Passing of
Chow-Chow and A Diadem of Snow; Lynn Riggs: Reck-
2IO
GLENN HUGHES
less and Knives from Syria; Austin Strong: The Drums of
Oude and (with Lloyd Osbourne) Little Father of the
Wilderness ; Booth Tarkington: Beauty and the Jacobin,
The Ghost Story y and six other titles} Dan Totheroh:
A Tune of a Time and ten other titles.
The above list excludes, of course, those professional
playwrights whose work has been mentioned earlier in this
chapter, such as Eugene O'Neill, Paul Green, and others
who were connected with early Little Theatre or univer-
sity groups.
During this same quarter century there have been many
American writers who, though not professional play-
wrights, have nevertheless contributed effectively to our
one-act play literature. A comprehensive list of such writers
would extend beyond our present limitations of space, and
we must therefore content ourselves with a mention of but
a few. Some of them are novelists, others are teachers, pub-
lishers, and what not. They are all familiar names in the
one-act field:
Colin Clements: Pierrot in Paris and twenty-six other
titles, as well as All on a Summer's Day and sixteen other
titles written in collaboration with Florence Ryersonj Sada
Cowan: Pomp, Sintram of Skaggerak, and eight other
titles^ Theodore Dreiser: Laughing Gas and six other
titles; John Farrar: The Wedding Rehearsal and three
other titles, in addition to a collection of plays for chil-
dren} Oscar W. Firkins: Two Passengers for Chelsea and
twenty other titles} Carl Click: The Fourth Mrs. Phillies
and six other titles} Doris Halman: Will o y the Wisp and
eleven other titles; Phoebe Hoffman: Marthas Mourning
and ten other titles} Babette Hughes: One Egg, Mrs.
Harper's Bazaar, and fifteen other titles} Charles O'Brien
211
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
Kennedy: And There Was Light and ten other titles j
Constance D'Arcy Mackay: The Beau of Bath and twenty-
five other titles; Mary Macmillan: A Fan and Two Can-
dlesticks and twenty-five other titles ; Jeannette Marks:
The Merry Merry Cuckoo and six other titles; Chris-
topher Morley: Thursday Evening and eight other titles;
David Pinski: A Dollar and eighteen other titles; J. W.
Rogers, Jr.: Judge Lynch and seven other titles; Ridgely
Torrence: The Rider of Dreams and three other titles;
Stuart Walker: Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil and
eight other titles; Stark Young: The Twilight Saint and
six other titles.
The number of one-act plays now being written in the
United States is enormous. The number published an-
nually is about two hundred. And because most of the
published plays are by nonprofessional playwrights, the
standard of originality and workmanship is not very high.
The basic reason for the low standard, however, is, as has
been indicated above, that there is scarcely any professional
use made of one-act plays in this country. The Little Thea-
tre either dies or becomes a large theatre; community and
college theatres start with the short play but graduate
quickly to the full-length. The only consistent consumers
of short plays are the high schools and social or profes-
sional clubs. It is obvious, therefore, that when a one-act
play is destined to be used by the least skilled amateur
groups, no rigid standard of excellence will be maintained
by the playwrights. The huge number of such groups cre-
ates a considerable market, but that market is served with
quantity rather than quality. Even the possibility of large
royalties does not tempt the typical professional playwright
to compose one-act plays for high school use. One might
212
GLENN HUGHES
suppose that a potential thousand performances at five or
ten dollars for each performance would tempt a good many
of our Broadway craftsmen particularly in these days of
a shrunken Broadway. But either through oversight or
choice the professionals ignore the short play.
Occasionally an American returned from Europe dreams
of a professional one-act theatre in New York or Los An-
geles, but either his dream dies a-borning or else it is shat-
tered by the indifferent public. In Paris there is a tradi-
tion for this type of theatre ; in this country there is not.
And it required the dazzling virtuosity of Noel Coward
to sell a bill of one-act plays to Broadway. At the moment
there is considerable talk of the commercial possibilities
of the form, but it seems unlikely that many writers or
producers will actually attempt to follow in Mr. Coward's
footsteps. Meanwhile it is interesting to hear reasonably
well-educated persons imply that Noel Coward invented
the one-act play.
*
The American one-act play, like the American long play,
represents a steady striving toward individuality and na-
tive character. It seems to most of us that considerable
progress in this direction has been achieved. And yet it is
difficult to define the American quality, particularly in the
matter of style. For a great many years critics have accused
our playwrights of being slaves to foreign models. Occa-
sionally they have hailed someone as a liberator, and have
rejoiced in the literary independence which they perceived
on the horizon. But even in these instances it has been pos-
sible to discern in the author's work distinct influences of
European literature. The American playwright who has
called forth the greatest burst of patriotic enthusiasm is
213
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
Eugene O'Neill, and yet O'Neill leans heavily on Strind-
berg and on the Greeks. What is more, it is possible to
contend that O'Neill's psychology does not conform to the
typical American psychology. His subject matter is usually
American, his bluntness may be called American, but like
most playwrights, he is compounded of European inher-
itances and influences.
More than any other country, the United States is a
mixture of racial stocks and cultural traditions. It has
achieved some unity of thought and feeling but scarcely
enough to bring forth a great body of characteristic litera-
ture. Our life is tremendously diversified, with the conse-
quence that those of our playwrights who have yearned
toward a truthful expression of American life have been
forced into regionalism. Paul Green has interpreted the
whites and blacks of North Carolina; Lynn Riggs has
captured the lusty life of Oklahoma; Clifford Odets has
excelled in depicting certain characters and aspects of exist-
ence in New York City; E. P. Conkle has drawn his
themes from Nebraska town and farm. The work of each
of these playwrights (as well as the work of many others)
may be called, and truthfully, American, yet such a term
is too general it must be qualified by the regional desig-
nation. And their strong regionalism that quality which
gives them strength and reality interferes with their gen-
eral popularity. ,
There are one-act plays by Americans which seem to
possess a general American quality and which achieve popu^
larity in all sections of the country, but these are apt to be
considered superficial. Such plays attempt to exhibit na-
tional rather than local psychology and to present charac-
ters which are the embodiment of this psychology: the
214
GLENN HUGHES
harassed but good-natured business-man, the energetic,
culture-seeking clubwoman, the spoiled and thoughtless
but still admirable young son, the recklessly independent
but fundamentally lovable girl in other words, types of
Americans that are to be found in all regions of the coun-
try and represent a kind of composite of Americanism.
Booth Tarkington, Christopher Morley, Zona Gale, and
many other writers have created effective plays from this
material. Optimism, courage, honesty, and unpretentious-
ness are the human qualities involved, and it is these quali-
ties which most Americans like to believe are the national
characteristics. Short plays by O'Neill and Green are
widely read and studied, but plays by Tarkington and
MorJey are widely performed. The former group, because
of their probing power, are admired as literature j the lat-
ter are enjoyed as theatrical entertainment.
Although American one-act plays written before 1911
were few and limited as to types, since 1911 they have
run the gamut of style and content. The rise of the Little
Theatres, inspired by European examples, brought every
kind of one-act play before American audiences. The Irish
folk play, the Strindbergian psychological melodrama, the
Maeterlinckian mystical fantasy, the French shocker as
well as the French drawing-room farce, the Russian peas-
ant farce, the Viennese comedy of sophistication, the whim-
sical English comedy, these and other types of play were
given their American hearing. All of them were imitated
few of them were approved. Gradually it became apparent
that although there are audiences in this country for every
sort of play, there are not very large audiences for many
sorts. Generally speaking, American audiences do not en-
joy poetic fantasy, gruesome melodrama, or cynical com-
215
AMERICAN ONE-ACT PLAYS
edy. They admire poetic tragedy, they will accept ingenious
farce, but they enjoy realistic comedy. One hesitates to set
down these generalizations because it is obvious that there
are so many exceptions, but the present writer's observa-
tions over a period of twenty-odd years lead him to the
above conclusions. And it seems no disparagement of the
American people to accept these conclusions. They may
not indicate a superior artistic perception, but they do point
to a healthy mental condition.
It is a far cry from the gentility of William Dean How-
ells to the raciness of George S. Kaufman, but in the plays
of each we have examples of American humor. The tempo
and the idiom have changed, the healthy good-naturedness
has not. But whereas Howells stood almost alone as a
writer of short farces and comedies, Kaufman is but one of
many, in kind if not in quality.
In recent years there has been a tendency to praise that
play which is based on what appears to be a "significant"
theme and to cry down the play which professes only to
entertain or which has to do with unchanging aspects of
human nature. This tendency has led at times to an ad-
miration for propaganda at the expense of other values}
for timeliness at the expense of eternal verity. This is a
tendency which has been felt in periods other than our
own, and one which occurs with inevitable frequency. It
affects the short play as well as the long, and it has re-
sulted lately in the composition of many pieces dealing
with the conflict between capital and labor, with war, and
with racial conflict.
America has written its share of "significant" short plays,
and while some of them have combined art with enthusi-
asm, a great many have been content to appeal to prejudice
2l6
GLENN HUGHES
rather than to reason or artistic sensibility. Generally speak-
ing, plays of the latter category have found their audi-
ences among those sections of the public which were al-
ready in sympathy with the propaganda of the play.
Plays on controversial themes, whether short plays or
long, professional or amateur, seldom achieve wide popu-
larity in this country, but short plays do so even less fre-
quently than long plays, for the reason that the production
of short plays is chiefly in the hands of groups associated
wijth the public schools, of church groups, or of social and
literary societies. Such auspices are inclined toward con-
servatism or at least toward an avoidance of inflammatory
material. The propaganda play is, in consequence, left in
the hands of the propagandists.
The inclination of American audiences to resent propa-
ganda in the theatre is irritating to those whose special in-
terests lead them to employ the theatre as a propagandist
agency, but it is a strongly rooted tradition among us to
enjoy ourselves rather than disturb ourselves in the thea-
tre. To the average American a play is fun, not worry $ it is
a "show," not a political or social or religious document.
And although from a radical point of view this attitude is
objectionably smug, lethargic, and cowardly, it is from a
conservative point of view eminently defensible. To the
conservative the theatre represents not so much an escape
from life as an escape from the irritating aspects of life.
It represents harmony and tolerant good nature. It is,
from this standpoint, an essentially democratic institution,
serving all the people and acting as a common denomina-
tor. This fact must be borne in mind when one attempts
to evaluate the many one-act plays which lack distinction
but which nevertheless enjoy an extraordinary popularity.
217
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN ENGLAND
JOHN BOURNE is editor of the highly successful English
publication Amateur Theatre and Playwrights* Journal y which
is considered the official organ of the Little Theatre move-
ment in Great Britain. He has edited over ten collections of
one-act plays and has adjudicated all over Great Britain on
over five thousand dramatic societies most of which have pre-
sented one-act plays. Mr. Bourne is the author of seven one-
act plays, one of which had a better run in the festivals during
the last seven years than any other play.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN ENGLAND
by John Bourne
SINCE the development of the one-act play in Great
Britain is inseparably bound up with the growth of the
amateurllrama movement jn^&stwar years, it is necessary
to begin by* considering how that movement stands today.
It is impossible, in an activity so essentially anarchic, to
illustrate its energy by the statistical method. Guesses as
to the extent of its hold vary according to the tempera-
ment and practical knowledge of the authority of the mo-
ment. Some short time ago, for instance, there appeared
in one national newspaper the information that "probably
100,000 persons in this country today get a good deal of
fun out of the amateur theatre," while, on the same day,
a more enthusiastic contemporary declared to its million
and a half readers that "the amateur dramatic cast in this
country is about 1,000,000 players strong."
Whatever the number of people in some way or an-
other actively engaged in amateur drama, there are cer-
tain reliable methods of estimating the amazing growth of
the movement in postwar years. It is not disputed that
there must be between twenty and thirty thousand amateur
societies in this country. It is also certain that the majority
give part of their attention each year to the production of
221
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
one-act plays. For instance, during 1937-38, at least three
hundred new one-act plays were printed most of them
in separate acting editions entirely for the amateur mar-
ket. Entries in the annual national festival of one-act plays
organized by the British Drama League and a similar
festival for Scotland run by the Scottish Community
Drama Association together numbered about a thousand.
Entries in various locally organized one-act play festivals
must have numbered at least as many. Collections of one-
act plays still seem to be a profitable enterprise for the
publishers who care to take their pickings in an apparently
inexhaustible market. On the surface, the one-act play is
in an extremely healthy condition. There exists a blessed
state of steady demand and plenteous supply: a state, I
might add, which is a fruitful text for after-dinner speak-
ers and similar optimists who are always with us in the
boom years when there seems no reason why the boom
should not be everlasting. For the one-act play is booming
in this country. And if I give it as my opinion that the
peak of the boom has already passed and that (as is the
nature of booms) it is due for a decline, it is not because
I am antagonistic to the one-act play. On the contrary, as
one who has played a small part in the birth and develop-
ment of the postwar amateur movement which is also the
story of the re-development of the short play I know
that (as Mr. Ivor Brown recently put it) "the present and
future of the one-act play is with the amateurs." But I
confess to a feeling that the place of the one-act play in
the amateur movement of this country is insecure; that it
is in danger of being considered merely as a technical exer-
cise j that present attitudes to it tend to turn it into noth-
ing but a chrysallis-stage struggle towards the greater
222
JOHN BOURNE
glory of producing three-act plays released from the pro-
fessional theatre.
The professional theatre in England has never con-
cerned itself seriously with the short play, and one looks
in vain for a revival of professional interest in it. A year
or two ago, it is true, Noel Coward presented ninej)ne-
act plays for a brilliant season in this country. But what
attracted at the box office was not the audacity of present-
ing three forty-minute plays instead of one play of three
forty-minute acts, but the glamour of the season's bright
particular stars Gertrude Lawrence and Noel Coward.
Apart from this one fugitive appearance, an even more
fleeting glimpse of a Thornton Wilder short play as cur-
tain raiser to a recent revival of Shaw's Candida, and the
occasional presentation of short plays by a very few pro-
vincial managers (notably Mr. William Armstrong, of the
Liverpool Playhouse), the professional theatre has re-
mained as oblivious as ever to the appeal of the one-act
play. All the tremendous activity of the past fifteen years
among amateur players has failed to convince the profes-
sionals that the one-act play has claim to equal considera-
tion with the three-act play. I do not imply that the pro-
fessional managers are right to ignore it. I state the fact,
and shall draw a conclusion from it later. It is true, how-
ever, that English audiences in the professional and ama-
teur theatre prefer a long play to a triple bill.
I have stated that the professionals never concerned
themselves seriously with the one-act play. But a brief
word on the use they have made of it is necessary, since
from these somewhat arid roots the postwar amateur
movement has sprung.
No need, I think, in a brief essay to recapitulate the
223
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
History of the short play from the earliest moralities, inter-
ludes, and farces of medieval times. If I refer to the
Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in A Midsummer Night's
Dream ("Is there no play to ease the anguish of a tortur-
ing hour?" said Theseus, thereupon establishing the status
of the short play from that day almost to this) or to the
appearance of the Players in Hamlet it is enough to indi-
cate that the short play has a respectably ancient, if some-
what misty, ancestry. As an interlude it persists through-
out theatrical history: something to ease an idle half-hour,
a relaxation taken in the middle of the gargantuan enter-
tainments that our forefathers expected when they took
their seats in the gallery.
Close enough to our own time, about the days when
Sir Henry Irving was making his first appearances in
London, these hardy playgoers could sit through an hors
d'ceuvres of a solo or two, pass on refreshed to a short
play (generally full of body and rank of bouquet), settle
down to the main item of the evening, a full-length play,
and top off the banquet with a lavish ballet. A moneyed
middle class then becomes more stabilized. Its necessary
social habits are made conventions. It looks for entertain-
ment only when the essential business of making money
and feeding itself has been accomplished and the theatre
adapts itself to changing conditions. By the end of the
nineteenth century the infinite variety of a night at the
theatre has given way to a program consisting of a short
play and the main piece of the evening. The "curtain
raiser" has made its appearance. No nonsense is talked
about art or problems of technique. For the benefit of
those playgoers who want full value for their money, a
short play is provided as appetizer for the longer dish of
224
JOHN BOURNE
the evening. Those who wish to eat their dinners in com-
fort know that they may wander into a theatre whose busi-
ness has already started without missing anything of great
consequence. "Curtain raiser." The very name is eloquent
of an attitude of toleration and contempt. And for the pro-
fessional, that attitude largely remains.
'-'Nonetheless, famous playwrights did on occasion turn
their hands to the short play as curtain raiser. Pick up a
bundle of current newspaper cuttings, and it is more than
likely that you will find record of a performance of JBar-
rie's The Twelve Pound Look, Shaw's How He Lied to
Herjtiij^bmd^ or Pinero's Playgoers. These, and ofheTs
like them, survive because they are examples of technical.
excellence in the one-act play form. For the most part,
the curtain raisers of this period were plays of situation.
What happens when the servants are invited into the
drawing room} the dire fate that awaits burglars who hide
in safes} the perils run by ardent gentlemen who make
love to other men's wives in the other men's studies and
so forth. The plays were not intended to do more than
give the house its preliminary warming-up $ therefore^
strong plot was all thatwas needed, and no problem of
one-act play construction was tackled other than that of
exposing, developing, and completing a situation within
the space of some thirty or forty minutes. In the hands
of the best of these playwrights, of course, the curtain
raiser became technically perfect. On the postwar play-
wrights who turned to writing plays for the amateur mar-
ket, these short pieces had an influence of the first im-
portance. They survived, be it added, until before the war
then disappeared from the professional stage.
But there is also another strong link between the mod-
225
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
ern writer of one-act plays and the nineteenth century
theatre. This is to be traced through that peculiarly Eng-
lish institution, the Music Hall.
Here we are much closer to the crude "humours" of
the medieval players: and I should hazard an opinion that
whereas the late- Victorian curtain raiser has largely dete^
mined the technique of today, it is the music-hall sketch
which has most influenced the spirit of the shorf pkyl
This is not a conclusion that the arty and crafty take kindly
to, but the fact remains that for one experimental or ex-
pressionistic effort staged in this country today, twenty
broad farces or comedies are given.
In the prewar music hall there was always place for
the short sketch. (There still is, for that matter, though
present-day fashions are all for the anemic bit of dialogue
leading up to what is euphemistically described as a "snap
ending.") Sometimes it was the strong play of situation
I instance here the famous W. W. Jacobs piece The Mon-
key's Paw but more often it was a mere framework for
a display of individual virtuosity in the arts of throwing
custard pies, of falling down ladders, of impersonating
the fruity idiosyncrasies of Cockney charladies, or of re-
lating the trials and tribulations that beset the man who
has a mother-in-law. (England's oldest joke and still
good for a laugh. We are a conservative nation.) The best
of these plays, too, survive such as A Sister to Assist 'Er
and they survive because they are, in a crude form, in-
terested in the quirks and oddities of character. In the
music hall the devotee paid his money to see a display of
personality. He wanted his personalities thrown at him in
broadest and most unsubtle colors. Therefor^the
226
JOHN BOURNE
sketch was built around the characteristics of the individual
star, and plot was of secondary importance.
The classification of these two sources are somewhat
rough and ready. But the main implication is true: that
the postwar playwrights had at their hands the right ma-
terial for development. The curtain raiser had achieved
much in overcoming the technical problems of the short
play 5 the music-hall sketch was continuing to present the
characteristic "humours," which are much the same in
modern English slapstick as they were when Snug the
joiner made a mess of his appearance as the Lion. A refer-
ence might also be added to the successful introduction in
this country in the early iqao's of Grand Guignol f which
had valuable technical lessons to teach,
^n addition, there were scattered attempts to use the
short play form for more than merely ephemeral pur-
poses. There jwas .some _^ recognition .that the one^act^ play
was as capable Qf_sgrious literary Jre^to^^^Jjie^s^^
story notably among the jrishjplaywrights encouraged
bj^that rejrnaAablejvoman, Lady Gregory. Four famous
one-act plays by Irish writers will suffice to demonstrate
the vitality of their work: Lady Gregory's The Rising of
the Moon, W. B. Yeats's Deirdre, Lord Dunsany's The
Golden Doom, and, of course, Synge's Rulers to the Sea._
Of the last mentioned, it is sufficient to say that no j>ne-act
play has yet beenjgyrittenjp equaT it fox-technical bril-
liance and universality of its tragedy and that its influence
on postwar playwrightTIuTT^ only be-
cause it showed them what could be achieved within the
limits of the short play bylt writerjrf genius. \ ^ *
It is essential, when examining the extremely rapid
growth of interest in the one-act play among amateur
227
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
sudden postwar ere-
ation of numerous amateur societies clamoring for short
piecesjm which to try their skill that produced the one-
acf play wrights.\ There was no "school" of playwrights
wKcTset out to show the world that the one-act pjay was
worthy of more dignified treatment^ than it had received
hitherto. There arose no master_of the one-act play form
who inspired others to follow ~h\s_ example or forced ama-
teur companies to "present his work. The distinction is
worth empEasixmgj for It means that the majority^ofthe
one-act plays that havejaeen. written, during the_aast-4en
-^ , __ A --- J- ---- - ---- *"' ~ O A
years are so much flapdoodle turned out tojnget a current
nee3TThe situation Lears some similarity to that caused
when incautious speculators get wind of a rumor that bar-
ren land is about to produce oil. The sharks and financial
thimbleriggers step in, companies are floated, the sharks
step out and what might have proved with careful nurs-
ing to be a profitable business for all concerned is left
barren before real work is begun.
It would assuredly be wrong to apply this parallel to
the achievements of the amateur movement in this coun-
try as a whole. NotjdUj:hejo^
tunists, nor is all their work meretricious.^But the fact that
the majority~oFpIay Wrights have been brought out on the
crest of a rising tide of demand for their wares and not
because they must write one-act plays or jjerish is one of
the reasons" why," after Ten to fifteen years of activity, one
feels a sense of insecurity about the future.
I do not think anyone will dispute 1926 as the most
important date in the history of the revival of thej)ne-
act play^ In that^ycar^the British Drama League held its
first experimental festival of one-a5~play&
228
JOHN BOURNE
The Drama League has a lengthy list of charter aims
and objectives; but essentially it is an association com-
posed of individual co-operators in amateur drama and
affiliated amateur dramatic groups. It provides a central
organization for a considerable number of amateur socie-
ties throughout the country, conducts drama schools, runs
a drama library, and so forth. Its most important at least,
most publicized activity, however, is the organization of
a competitive festival run on knockout lines between affi-
liated groups which enter one or more one-act plays each
year. The plays are seen by adjudicators, who decide, on
the basis of a marking system, which are the best pro-
ductions in their areas ; send their selections forward to a
second round in the competition which is reviewed by an-
other set of adjudicators, who, in turn, send a selection
forward to a final round held annually in a London
theatre.
In the first year (1926) seven societies took part in
this competition always, by the way, named (or mis-
named) a festival. The idea caught on. There were plenty
of societies who were either presenting one-act plays after
a fashion or who were willing to produce them with the
slightest encouragement. In 1927 a hundred and fifty
groups entered the competition ; in 1930 the entrants num-
bered four hundred; by 1932 the number had reached six
hundred; and the peak entry so far recorded was that of
1936 when seven hundred and forty-seven groups entered.
Boom years indeed! For the success of the British
Drama League's festival inspired others to do likewise.
In Scotland, a similar organization, the Scottish Commun-
ity Drama Association, developed its annual knockout
festival. This, begun in 1927, experienced a similarly swift
229
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
rise in popularity and now attracts about three hundred
and fifty entries. Indeed, the annual drama festival in
Scotland is said to attract as much discussion among its
fans and followers as do the chances of the football teams
playing their league matches throughout the winter.
Nor is this the end. One-act play festivals are variously
organized with the support of town councils who consider
it profitable to advertise the excellencies of their airs and
waters besides giving crowded audiences a week of one-
act plays and a dash of excitement inspired by the ques-
tion: Who is going to win? Local drama associations
(formed voluntarily by groups of societies all over the
country for mutual self-help) run their own drama weeks
of one-act plays. Some festivals running from two to nine
nights are simply got up by local residents interested in
nothing but encouraging drama in their town or district.
The Women's Institutes hold their own festivals, so do
various rural County Committees. There are single socie-
ties who, with large membership lists capable of providing
anything up to twelve casts for one-act plays, run their
own annual drama festivals and invite an adjudicator to
decide which team has done best. Even professional man-
agements in the provinces have begun to organize local
one-act play festivals for amateur groups. The venture is
financially profitable (festivals draw the crowds) and the
event is not without significance in view of the professional
actor's traditional dislike of "amateurs."
The result of this manifold festival activity (there are
as yet comparatively few competitive festivals devoted to
three-act plays) has therefore been to create a wide and
steady demand for new one-act plays. I have already men-
tioned that in 1937 at least three hundred new ones were
230
JOHN BOURNE
added to the large number published during the past ten
years. It can therefore be definitely stated that, without
the rise of the festival movement, the one-act play as we
know it would not exist today. The festivals have been
almost the only begetter of its new-found prosperity. This
does not mean, of course, that one-act plays are performed
only at festivals. There are many societies, unable to
handle full-scale productions, who are in the habit of pre-
senting triple bills. There are as many who vary the pre-
sentation of three-act plays with occasional programs of
one-act plays. There is a considerable number among
which the practice of presenting a curtain raiser to a three-
act play has become part of theatrical routine. And^ among
the many Women's Institute drama_groups in BritainTthe
one-act play as proved a godsend. Handicapped by rea-
son of small stage space, casting difficulties, and lack of
rehearsal time, Women's Institutes everywhere have been
released by TK^flo^oFh^wj)ne-act plays from having to
confinelheir theatrical activities J
from The M^^^gjLi^2z/^> an extract or two
from Twelph^Night, and a fe\^ monologues and brief
sketches that have grown Bleached with the passage of
""But in these cases, the opportunity to choose at large
among a variety of one-act plays is primarily due to the
festival movement. The drama festival therefore, playing
as it does the highly important part of midwife to the
nascent one-act play, deserves to have its credentials for
the job examined. And it is here that thoughtful critics in
this country begin to have their doubts.
I have already mentioned that it was the festivals that
brought forth the dramatists. Now in the ideal state, the
231
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
process would have been reversed. That is, a vigorous one-
act drama should have come first, and a festival move-
ment developed out of it because amateurs everywhere
were already producing one-act plays. It is useless to pro-
pound the impossible. But the proposition should make
clear an important point: namely, that the majority of
dramatists now using the one-act play as a means of ex-
pression would just as readily turn their hands to three-
act, two-act, or five-minute plays if the festivals suddenly
decided to concentrate on any one particular form as from
tomorrow. These playwrights write one-act plays because
it is immediately profitable for tHem7fp~do~so, and while
tHIs makes for no restraint upon^individual genius (many
great artistic masterpieces in painting, music, and litera-
ture were done under compulsion and to satisfy a particu-
lar client or market), there is considerable danger in the
fact that most of the output is opportunist and without
any valid artistic justification.
But the _more serious dangers arise from the organiza-
tion of the festivals themselves. Where there is competi-
tion, there^ ^aKo^are :1Bpund^T6 be rules ahH~regulations. Tf
therq.isLJ^.J'ace for a prize, it_will not attract a mass of
entries unless provision is made to^ ensure some uniformity
of condilicmsLamc^^
Therefore, if the playwright wishes to receive a modest
return for the labor of his creation, he must in this country
look to it that his play acts for no more than forty min-
utes. Why? Because it is a general rule in festival work
that any play which runs over the forty minutes is dis-
qualified instantly. Equally, he should see that it plays
for at least twenty minutes j for if it plays for only fifteen,
no competing team will present it - y it would be again dis-
232
JOHN BOURNE
qualified. He may not write a duologue, for such plays
are barred from competitive festivals. He would be well
advised, indeed, to include at least five or six characters
if his play is to be popular j for entrant teams know very
well that the adjudicator is instructed to be more sympa-
thetic to a team with a large cast than he is to a group
which puts forward three or four players only regardless
of the artistic merits of the play. Moreover, if he really
wants a good return for the effort of creation, the play-
wright will rack his wretched brains for a plot that will
include as many women as possible. If he can manage to
make the entire cast one for women only, his success is
assured. For^good m amateujrojnen players are available
in lent
With all these points in mind, the playwright must next
consider his setting. He has perhaps conceived of a drama
set upon an alpine glacier. In the moment of his inspiration
he cries: "That setting, and none other!" But a moment's
reflection proves to him that his probable purchasers will
refuse his play at once if he makes use of the alpine glacier
because the festivals (necessarily short of time) allow
only ten minutes to each team in which to set the stage
and (wishing to allow uniform conditions of entry for
everyone) demand that all teams play in a curtain fit-up.
Therefore, the playwright will be advised to forgo any-
thing that complicates stage-setting problems, and he will
probably set his play in the everlasting "drawing room of
Mrs. So-and-So" and vary this procedure, when he is
bored, by shifting his drama back into the kitchen.
Above all, he will avoid if he can any change of scene
during his play. Even one curtain or one black-out is sus-
233
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
pect, since it not only implies the danger of overrunning
the time limit but puts a strain upon scene-shifters and/or
the man in charge of the switchboard. Curtain up and
curtain down: that is the general rule for the author of
one-act plays who desires success. The episodic short play
(so full of possibilities) has hardly been touched in Eng-
land for this reason.
But the most serious limitation of all has still to be
discussed. I refer to the marking system.
I may as well confess here and now that I have prob-
ably done more adjudicating in drama festivals than any
other man in this country. Furthermore, I am the author
of one of the marking systems which is widely in use
among the so-called independent (as opposed to the na-
tionally organized) festivals. I deplore the marking system
on several grounds chief of which is that it is impossible
to assess the comparative merits of theatrical productions
on a basis of so many marks for this and so many for that.
On the other hand, given the festival system and the pur-
pose for which it was first framed, I can make no valid
objection to it.
When the festivals began on a large scale in this coun-
try, technical achievement among amateur players was at
an extremely low level. Acting, production, stage manage-
ment, make-up, lighting all were, in the main, of a poor
standard. It was therefore necessary first of all to raise the
technical standards of the numerous amateur companies
in the country. To this end the marking system was
framed.
Here is one system (my own), which is much the same
as those generally in use.
234
JOHN BOURNE
Marks
Acting ........................... 45
Production ........................ 30
Stage presentation ................... 10
Dramatic merit of play ............... 10
Enterprise ........................ 5
It is immediately obvious that no less than eighty-five
percent of the adjudicator's marks are awarded purely
for technical achievement $ that five percent are given for
enterprise, whether it be for choice of play or for some
bold stroke of imaginative interpretation or staging; and
that only ten percent go for the excellence of the chosen
I shall not enter into a discussion of the marking sys-
tem, which is a particularly thorny subject and one most
fruitful of argument. But I should point out that it has
achieved much of what it set out to do. The technical
standards of amateur production have made tremendous
strides under its guidance during the last decade. More-
over, it has still much work to do, as any adjudicator with
painful experience among the immature societies can prove.
A marking system does not perfect the technique of an
almost entirely untried drama within the space of ten
years.
But from the point of view of those whose first interest
is in the plays that amateur societies are performing and
not in the way they stage them, the marking system is
gravely overweighted in favor of technique. Ten marks
out of a hundred for the dramatic merit of the chosen play
is so small a proportion that it does little positively to
encourage new authors, nor does it offer much encourage-
ment to societies to look for the best. Naturally enough,
235
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
the better the play the better should be the performance.
But, with the emphasis on technique, authors are in the
main content to write pieces which are virtually little more
than good test pieces that will give a team the best pos-
sible technical exercise. The author watches changing
fashions, changing tastes. He obeys every rule and regu-
lation that I have noted, with scrupulous care. He tries to
write the sort of piece which will hit the widest market
which will appeal as much to Women's Institutes as to the
more advanced societies. He takes care not to set over-
difficult problems for producer, scene-designer, or players.
He remembers the marking system and writes accord-
ingly. Small wonder that many of the plays written an-
nually are of negligible artistic quality, show no advance
whatsoever either in technique or in content on Pinero's
Playgoers, and have about as much expectation of life as
a May fly. Small wonder, too (to revert to a point I raised
earlier), that the professional theatre has yet to be per-
suaded to take the one-act play seriously. What have the
amateurs to show them that they have not already got?
The blunt answer is: Little or nothing.
So much for the general situation as it exists in Britain
today. And now for a few of the one-act playwrights of
note to whom the aew amateur movement has given a
wider opportunity, ijarold Brighouse is one of the play-
wrights who was 'writing one-act plays before amateur
acting became the universal activity it now is. Amateurs^
I fear, are inclined to regard him as a "difficult" author,
Difficult or no, he is the most consistent and most reward-
ing of the one-act playwrights who is content to use _a
familiar technique and to enrich it with a discussion^oj
modern problems. If I quote a play like The Boy: What
236
JOHN BOURNE
Will He Become? it is not because it is anything like his
best play, but because the title expresses admirably the
quiet, nonviolent methods of its author. Brighouse excels
at dialogue which provokes disturbing echoes, which
rarely makes direct statement, but which hints, as it were
obliquely, at the emotional currents stirred in each of his
characters by the social or ethical problem he is discussing.
Sjginey Box, among the most prolific of English one-
acf playwrights, has aTsoT>eenT one ol: the most successful
m recent years. He can with equal facility produce a
straightforward play built to suit the Women's Institutes
and a piece so obscure that it sets the adjudicator guessing!
His work is always of extremely efficient craftsmanship:
he is the least "untidy" of playwrights. His most impor-
tant work has undoubtedly been with the experimental
play. He has, for example, compressed within thirty-fivd
minutes of playing time the story of the rise and fall of_a
financier (Self -Made Man), has given us in Waiter a fine
example oF simultaneous presentation of direct action and
"thought action," and has made a highly interesting ex-
periment m symbolism with hisjplay about dual person-
ality, Tjhe Tree. More than any other one-act playwrigh'
in this country, Box has pointed the way for future exi
ploration of the technical possibilities of the one-act form
Another playwright of significance is that sturdy indi-
vidualist, F. Sladen-Smith. Like all individualists, he has
paradoxically had considerable influence among the
younger writers. Sladen-Smith is lucky in that he pos-
sesses, or rather is in control of, his own theatre group,
Most of his short plays have been written for the Un-
known Theatre, Manchester, and are blessedly free from
the influence of current tastes elsewhere. His style is un-
237
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
mistakablc: situations fantastic, dialogue polished, and
^vitty, ideas improbably audacious. It is typical of this
author that he excels in light but telling satire of the more
heavy-handed dramas of mighty situation. For he is (and
has proclaimed the fact in his only novel) an unrepentant
escapist. His plays spin fancies in a happy vacuum bril-
liant bubbles of witty dialectic floating in a clear air. He
just doesn't like his fellow-men, and cares less for their
continuously clumsy though well-meaning efforts to
straighten things out.
The playwright whose work has, in the past few years,
been more performed than that of any other is Philip
Johnson., For at least three years he has far outdistanced
Els rivals when a count is taken of the authors represented
in the national festival. All forms appear to come alike
to this author: comedy, tragedy, fantasy, and bold experi-
ment. But he is at his best in straightforward comedy
particularly of northern types. His characterization is al-
ways clear cut, his style fluent, and his technique assured
a brilliant craftsman who has never given us a botched
piece of work.
In Scotland two names stand out, and in complete con-
trastjp one another Gordon Bottomley and Joe Corrie.
Bottomley is actually an Englishman, and lives in the
north of England; but since he is President of the Scot-
tish Community Drama Association and has made much
use of the old Gaelic legends of Scotland in his verse
plays, Scotland can rightly claim him as her own. He is
the foremost poet dramatist in this country today and the
verse drama's best propagandist. His plays are of most
cfflejul craftsmanship, and the verse of a fine musical
quality which is written to be spoken: indeed, only in per-
238
JOHN BOURNE
formance is the true quality of Bottomley's work apparent.
Corrie, on the other hand, is a dramatist of his day and
age. Once a miner, his roots are firm in his own class, and
he knows all its problems. Much of his work is open to
criticism on technical grounds: he is weakest in dealing
with passages of sentiment and does not always succeed
in masking his own voice by those of his characters. But,
as the only working-class playwright of note in Britain,
he represents what is still an untapped source of strength
for the future. For the fact is that the postwar amateur
movement in this cour^^y is alir** ^ntirely middle class
in origin and outlook. Working-class sentiment has, as
yet, remained unvoiced. Or, if voiced at all, it has been
done through the medium of sympathetic middle-class
writers who know of working-class conditions only at
second hand.
In Wales, few authors of note have emerged in recent
years. (I speak, of course, of Welsh playwrights writing
in English. Of plays in the Welsh language I know noth-
ing.) I am inclined to rank Ronald Elwy ftlitcJiell (now
resident in America) as the best of them. Mitchell is only
now beginning to receive the recognition that is his due.
His one-act plays of Welsh life break no new ground
technically, but do present an extraordinarily virile picture
of his fellow-countrymen. He has a deep understanding
of the Welsh character, creates individuals who linger in
the memory, and satirizes the follies and vices of his race
unmercifully! J. O. Francis, author of The Bakehouse,
Birds of a Feather, and The Poacher is kinder. He knows
how to touch up the humors of Welsh life so that, al-
though we relish the inconsistencies, we enjoy the char-
acters.
239
ENGLISH ONE-ACT PLAYS
Had I the space, many other playwrights should be
mentioned particularly those who have only recently
come to notice and have yet to prove themselves. It is
always more exciting to try and spot the future winners
than to make a note on established reputations. And the
mention of six authors only gives by no manner of means
a true indication of the widespread activity of short-play
authorship in a country where every other amateur actor
is said to have at least one unpublished manuscript in his
desk. This activity still persists even if it is beginning to
show signs of slackening.
In my view, the boom years of indiscriminate one-act
play acting and writing have passed. It is being realized
that the festivals alone supply no real incentive for the
writing of one-act plays of merit. Critics begin to feel that
a festival system which is based almost entirely upon a
desire to raise the standard of technique in acting and pro-
duction can do little to bring out new writers with new
methods and a fresh point of view, that, on the contrary,
it stultifies genuine creation. We are, in fact, at a period
when decisions will have to be taken by those who control
the national festivals with regard to their duties to authors.
If they do not, then the job of carrying the development
of the one-act play a step further will be taken out of their
hands.
And there are signs that this job may be under-
taken. During the past year (j^J2liX there has sprung
into being an avowedly propagandist theatre movement
which insists upon calling itself by the unwieldy title of
The Lef^Book Clu^ Theatre Guild It was born out of
a remarkable workers' theatre in London, the Unity The-
atre, which suddenly made a reputation for itself by giv-
240
ing the first production in this country o
for Lefty. Within the space of twelve months a nation-
wi3e workers' theatre movement has been created, and in
January, 1938, no less than three hundred groups, most
of which had never undertaken theatrical productions be-
fore, were affiliated to the Guild.
I care not two hoots for the political slant of this or any
other drama movement. But I do care deeply for the fact
that here, for the first time, the working classes are being
drawn in to the amateur movement and are being en-
couraged to create one-act plays of their own. They are
not limited by festival rules indeed, they are limited by
nothing as yet but their comparative ignorance of the the-
atre! So far, little creative work has been achieved. Wait-
ing for Lejty is the inevitable choice of the moment, and
there exist only half a dozen or so native products that are
worth more than a minute or two of consideration. But
potentially the movement is strong. In its hands the festi-
val movement has placed the one-act play, admitted that
its own inspiration is, for the moment, exhausted, and has
marked the assignment "ripe for development." Whether
these three hundred groups are capable of tackling the job
I cannot say. But I do state with confidence that this is
their opportunity. If they fail to take it, and if the na-
tional festivals fail to recognize that they are working a
vein that is perilously near exhaustion,_then the one-act
play created by the amateur drama movement in this coun-
try will fizzle out an episode in theatrical history which
promised mucITand achieved little.
241
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE REVOLUTION-
ARY THEATRE
JOHN W. GASSNER is considered one of the most ad-
vanced American drama critics living today. He combines so-
ciologic with esthetic criticism, and since this approach is rare in
theatrical criticism and since he was associated with the militant
magazine New Theatre as its only permanent dramatic critic, he
has been sometimes referred to as a "left-wing" writer. Richard
Watts, Jr., dramatic critic of the New York Herald Tribune,
described Mr. Gassner as "the best left-wing dramatic critic
in America." "As a matter of fact," Mr. Watts went on to
say, "there is no reason for placing such a limit to my admira-
tion for him, since Mr. Gassner is, in truth, one of the ablest
dramatic critics in the country, without respect to social and
political adherence." Mr. Gassner prefers to regard himself
simply as a practising dramatic critic who has no political affili-
ations but entertains a healthy respect for the social forces which
manifest themselves in so social an institution as the theatre.
With Burns Mantle, Mr. Gassner edited A Treasury of the
Theatre, published in 1935. He is an instructor in the English
department of Hunter College and head of the Playreading
Department of the Theatre Guild. He was associated last sum-
mer with the Bread Loaf Writers Conference of Middlebury
College, and has lectured widely on the theatre. He is at pres-
ent reviewing the drama for The Forum, The One Act Play
Magazine, and other publications, and is a member of the
New York Drama Critics Circle.
THE ONE-ACT PLAY IN THE
REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
by John W. Gassner
PASCAL once wrote, "I have no time for a short letter.
Therefore I am writing you a long one." When the theatre
does not take time to deal with essential matters and to
deal with them cogently, it is content to ramble, hoping
that the sum of its irrelevancies will somehow assume rele-
vance, that many things poorly said will become one thing
well said. It is then that some alert idealists, generally
young and rebellious, take time to write a short letter. A
one-act theatre comes into existence, ready to excise the
hypertrophic tissues of the established full-length thea-
tre. Although not all new movements begin with shorter
forms witness the birth of European realism the Irish
renaissance, the Little Theatre movement in America,
and left-wing insurgency in the thirties favored the one-
acter.
The history of the revolutionary theatre had many
points in common with the earlier movements. It returned
to the "people," it expressed the leaven of new forces in
the social and political sphere, it broke with commercial-
ism, and it attracted a new generation of theatre folk. Like
the earlier movements, it produced a large body of half-
245
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
realized drama and an impressive number of short master-
pieces.
Again, moreover, the shorter form was not dictated
solely by esthetic considerations. It is more economical
to produce a one-acter than a full-length play, and new
movements are notoriously short of cash. Their proponents
are also short of time. They earn their living by means of
some concession to Mammon, and what leisure they have
is sometimes divided between art and politics or some form
of social activity. The young men of the thirties earned
their living as best they could in offices and factories, acted
in professional companies, or wrote for the radio. Their
rehearsals or wrestlings with the muse would have to give
precedence also to party meetings, protest meetings, pick-
etings, and other so-called "dress rehearsals" for revo-
lution.
Many of the playwrights were impatient with extended
and arduous writing. Art struck them as an anachronism
in a world cracking in the joints and falling to pieces, a
bourgeois luxury, and a sign of decadence. The theatre
they held to be a weapon in the class struggle, in the war
against poverty, unemployment, and class and racial op-
pression. What they wanted to say had to be said simply
and directly, had to be addressed to agricultural and in-
dustrial workers who had rarely been inside a theatre.
Subtleties of characterization and development did not
seem to matter when larger issues were at stake, nor would
such refinements avail much in galvanizing an audience
into indignation or inculcating the principles of mass action.
Many of the playwrights were, moreover, unprepared to
cope with larger forms, even if they had been inclined to
favor them. Their apprenticeship to the theatre had been
246
JOHN W. GASSNER
of short duration, they were young, and some of them were
primarily sociologists rather than natural-born artists.
If their selection of the shorter forms was partly dic-
tated by the deficiencies of their talent and the limitations
of their audiences, there is a difference between the halting
steps of childhood and doddering old age. Childhood is a
promise and a capacity for growth, and the new movement
began to grow in talent, as well as in numbers. Moreover,
even its inadequacies possessed a certain attractiveness, just
as childhood has a charm all its own. The crude early ef-
forts of the playwrights may have been negligible as
drama, the early productions may have fallen short of
the fine art of theatre, but their enthusiasm and vigor were
attractive by comparison with the tired sophistication of
many Broadway cream puffs. They were also indirectly
useful to the theatre as a whole. A new audience was being
won for the theatre, an audience that had been hitherto
regaled solely by the films. This became evident when the
Theatre Union began to muster a working-class audience
to its support; when the principle of a low-priced theatre
culminated in the Federal Theatre; when amateur organi-
zations sponsored by the New Theatre League began to
recruit an audience in the hinterland after the "road" had
collapsed as a result of the depression and of competition
with the motion pictures.
New writing talent was developed in the political thea-
tre ushered in by the one-act movement one need only
list the names of Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, Albert Bein,
Victor Wolfson, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Peters, George
Sklar, Albert Maltz, and Michael Blankfort, who made
their mark in the professional theatre. Older writers like
Paul Green, Claire and Paul Sifton, John Howard Law-
247
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
son, and John Wexley found a new place in the theatre.
Not merely did they find a new theatre hospitable to their
outlook, but they could only feel encouraged by the work
of the novices who were exciting audiences. Other play-
wrights must have been brushed with the wings of the new
spirit: Elmer Rice turned from profitable ventures in the
general theatre to the field of social drama in which he
had won his spurs j Sidney Kingsley turned to vigorous
playwriting with Dead End; Maxwell Anderson's Both
Your Houses and Winterset bowed to the time spirit
which was being so insistently promoted by the young
apostles $ Idiot's Delight was a new departure for the au-
thor of Reunion in Vienna.
New, important producing units were either born of
the movement (the Theatre Union and the Actors Reper-
tory Company) or affected by it, as in the case of the
Group Theatre and the Mercury Theatre, not to speak of
the Federal Theatre and its inclination toward social
drama. New dramatic forms were either created or dis-
seminated by the ferment the "Living Newspaper" form,
the epic theatre and its variants, and the mass recitation.
Even the musical revue was subjected to the new influence
in the Theatre Guild's Parade and Labor Stage's widely
heralded Pins and Needles. It is incontestable that, with
all its errors and blanks, the revolutionary one-act move-
ment wrote a significant chapter in American theatre his-
tory. In fact, it is still writing it, though it seems to have
passed its peak in the season of 1936-37.
. JOHN W. GASSNER
II
The Worker and the Theatre
In the gilded twenties, when the Little Theatre move-
ment ripened into the progressive professional theatre, a
purely working-class theatre was almost unthinkable. A
benevolent capitalism was the order of the day; organized
labor, dazzled by high wages, tended to identify its inter-
ests with the capitalistic economy 3 and the progressives of
the theatre were far more concerned with the dangers of
mechanization and the vulgarities of successful business,
popularly known as Babbittism, than in class conflicts.
Moreover, the struggles and problems of the working
class were incorporated somewhat in the so-called middle-
class theatre. O'Neill described the homelessness of the
proletariat in his seapieces and symbolized its rebellion in
The Hairy Af>e. Elmer Rice dramatized the mechaniza-
tion of the worker in The Adding Machine and the life of
the slums in Street Scene. Imported dramas like Toller's
Masses md Mm> Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight and
Werfel's Goat Song variously represented the worker's in-
surgency. Associated causes, such as peace and the rights of
the Negro people, were expressed in What Price Glory, In
Abraham's Bosom, All God y s Chillun, and other plays.
None of the above-mentioned plays would have satisfied
the demands of the revolutionary theatre of the thirties,
but they went as far as most professional playwrights could
go and sometimes further than their audiences would fol-
low them.
Efforts to create a workers' theatre that would toe the
class line and avoid the mixed sympathies of the more
established playwrights were sporadic. Foreign language
249
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
groups arose from time to time, but their work was not
always clearly defined, and the linguistic barrier was too
great to be overcome. A Workers Drama League, founded
in 1926, had no language problems but lasted only two
years. It provided a leaven, however, for the one consid-
erable radical theatre of the twenties. In 1927, a group
which called itself the New Playwrights Theatre, pre-
vailed upon the unfailingly generous Otto Kahn to grant
it a subsidy of one hundred thousand dollars. It enlisted
the services of the insurgent writers John Dos Passos, John
Howard Lawson, Francis Faragoh, Paul Sifton, Emjo
Basshe, and Michael Gold. Though some of the plays
seemed foggy enough in execution, a number of them
confronted working-class problems more single-heartedly
than had been hitherto the case. Lawson's The Interna-
tional dramatized aspects of American imperialism 5 The
Belt by Sifton described the struggle against the Taylor
system and Fordism j Upton Sinclair's Singing Jailbirds
dealt with the framing of a labor organizer, a subject per-
haps inspired by the Mooney-Billings case. In spite of its
peregrinations from Greenwich Village to Broadway the
New Playwrights' group remained a small patch of revo-
lutionary theatre without a mass basis and failed to make
an impression on the country as a whole. It was not even,
strictly speaking, a workers' theatre $ it was for the workers
but was hardly of them. After three seasons the New Play-
wrights Theatre called it a day.
Consequently the workers' theatre of the thirties started
almost from scratch. Fired it must have been by the New
Playwrights' effort and by the early experiences of the
Little Theatre movement, which had proved that it was
possible to begin on a small scale and reach new audiences
250
JOHN W. GASSNER
with a minimum of expense. The experiences of foreign
language groups and of the workers' theatre groups in
Germany also contributed an impetus. The immediate in-
spiration of the movement, however, came from conditions
outside of the theatre.
The movement arose as a response to the terrifying con-
ditions of the depression. The stock-market crash left about
thirteen million people unemployed, the wages of those
fortunate enough to remain employed were slashed merci-
lessly, labor unions were helpless in the grip of economic
circumstance, unemployment relief was still in the apple-
selling stage; and everywhere, including the circles of the
rich, there was talk of the imminent collapse of the social
order. Banker and worker alike expected a death struggle
for domination. And abroad there was Soviet Russia mak-
ing giant strides, a visible symbol of what could be accom-
plished by successful revolution. "Theatre is a weapon in
the class struggle," the motto of the John Reed Group
Theatre of Philadelphia, expressed the objectives of the
new movement, which took as its twofold aim the spread-
ing of the communist gospel and the agitation for specific
palliatives, which could be, and were as a matter of fact,
slowly adopted by the American people without commit-
ment to revolution.
Two theatre groups, working at first independently, be-
came the spearhead of the movement the Prolet-Buehne,
a German-speaking unit, and the Workers Laboratory
Theatre of New York. The former, founded in 1925 and
strongly influenced by the workers' theatre movement in
Germany, adopted a militant policy. By the fall of 1930,
under the vigorous leadership of John Bonn and Anne
Howe, Prolet-Buehne was appearing at a variety of mass
251
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
meetings, on improvised stages, with few props, and inex-
pensive facilities. Its plays, stylized, rhythmical, and
adapted to chanting, called "agit-prop" because their object
was agitation and propaganda, frankly dispensed with char-
acterization and developed situations. To the student of dra-
matic literature they are worthless. Whatever artistic merit
they could claim lay entirely in production. Prolet-Buehne
depended on a theatre of slogans, denunciation, and cari-
cature, held together by rhythmic movement and songlike
expression. Its characters were broad types, easily distin-
guished and symbolic j thus, the capitalist wore a top hat
and the worker an open shirt, the employer was a mealy-
mouthed oppressor, the employee a downtrodden worm
until he turned. The subjects ranged from the speed-up in
industry to the Scottsboro case. In its typing, stylization,
and popular style, agit-prop was almost a species of
commedia dell'arte, which has never been judged by
literary standards. This drama also marked a return to
folk theatre, in which the common people voice their re-
sentments by satirizing their masters and parasites. The
frontal satire of agit-prop spared no one, not even social-
ists and labor leaders, who were accused of misleading the
working class.
This style was adopted and extended by the English-
speaking organization that paralleled the work of the
Prolet-Buehne, the Workers Laboratory Theatre, founded
in 1929. Its members were possessed of all the enthusiasm
of youth, but they had little use for collegiate high jinks.
Many of their actors and writers had grown up in poverty
and had worked in factories. Few of them had gained
practical experience in the theatre} their ablest director,
252
JOHN W. GASSNER
Alfred Saxe, a fiery and gifted young man, had only a
year of acting to his credit.
By 1931 the group was actively engaged in propaganda,
appearing at mass meetings in New York and elsewhere.
Its first production, in the winter of 1930-31, a skit en-
titled Unemployed, had for its lesson the necessity of or-
ganizing the unemployed to demand humane treatment
and work when this could be managed. The group partici-
pated in political campaigns. Its contribution to the 1932
election was a skit, The Sell-Out, attacking ameliorative
liberalism and socialism because it deflected the struggle
for a collectivist society. An auctioneer selling "Civil Lib-
rolax" offered the workers "A cure for unemployment, A
cure for corns and bunions," and assured them that "Our
laxatives are gentle, mild. . . . They do not pinch, they
do not gripe." Another political burlesque, The Great
Show, had for its characters a Worker, a Speaker, a Capi-
talist, and a political charlatan named "Chameleon," de-
scribed with double entendre as "a reptile possessing the
power of changing its color."
Resolved to spread its type of drama over the country,
the Workers Laboratory Theatre encouraged the creation
of similar units elsewhere, until even Canada had its agit-
prop. Los Angeles had its "Rebel Players," Chicago its
"Blue Blouses" and Brahmin Boston its "Solidarity Play-
ers." Contacts with these and other groups were main-
tained largely by means of a new publication, Workers
Theatre, which grew from two hundred mimeographed
copies in April, 1931, to one thousand printed ones by the
beginning of the next year. In April, 1932, the movement
had grown to proportions that warranted the holding of a
national festival and conference, the so-called Workers
253
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
Theatre Spartakiade and Conference, in New York City.
Ben Blake, the left theatre's first chronicler, 1 notes with
some pride that this was "the very spring when for the
first time since its initiation in 1923 the National Little
Theatre Conference Tournament annually staged by Wal-
ter Hartwig was unable to take place." The conference
made it evident that the theatre had given birth to a lusty
infant inclined to strangle serpents in its cradle and bent
upon keeping the neighborhood awake with its howling.
Its Dramatic Bureau, which had been created in the mid-
dle of 1931, now had twenty-three short plays in its reper-
tory. A central organization, the League of Workers Thea-
tre, abbreviated in New Deal fashion as the LOWT, was
established, and Workers Theatre magazine was adopted
as its official organ.
The Conference was a landmark in more than an or-
ganizational sense. The agit-prop groups surrendered
much of their brash certainty and self-assurance, and a
commendable capacity for self-criticism became apparent.
Hitherto they had scorned the professional stage as a fen
of stagnant waters and an abomination in the sight of the
deified proletariat. They had behaved as if there had been
no theatre before them, as if everything "bourgeois" was
simply waiting for the harvester Death. Some respect for
the continuity of culture, a principle recognized by Marx
and Engels, even if forgotten by their more or less recent
converts, became apparent. A healthy concern with theatre
technique became manifest, training schools were estab-
lished, and appeals for assistance were sent to the profes-
sional theatre and the Little Theatres. Attracted by the
x Ben Blake, The Awakening of the American Theatre, New York,
Tomorrow Publishers, 1935.
254
JOHN W. GASSNER
sincerity and enthusiasm of the new groups and by an op-
portunity to exercise talents lying fallow in the depressed
theatre, professionals soon responded in increasing num-
bers. Their effect upon the movement was eminently salu-
tary, and the movement amply discharged its indebtedness
by providing them with a new stimulus.
At first, direct agitation was not greatly abated, and it
is a matter of record that it was never wholly abandoned.
The first signs of growth were felt in the efficiency of the
new productions. As late as November, 1934, the Workers
Laboratory Theatre, whose most active members lived for
a time in a collectively run apartment, reaffirmed the ideals
of its inception, by establishing a "shock troupe" prepared
to perform at a moment's notice wherever agitational
drama was urgently needed. Collectively, the shock troupe
created a topical montage, Newsboy > which was vibrantly
directed by Alfred Saxe. Technically, Newsboy was a
unique fusion of suggestions from Merry -Go-Round and
the Jooss Ballet that would interest the student of esthetic
forms without respect to political sympathies. But the form
was primed for agitational effectiveness. Later, when it
was temporarily included in the Theatre Guild's Parade
in Boston, it was still sufficiently point-blank to shock the
Governor of Massachusetts out of his seat with the query,
"Do you remember Sacco and Vanzetti?" A powerful
montage, Free Thaelman, which made an impression on
students of the theatre, agitated for the release of the
German leader then languishing in a concentration camp.
For elementary agitation, the group also established a pup-
pet department devoted to such topical titles as Mr. Mor-
gan's Nightmare and N.R.A. and Blue Eagle, in which
the President was made to say: "If the workers are strik-
255
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
ing, we'll give them the bird? and Punch, the Worker,
declared:
My stomach often rubs my spine
And now it's started shrinking.
And though my head is made of wood
I've lately started thinking.
in
The New Theatre Movement
The natural processes of growth and the influx of pro-
fessional people nevertheless operated increasingly against
the agit-prop drama. The principle of "a theatre greater
than the labor movement but drawing its inspiration from
the latter and continuing the new social outlook on a
broader scale," to which the movement had committed
itself, was beginning to be realized both organizationally
and artistically. In response to this trend, Workers Theatre
magazine changed its name to New Theatre in September,
1933. The magazine ushered in the new policy by distrib-
uting a questionnaire on the social relations of the theatre
among prominent playwrights, producers, and craftsmen.
Among the many to respond to New Theatres appeal
were Paul Green, Philip Barry, Sidney Howard, Sher-
wood Anderson, and Hallie Flanagan. In September,
1934, the magazine, which acquired an exceptionally
gifted editor in Herbert Kline, of Davenport, Iowa, an-
nounced flatly that "the day of the cliche and mechanical
statement has gone by for the workers' theatre." Another
factor in the broadening realism of a movement that had
begun by specializing in dramatized poems, expressionistic
satires, and mass recitations (of which Alfred Kreymborg's
America^ America remains the finest example) was the
256
JOHN W. GASSNER
success of the Theatre Union in full-length social drama of
the type of Stevedore and Black Pit. This institutional
radical theatre, which owed its inception to the spadework
of the League of Workers Theatres, repaid its debt by set-
ting the one-act movement an example in rounded charac-
terization and dramatic development.
In response to the new trend, which would have been
regarded earlier as perniciously compromising, the League
of Workers Theatres changed its name in January, 1935,
to the New Theatre League, with Mark Marvin, another
immigrant from Iowa, as its executive secretary. Eligibility
to membership was construed along the broad lines of op-
position to war, fascism, and censorship a policy that left
the door wide open to writers, actors, and directors who
would have otherwise remained aloof. (The precise for-
mulation of the program was: "For a mass development
of the American theatre to its highest artistic and social
level; for a theatre dedicated to the struggle against war,
fascism, and censorship.") Almost at once New Theatre
affiliates sprang up in approximately one hundred and
fifty communities. Little Theatre groups became increas-
ingly hospitable to New Theatre plays; and the "road,"
which had been largely lost to the professional theatre,
showed recovered vitality. The repertory department be-
came an active play bureau and play publisher, stimu-
lating production throughout the country; and the New
Theatre School, which attracted a vigorous student body
and an advanced faculty, became a major institution of its
kind. New Theatre^ which became increasingly hospitable
to writers of different shades of opinion without sacrificing
its social critique, grew rapidly in circulation, which
at one time reached the high-water mark of twenty-three
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
thousand. Soon recognized as the most vital publication in
the theatre even by those who still found many of its poli-
cies unacceptable, it gave impetus to the composition of
distinguished one-acters. Its annual contests, given in con-
junction with the New Theatre League and other organi-
zations, netted numerous playlets of variable quality, and
made such notable discoveries as Waiting for Lefty and
Bury the Dead. Under these auspices, "New Theatre
Nights" became a regular feature, attended by large audi-
ences and respected by the press. It was at one of these
special performances, in January, 1935, that the prize-
winning play, Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty received
its first production. Another New Theatre Night unveiled
Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead, written for another annual
contest. A third evening saw the production of Paul Green's
Hymn to the Rising Sun, considered one of the short mas-
terpieces of the American theatre and subsequently revived
by the Federal Theatre. Albert Maltz's Private Hicks,
though a less distinguished work, achieved another respect-
able success. In each instance, moreover, production in New
York was followed by performances throughout the coun-
try '
The Workers Laboratory Theatre veered to realism in
Peter Martin's Daughter , a dramatization of a short story
by Erskine Caldwell, in January, 1935, and in Michael
Blankfort's The Crime, in the spring of 1936. Changing
its name to The Theatre of Action the group also turned
to full-length drama in The Young Go First, a collabora-
tion by three young writers which represented conditions
in the C.C.C. camps. But the honor of shaking down the
ripened fruit of the revolutionary one-act movement was
reserved for groups that had started less militantly the
258
JOHN W. GASSNER
Group Theatre and the "Let Freedom Ring" Company,
later known as the Actors Repertory. Both were profes-
sional units, drilled in the technique of realism, though
not impervious to the influence of agit-prop. It is signifi-
cant, too, that both companies had been producing full-
length plays before turning to one-acters, a reversal of
tradition.
The Group Theatre, which had begun as an affiliate of
the venerable Theatre Guild, was an actors' company that
had been a collective since 1930, after germinating in the
minds of its leading spirits, Harold Clurman, Cheryl
Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. From an ideal of collective
acting it was a short step to a more or less collectivist social
ideal. The group, according to Clurman, would eschew
doing merely "amusing things." In 1931 he wrote to the
Directors of the Theatre Guild:
We are passionately devoted to the theatre because only
through it can we most successfully say the things we have to
say. We believe that men cannot live without giving themselves
completely to some force outside themselves and that this must
have a concrete object and form which can absorb the activities
of men in their daily lives. The generations before us seemed to
have been strenuously individualistic without believing very
steadily in any particular good for their individuals. We, on the
contrary, feel that the individualism of self-assertion which
made of the ego the sole and final reality of life is self-destruc-
tive, and we believe that the individual can realize himself only
by seeking his spiritual kindred and by making of their common
aspirations and problems the object of his active devotion. We
believe that the individual can achieve his fullest stature only
through the identification of his own good with the good of his
group, a group which he himself must help to create.
259
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
The Group's productions strove to realize these ideals,
both in technique and choice of plays.
In the fall of 1931, while still functioning under the
Guild's directorate, the group had given a memorable pro-
duction of Paul Green's The House of Connelly, a sensi-
tive study of decayed Southern aristocracy. Its next pro-
duction, the Siftons' /pj/, also owned by the parent or-
ganization, proved to be the first full-length study of
the actual effects of the depression. After a brief excursion
into romanticism with Maxwell Anderson's Night over
Taos y the first independent venture, this organization re-
turned to the social theatre with John Howard Lawson's
Success Story in the fall of 1932. Big Night y which fol-
lowed it, was only mildly satirical and died a-borning, but
the socially insignificant Men in White, produced in asso-
ciation with Broadway managers, proved a bonanza and
won the Pulitzer Prize. With its next two plays, Lawson's
Gentlewoman and Melvin Levy's Gold Eagle Guy, the
Group returned to social drama but in a muddled and in-
conclusive manner which bespoke neither commercial nor
artistic success. The Group was stumped. It possessed a
play, Awake and Sing, by a member of the company, but
seemed disinclined to risk it after two failures.
It was at this point that New Theatre came to the res-
cue. It had offered a prize for the best one-act play, and
Clifford Odets, locking himself in a hotel room, set his
nose to the grindstone. After three days he completed
Waiting for Lefty, a playlet revolving around a recent
taxi strike, which won first prize. Members of the Group
Theatre accepted the magazine's invitation to perform the
play at a special showing as a kind of extra-curriculum
performance. The opening night at the old Civic Reper-
260
JOHN W. GASSNER
tory Theatre, then occupied by the Theatre Union, proved
memorable. The audience wept and refused to leave the
theatre. The enthusiastic reception became the making of
the most promising playwright to be discovered in years.
The Group resolved to give the play a professional run,
and to fill out the evening at the Longacre the wildly ac-
claimed young author prepared another short play, Till the
Day I Die, less enthusiastically received but regarded by
such authorities as Richard Watts, Jr., and Percival Wilde
as the most distinguished of his shorter pieces. Convinced
that it had a full-fledged playwright in its ranks, the
Group looked again at Awake and Sing and produced his
first full-length drama with uncommon success. Thus the
New Theatre movement had given birth to a new and im-
portant playwright.
The two short plays, which opened on March 25, 1935,
enjoyed an excellent press and a respectable run; with the
exception of George O'NeiPs American Dream, which was
presented by the Theatre Guild as a single play, Odets*
one-acters were the first in a decade to be successful in the
professional theatre. But the history of Waiting for Lefty
went far beyond the limelight of Broadway, which was as
the folk-minded New Theatre movement would have it.
Six months after its premiere, this one-acter was being
played from coast to coast in twenty cities by twenty differ-
ent companies. Eventually, more than a hundred cities saw
the play. Even conservative England played host to it in
London, Durham, Newcastle, and other places. The Unity
Players who produced it in New Haven won the much-
coveted George Pierce Baker cup at the Yale Dramatic
Tournament and gained the right to present the piece
throughout the state in spite of opposition from the police
261
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
department and sundry irate elements. Numerous efforts
to suppress Waiting for Lejty made the one-acter a cwse
celebre, and the New Theatre League soon had a censor-
ship fight on its hands, which it fought to a successful con-
clusion with the aid of divers liberal and theatre-loving
friends. Not all of its enemies, however, were in the ranks
of capital. Some of the most indignant protests came from
labor itself more precisely, from its conservative leader-
ship which was angered by the charge of racketeering
within unions. Thus Labor Chronicle, organ of Joseph P.
Ryan, old-line leader of the Longshoremen's Union, com-
plained that the play held "legitimate unionism up to
obloquy."
The Group's other ventures in the one-act field were
less overwhelmingly successful. Till the Day I Die y which
dealt with foreign fascism, was less calculated to attract
American audiences, although in point of distance its pro-
ductions outranked Waiting for Lefty when the play was
given in Perth, West Australia. Dmitroff, an early play,
written by two other members of the Group, Elia Kazan
and Art Smith, and the latter's The Tide Rises, a picture
of the San Francisco water-front strike, won attention on
a smaller scale.
Less eminent in full-length production, but the Group's
peer in the one-act field, proved the "Let Freedom Ring"
Company, originally assembled by Albert Bein for the
production of his full-length drama of the Southern mills,
Let Freedom Ring. Ultimately organized along collective
lines, and keenly alive to the struggles of the day, this
company contributed its services to a number of New Thea-
tre Nights. After giving two short pieces at the first Night,
in November, 1935, the company was allowed to present
262
JOHN W. GASSNER
the prize play of the year, Private Hicks y on January n,
1936. This playlet proved eminently successful in its nu-
merous productions throughout the country, perhaps
largely because it voiced labor's opposition to the use of
militia in strike areas.
It was not long before the company's impressive show-
ing attracted new players, as well as plays that were to
excel Private Hicks. In their next appearance on a New
Theatre Night, also in January, 1936, they unfolded Paul
Green's Hymn to the Rising Sun, an exposure of the
Southern chain-gang system, which had been first pub-
lished in New Theatre. With Charles Dingle in the role
of the sadomasochistic chain-gang boss and an effective
cast of prisoners and guards, the playlet made a profound
impression upon audiences and critics. Supplementing it,
the company revived the same author's satire on evan-
gelism, Unto Such Glory y a folk piece that was invested
with new relevance by the players, among whom the ex-
cellent actor Will Geer was most impressive.
Paul Green did not of course need to be "discovered."
At most it can be assumed that the New Theatre move-
ment gave him renewed impetus and an audience which
his earlier dramas had barely scratched. Irwin Shaw's anti-
war drama Bury the Dead was, however, a real discovery,
and the honor of presenting it for the first time under
New Theatre League auspices devolved upon the group,
which soon constituted itself as a collective known as the
Actors Repertory Company. When this long-acter was
chosen prize winner of a New Theatre contest, Irwin Shaw,
who had seen the actors at work, selected them to perform
his play. It was instantly acclaimed at the 46th Street
Theatre, and the press was so favorable that a commer-
263
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
cial manager, Alex Yokel, whose current success was a far
cry from the social drama, undertook to finance it for a
Broadway run. Directed by Worthington Miner, it opened
in May, 1936, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, with a
curtain raiser collectively composed by the actors. Although
Bury the "Dead did not prove a bonanza to its angel, it
had a respectable run and was a success of esteem having
few equals in the contemporary theatre. And again, as in
the case of Odets* one-acter, the triumph of the play can
only be measured by its dispersion over the country. A
most colorful moment in its history occurred in Hollywood
at a preview arranged to stimulate interest in its forth-
coming production by the Contemporary Theatre of Los
Angeles. The occasion took the form of a public reading
by Fredric March and Florence Eldridge. Among other
notables who participated were James Cagney, Francis
Lederer, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Arthur Kober; and
Lewis Milestone, the film director, who was subsequently
to take Odets under his wing in pictures, telegraphed the
audience, "Let there be more of these plays for the sake
of humanity."
When Bury the Dead closed in New York, the Actors
Repertory Company returned to full-length production
with a high-minded drama of unemployment rehabilita-
tion, E. P. Conkle's Two Hundred Were Chosen, but it
was unable to match its previous triumph. The group,
however, continued to have faith in the one-act form. It
was prepared to present another New Theatre winner,
Marc Blitzstein's music drama The Cradle Will Rock,
when it was prevented by the financial failure of its full-
length play. It remained for the Mercury Theatre, an off-
shoot of the Federal Theatre and an organization not un-
264
JOHN W. GASSNER
influenced by the New Theatre movement, to salvage The
Cradle Will Rock from the Federal Theatre's scrap heap,
to which it had been relegated in the summer of 1937. The
Actors Repertory Company is still interested in one-actersj
recently it contributed an enchanting musical skit, A Town
and Country Jig } which should commend itself to many
groups.
The early work of the Prolet-Buehne and the Workers
Laboratory Theatre and the later accomplishments of the
Group Theatre and the "Let Freedom Ring" Company
comprise the most colorful aspects of the movement. But
by no means do they exhaust it. Thus The Theatre Col-
lective of New York produced numerous social playlets
and launched another able, if less widely recognized,
writer, Philip Stevenson. The Collective made an impres-
sive showing with his satire on lukewarm liberalism during
the American Revolution, You Can't Change Human
Nature. One of the directors of the Collective, Brett War-
ren, subsequently made his mark with an admirable pro-
duction of the Federal Theatre's "Living Newspaper,"
Power. It is in fact impossible to record the work of groups
like the Collective individually. At the peak, the New
Theatre movement could boast of more than three hun-
dred affiliated groups throughout the country.
To their activities, moreover, must be added the work
of independent organizations like The Vassar Experimen-
tal Theatre under Hallie Flanagan, soon to become na-
tional director of the Federal Theatre Project, which pro-
duced a militant farm drama, Can You Hear Their Voices y
by Mrs. Flanagan and her student Margaret Clifford as
early as 1931. (This play and W. H. Auden's Dance of
Death) produced first at Vassar, are classified as full-
265
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
length plays. Actually, they are long one-acters, as a
glance at their structure would reveal.) Independent, but
allied in spirit, were also the Brookfield Players, who held
forth in a converted tobacco barn on the Pittsfield Post
Road near Danbury and presented the work of Virgil
Geddes. Though his plays were listed by their author as
full-length dramas forming a tetralogy, From the Life
of George Emery Blum y they were individually long one-
acters in structure. The Rebel Arts Group of New York,
another independent unit of Socialist inspiration, offered a
number of short plays, the most recent and impressive
being Michael Blankfort's drama of the Spanish civil war,
The Brave and the Blind, given in the spring of 1937.
Noteworthy, too, was the annual tour of the Brookwood
Labor College Players, who at one time covered as many
as one hundred and fifty cities with short labor plays and
mass recitations given mostly in union halls under union
auspices. "Economics without tears, and history with foot-
lights instead of notes," the motto of this the leading labor
college in the country, was scrupulously adhered to, al-
though its writing talent was meager. For the record it
must also be noted that the Theatre Guild's trilogy of one-
acters, George O'NeiPs American Dream, consisting of
episodes in the American struggle for freedom, had much
in common with the revolutionary one-act movement, as
did the better skits of its musical revue Parade y to which
many a Theatre Unionite contributed.
Finally, there is a phase of the movement to which this
historian cannot do justice. Its active proponents can paint
a vivid picture of participation in vital industrial conflicts.
When relief workers in Madison, Wisconsin, took posses-
sion of a courthouse, it was a theatrical unit that kept up
266
JOHN W. GASSNER
their morale. Private Hicks was based on the Auto-Lite
strike, during which a number of strikers were killed by
the militia in Toledo, Ohio; it was not surprising, there-
fore, that this playlet should have been presented wher-
ever its protest seemed called for. From the General Mo-
tors strike a number of embattled actors still retain souve-
nirs blackjacks with which the strikers are said to have
armed themselves for defense against hired thugs. Actors
played to rubber strikers in Akron during freezing weather.
The Mass Action Theatre played to the steel strikers'
picket line the day after the "Memorial Day Massacre" in
Chicago. When the civil war broke out in Spain there was
no dearth of actors who went to the front to fight or to en-
tertain the fighters, some, like John Lenthier, to lay down
their lives in the struggle against their arch-enemy, fascism.
Units of the one-act movement not only expressed the
ardors of the industrial conflicts that were to culminate in
the birth of the C.I.O., but participated in them. Whether
this activity enhanced or detracted from the quality of the
plays and performances is of course a debatable subject.
Perhaps we may reach a suitable compromise by suggesting
that the movement would have had to forgo its inspira-
tion if it had maintained a high-minded neutrality.
IV
The Recession
In 1936 the New Theatre movement entered a period
of recession, as well as of transition. As a result of the de-
cline, as well as of a necessary cleansing of the stables and
concentration of the work, it has shrunk considerably in
size and activity. Among a variety of causes perhaps the
267
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
prime one was the development of a subsidized Federal
Theatre offering many of the movement's workers a live-
lihood, however meager, and also an opportunity to carry
their ideals into an institution that bore the seeds of a full-
grown national people's theatre. The assimilation of their
objectives, to some extent, in the Federal project and, to a
slighter degree, in the general theatre did away with the
uniqueness of their stage for audiences that might have
otherwise supported it. A temporary lifting of the heavier
clouds of the depression in 1936 disposed an increasing
number of regular playgoers in favor of light entertain-
ment. The suspension of New Theatre magazine (which
became New Theatre and Film for the two last issues) de-
prived the movement of a valuable organ in the spring of
1937. Debts resulting from the bankruptcy of its commer-
cial distributor undermined this publication at a time when
the need for its influence was greater than ever, leaving
Theatre Workshop, a technical, nonpolitical quarterly, as
the sole publication of the New Theatre League. Support
from sympathetic sources also declined $ perhaps chiefly
because other causes, like Spanish loyalism, were regarded
as more immediate.
Intrinsic weaknesses also contributed to the recession.
Although the movement afforded opportunities for young
and talented directors, its collective ideals did not suffice
to encourage the emergence of a directorial personality or
magnetic regisseur sufficiently potent to create a solidly
grounded one-act theatre. Theoretical hair splitting has
always been the bane of a semipolitical movement j if the
Irish theatre once suffered from such disadvantages, the
New Theatre League's energies were even more decidedly
depleted by them. Moreover, the emphasis upon economic
268
JOHN W. GASSNER
struggles tended to produce monotony of treatment. It is
perhaps not so curious that the libido should be able to
endure countless regurgitation in the theatre while the
repetition of social problems in unsublimated form should
try the patience of audiences. Playgoers bring a variety of
resistances to anything that does not titillate them. "Es-
capism," a much overworked charge, may be more inherent
in the theatre than the movement could realize. It failed
to sublimate much of its depressing and strident material.
That there is an essential difference between escape and
isolation is something the theatre of social purpose has yet
to learn and apply. The weaknesses of this type of theatre
were inherent in its strength, and once the physical ener-
gies and novelty of the movement suffered depletion, its
shortcomings became apparent even to sympathizers.
At the same time, the recession is hardly an adequate
reason for a funeral oration. It is difficult to believe that
a theatre so rooted in contemporary realities can end in
the morgue so long as those realities continue to exist. In
fact, there is much evidence of continued activity and of
some very respectable achievement since the 1935-36 peak.
Pre-eminent is Marc Blitzstein's music drama The Cradle
Will Rock, another New Theatre League prize winner,
which had a checkered history in the Federal Theatre until
it was given special performances by the Mercury Theatre
beginning on December 12, 1937, and set for a regular
run by the commercial producer Sam H. Grisman on
January 4, 1938. This long one-acter was promptly hailed
as a major tour de force and considered the equal of prac-
tically anything discovered by the New Theatre League.
The first half of 1937 also saw productions of Michael
Blankfort's The Brave and the Blind, a moving drama of
269
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
civil war in Spain, by the Rebels Arts Group and by the
Current Theatre of New York. Another impressive event
was the appearance of William Kozlenko's indictment of
unscrupulous utility corporations, This Earth Is Ours, pro-
duced by a New Theatre League group in February, 1937,
to much acclaim, cited as one of the best one-act plays of
1937, and included in four general anthologies of short
plays. Productions of this piece took place in Chicago,
Pittsburgh, New Haven, Boston, London, Prague, and
Melbourne. The nonpartisan One Act Play Magazine,
founded by Kozlenko in May, 1937, has continued to re-
veal a number of respectable one-acters of social purpose,
such as Percival Wilde's Blood of the Martyrs ; a dramati-
zation of Stephen Vincent Benet's anti-fascist short story,
which should rank as one of the most gripping of contem-
porary one-acters, and Philip Stevenson's Transit , a drama-
tization of Albert Maltz's novelette Season of Celebration,
which is even more deserving. Most recently, the New
Theatre League revealed a touching and colorful short sit-
down play, Ben Bengal's Plant in the Sun, and the Actors
Repertory Company produced the earlier mentioned satiri-
cal skit, A Town and Country Jig, which should go to the
top of its class.
Perhaps most significant is the progress that has re-
cently been made in the broadcasting field, largely owing
to the interest of Irving Reis, former director of the Co-
lumbia Broadcasting Company's Workshop. Marc Blitz-
stein's I've Got the Tune, a radio music drama, was an
interesting accomplishment, and Archibald MacLeish's
The Fall of the City was universally regarded as the most
significant event in radio theatre. In The Fall of the City,
270
JOHN W. GASSNER
broadcast on April n, 1937, the New Theatre movement,
which supported this poet's first appearance in the theatre
in Panic and found him one of its most ardent champions,
could properly take credit for a short American master-
piece.
It is evident, then, that the afore-mentioned recession
has not been followed by anything describable as rigor
mortis. At the peak it was possible for Sheldon Cheney,
one of the fathers of the Little Theatre movement, to re-
port that he "felt the surge of a new theatre life in the
workers' theatres: that the leftist stage has afforded me,
personally, the most poignant theatrical emotion born out
of the clash of modern living that I have experienced."
Turning to the older movement which he had sponsored,
he mourned, perhaps a trifle exaggeratedly, "We were
thinking of the theatre only on the esthetic side 5 thought
to perfect it as a form of art expression . . . , not recog-
nizing that there must be significant life-content the play,
and this in turn vibrating to the deepest life-consciousness
of the audience." 2 As late as December, 1936, Archibald
MacLeish could write: "No man who has had the ex-
perience of presenting plays first before Broadway audi-
ences and thereafter before such audiences as the radical
theatres would ever of his own choice return to the Broad-
way audience." The picture changed in 1937, but by then
the movement had already sown its seeds in the American
theatre, ensuring the continuance of short drama of social
purpose. Since, moreover, the New Theatre League is still
active and may be galvanized into even greater activity by
2 Sheldon Cheney, "The Art Theatre Twenty Years Af ter," The
New Caravan, W. W. Norton, 1936, pp. 426-445.
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
the events of the immediate future, it is highly probable
that the present survey will have to be extended and even
modified.
v
Sociology and Playwriting
Ultimately, of course, the movement will have to be
judged by the plays it leaves to posterity, as productions
are too elusive to withstand the erosion of time and mem-
ory. Although it is impossible to consider all or even a
large portion of the plays, the chronicler must give some
brief consideration to the body of dramatic literature avail-
able to us. Misrepresentations and misunderstandings have,
however, abounded in all considerations of this drama.
Friends, as well as enemies, have laid down a smoke screen
which must be dissipated before a just evaluation is
possible.
The plays have frequently been referred to as brutally
realistic. A blanket charge of unmitigated propaganda has
also been their lot. They have also been referred to as an
absolutely new phenomenon in the theatre. Like most gen-
eralizations, these are at best only partially true. The mar-
gin of error comes, in part, from the fact that art rarely
toes the mark of a prescribed formula. Art has its own mo-
mentum, and the personality of the writer is highly indi-
vidual even when it owes much to the general environ-
ment. The playwrights were individuals differing in tem-
perament, politics, and social background. Not all of them
were revolutionaries, and, strictly speaking, not many of
them emanated from the working class. Even those who
did could not always claim a patent of proletarian royalty,
for nearly every artist in a variously stratified society em-
272
JOHN W. GASSNER
braces in his imagination, education, and taste the other
classes. As a matter of fact, many of the playwrights were
charter members of the middle class who may or may not
have been temporarily in bad standing, though perhaps no
more so than most artists from time immemorial. Man,
being a mammal, is an umbilical-minded animal which is
perhaps all to the good, since art owes its depth and scope
to the fact that it possesses a multifarious root system.
Nevertheless, few of the playwrights could avoid accept-
ance of the principle of class conflict and of revolutionary
philosophy.
Some of the plays were unmistakably revolutionary}
others, like Hymn to the Rising Sun, were reformist. Still
others were both. In describing them as a group, it is there-
fore perhaps nearer to the truth to call them "sociological"
rather than "revolutionary" or even "left." They may be
called "revolutionary" in a strict sense only in deference
to their formative period. If they were revolutionary, in
a wider sense, they were so because the abuses they de-
scribed struck most of the leaders of the movement as
remediable only by the inauguration of a new collective
social order.
To say that the movement was unmitigatedly realistic
is also an exaggeration. Omitting the early agit-prop forms,
which were completely stylized and made scant use of real-
istic modes, we must still note that the expressionistic tech-
nique was apparent more or less in the flashbacks of
Waiting for Lefty and in the warp and woof of Bury the
Dead. The Fall of the City is altogether a feat of the
imagination rather than of documentation and realistic de-
velopment.
I would go further and claim considerable romanticism
273
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
for many of the formally realistic pieces. They romanti-
cized the worker, who was frequently a Bayard in overalls,
while his capitalistic antagonist could trace his descent from
the mustachioed Mephistos of early American melodrama,
if not from Die Rauber. Greatly in favor for a time were
conversion endings $ Michael Blankfort referred to such
pieces, whose object was to "show a worker or intellectual
swing from a conservative position ... to a militant class-
position by the final curtain," as "pendulum plays." 8 Apol-
ogists for "pendulum plays" liked their conclusiveness and
found them realistically justified by the fact that many
workers and intellectuals did undergo conversion. In prac-
tice, however, the conversion was frequently effected too
rapidly and unconvincingly in a short play. It looked like
wish fulfillment, and stood suspiciously close to romantic
hero-worship. Conversion endings, in fact, often made the
play puerile, although they sometimes infused better-
written pieces like Waiting for Lefty and Bury the Dead
with poetic fire.
A cynic might even say that the entire movement, often
so all-fired proud of its tough-minded realistic outlook, was
cut from the cloth of romanticism. And if one holds that
faith in human nature, in the possibilities of changing man-
kind for the better, is a major delusion, the cynic would be
undoubtedly right. Short of such a view, however, one
must allow the movement its claim to a modified realism,
a realism with a purpose, sometimes described as "socialist
realism." This is in fact the only sense in which the revo-
lutionary one-acters could be freely regarded as a new
8 Michael Blankfort, "Facing the New Audience." New Theatre,
November, 1934.
274
JOHN W. GASSNER
phenomenon in American playwriting, since realism was
nothing new on our stage.
What was the nature of this new realism? On the one
hand, it shrank from nothing sordid, horrible, and painful.
The horrors of poverty, of industrial conflicts, or life in the
chain gang were set down with resolute fidelity. Still, they
were not set down with an eye to sensationalism or simply
for the record. They were intended to inculcate a lesson,
agitate for the elimination of abuses, and indict a social
order that tolerated them. They were not recorded pessi-
mistically, but in the belief that society could be trans-
formed, that in fact it was already being changed. They
were set down in hope rather than in despair, and their
ultimate object, though sometimes honored only in the
breach, was to exhilarate. They aimed at the catharsis that
comes with recognizing an evil and endeavoring to remove
it. In every event, they saw symbols of a vast struggle be-
tween the owning classes and the workers, between the
servants of injustice and justice, between Ahriman and
Ormuzd. Theirs was the drama of dynamic processes affect-
ing society and its individuals.
Not only was such a viewpoint relatively new in the
American theatre, but it frequently expressed itself in new
forms new at least on the American stage. The earliest
form, agit-prop, was essentially an expression of conflict, in
which the two sides were sharply and arbitrarily divided,
the viewpoint was stated as baldly as possible, and the les-
son was pressed home beyond all possibility of misunder-
standing by means of caricature, insinuating rhythm, and
broad acting, as well as verbally. The mass recitation, a
secondary form, broke up a recitation into its dramatic com-
ponents and underscored them by means of appropriate
275
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
gesture and movement, using different voices for different
characters or groups, in an effort to present a lesson as tell-
ingly as possible.
When, later in its history, the movement turned to fully
developed plays, these frequently retained agit-prop ele-
ments in solution. They were primed for a rousingly mili-
tant ending that frequently propelled the characters, as well
as the audience, out of the immediate situation into the
world of larger social conflicts. Thus the strike situation of
Waiting for Lefty is only a springboard to a call for action
on all fronts for the overthrow of the old order and the
creation of the new. Thus the soldiers who come to life in
Bury the Dead march out of the grave not merely because
they have renounced imperialistic war but because they
intend to set the world to rights the world that cheated
them as much back home as when it sent them to their
death on the battlefield.
Technically, moreover, the plays tended to be inclusive
and frequently even, as in the case of Waiting for Lefty y
The Tide Rises y and Bury the Dead, kaleidoscopic. Al-
though Waiting for Lefty deals primarily with the calling
of a taxi strike, it is largely composed of vignettes describ-
ing an assortment of lives and a series of indictments of the
social order in such varied fields as medicine, industrial
chemistry, and the theatre. Although Bury the Dead has
for its central situation the revolt of a group of soldiers
against death it moves far afield in dramatizing their in-
dividual frustrations in society. Till the Day I Die alter-
nates between scenes of the National Socialist terror and
the underground movement in Germany. Despite extreme
concentration, Hymn to the Rising Sun manages to bring
Southern legislation within the compass of a chain-gang
276
JOHN W. GASSNER
drama. The Fall of the City shifts its camera eye constantly
in the effort to describe a mass drama. Even the less am-
bitious plays strove for scope and mass. The objectives of
the movement expressed themselves technically in con-
siderable extension of the one-act form. The one-acter be-
came generally longer and more varied, favoring many
scenes, the use of black-outs and flashbacks, and large casts.
In this respect, the movement blazed new possibilities of
expression in the short play.
VI
The Plays
A descriptive account of the hundreds of short plays
written between 1930 and 1937 would make a formidable
volume. Fortunately this is not necessary, not merely be-
cause many of them would be thrown out of court by any
discriminating judge, but because so many of them fall into
a few convenient classifications. Trade unionism occupied
the foreground of a great many of them 5 the most notable
perhaps were Waiting for Lefty, The Tide Rises, Plant
in the Sun, The Crime, and I Take My Stand. Militarism
and war were the subjects of Bury the Dead, Private Hicks,
The Trumpets of Wrath, by Kozlenko, and a number of
less distinguished pieces. Sharecroppers and the submerged
farmer received attention in His Jewels (Bernice Kelly
Harris), This Earth Is Ours, Mighty Wind A* Blowing
(Alice Holdship Ware), Daughter, and Can You Hear
Their Voices. Problems of the Negro race were treated by
several of the aforementioned plays and by Trouble with
the Angels. Poverty and city life found expression in Virgil
Geddes* In the Tradition, A. B. Shiffrin's Kids Learn Fast
277
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
and Return at Sunset, and Stevenson's Transit. Fascism was
excoriated in Till the Day I Die, The Fall of the City,
The Brave and the Blind, and Blood of the Martyrs. Sun-
dry abuses filled other plays and served as secondary mo-
tifs in a number of the aforementioned one-acters.
A considerable percentage of the play crop was, as noted,
rank and worthless, which is perhaps no great indictment
of the movement when we consider the mortality rate on
Broadway. Many of the playwrights were unskilled, and
their philosophy of art was too sophomoric to promote
good work. Gradually, however, some of them grew in
power and their ranks were augmented by respectable and
in a few instances superlative talents.
The gifts of satire and humor were underdeveloped in
them at first, perhaps because few of the playwrights were
disposed to find anything amusing in the world about them.
But the blanket charge that the movement lacked humor
is a rank libel. One of the first to disprove the indictment
was Philip Stevenson, whose God's in His Heaven and the
more fully rounded What It Takes satirized the compla-
cencies of average Americans. The last-mentioned play, in
particular, revealed a fine feeling for characterization and
wry pathos. Another play of his, You Carft Change
Human Nature, owed much of its power to its humor-
ous treatment of fence-straddling elements in the Ameri-
can Revolution. Particularly apt seemed his parallels
between 1776 and 1936, and especially pointed was the
implication that the American fathers had been revolution-
ists. Later, in dramatizing Albert Maltz's novelette,
Stevenson also uncovered a talent for stark realism rarely
associated with a humorist j Transit is a profoundly moving
278
JOHN W. GASSNER
transcription of life among society's outcasts that comes
close to the spirit of Gorky's The Lower Deaths.
Stevenson's comrade in arms was A. B. Shiffrin, who
moved from a brutal exposure of slum life in Kids Learn
Fast y a play in which a number of white children lynch a
Negro boy in jest, to one of the most amusing comedies of
the movement, Return at Sunset. How poverty grinds the
faces of the poor into the dust is not a naturally entertain-
ing subject. Shiffrin makes it both entertaining and moving
in his rather diffuse one-acter by virtue of some keen ob-
servation of shanty-Jewish life, by the accumulation of
tragi-comic errors which approach the fantastic. Pithy folk
humor studs its family scene in which the paterfamilias
loses his horse, the son gets a broken head for listening to
a street-corner speaker, and the daughter leaves a position
because her employer has made advances to her. A real
jewel for a humorist is Wassermann, the boarder, who had
a nervous stomach and was told to go to a farm. "So what
happened? I got sick. I had to go back to the city again.
I couldn't stand the fresh air." He tried to join the army,
when his trade was eliminated, but he was rejected. "I
wasn't healthy enough for them. To get killed in a war
you first got to be healthy."
In time, too, there appeared considerable talent for mu-
sical comedy and the composition of satiric skits dear to our
musical revues. One of the earliest examples was the col-
lection of sketches by Paul Peters, George Sklar, Alan
Baxter, Frank Gabrelson, and David Lesan in the Theatre
Guild's ill-fated revue, Parade. Harold J. Rome, who
composed most of the skits, lyrics, and music for the highly
entertaining Labor Stage revue Pins and Needles, is an
impressive craftsman in the musical comedy form.
279
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
A curious, mordant type of humor also makes itself felt
in some of the work of Virgil Geddes, whose Native
Ground is no criterion of the range of his talents. A ma-
cabre and savage humor pervades In the Tradition, which
dramatizes the economic plight of an undertaker almost
unbearably for some tastes. A bizarre feeling for the tragi-
comedy of human relationships in / Have Seen Myself
Before underscores the same character's search for a job.
The undisputed master of them all in a satiric vein is,
however, Marc Blitzstein, who uses the resources of both
music and drama to send his points home. I've Got the
Tune, his radio play, produces incisive and bitter effects
with the device of propelling a composer who has the tune
out into the world to look for the words j he finds them
at last after surveying the social scene. The Cradle Will
Rocky a rich satire on respectability and an excoriation of
the professional men and artists who sell their souls to
Mammon, proved a major event in the season of 1937-38.
Blitzstein has a biting feeling for lines and music j he is
a caricaturist who transmutes the cliches of the old agit-
prop into artistry. In a more realistic genre he is equaled
only by George O'Neil, whose third one-acter in American
Dream, entitled 1933, is a vigorous satire on the decadence
of upper-class society. Though it ends tragically, with the
suicide of the last of the Pengree dynasty, its force resides
in its vitriolic treatment of social parasites and futilitarians.
Less abundant than humor is, as a matter of fact, im-
aginative drama, the relative absence of which is, however,
characteristic of our entire theatre. Moreover, the move-
ment did produce two of the rare imaginative works of the
thirties, against which we can set only one example from
the full-length nonpolitical stage namely, Anderson's
280
JOHN W. GASSNER
High Tor. Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead possesses pathos
and indignation in its diatribe against war and frustration.
But much of its uniqueness resides in its fantasy of dead
soldiers coming to life, an idea used before in the Theatre
Guild's Miracle at Verdwn but expressed by Shaw more
dynamically and with a spare economy which guards
against operatic fireworks. MacLeish's The Fall of the City
went even further in its claim upon the imagination with
its use of mass effects and adaptation to the demands of the
nonvisual medium of radio drama. That so distinguished
a poet should have added the imaginative qualities of the
most forceful verse written for the American theatre goes
without saying. In comparison with MacLeish's poetry
most of Maxwell Anderson's sounds epigonal, an echo
from the past. The theme, within the small compass of a
thirty-minute play, is epic.
The city of masterless men r
Will take a master.
When the dictator before whom the populace bends in
adoration and submission appears,
The helmet is hollow!
The metal is empty! The armor is empty! . . .
The push of a stiff pole at the nipple would topple it.
But,
. . . they don't see ! They lie on the paving. They lie in
Burnt spears: the ashes of arrows. They lie there.
They don't see or they won't see. They are silent. . . .
The city of masterless men has found a master!
The city has fallen!
The city has fallen!
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THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
Confronted with the uncanny power of imaginative
drama, however, realism has no reason to turn away
abashed when it is deeply and excitingly realized. The
bulk of the plays were realistic, and although many of them
were pedestrian, their militancy stood them in good stead,
ensuring them excitement and vigor. The least successful
plays were naturally those which lacked these attributes.
Folk drama like Alice Holdship Ware's Mighty Wind
A'Blowing and Bernice Kelly Harris's His Jewels is distin-
guished in dialogue and native characterization. In the first,
the rapprochement between Negro and white sharecroppers
is treated with verisimilitude and charm. His Jewels pos-
sesses an unusual central situation the eviction of a share-
cropper and his daughters from the church in which they
have sought shelter which lends itself to much pathos and
irony. The Sif tons' Give All Thy Terrors to the Wind is an
admirably rounded drama of a ship disaster caused by the
greed of the shipping interests. Michael Blankfort, one of
the leaders of the Theatre Union, contributed a searching,
if somewhat static, study of a vacillating but honest labor
organizer in a flavorsome long one-acter, The Crime. His
drama of the siege of the Alcazar or some similar fortress
in the Spanish civil war, The Brave and the Blind, is like-
wise distinguished by its just appraisal of men and their
motives. Although it is characteristic of Blankfort that his
psychological insight and molding of character are not
always equaled by his dramatic feeling, his work possesses
rare persuasiveness. William Kozlenko, another exponent
of the long one-act form, shows a stronger feeling for
drama with very much the same talent for characteriza-
tion in This Earth Is Ours. The persecution of an obdurate
farmer by a power company which wants the right of way
282
JOHN W. GASSNER
for its lines makes an affecting short play, one of the strong-
est in the movement's realistic repertory. Finally, there are
the three acknowledged masterpieces Waiting for Lejty y
Till the Day I Die, and Hymn to the Rising Sun.
The first mentioned remains the most exciting of the
trio. A panoramic study of suffering and injustice in society,
it draws its lines together in a terrific onslaught on the
whole social fabric and fulfills Odets' requirement that
"art must be about something. It must be hot and spite-
ful." Anybody, however, can be hot and spiteful. In Wait-
ing for Lejty Odets revealed an uncanny sense of show-
manship, which is not so easily encompassed. Three strike
scenes, well placed at the beginning, center, and conclusion
of the play, provide an exciting framework for flashbacks
into the lives of the strike committee, each of which forms
a brief history of a man driven to militant action by pov-
erty, frustration, and injustices covering a wide range of
abuses. Suspense is the keynote of the play from the mo-
ment it begins in the hall where a strike vote is being
taken. It is resolved at the end when we learn that the
leader of the militant faction has been murdered, presum-
ably by the racketeer who runs the union for his own profit.
Dialogue of rare vigor, sensitively attuned to living speech,
flavors the drama and reflects its drive. The passions are
involved in the struggle against the racketeer, who is im-
aginatively treated in successive scenes as an incarnation of
predatory society. Pathos is distilled from several pictures
of suffering and humiliation. Occasional lapses into sopho-
moric or cheap dialogue and some exaggerated stridency
vitiate the little drama but do not destroy its total effect,
which is pure theatre. Even those who disagree with its
viewpoint must pay tribute to its power. If it did not leave
283
THE REVOLUTIONARY THEATRE
one with reservations regarding the easy way in which it
sees only one aspect of human experience, it could be un-
hesitatingly set down as a little masterpiece of the theatre.
This playwright's second short play. Till the Day I Die,
uses a plummet that sinks deeper into human drama and
contains an even more affecting theme, compounded of
pity and terror, in the tale of a German revolutionist who
asked his brother to kill him before he revealed the secrets
of his party and betrayed his comrades under torture. It
overreaches itself in its satirization of the fascist tormentors,
suffers from some arbitrary theatricalism, and some of its
details ring untrue. But for all its unevenness, Till the
Day I Die compresses its ardors and endurances into some-
thing very close to a masterpiece. It is "hot and spiteful"
in a finer sense than these words would indicate 5 it is heroic.
In both plays Odets, who loves music passionately, is a
symphonic artist, with a fine mastery of crescendo and
decrescendo, of the development and weaving of themes,
and of climactic force. They are youthful works, and their
flaws could only become more conspicuous when their au-
thor turned to full-length drama. But without the elan
of young manhood, which found inspiration in the revo-
lutionary leaven of the movement, they could not have
been written.
For maturity we must turn to the last of the trio of
realistic masterpieces, Paul Green's Hymn to the Rising
Sun. In anguish and irony there is perhaps no short play
in the theatre's treasury to excel this masterly description
of chain-gang horrors, which take place on Independence
Day! Dedicated to "Tom Thumb, the brave legislator who,
in the confines of the little black bag, declaims of liberty,"
Hymn to the Rising Sun is a lambent protest against a
284
JOHN W. GASSNER
long-standing blot on the American scutcheon. To wish to
erase it, it is not necessary to accept the First, Third, or
Fourth International, it is necessary only to be human. It
is the distinction of the play that it abates nothing of its
proper indignation and yet meets its audience on the lowest
common denominator of humanity. This beautifully com-
pressed and poignant work may serve as a fitting conclusion
to the survey of a movement that began as partisan agita-
tion and ended as art. 4
4 Most of the material in this chapter is based on information con-
tained in Workers Theatre^ New Theatre, and New Tfoatre and Film.
Two pamphlets, Audience Organization, edited by Mark Marvin, and
Censoredy by Richard Pack and Mark Marvin, contain helpful infor-
mation. Both are published by the New Theatre League, 132 West 43rd
Street, New York City, the only office from which it is possible to se-
cure literature bearing on this subject. For other aid, the author wishes
to express his gratitude to: Emanuel Eisenberg, press representative of
the Group Theatre, John O'Shaughnessy, of the Actors Repertory Com-
pany, Ben Irwin and Mark Marvin, of the New Theatre League.
285
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Below are listed the plays, both one-act and longer, which
are named in this book and which have been published in book
form, with the authors, and details of publication.
When the play has been published singly, the place of pub-
lication, the name of the publisher, and the date of publication
are given immediately after the name of the play. If the play
has also been printed in a collection or collections of plays by
the same author, these details are given next. When the play
has been printed in an anthology, such publication is indicated
by a number which refers to the list of anthologies printed at
the end of this bibliography.
Across the Border, by Dix. New York. Holt. 1915
Adding Machine, The, by Rice. New York. Doubleday. 1923
Also in Plays of Elmer Rice. London. Gollanz. 1933
Also in 20, 49
Albany Depot, The, by Howells. New York. Harper. 1892
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907. Vol. I
All God>s Chillun Got Wings, by O'Neill. New York. Boni.
1921. (Also London. Cape. 1937)
Also in Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. 2
Also in Nine Plays. New York. Liveright. 1932
All on a Summer's Day, by Clements and Ryerson. New York.
Appleton. 1926. (Also New York. French. 1934)
Also in All on a Summers Day, and Six Other Short Plays.
New York. French. 1928
Also in 84
287
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allison's Lad y by Dix
In Allison's Lad, and Other Martial Plays. New York. Holt.
1910
Also in 27
Ambush, The, by Hughes. In 89
Among Thieves, by Gillette. In 56
Another Way Out, by Langner. In 87, 88
Antigone, by Sophocles. Toronto. Nelson. 1937
Aria da Capo, by Millay. New York. Harper. 1920
Also in Three Plays. Harper. 1926
Also in 5, 71, 88
Awake and Sing, by Odets. New York. Random House. 1935
Also in Three Plays. New York. Random House. 1935.
(London; Gollancz. Toronto; Macmillan)
Bakehouse, The, by Francis. Cardiff. Educational Publishing
Co. 1914
Battle Hymn, by Blankfort and Gold. New York. French.
1937
Beau of Bath, The, by Mackay. In 102
Beauty and the Jacobin, by Tarkington. In 13
Bedside Manners, by Nicholson and Behrman. New York.
French, c. 1924
Before Breakfast, by O'Neill. New York. Shay. 1916
Also with The Great God Brown. London. Cape
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. 2
Also in 85
Belt, The, by Sifton. New York. Macaulay. 1927
Bicyclers, The, by Bangs. In Bicyclers, and Three Other
Farces. New York. Harper. 1896
Birds of a Feather, by Francis. Newtown, Wales. Welsh Out-
look Press. 1927
Also in 6 1
Black Pit, by Maltz. New York. Putnam, 1935
Blood of the Martyrs, by Wilde. New York. French. 1937
288
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Both Your Houses, by Anderson. New York. French. 1933
and 1937
Also in 33
Bound East for Cardiff, by O'Neill
In Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926. Vol. 5
In Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. I
In The Great God Brown, and Other Plays. New York.
Boni. 1926
In Moon of the Caribbees, and Six Other Plays of the Sea.
New York. Boni. 1919
Also in 8, 71, 73
Box and Cox y by Morton. In 29
Brains, by Flavin. In Brains, and Other One-Act Plays. New
York. French. 1926
Brave and the Blind, The, by Blankfort. New York. French.
^937
Bread, by Eastman. In 8, 22, 68
Bury the Dead, by Shaw. New York. Random House. 1936
Clod, The, by Beach. New York. French. 1935
Also in 99
Coming of Christ and Easter, The, by Masefield. New York.
Macmillan. 1928
Confessional, by Wilde
In Confessional, and Other American Plays. New York.
Holt. 1916
In Question of Morality, and Other Plays. Boston. Little.
1922
Also in 22, 26, 62, 97
Crime, The, by Blankfort. New York. New Theatre League.
1936
Dance of Death, The y by Auden. London. Faber. 1936
Dead End, by Kingsley. New York. Random House. 1936.
(Toronto; Macmillan)
289
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Deathless World, The, by Tompkins. In 22
Decision of the Court, The, by Matthews. New York. Harper.
1893
Deirdre, by Yeats. London. Bullen. 1907
Also in Collected Works. London. Chapman. 1908. Vol. 2
Also in Collected Plays. Toronto. Macmillan. 1935
Also in Plays for an Irish Theatre. London, Bullen
Also in Plays in Prose and Verse, Written for an Irish
Theatre. London. Macmillan. 1922
Also in Poetical Works. New York. Macmillan. 1916. Vol. 2
Diadem of Snow, A, by Rice. In 59
Dollar, A, by Pinski. New York. French. 1932
Also in 31
Drums of Oude, The, by Strong
In The Drums of Oude, and Other One-Act Plays. New
York. Appleton. 1926
Dust of the Road, by Goodman. Chicago Stage Guild, c. 1912
Also in 22, 26, 80
Emperor Jones, The, by O'Neill. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1921
Students' Edition. New York. Appleton-Century. 1934.
With Anna Christie and The Hairy Afe. Toronto. Mac-
millan. 1937
Also in Nine Plays. New York. Liveright. 1932
Also in The Emferor Jones, Different, Straw. New York.
Boni. 1912
Also in Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926.
Vol. 3
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. 2
Also in 5, 19, 32, 34, 46, 49, 76, 96, 100
Evening Dress, by Howells. New York. Harper. 1 893
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907
Everyman, by Lady Egerton. New York. Phillips. 1922
Examination, by Eastman. Boston. Baker. 1937
290
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fall of the City, The, by MacLeish. New York. Farrar. 1937
Fan, A, and Two Candlesticks, by Macmillan. Cincinnati.
Kidd. c. 1922
Finders-Keepers, by Kelly. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1923
Also in 52, 82, 86
Finger of God, The, by Wilde
In Dawn, etc. New York. Holt. 1925
In One-Act Plays of Percival Wilde, First Series. London.
Harrap. 1933
Also in 88
Florist Shof, The, by Hawkridge. In 69
Four Comedies from the Life of George Emery Blum, by
Geddes. Brookfield, Conn. Brookfield Players. 1934
Fourth Mrs. Phillip, The, by Click. In 58
From Morn to Midnight^ by Kaiser. New York. Brentano's.
c. 1922
Also in 19, 48
Garroters, by Howells. New York. Harper. 1894
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907. Vol. I
Gentlewoman, by Lawson
In With a Reckless Preface. Two Plays. New York. Farrar.
'934
Gettysburg, by MacKaye. New York. French. 1934
Also in Yankee Fantasies. New York. Duffield. 1912
Also in 12, 30
Ghost Story, The, by Tarkington. Cincinnati. Kidd. c. 1922
Also in 52
Goat Song, by Werfel. Garden City, L. I. Doubleday. 1926
God? 3 in His Heaven, by Stevenson. New York. Theatre
Union. 1934. (Also London. Gollancz. 1936)
Gold Eagle Guy, by Levy. New York. Random House. 1935.
(Also Toronto. Macmillan. 1935; New York. French.
1937)
291
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Golden Dooniy The, by Dunsany
In Five Plays. London. Richards. 1914
Also in 6, 43
Good Men Do, The, by Osborne. In I
Great Choice, The, by Eastman. In 68
Great Divide, The, by Moody. New York. Macmillan. 1909.
(Also New York. French. 1937)
Also in Poems and Plays. Boston. Houghton. 1912
Also in 1 7, 64
Hairy A$e y The, by O'Neill. London. Cape. 1937
Also with The Emperor Jones. Toronto. Macmillan. 1937
Also in Collected Plays. New York. Bonf. 1925-1926.
Vol.3
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. 2
Also in The Hairy A$e, and Other Plays. New York. 1922
Also in Nine Plays. New York. Liveright. 1932
Also in 2O
Helenas Husband, by Moeller
In Five Somewhat Historical Plays. New York. Knopf.
1918
Also in 88, 99
Hero of Santa Maria, The, by Goodman and Hecht. New
York. Shay. c. 1920
Also in 75, 82, 86
High Tor, by Anderson. New York. Dodd. 1937
Holbein in Blackfriars, by Goodman and Stevens. Chicago
Stage Guild, c. 1913
Hot Iron, The, by Green
In Lonesome Road. New York. McBride. 1926
House of Connelly, The, by Green
In House of Connelly, and Other Plays. New York. French.
1931
292
BIBLIOGRAPHY
How He Lied to Her Husband, by Shaw
In Complete Plays. London. Constable, c. 1931
Also in Man of Destiny, and How He Lied to Her Husband.
New York. Brentano. 1907
Hymn to the Rising Sun y by Green. New York. French. 1936
/ Have Seen Myself Before, by Geddes
In Four Comedies from the Life of George Emery Blum.
Brookfield, Conn. Brookfield Players. 1934
Idioms Delight. New York. Scribner. 1936
// Men Played Cards as Women Do, by Kaufman. New York.
French, c. 1926
lie, by O'Neill
In Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926. Vol. 5
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. 2
Also in 7, 13, 26, 30, 62, 88
In Abraham? $ Bosom, by Green. London. Allen. 1929
Also in Field God, and In Abraham's Bosom. New York.
McBride. 1917
Also in Lonesome Road-, Six Plays for the Negro Theatre.
New York. McBride. 1926
Also in 19, 32, 37
"In 1999" by De Mille. New York. French, c. 1914
In the Tradition, by Geddes
In Four Comedies from the Life of George Emery Blum.
Brookfield, Conn. Brookfield Players. 1934
In the Zone, by O'Neill
In Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926. Vol. 5
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. I
Also in Moon of the Caribbees, and Six Other Plays of the
Sea. New York. Boni. 1919
Also in 45
International, The, by Lawson. New York. Macaulay. 1928
293
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jefhthah's Daughter, by Levinger. New York. French, c. 1921
Joint Owners in Sfain, by Brown. Chicago Little Theatre.
1914
Also in 54
Journefs End, by Sherriff. New York. Brentano's. 1929
Also in 4, 25, 38, 67
Judge Lynchy by Rogers. New York. French, c. 1924
Also in 32, 55
Justice, by Galsworthy. New York. Scribner. 1910
Also in Plays, Series 2. New York. Scribner. 1913
Also in Works (Manaton Edition). London. Heinemann.
1923
Also in Representative Plays. New York. Scribner. c. 1924
Also in Plays. New York. Scribner. 1928
Also in 64, 1 01
Katy Did, by Crothers
In Smart Set. 1927. No. I
King Arthur's Socks, by Dell
In King Arthur's Socks, etc. Provincetown Players, 2d
Series. New York. Shay. 1916
Knives from- Syria, by Riggs. New York. French, c. 1928
Also in 7, 57
Laughing Gas, by Dreiser
In Plays of the Natural and Supernatural. New York. Lane.
1916
'Lection, by Conkle
In Crick Bottom Plays. New York. French. 1928
Let Freedom Ring, by Bein. New York. French. 1 936
Likely Story, A, by Howells. New York. Harper. 1924
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907. Vol. I
Lima Beans, by Kreymborg. New York. French. 1925
Also in Plays for Poem-Mimes. New York. The Other
294
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Press. 1918. (Same as Puppet Plays. London. Seeker.
1923)
Also in 45, 74
Little Father of the Wilderness, The, by Strong and Osbourne.
New York. French. 1924
Also in The Drums of Oude, and Other One-Act Plays.
New York. Appleton. 1926
Also in n, 55
Little Italy, by Fry. New York. Russell. 1902
Long Voyage Home, The, by O'Neill
In Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. I
Also in The Great God Brown, and Other Plays. New
York. Boni. 1926
Also in Moon of the Caribbees, and Six Other Plays of the
Sea. New York. Boni. 1919
Also in Smart Set Anthology
Lower Depths, The, by Gorky. New York. Duffield. 1912.
(Also New York. Brentano's. 1922)
Also in 3, 1 8, 64, 78
Manikin and Minikin, by Kreymborg. New York. French.
1925
Also in Plays for Poem-Mimes. New York. The Other
Press. 1918. (Same as Puppet Plays. London. Seeker.
Also in 31, 85
Marching Song, by Lawson. New York. Dramatists Play
Service. 1937
Marriage of Little Eva, The, by Nicholson
In Garden Varieties. New York. Appleton. 1924
Marthas Mourning, by Hoffman. Boston. Baker. 1923
Also in 45
Masses and Men> by Toller. London. Lane. 1936
295
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mayor and the Manicure, The, by Ade. New York. French.
c. 1923
Also in 55
Meet the Missus, by Nicholson. In 55
Men in White, by Kingsley. New York. Covici. c. 1933.
(Also New York. French. 1935)
Also in 40
Merry-Go-Round, by Becque
In Vultures, etc. New York. Kennerley . 1913
Merry Merry Cuckoo, The, by Marks
In Three Welsh Plays. Boston. Little. 1917
Also in Merry Merry Cuckoo, and Other Welsh Plays. New
York. Appleton. 1927
Also in 12, 13, 45, 92
Mighty Wind A*Blowin y , by Ware. New York. New Theatre
League. 1936
Minnie Field, by Conkle
In Crick Bottom Plays. New York. French. 1928
Also in 2, 8
Miracle at Verdun, by Chlumberg. New York. Brentano's.
Also in 4, 23
Miss Civilization, by Davis. New York. Scribner. 1905
Also in Farces. New York. Scribner. 1906
Monkey y s Paw, The, by Jacobs and Parker. New York.
French, c. 1910
Also in 42
Monsignor*s Hour, by La very. New York. French. 1937
Moon of the Caribbees, by O'Neill, London. Cape. 1937
Also in Collected Plays. New York. Boni. 1925-1926
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. I
Also in The Great God Brown, and Other Plays. New
York. Boni. 1926
206
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Also in Moon of the Caribbees, and Six Other Plays of the
Sea. New York. Boni. 1919
Also in 83
Mouse Trap, The, by Howells
In The Mouse Trap, and Other Farces. New York. Harper.
1889
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907
Mrs. Harper's Bazaar* by Hughes. New York. Dramatists Play
Service. 1937
Napoleon Crossing the Rockies, by MacKaye. In 5, 57
Native Ground, by Geddes
In Native Ground: A Cycle of Plays. New York. French.
1932
Neighbor s ) by Gale. In 21, 22
Night Before Christmas y The, by Howells
In Daughter of the Storage. New York. Harper. 1916
Night over Taos, by Anderson. New York. French. 1932
1, by the Siftons. New York. Farrar. c. 1932
Ol y Captain, by Baker. New York. French. 1937
Old Lady Shows Her Medals, The, by Barrie
In Echoes of War. London. Hodder. c. 1918
Also in The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. London. Hod-
der. 1921
Also in Representative Plays. New York. Scribner. c. 1926
Also in Plays of J. M. Barrie, in One Volume. New York.
Scribner. 1929
Old Love Letters, by Howard. London. French. 1897; also
1936
On the Razor Edge, by Hughes. New York. French. 1930
Also in 53
One Egg, by Hughes. In 52
Our Lean Years, by Stevenson. In 68
297
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Overtones, by Gerstenberg. New York. French, c. 1929
Also in 1 6, 99
Pair of Lunatics, A, by Walkes. Hardin. 1937
Panic, by MacLeish. Boston. Houghton. 1935
Parlor Car, The, by Howells. Boston. Houghton. 1924
Also in The Sleeping Car, and Other Farces. Boston.
Houghton. c. 1892
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907
Passing of Chow-Chow, The, by Rice. New York. French.
1933
Also in 55
Pawns, by Wilde. New York. French. 1936
Also in Unseen Host, and Other War Plays. Boston. Little.
1917
Also in One-Act Plays of Percival Wilde. London. Harrap.
1933
Pierrot in Paris, by Clements. In 66
Pilgrim and the Book, The, by MacKaye. New York. Ameri-
can Bible Society, c. 1920
Playgoers, by Pinero. London. Chiswick Press. 1913
Poacher, The, by Francis. Cardiff. Educational Publishing Co.
1914
Also in 44
Pomp, by Cowan
In Pomp, and Other Plays. New York. Brentano's.
c. 1920
Proposal Under Difficulties, A, by Bangs. New York. Harper.
1913
Also in The Bicyclers, and Three Other Farces. New York.
Harper. 1896
Purple Door Knob, The, by Eaton. New York. French. 1936
Queen Victoria, by Eaton and Carb. New York. Dutton. 1922
298
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reckless , by Riggs. In 8, 58
Rector, by Crothers. New York. French, c. 1905
Also in 55
Red Owl, The, by Gillette. In 55
Reunion in Vienna, by Sherwood. New York. Scribner. 1932
Rider of Dreams, The, by Torrence
In Granny Maumee, etc. New York. Macmillan. 1917
Also in 32, 92
Riders to the Sea, by Synge. Boston. Luce. 1911
Also in Works. Dublin. Maunsel. 1910. Vol. i
Also in Shadow of the Glen, and Riders to the Sea. London.
Mathews. 1910
Also in Four Plays. Dublin. Maunsel. 1911
Also in Works. Boston. Luce. 1912. Vol. I
Also in Works. Boston. Luce. 1913. Vol. 4
Also in Plays. London. Allen. 1932
Also in 6, 10, 12, 13, 17, 27, 30, 101, 103
Rising of the Moon, by Lady Gregory
In Seven Short Plays. Dublin. Maunsel. 1910
Also in 17, 42, 93, 102
Rock, The, by Hamlin. Boston. Pilgrim Press, c. 1921. (Also
New York. French. 1935)
Ryland, by Goodman and Stevens. Chicago Stage Guild,
c. 1912
Also in 45
Sam Average, by Mac Kay e
In Yankee Fantasies. New York. Duffield. 1912
Also in 3 1, 45
Secret, The, by Alehin
In First Sin, and Other One-Act Plays. Boston. Expression
Co. c. 1927
Secret Service, by Gillette. New York. French, c. I {
Also in 64, 77
299
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Self -Made Man, by Box. New York. French. 1937
Self -Sacrifice, by Howells
In Daughter of the Storage, and Other Things in Prose and
Verse. New York. Harper. 1916
Shepherd in the Distance, The, by Hudson. Cincinnati. Kidd.
c. 1921
Also in 88
Sherlock Holmes, by Gillette. New York. Doubleday. 1935
Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet, The, by Shaw. New York.
Brentano's. 1909; New York. Dodd. 1937
Also in The Doctors Dilemma, and Other Plays. New
York. Brentano's. 1911
Also in Complete Works. London. Constable, c. 1931
Show-Off, The, by Kelly. Boston. Little. 1924
Also in 35, 49
Singing Jailbirds, by Sinclair. Pasadena. The Author. 1924
Sintrim of Skaggerak, by Cowan. New York. French. 1930
Also in Pomp, and Other Plays. New York. Brentano's.
c. 1920
Also in 9, 45
Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil, by Walker. Cincinnati.
Kidd. c. 1921
Also in 45, 51, 70, 92
Smoking Car, The, by Howells
In The Smoking Car, and Other Farces. Boston. Houghton.
c. 1892
Also in Minor Dramas. Edinburgh. Douglas. 1907. Vol. 2
So** Your Old Antique, by Kummer. New York. French.
c. 1928
Also in 58
Sparking by Conkle
In Crick Bottom Plays. New York. French. 1928
Also in 58
300
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Stevedore, by Peters and Sklar. New York. Covici. c. 1934;
Cape. 1935
StUl Alarm, by Kaufman. In 60
Street Scene, by Rice. New York. French. 1926; also 1937
Also in 4, 38
Strife, by Galsworthy. New York. Scribner. 1920
Also in Plays. New York. Putnam. 1909
Also in Works (Manaton Edition). London. Heinemann.
1923
Also in Representative Plays. New York. Scribner. c. 1924
Also in Plays. New York. Scribner. 1928
Also in 17, 41, 103
Success Story, by Lawson. New York. Farrar. 1932
Such a Charming Young Man, by Akins. New York. French,
Also in 55
Suppressed Desires, by Glaspell and Cook
In Plays by S. Glaspell. Boston. Small, c. 1920
Also in Trifles, and Six Other Short Plays. London. Benn.
1926
Also in 45, 73
Sweet and Twenty, by Dell. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1921
Also in King Arthur's Socks, etc. Provincetown Players. 2d
Series. New York. Shay. 1916
Also in 82, 86
They Shall Not Die, by Wexley. New York. Knopf. 1934
Also in 40
This Picture and That, by Matthews. New York. Harper.
1894
Three Pills in a Bottle, by Field. New York. French. 1935
Also in Six Plays. New York. Scribner. 1924
Also in 2
301
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tickless Time, by Glaspell and Cook. Boston. Baker. 1925
Also in Plays by S. Glaspell. Boston. Small, c. 1920
Also in Trifles, and Six Other Short Plays. London. Benn.
1926
Also in 28, 82, 86
Tidings of Joy, by McFadden. New York. French, c. 1933
Till the Day I Die, by Odets
In Three Plays. New York. Random House. 1935. (Also
London; Gollancz, and Toronto; Macmillan)
With Waiting for Lefty. New York. Random House. 1935.
(Also Toronto; Macmillan)
Tinker, The, by Eastman. New York. Century, c. 1930
Also in 68
Tonight at 8.30, by Coward
In Plays. Garden City, L. I. Doubleday. 1936
Too Much Smith, by Matthews. Boston. Baker. 1902
Also in Comedies for Amateur Acting (under the tide,
Heredity). New York. Appleton. 1880
Tree, The, by Box. New York. French. 1937
Trifles, by Glaspell. New York. Washington Square Players.
1916
Also in Plays by S. Glaspell. Boston. Small, c. 1920
Also in Trifles, and Six Other Short Plays. London. Benn.
1926
Also in 8, 62, 63, 88
Twelve Pound Look, The, by Barrie
In Half Hours. New York. Scribner. 1914
Also in The Twelve Pound Look, and Other Plays. Lon-
don. Hodder. 1921
Also in Representative Plays. New York. Scribner. c. 1926
Also in Plays of J. M. Barrie, in One Volume. New York.
Scribner. 1929
Also in 31
702
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Twentieth Century Lullaby, by Mount. New York. French.
1937
Twilight Saint, by Young. New York. French, c. 1925
Also in Addio, Madretta, and Other Plays. New York.
Sergei. 1912
Also in 12, 13
Two Crooks and a Lady, by Pillot. In I
Two Hundred Were Chosen, by Conkle. New York. French.
1937
Two Passengers for Chelsea y by Firkins
In Two Passengers for Chelsea, and Other Plays. New
York. Longmans. 1928
Two Slatterns and a King, by Millay. Cincinnati. Kidd.
1921
Also in Three Plays. New York. Harper. 1926
Also in 82, 86
Unto Such Glory y by Green
In In the Valley, and Other Carolina Plays. New York.
French. 1928
Also in 57
Valiant, The, by Hall and Middlemass. In 22$ 98
Waiting for Lefty, by Odets
In Three Plays. New York. Random House. 1935. (Also
London; Gollancz, and Toronto; Macmillan)
With Till the Day I Die. New York. Random House. 1935,
(Also Toronto; Macmillan)
Wedding Rehearsal, The, by Farrar. In 59
What Price Glory?, by Anderson
In Three American Plays. New York. Harcourt. 1926
Also in 4, 36
33
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Where the Cross Is Made, by O'Neill
In Collected Plays, New York. Boni. 1925-1926. Vol. 5
Also in Complete Works. New York. Boni. 1924. Vol. 2
Also in The Great God Brown, and Other Plays. New
York. Boni. 1926
Also in Moon of the Caribbees, and Six Other Plays of the
Sea. New York. Boni. 1919
Also in 10, n, 97
White Dresses, by Green. New York. French. 1935
Also in Lonesome Road. New York. McBride
Also in 31, 32
Why the Chimes Rang, by McFadden. New York. French.
c. 1915
Also in Why the Chimes Rang, and Other Plays. New
York. French. 1925
Will o* the Wisp, by Halman. In 45, 79
Winterset, by Anderson. Washington. Anderson House. 1935.
(Also New York. Dramatists Play Service. 1937)
Wonder Hat, The, by Goodman. New York. Shay. c. 1920
Also in The Wonder Hat, and Three Other One-Act
Plays. New York. Appleton. 1925
, Also in 45
Workhouse Ward, by Lady Gregory
In Seven Short Plays. Dublin. Maunsel. 1910
Also in 10, 26, 50, 97
1. Baker, G. P., ed. Plays of the 47 Workshop. Series /.
New York. Brentano's. 1918
2. Baker, G. P., ed. Yale One-Act Plays. New York.
French. 1930
3. Bates, A. Drama. London. Athenian Society. 1903
4. Chandler, F. W., and Cordell, R. A., eds. Twentieth
Century Plays. New York. Nelson. 1934
5. Church, V. W., ed. Curtain! A Book of Modern Plays.
New York. Harper. 1932
304
BIBLIOGRAPHY
6. Clark, B. H., ed. Representative One-Act Plays by British
and American Authors. Boston. Little. 1921
7. Clark, B. H., and Cook, T. R., eds. One-Act Plays.
Boston. Heath. 1929
8. Clark, B. H., and Nicholson, K., eds. American Scene.
New York. Appleton. 1930
9. Clements, C. C., ed. Sea Plays. Boston. Small, c. 1925
10. Coffman, G. R., ed. Book of Modern Plays. Chicago.
Scott, c. 1925
11. Cohen, H. L., ed. More One- Act Plays by Modern Au-
thors. New York. Harcourt. 1921
12. Cohen, H. L., ed. One-Act Plays by Modern Authors.
New York. Harcourt. 1921
13. Same; 1934
14. Cohen, H. L., ed. One- Act Plays for Stage and Study.
New York. French. 1924
15. Comediettas and Farces. New York. Harper. 1886
1 6. Dickinson, A. D., ed. Drama. Garden City, L. I. Double-
day. 1924
17. Dickinson, T. H., ed. Chief Contemporary Dramatists.
Boston. Houghton. c. 1915
1 8. Dickinson, T. H., ed. Chief Contemporary Dramatists.
Series 2. Boston. Houghton. c. 1921
19. Dickinson, T. H., ed. Chief Contemporary Dramatists.
Series 3. Boston. Houghton. c. 1930
20. Dickinson, T. H., ed. Contemporary Plays. Boston.
Houghton. c. 1925
21. Dickinson, T. H., ed. Wisconsin Plays. New York.
Huebsch. 1914
22. Eastman, F., ed. Modern Religious Dramas. New York.
Holt. 1928
23. Famous Plays of 1932-33. London. Gollancz. 1933
24. Famous Plays of 1933-34. London. Gollancz. 1934
25. Famous Plays of To-day. London. Gollancz. 1930
305
BIBLIOGRAPHY
26. Goldstone, G. A., ed. One-Act Plays. Boston. Allyn. 1926
27. Hampden, J., ed. Nine Modern Plays. New York. Nel-
son. 1923
28. Hampden, J., ed. Ten Modern Plays. London. Nelson.
1928
29. Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays. London. Lacy. Vol. 5
30. Leonard, S. A., ed. Atlantic Book of Modern Plays. Bos-
ton. Atlantic Monthly Press, c. 1921
31. Lewis, B. R., ed. Contemporary One-Act Plays. New
York. Scribner. c. 1922
32. Locke, A. Le R., and Gregory, M., eds. Plays of Negro
Life. New York. Harper. 1927
33. Mantle, B., and Sherman, G. P., eds. Best Plays of 1909-
1910 and the Yearbook of the Drama in America. New
York. Dodd. 1933
34. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1920-21. Boston. Small.
1921 (abridged)
35. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1923-24. Boston. Small,
c. 1924 (abridged)
36. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1924-25. Boston. Small,
c. 1924 (abridged)
37. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1926-27. New York. Dodd.
1927 (abridged)
38. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1928-29. New York. Dodd.
1929 (abridged)
39. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1931-32. New York. Dodd.
1932 (abridged)
40. Mantle, B., ed. Best Plays of 1933-34. New York. Dodd.
1934 (abridged)
41. Marriott, J. W., ed. Great Modern British Plays. London.
Harrap. 1929
42. Marriott, J, W., ed, One-Act Plays of To-day. Series 2.
Boston. Small, c. 1924
306
BIBLIOGRAPHY
43. Marriott, J. W., ed. One-Act Plays of To-day. Series 3.
London. Harrap. 1927
44. Marriott, J. W., ed. One-Act Plays of To-day. Series 4.
London. Harrap. 1928
45. Mayorga, M., ed. Representative One-Act Plays by
American Authors. Boston. Little. 1919
46. McDermott, J. F., ed. Modern Plays. New York. Har-
court. c. 1932
47. More Quick Curtains. Chicago Stage Guild. 1923
48. Moses, M. J., ed. Dramas of Modernism and Their Fore-
runners. Boston. Little. 1931
49. Moses, M. J., ed. Representative American Dramas y Na-
tional and Local. Boston. Little. 1925
50. Moses, M. J., ed. Representative British Dramas, Vic-
torian and Modern. Boston. Little. 1918
51. Moses, M. J., ed. Treasury of Plays for Children. Boston.
Little. 1921
52. Nicholson, K., ed. Appleton's Book of Short Plays. New
York. Appleton. 1926
53. Nicholson, K., ed. Hollywood Plays. New York. French.
1930
54. One-Act Plays. New York. Macmillan. 1921
55. One-Act Plays for Stage and Study. New York. French.
1924
56. Same. Series 2. 1925
57. Same. Series 3. 1927
58. Same. Series 4. 1928
59. Same. Series 5. 1929
60. Same. Series 6. 1931
61. One-Act Plays of To-day. $th Series. London. Harrap.
c. 1931
62. Pence, R. W., ed. Dramas by Present-Day Writers. New
York. Scribner. c. 1927
BIBLIOGRAPHY
63. Phillips, Le R., and Johnson, T,, eds. Types of Modern
Dramatic Composition. Boston. Ginn. 1927
64. Pierce and Matthews, eds. Masterpieces of Modern
Drama. Garden City, L. I. Doubleday. 1915. Vol. I
(abridged)
65. Same. Vol. 2
66. Plays for a Folding Theatre. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1923
67. Plays of a Half Decade. London. Gollancz. c. 1933
68. Plays of American Life. New York. French. 1934
69. Plays of the Harvard Dramatic Club. Series I. New York.
Brentano's
70. Portmanteau Plays. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1917
71. Provincetown Plays. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1921
72. Provincetown Plays. New York. Harper. 1920
73. Provincetown Plays. Series i. New York. Shay. 1916
74. Same. Series 3
75. Quick Curtains. Chicago Stage Guild. 1915
76. Quinn, A. H., ed. Contemporary American Plays. New
York. Scribner, 1923
77. Quinn, A. H., ed. Representative American Plays>
78. Sayler, O. M., ed. Moscow Art Theatre Series of Russian
Plays. Series i. New York. Brentano's. 1923
79. Set the Stage for Eight. Boston. Little. 1923
80. Shay, F., ed. Afpleton Book of Christmas Plays. New
York. Appleton. 1929
81. Shay, F., ed. Contemporary One-Act Plays (American).
Cincinnati. Kidd. 1922
82. Shay, F., ed. Contemporary One-Act Plays of 1921. Cin-
cinnati. Kidd
83. Shay, F., ed. Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays
84. Shay, F., ed. Plays for Strolling Mummers. New York.
Appleton. 1926
308
85. Shay, F., ed. Treasury of Plays for Women. Boston,
Shay. 1922
86. Shay, F., ed. Twenty Contemporary One-Act Plays
(American). Cincinnati. Kidd. 1922
87. Shay, F., ed. Washington Square Players. New York.
1916
88. Shay, F., and Loving, P., eds. Fifty Contemporary One-
Act Plays. Cincinnati. Kidd. 1922
89. Short Plays for Modern Players. New York. Appleton.
I93 1
90. Six Plays. London. Gollancz. 1931
91. Smart Set Anthology
92. Smith, A. M., ed. Short Plays by Representative Authors.
New York. Macmillan. 1920
93. Smith, M. M., ed. Short Plays of Various Types. New
York. Merrill, c. 1924
94. Ten One-Act Plays. New York. Brentano's. c. 1921
95. Ten Plays. New York. Huebsch. 1920
96. Tucker, S. M., ed. Modern Plays. New York. Mac-
millan. 1932
97. Tucker, S. M., ed. Twelve One-Act Plays for Study and
Production. Boston. Ginn. 1929
98. Twelve One-Act Plays. New York. Longmans, c. 1926
99. Washington Square Plays. Garden City, L. I. Doubleday.
1919
100. Watson, E. B., and Pressey, B., eds. Contemporary
Drama; American Plays. New York. Scribner. c. 1931
101. Watson, E. B., and Pressey, B., eds. Contemporary
Drama; English and Irish Plays. New York. Scribner.
c. 1931. Vol. I
102. Webber, J. P., and Webster, H. H., eds. One-Act Plays
for Secondary Schools. Boston. Houghton. c. 1933
103. Whitman, C. H., ed. Seven Contemporary Plays. Boston.
Houghton. 1931
309
INDEX
Abbey Theatre of Dublin, 202
Abbott, George, 34
Across the Border, by Dix, 210
Across the Moon (radio), 107
Acting-, 14.6
Action, and exposition, 24 et seq.;
and speech, 1355 call to, 845
rise of, 27 j violent, 28
Actor, function of, 20
Actor's Heritage, The, by W. P.
Eaton, 34
Actors Repertory Company, 248,
259, 263, 265, 270
Adding Machine, The, by Rice,
249
Ade, George, 210
Aeschylus, 156
Agit-prop, 275
Akins, Zoe, 210
Albany Depot, The, by Howells,
200
Aldis, Mary, 190
Alexander, George, 42
All God's Chillun Got Wings, by
O'Neill, 249
All on a Summer's Day, by Clem-
ents and Ryerson, 211
Allison's Lad, by Dix, 210
Amateur theatre, the, 10, 139 et
seq., 197, 198
Amateur Theatre and Play-
wright*! Journal, 218
Ambush, The, by Hughes, 210
America, America, by Kreymborg,
256
American Claimant, The, by How-
ells and Twain, 200
American Drama Today, by Gold-
berg, 112
American Dream, by O'Neil, 261,
266, 280
Among Thieves, by Gillette, 201
And There Was Light, by Ken-
nedy, 212
Anderson, Maxwell, 77, 115, 116,
117, 118, 175, 191, 248, 260,
280, 281
Anderson, Sherwood, 256
Andreyev, 120
Another Way Out, by Langner,
207
Antecedents, attention to, 23
Antigone, by Sophocles, 156
Aria da Capo, by Millay, 208
Armstrong, William, 223
Art, origin of, 113$ versus propa-
ganda, 76, et seq.
"Art Theatre Twenty Years
After," by Cheney, 271
Attention, capture of, 58
Auden, W. H., 178, 265
Audience Organization, 285
Audiences, 54, 92 j psychology of,
2ij radio, 105$ responsiveness
of, 25
Authors. See Playwrights
Awake and Sing, by Odets, 260,
261
Awakening of the American The-
atre, by Blake, 254
INDEX
Bakehouse , The, by Francis, 239
Baker, George Pierce, 34, 80, 203,
204, 206, 261
Baker, Virgil L., 138
Bangs, John Kendrick, 200-201
Barnes, Djuna, 208
Barrie, James M., 9, n, 30, 36,
37, 4 43, 46, 192, 225
Barry, Philip, 34, 256
Basshe, Em jo, 183, 250
Battle Hymn, by Bein, 88
Baxter, Alan, 279
Beach, Lewis, 208
Beauty and the Jacobin, by Tar-
kington, 211
Bedside Manners, by Kenyon, 210
Before Breakfast, by O'Neill, 208
Bein, Albert, 88, 186, 247, 262
Belt, The, by Sifton, 250
Benet, Stephen Vincent, 270
Bengal, Ben, 270
Betty's Finish, by Fitch, 199
Bicyclers, The, by Bangs, 201
Big Night, 260
Birds of a Feather, by Francis,
239
"Black-outs," 191
Black Pit, by Maltz, 88, 93, 257
Blake, Ben, 254
Blankfort, Michael, 74, 247, 258,
266, 269, 274, 282 j biography,
74
Blinn, Holbrook, 9
Blitzstein, Marc, 88, 247, 264,
269, 270, 280
Blood of the Martyrs, by Wilde,
270, 278
Bonn, John, 251
Both Your Houses, by Anderson,
248
Bottomley, Gordon, 238
Boucicault, Dion, 38
Bound East for Cardiff, by
O'Neill, 29, 208
Bourne, John, 218
Box, Sydney, 52, 63, 236
Box and Cox, by Morton, 198
Boy, The: What Will He Be-
come?, by Brighouse, 236
Boyce, Neith, 208
Brains, by Flavin, 210
Brave and the Blind, The, by
Blankfort, 91, 93, 266, 269,
278, 282
Bread, by Eastman, 154, 166
Brighouse, Harold, n, 31, 192,
236
British and American Drama of
Today, by Clark, 186
British Drama League, 222, 228-
229
Broadcast plays. See Radio
Broadway, and one-act plays, 8
Brookfield Players, 266
Brooks, Van Wyck, 183
Brookwood Labor College Play-
ers, 266
Brown, Alice, 204
Brown, Ivor, 9-11, 222
Browne, Maurice, 204
Bury the Dead, by Shaw, 3, 32,
36, 43, 82, 84, 91, 93, 258,
263, 273, 274, 276, 277, 281 j
success of, 264
By-product and doctrine, 35
Caldwell, Erskine, 258
Call to action, the, 84
Can You Hear Their Voices, by
Flanagan and Clifford, 265,
277
Carb, David, 34
Carnegie Institute of Technology,
205
Carolina Playmakers, 205
"Catharsis," 21, 157
"Catharsis and the Modern The-
atre," by Gassner, 77
"Censor, the Psychologist, and the
Motion Picture, The," by Kal-
len, 125-126
312
INDEX
Character, drawing, 28, 56, 87$
evolution of, 62
Characteristics of the one-act play,
19
Cheney, Sheldon, 271
Chekhov, 119
Chicago Little Theatre, 202, 204
Chofin, radio play, 106, 107
Churches, modern religious plays,
i6z\ number of plays given in,
167$ one-act plays in, 154-168
Cinema. See Films
"Cinema technique," 92
City life, plays on, 277
Clarity, social, 81-83
Clark, Barrett H., 140 5 biog-
raphy, 1 86
Classical Tradition in Poetry,
The, by Murray, 157
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark
Twain), 200
Clements, Colin, 190, 211
Clifford, Margaret, 265
Clod, The, by Beach, 206
Clurman, Harold, 259
Cohen, Helen Louise, on the one-
act play, 4
College theatre, the, 137-1515 dra-
matic laboratories, 205 (See
also names of colleges)
Columbia Workshop, 179
Coming of Christ and Easter,
The, by Masefield, 164
Commedia dell y Arte, 8
Commencement^ by Kreymborg,
170
Common man, writing for, 180-
181
Compactness, 92
Conciseness, 122
Confessional, by Wilde, 166
Conflicts, human, 93
Conkle, E. P., 183, 186, 192,
210, 214, 264
Connelly, Marc, 191
Construction, 19-32$ principles of,
57 et seq.; social one-act play,
72-94
Contemporary French Dramatists,
by Clark, 186
Contemporary One- Act Plays from
Nine Countries, by Wilde, 17
Continental Drama of To-day,
The, by Clark, 186
Conversion drama, 85
Cook, George Cram, 208
Cornell University Plays, 205
Corrie, Joe, n, 238, 239
Cowan, Sada, 211
Coward, Noel, 8, 9, 31, 36, 37,
38, 77* 78-79) I2 *> I2 5> 34i
2i3> 223
Cradle Will Rock, The, by Blitz-
stein, 88, 264, 265, 269, 280
Craft of play wn'ting, 54-5 5, 57-
60
Craftsmanship of the One-Act
Play, by Wilde, 17, 20
Crawford, Cheryl, 259
Creative writing, need for, 148
Crime, The, by Blankfort, 84, 91,
92, 258, 277, 282
Critics, 9-11
Crocker, Bosworth, 207, 208
Crothers, Rachel, 202
Current Theatre, 270
"Curtain raisers," 224
Dance of Death, The, by Auden,
178, 265
Daughter, by Martin, 258, 277
Davis, Richard Harding, 201
Dawn and Other One- Act Plays,
by Wilde, 209
Dead End, by Kingsley, 88, 248
Deathless World, The, by Tomp-
kins, 1 66
Decision of the Court, The, by
Matthews, 201
Deirdre, by Yeats, 227
Dell, Floyd, 208
313
INDEX
De Mille, William C., 210
Diadem of Snow, A y by Rice, 210
Dialogue, 22, 27, 47
Directors, 1455 training of, 147
Discipline in writing, 56
Dix, Beulah Marie, 210
Dmitroff y by Kazan and Smith,
262
Doctrine and by-product, 35
Dogma, restriction by, 4
Dollar , A) by Pinski, 212
Dos Passos, John, 250
Drama , T/ie, 203
Drama and opera, 114
Drama in the Church, by East-
man, 154
Drama League of America, 202,
203
Dramatists. See Playwrights
Dramatists Play Service, 186
Dreiser, Theodore, 208, 211
Drummond, A. M., 205
Drums of Oude y The y by Strong,
189, 211
Dunsany, Lord, 47, 227
Dust of the Roady by Goodman,
163, 210
Eastman, Fred, 154, 166
Eaton, Walter Prichard, 150, 206 j
biography, 345 on faults in
writing, 34-50
Economy of action and dialogue,
56
Edit ha* s Burglar, by Thomas, 199
Educational value of the one-act
play, 143 et seq.
Eisenberg, Emanuel, 285
Eliot, T. S., 174, 176, 177, 178
Embers and Other One- Act Plays,
by Middleton, 209
Emotion, rousing, 46
Emfcror Jones, The y by O'Neill,
29
Endings, trick, 47
England, one-act play in, 218-
24 1 j religious one-act plays in,
164-165
Episodic plays, 62 et seq.
Ervine, St. John, 9
"Escapism" in the theatre, 269
Essentials in play construction, 22
Eugene O'Neill, the Man and His
Plays, by Clark, 186
Euripides, 156
European Theories of the Drama y
by Clark, 186
Evening Dress, by Ho wells, 200
Everyman, by Lady Egerton, 160
Examination, by Eastman, 154
Experimental one-act plays, 53-
71, 150, 174, 237
"Experimenters," 5
Exposition and action, 23 et seq.
Exposition, time, and space, 39,
42
Extension service, 142
Fall of the City, The, by Mac-
Leish, 70, 179, 191, 270, 277,
278, 281
Fan and Two Candlesticks, A y by
Macmillan, 212
Faragoh, Francis, 250
Farmers, plays on, 277
Farrar, John, 211
Fascism, plays on, 278
Faults in writing, 34-50
Feast of the Ortolans y by Ander-
son, 191
Federal Theatre, 177, 178, 247,
248, 264, 265, 268, 269
Festivals and tournaments, 142$
British, 229-236, 240, 241
Field, Rachel, 205
Films, the one-act play in, m-
126$ audiences, 115; screen and
Stage, 122-1235 "shorts," 1205
sources of, in one-act plays, 75
technical tricks in, 705 tech-
nique of, 3
3H
INDEX
Finders- keepers, by Kelly, 210
Finger of God, The, by Wilde,
166
Firkins, Oscar W, 211
Fitch, Clyde, 199
Flanagan, Hallie, 145, 256, 265
Flavin, Martin, 186, 210
Florist Shof, The, by Hawkridge,
205
Flowers Are Not for You to Pick
(radio), by Guthrie, 108
Folk drama, 151, 159, 161, 282
Food y by De Mille, 210
Footnotes, 23
Form. See Technique
"47 Workshop," 34, 203, 204,
205
Fourth Mrs. Phillies, The, by
Click, 211
Francis, J. O., 239
Francklin, Thomas, The Trage-
dies of Sophocles, 157
Frederick Lemditre, by Fitch, 199
Free Thaelman, 255
From Morn to Midnight, by
Kaiser, 249
From the Life of George Emery
Blum, by Geddes, 266
Fumed Oak, by Coward, 36, 37
Future of the one-act play, 7
Gabrelson, Frank, 279
Gale, Zona, 36, 166, 203, 215
Galsworthy, John, 165
Garroters, The, by Howells, 200
Gassner, John W., 77, 89, 244
Geddes, Virgil, 186, 266, 277, 280
Gentlewoman, by Lawson, 260
George Pierce Baker Cup, 261
Gerstenberg, Alice, 190, 207
Gettysburg, by MacKaye, 189
Ghost Story, The, by Tarkington,
2H
Gielgud, John, 21
Gielgud, Van, 96
Gillette, William, 201
Give All Thy Terrors to the
Wind, by the Siftons, 84, 88,
281, 282
Glaspell, Susan, 9, 189, 192, 208
Click, Carl, 211
Goat Song, by Werfel, 249
God y s in His Heaven, by Steven-
son, 84, 88, 278
Gold, Michael, 208
Gold Eagle Guy, by Levy, 260
Goldberg, Isaac, biography, 112
Golden Doom, The, by Dunsany,
227
Gonzales Prada, Manuel, 122
Good Men Do, The, by Osborne,
205
Goodman, Kenneth Sawyer, 163,
210
Gorky, Maxim, 279
Grand Guignol, 187, 188} in Eng-
land, 227
Great Choice, The, by Eastman,
154, 166
Great Divide, The, by Moody,
171
Great Show, The, 253
Greece, ancient drama, 155-158}
ancient one-act plays in, 8
Green, Paul, 9, 29, 36, 86, 89,
183, 186, 191, 192, 206, 214,
215, 247, 256, 258, 260, 263,
284
Gregory, Lady, 3, 36, 37, 119,
192, 202, 227
Group Theatre, 8, 248, 259, 265,
285
Guilds, medieval, plays by, 160
Guthrie, Tyrone, 107
Hairy A$e, The, by O'Neill, 29,
249
Hall, Holworthy. See Porter, Har-
old Everett
Halman, Doris, 211
Hamlin, Mary P., 163
Hapgood, Hutchins, 208
INDEX
Harding (radio playwright), 107
Harrigan, Edward, 198
Harris, Bernice Kelly, 87, 277,
282
Harvard Dramatic Club Plays,
205
Harvard University, 203, 204, 205
Harvest, The, by Fitch, 199
Hawkridge, Winifred, 205
Hecht, Ben, 210
Helena's Husband , by Moeller,
207
Hero of Santa Maria, by Good-
man and Hecht, 210
High Tor, by Anderson, 281
His Jewels, by Harris, 87, 277,
282
Hoffman, Phoebe, 211
Hot Iron, by Green, 192
Hour of American Drama, An, by
Clark, 1 86
House of Connelly, The, by
Green, 260
Housman, Laurence, 164.
How He Lied to Her Husband,
by Shaw, 225
Howard, Bronson, 198
Howard, Sidney, 34, 256
Howe, Anne, 251
Howells, William Dean, 199, 200,
216
Hudson, Holland, 207
Hughes, Babette, 211
Hughes, Glenn, 206 j biography,
196
Hughes, Rupert, 210
Humor and satire, 278
Hymn to the Rising Sun, by
Green, 86, 87, 89, 191, 263,
273, 276, 283, 284
/ Have Seen Myself Before, by
Geddes, 280
/ Take My Stand, 277
Idiot's Delight, 248
// Men Played Cards as Women
Do, by Kaufman, 210
lie, by O'Neill, 29, 49, 189, 192,
208
Imaginative plays, 280
Improvement, technical, 69
In Abraham^ Bosom, by Green,
249
In iooo t by De Mille, 210
In the Tradition, by Geddes, 277,
280
In the Vestibule Limited, by Mat-
thews, 20 1
In the Zone, by O'Neill, 208
Indecency of the Seven Arts, by
Kallen, 125-126
Ingot City, by Stevenson, 88
Initial exposition, 23
Inspiration, 61
Interest, capture of, 58
International, The, by Lawson,
250
Iowa, University of, 206
Irish Players, 202
Irish renaissance, 245
Irwin, Ben, 285
Isherwood, Christopher, 178
I've Got the Tune, by Blitzstein,
270, 280
Jacobs, W. W., 226
Jefferson, Joseph, 38
JefhthaWs Daughter, 167
John Reed Group Theatre, 251
Johnson, Philip, 238
Joint Owners in Spain, 204
Jones, Henry Arthur, 35
Jones, Robert Edmond, 206
Journey's End, by Sherriff, 133
Judge Lynch, by Rogers, 212
Justice, by Galsworthy, 165
Kaiser, 249
Kallen, Horace M., 125
Katy Did, by Cr others, 202
316
INDEX
Kaufman, George S., 191, 210,
216
Kazan, Elia, 262
Kelly, George, 49, 210
Kemp, Harry, 208
Kennedy, Charles O'Brien, 212
Kids Learn Fast, by Shiffrin, 277,
279
Kilpatrick, William H., 143-144
King Arthur's Socks, by Dell, 208
Kingsley, Sidney, 88, 248
Kline, Herbert, 256
Knives from Syria, by Riggs, 211
Koch, Frederick H., 205
Kozlenko, William, 88, 270, 277,
282
Kreymborg, Alfred, 189, 192,
208, 25 6 j biography, 170
Krutch, Joseph Wood, 77
Kummer, Clare, 210
Labor Theatre, 190
Langner, Lawrence, 207, 208
Laughing Gas, by Dreiser, 211
La very, Emmet, 166
Lawrence, Gertrude, 8, 122, 223
Lawson, John Howard, 79, 87,
90, 247, 250, 260
League of Workers' Theatres
(LOWT), z 54 , 257
'Lection, by Conkle, 210
Left Book Club Theatre Guild
(British), 240
Left-wing insurgency, 245
Left Wing Theatre, 190
Lesan, David, 279
Let Freedom Ring, by Bein, 88,
262
"Let Freedom Ring Company,"
259, 262, 265
Levy, Melvin, 260
Lewis, C. Day, 178
Likely Story, A, by Howells, 200
Lima Beans, by Kreymborg, 170,
208
Little Father of the Wilderness,
The, by Strong and Osbourne,
189, 210
Little Italy, by Fry, 189
Little Plays of Saint Francis and
Bethlehem, by Housman, 164
Little Theatres, 8, 173, 189, 190,
203, 245, 257, 271} British,
218
Living Newspaper, The, 25, 248,
265
Long Voyage Home, The, by
O'Neill, 29, 208
Lower Deaths, by Gorky, 279
LOWT. See League of Workers'
Theatres
Machinery, stage, 69
Mackay, Constance D'Arcy, 212
MacKaye, Percy, 9, 163, 189,
210
MacLeish, Archibald, 70, 79, 116,
117, 118, 179, 191, 270, 271,
281
Macmillan, Mary, 212
MacNeice, Louis, 178
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 183
Magical City, The, by Akins, 210
Maltz, Albert, 87, 191, 247, 258,
270, 278
Managers, commercial, 9
Manikin and Minikin, by Kreym-
borg, 170, 208
Marching Song, by Lawson, 84
Marking system, British, 234-235
Marks, Jeannette, 212
Marriage of Little Eva, The, by
Nicholson, 210
Martha's Mourning, by Hoffman,
21 I
Martin, Christopher, 106
Martin, Peter, 258
Marvell (radio playwright), zio
Marvin, Mark, 257, 285
Masefield, John, 164
Mass Action Theatre, 267
INDEX
Mateo Falcone, by Merimee, 44
Matthews, Brander, 200-201
Mayor and tfte Manicure^ The,
by Ade, 209
Mayor ga, Margaret, 209
McConn, Max, 144
McFadden, Elizabeth, 166, 210
Medieval drama, 158, 159, 160
Meet the Missus, by Nicholson,
210
Melodrama, 134
Men in White, by Kingsley, 260
Men Must Fight, 82
Mercury Theatre, 248, 264, 269
Meredith, Burgess, 179
Merimee, Prosper, 44
Merry-Go-Round, 255
Merry Merry Cuckoo, The, by
Marks, 212
Middle Ages, drama in, 158, 159,
1 60
Middlemass, Robert, 32, 36
Middleton, George, 9, 208, 209
Mighty Wind A* Blowing by
Ware, 87, 277, 282
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 208
Militarism and war, plays on, 277
Minnie Field, by Conkle, 192,
210
Miracle at Verdun, by Chlumberg,
281
Miracle plays, 159
Miss Civilization, by Davis, 201
Mitchell, Ronald Elwy, 239
Modern religious plays, 162
"Moderns," 19
Moeller, Philip, 190, 207
Money, by Gold, 88
M^nkey^ Paw, The, by Jacobs
and Parker, 226
Monsignor's Hour, by Lavery,
166
Moody, William Vaughn, 171
Moon of the Caribbees, by O'Neill,
29, 192, 208
Morality plays, 160
Morley, Christopher, 212, 215
Morton, J. M., 198, 200
Motion pictures. See Films
Mount, Cedric, 63-69, 166
Mouse Trap, The, by Howells,
200
Movies. See Films
Mrs. Harper's Bazaar, by Hughes,
211
Mrs. Molly, by Crothers, 202
Muni, Paul, 121
Murder in the Cathedral, by Eliot,
177
Murray, Gilbert, The Classical
Tradition in Poetry, 157
Music halls, British, 226
Music in radio plays, 106
Mystery plays, 159, 165
Napoleon Crossing the Rockies,
by MacKaye, 210
National Little Theatre Confer-
ence Tournament, 254
Native Ground, by Geddes, 280
Negroes, plays on, 277
Neighbors, by Gale, 36, 166, 203
New Playwrights Theatre, 250
New Theatre, 244, 256, 257, 260,
263, 265, 267, 274, 285
New Theatre and Film, 268, 285
New Theatre League, 247, 257,
258, 262, 263, 268, 269, 270,
271, 285
New Theatre movement, 256-267
New Theatre Nights, 262
New Theatre School, 257
Newsboy, 255
Nicoll, Allerdyce, 206
Nicholson, Kenyon, 210
Night Before Christmas, The, by
Howells, 200
Night over Taos, by Anderson,
260
7951, by the Siftons, 260
*933t ty O'Neil, 280
INDEX
Nonprofessional theatre, the, 139
et seg.
North Carolina, University of, 205
North Dakota, University of, 205
Northwestern University, 206
Novelties in technique, 60
Odets, Clifford, 3, 5, 8, 31, 36, 37,
41, 47, 70, 84, 85, 87, 191,
210, 214, 241, 247, 258, 260,
283, 284 j success, 261
Ol y Captain, by Baker, 138
Old Lady Shows Her Medals,
The, by Barrie, 36, 40, 46
Old Love Letters, by Howard,
198
On the Razor Edge, by Hughes,
210
One- Act Play Magazine, 78, 86,
89, 123, 244, 270
One Egg, by Hughes, 211
O'Neil, George, 261, 266, 280
O'Neill, Eugene, 3, 5, 9, 29, 34,
49, 174, 175, 186, 189, 192,
20$, 208, 214, 215, 249
O y Neill, Eugene, the Man and
His Plays, by Clark, 186
Opera and drama, 114
O'Shaughnessy, John, 285
Osborne, Hubert, 205
Osbourne, Lloyd, 211
Osgood, Phillips E., 163
Our Lean Years, by Eastman, 154
Overtones, by Gerstenberg, 207
Painful Predicament of Sherlock
Holmes, The, by Gillette, 201
Pair of Lunatics, A, by Walkes,
42
Panic, by MacLeish, 79, 179-180,
271
Parade, 248, 255, 266, 279
Parlor Car, The, by Howells, 200
Passing of Chow-Chow, The, by
Rice, 210
Pawns, by Wilde, 166, 209
"Pendulum plays," 274
Peters, Paul, 247, 279
Phillips, Stephen, 183
Pierrot in Paris, by Clements, 211
Pilgrim and the Book, The, by
MacKaye, 163
Pillot, Eugene, 205
Pinero, Arthur Wing, 225, 236
Pins and Needles, 248, 279
Pinski, David, 212
Pioneering, 88, 89
Pirandello, 5
Place of the one-act play, 187-193
Plant in the Sun, by Bengal, 270,
277
Play, definition of, 19
Players, The, 1 74
Playgoers, by Pinero, 225, 236
Plays for Merry Andrews, by
Kreymborg, 170
Plays of American Life, by East-
man, 154
Plays of the 47 Workshop, 205
Plays, one-act, and longer plays,
60-61
"Playwrighting," by Wilde, 20
Playwrights, 29-325 amateur, loj
mental attitude, 29; 1900-1910,
202 $ professional, and the
short play, 2125 progressive,
785 school, 34} social, 79
Plot, definition of, 25
Poacher, The, by Francis, 239
"Poem-Mimes," by Kreymborg,
170
Poems of protest, 84
Poet, the, 171-173
Poetic Theatre, 177-178
Poetry in the one-act play, use
of, 169-184
Pomp, by Cowan, 211
Porter, Harold Everett (Hoi-
worthy Hall), 32, 36
Poverty, plays on, 277
Power, 265
"Preparation," 27
INDEX
Private Hicks, by Maltz, 84, 87,
93> i9*> 2 5 8 > *6*, 267, 277
Prize Money , by Wilson, 166
Problems, necessary, 26
Professional playwrights and the
short play, 212
Professional theatre and one-act
plays, 8
Progressive playwrights, 78
Prolet-Buehne, 251, 265
Propaganda plays, 216, 24.0, 272$
versus art, 76 et seq.
Proposal Under Difficulties, A,
by Bangs, 201
Protest, social, 83
Provincetown Players, 170, 171,
173, 174, 206, 207
Provincetown Theatre, 3 j authors,
208
Psychological interest, 134
Punch and Judy, origin of, 161
"Puppet plays," 170, 255
Purple Door-Knob, The, by
Eaton, 34
Queen Victoria, by Eaton and
Carb, 34
Questions and answers, in the ac-
tion, 23
Radio, 178-179, 270$ and the
movies, 115-118$ and the one-
act play, 96-1105 as a stage
medium, 70-71$ audiences, 1055
characters in plays, io8j drama,
7, ii j music in plays, 106$
Shakespeare on the radio, 109$
subjects for, 104, 109
Raphaelson, Samuel, 186
Rauber, The, 274
Realism, new, 274-276, 282
Rebel Arts Group, 266, 270
Recession, the, 267-^71
Reckless, by Riggs, 210
Rector, The, by Crothers, 202
Red, Ow/, The, by Gillette, 201
Reed, John, 208
Reed, John, Group Theatre, 251
Regionalism, American, 214
Reis, Irving, 179
Religious Drama Council (Eng-
land), 164-165
Religious plays. See Church
Representative One- Act Plays by
American Authors, 209
Restriction by dogma, 4
Return at Sunset, by Shiffrin, 278,
27 ?
Reunion in Vienna, 248
Revolutionary theatre, the, 242-
285
Revues, 191
Rice, Elmer, 210, 248, 249
Rider of Dreams, The, by Tor-
rence, 212
Riders to the Sea, by Synge, 36,
^37, 40, 183, 227
Riggs, Lynn, 186, 210, 214
Rip Van Winkle, by Boucicault
and Jefferson, 38
Rising of the Moon, by Lady
Gregory, 192, 227
Robber, The, by Gillette, 201
Robertson, Tom, 54
Rock, The, by Hamlin, 163
Rogers, J. W., Jr., 212
Rome, Harold J., 279
Rooke-Ley, W., 106
"Rules," use and disregard, 19
Ruth, Book of, 38-39
Ryerson, Florence, 211
Ryland, by Goodman and Stevens,
210
Sam Average, by MacKaye, 210
Satire and humor, 278
Saxe, Alfred, 253, 255
Scenes, division of play into, 4
Schnitzler, Arthur, 119, 134
School for playwrights, 34
Screen. See Films
320
INDEX
Scottish Community Drama Asso-
ciation, 222, 229, 238
Season of Celebration (story), by
Maltz, 270
Secret, The, by Sender, 84
Secret Service, by Gillette, 201
Seldes, Gilbert, biography, 128
Self -Made Man, by Box, 63, 237
Self -Sacrifice, by Howells, 200
Sell-Out, The, 253
Sets, stage, 122
Seven Who Were Hanged, by
Andreyev, 120
Shakespeare on the radio, 109
Sharecroppers, plays on, 277
Shaw, George Bernard, 30, 35,
36, 91, 225
Shaw, Irwin, 3, 32, 36, 43, 82,
247> 258, 263, 281
Shepherd in the Distance, The,
by Hudson, 207
Sherlock Holmes, by Gillette, 201
Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet,
The, by Shaw, 36
ShifTrin, A. B., 277, 279
Short stories as bases for plays,
45-47
Show-Off, The, by Kelly, 49
Sifton, Claire, 247
Sifton, Paul, 247, 250
Siftons, 88, 260, 282
Significance, 48-49, 50, 216$ im-
portance of, 35 et seq.
Simplicity, value of, 48
Sinclair, Upton, 250
Singing Jailbirds, by Sinclair, 250
Singleness of purpose, 56
Sinner Beloved, A, by Osgood,
163
Sintram of Skaggerrak, by Cowan,
211
Sister to Assist >Er, A, 226
"Situations," dramatic, 25 et seq.
*ix Who Pass While the Lentils
Boil, by Walker, 212
"Skeleton" of a play, 48
Sklar, George, 247, 279
Sladen-Smith, F., n, 237
Smith, Art, 262
Smo&ing Car, The, by Howells,
200
Social drama, 3, 6-7, 8, 72-94 j
construction, 75-94
Sociology and playwrighting, 272-
276
Soliloquy, 70
"Something to say," 77
Sophocles, 156
So y s Your Old Antique, by Kum-
mer, 210
Space, time, and exposition, 39, 42
Spanish Diggings, by Baker, 138
Sfarkin 1 , by Conkle, 210
Speech and action, 135
Spender, Stephen, 178
Squirrel's Cage (radio play), by
Guthrie, 108
Stage and screen, 122-123
Stage machinery, 69
Steele, Daniel Wilbur, 208
Stevedore, by Peters and Sklar, 74,
82, 84, 87, 257
Stevens, Thomas Wood, 205, 210
Stevenson, Philip, 79, 88, 265,
270, 278
Still Alarm, The, by Kaufman,
210
Stories, short, as bases for plays,
45-47
Story of the Theatre, The, by
Hughes, 196
Strasberg, Lee, 259
Street Scene, by Rice, 249
Strife, by Galsworthy, 165
Strikes, plays based on, 266-267
Strindberg, 3, 5
Strong, Austin, 189, 192, 211
Structure, "skeleton" of a play, 48
Study of the Modern Drama, A 9
by Clark, 186
721
INDEX
Success Story, by Lawson, 260
Such a Charming Young Man, by
Akins, 2 1 o
Suffressed Desires, by Glaspell
and Cook, 189, 208
Suspense, 275 value of, 46-47
Sutherland, Evelyn Greenleaf, 189
Sweet and Twenty, by Dell, 208
Synge, John Millington, 3, 36,
37, 40, 119, 183, 192, 202, 227
Tarkington, Booth, 211, 215
Technical improvement, 69
Technicians, training of, 147
Technique, 3-7, 53-715 definition
and use, 22 et seq.; film, 3$
novelties in, 60
Television, 7, n, 98, 127-136$
technique, 135
Tempest, The (radio play), 107
The Boy: What Will He Become?,
by Brighouse, 236
Ticey, by Gillette, 201
Tickless Time, by Glaspell and
Cook, 208
Tide Rises, The, by Smith, 262,
276, 277
Tidings of Joy, by McFadden,
166
Till the Day I Die, by Odets, 8,
31, 91, 210, 261, 262, 276,
278, -283, 284; synopsis, 284
Time factor, 22
Time, space, and exposition, 39,
42
Tinker, The, by Eastman, 154
Toller, 249
Tompkins, J. M. S., 166
Tonight at 8:30, by Coward, 8,
36, 122, 125
Too Much Smith, by Matthews,
201
Torrence, Ridgely, 212
Totheroh, Dan, 211
Theatre (building), modern, evo- Tournaments and festivals, 142
lution of, 159-161
Theatre Collective, The, 265
Theatre Guild, 174, 206, 248,
255 259> 2 ^6, 281
Theatre Libre, 3
Theatre of Action, 258
Theatre Union, 74, 247, 248, 257,
266
Theatre Workshop, 268
Theory and Technique of Play-
wighting, by Lawson, 79, 87
They Shall Not Die, 84, 87
This Earth Is Ours, by Kozlenko,
84, 88, 91, 277, 2825 success,
270
This Picture and That, by Mat-
thews, 201
Thomas, Augustus, 199
Three-act plays versus one-acters,
9-1 1
Three Pills tn a Bottle, by Field,
205
Town and Country Jig, A, 265,
270
Toy Theatre, 202
Trade unionism, plays on, 277
Tragedies of Sophocles, The, by
Francklin, 156
Transit, by Stevenson, 84, 88, 270,
27 8
Travellers, by Connelly, 191
Treasury of the Theatre, A, 244
Tree, The, by Box, 237
Trick endings, 47
Trifles, by Glaspell and Cook, 208
Trouble with the Angels, 277
Trumpets of Wrath, The, by Koz-
lenko, 84, 88, 91, 277
Twain, Mark (S. L. Clemens),
200
Twelve Pound Look, The, by Bar-
rie, 36, 37, 43, 225
Twentieth-Century Lullaby, by
Mount, 63-69, 1 66
322
INDEX
Twilight Saint, The, by Young,
212
Two Crooks and a Lady, by Pil-
lot, 205
Two Hundred Were Chosen, by
Conkle, 264
Two Passengers for Chelsea, by
Firkins, 211
Two Slatterns and a King, by
Millay, 208
Types of the short play, 215
Unemployed, The, 253
Unifying idea, 80
Unionism, trade, plays on, 277
United States, one-act play in, 1 94-
217
Unity, essential, 55
Unity Players, 261
University dramatic laboratories,
205. (See also names of univer-
sities)
University of Washington Plays,
206
Unknown Theatre, Liverpool, 237
Unto Such Glory, by Green, 263
Utah, University of, 206
Valiant, The, by Hall and Mid-
dlemass, 32, 36, 189, 192
Van Volkenburg, Ellen, 204
Vassar Experimental Theatre, 265
Vaudeville, 190, 199$ British,
2265 one-act plays in, 188-189,
197
Violent action, 28
Waiter, by Box, 237
Waiting for Lefty, by Odets, 3,
8> 31, 36, 37, 4i, 70, 84, 85,
^7) 9> 9*> 93> 190, 210, 241,
258, 260, 261, 273, 274, 276,
27 7 j success, 26 1 j synopsis, 283
Walker, Stuart, 212
War, plays on, 81, 277
Ware, Alice Holdship, 87, 282
Warren, Brett, 265
Washington Square Players, 174,
206
Washington, University of, 206
Wedding Rehearsal, The, by Far-
rar, 211
Wellman, Rita, 208
Welles, Orson, 179
Welsh playwrights, 239
Werfel, 249
Wexley, John, 248
What It Takes, by Stevenson, 278
What Price Glory, 249
Where the Cross Is Made, by
O'Neill, 208
White Dresses, by Green, 36
Why the Chimes Rang, by Mc-
Fadden, 210
Wilde, Percival, 9, n, 55, 86,
166, 189, 192, 208, 209, 2705
biography, 17
Wilder, Thornton, 223 -
Will o y the Wisp, by Halman, 211
Wilson, Louis, 166
Winter set, by Anderson, 77
Wisconsin Players, 202, 203
Wisconsin Plays, 203
Witchin* Racket, by Baker, 138
Wolfson, Victor, 247
Women's Institutes, British, 231,
236, 237
Wonder Hat, The, by Goodman
and Hecht, 210
Wonder of Words, The (book),
by Goldberg, 112
Worker and the theatre, 249-256
Workers Drama League, 250
Workers Laboratory Theatre, 251,
252, 255, 258, 265
Workers Theatre, 253, 256, 285
Workers' theatre movement, Brit-
ish, 241
Workers Theatre Spartakiade and
Conference, 253-254
323
