IMMUNITY DRAMA BY PERCY MAGKAYE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CAL'FDRNtA SAN DIEGO J "^ * I > COMMUNITY DRAMA WORKS BY PERCY MACKAYE PLA YS The Canterbury Pilgrims. A Comedy. Jeanne d'Arc. A Tragedy. Sappho and Phaon. A Tragedy. Fenris the Wolf. A Tragedy. A Garland to Sylvia. A Dramatic Reverie. The Scarecrow. A Tragedy of the Ludicrous. Yankee Fantasies. Five One-act Plays. Mater. An American Study in Comedy. Anti-Matrimony. A Satirical Comedy. To-Morrow. A Play in Three Acts. A Thousand Years Ago. A Romance of the Orient. MASQUES Caliban. A Community Masque. Saint Louis. A Civic Masque. Sanctuary. A Bird Masque. The New Citizenship. A Civic Ritual. OPERAS Sinbad, the Sailor. A Fantasy. The Immigrants. A Tragedy. The Canterbury Pilgrims. A Comedy. POEMS The Sistine Eve, and Other Poems. Uriel, and Other Poems. Lincoln. A Centenary Ode. The Present Hour. Poems of War and Peace. Poems and Plays. In Two Volumes. ESS A YS The Playhouse and the Play. The Civic Theatre. A Substitute for War. Community Drama. An Interpretation. ALSO {As Editor) The Canterbury Tales. A Modern Rendering into Prose. The Modern Reader's Chaucer (with Professor J. S. P. Tatlock). AT ALL BOOKSELLERS COMMUNITY DRAMA Its Motive and Method of NEIGHBORLINESS An Interpretation by PERCY MACKAYE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1917 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY PERCY MACKAVE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published June iqij To P. S. PREFACE The present essay is the substance of an address delivered by me before the American Civic Association at its annual meeting, at the Hotel Willard, Washington, D.C., December 13, 1916, Miss Margaret Woodrow Wilson pre- siding. At that conference of workers in the fields of public education, re- creation, and community organizing, the experts there gathered expressed their very real enthusiasm for the prac- ticability and progressiveness of the ideas which I sought to suggest for their earnest consideration. • • Vll PREFACE Those ideas — for a new method of community building, for a dynamic, cooperative means of education in community aims, for a loyalty to those aims at once spontaneous and disci- plined, for a purposeful efficiency of neighborliness — apply not less, but more, since our entrance into the World War with the exalted purpose expressed by President Wilson of help- ing to make the world permanently " safe for democracy." Especially, I think, at this time they might be applied with excellent results to the inspiring task, immense in its scope and meaning, which the newly appointed Federal Commission on VI 11 PREFACE Training Camp Activities is under- taking for America. That task is to establish " a great affirmative system, instead of a merely sterile negative one," for the healthful development of our nation's young men under mili- tary conscription, as an offset to the scourging menaces of drink and sexual immorality. Here is the opportunity for America to create a new kind of army — a new kind of community in arms for the at- tainment of democratic world-freedom : an army in which " the moral equiva- lent of war " shall be quickened and organized within the very fabric of the fighting machine itself: a fighting ix PREFACE force, in which virile and wholesome expression through cooperative sports and arts shall be substituted for an outworn ideal of repression, and go hand in hand with effective martial discipline, not lessening but increasing its efficiency. Besides such activities within the camps themselves as unit communi- ties, the relationship of the camps to their environs hold important possi- bilities of social development. Concerning these, one of the Federal Commissioners 1 writes : " A part of our work will be the promotion of harmo- 1 Dr. Joseph E. Raycroft, of Princeton University, in the New York Times Magazine, Sunday, May 20, 1917. PREFACE nious and beneficial relations between the camps and the neighboring towns." To cooperate in this work, a number of agencies — such as the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., the Red Cross, the churches — are, he says, to be counted upon " to make a new environment for the soldier when off duty, and to put life into an ideal that will strive to return him finally to his home a better man than when he left it.'* To these agencies surely there will be added the expert art of recreational expression, Community Drama. 1 1 Community Drama, as its meaning is here conceived, is of course directly bound up with the Community Music Movement, as that is being developed under the leadership xi PREFACE Thus the Motive and Method sug- gested in this essay — the Christian motive of efficient ' neighborliness,' and the art method of dramatic or- ganization — may well be directly ap- plied to the constructive solution of an American problem, national and international in its implications. In consonance with these ideas, the important community experiment, tried with encouraging results a year ago through the production of the in New York of Arthur Farwell and Harry H. Barnhart. With that is also directly related the Community Centre Movement, under the leadership of John Collier, of the People's Insti- tute, New York, as well as many recreational activities of the Playgrounds Association, under the presidency of Joseph Lee. xii PREFACE Community Masque " Caliban " in New York, is being repeated, on an even larger scale, in Boston. There, at the date of this preface, the Caliban Committee of Greater Boston are busily organizing more than seven thousand men and women for the production of " Caliban," at the Har- vard Stadium, from June 28 to July 9, for the monetary benefit of the Red Cross and the Reserve Officers' Train- ing Corps, Harvard University, and the social benefit of the whole Boston community. To assist the purposes of the Com- mittee, this essay is now published, for whatever service it may render to xiii PREFACE those community objects in Boston and elsewhere. Percy MacKaye Boston, 22 May 1917 COMMUNITY DRAMA COMMUNITY DRAMA AN INTERPRETATION "Can we poor human beings never realize our quality without destruc- tion?" H. G. Wells asks this question in a recent volume on the war. 1 And in a recent series of articles 2 in the "New York Times," "a distin- guished publicist," Cosmos, discussing the basis of world peace, writes: — 1 Italy, France, and Britain at War, p. 13. 2 Tenth article of the series, which has been published as a volume, The Basis of World Peace. 3 I COMMUNITY DRAMA More important than the declaration of rights and duties of nations, and more important than the machinery which may be erected to give that declaration vitality and force, is the spirit of the peoples who unite in taking these steps. What the world is waiting for, and what it must achieve before the foun- dations of a durable peace are securely laid, is what President Butler has well called the International Mind — "that habit of regarding the several nations of the civilized world as friendly and cooperating equals in spreading enlight- enment and culture throughout the world." , The International Mind : in the pro- cess of achieving that, an answer may be found to the question of Wells. Yes, the quality of human beings can be realized without destruction; 4 COMMUNITY DRAMA but it can never be realized without imagination. It is precisely because our peace is so devoid of organized, constructive imagination, that the or- ganized destruction of war appeals so potently to the imaginations of men, by giving scope for their qualities of spiritual heroism. War provides a method — a drastic, compelling method — for creating the national mind. Its method is organi- zation — for competition: the unify- ing of nations — against nations. "What the world is waiting for" is a method, more excelling, for creating the international mind: a method of organization — for cooperation : the 5 COMMUNITY DRAMA harmonizing of nations with nations — of communities with communities. This does not imply less nationality in our culture, but more civilized culture in our nationalism. In approaching my subject I can approach it in no less a sense than a world sense: and I weigh carefully my thought when I say that "what the world is waiting for" is to be found, I believe, in the basic method of social service involved in Community Drama. That method is organization — for cooperation; it is testable by the most modest beginnings, but the scope of its principle is vast — or it is noth- ing. And it is not — nothing. I have 6 COMMUNITY DRAMA watched its seed take root in soil that seemed sterile ; I have seen it take form from almost nothing, watched its por- tentous growth, its magical flowering, its colossal bearing of fruit and the sowing forth again of its own seed in strong fecundity. No, the life- meaning of Community Drama is universal. It is so, because its life is very old — as old and peren- nially young as humanity. Under its new guises in America it has had as yet small critical attention — very scant philosophic regard. In a world of journalism, its immediate obvious aspects, its shining banners, its spectacular color, its blare of music, 7 COMMUNITY DRAMA its thousands massed in stadiums and on hillsides — these aspects indeed have received large public attention, the hectic publicity accorded to pass- ing shows. But not yet its realities — its deep, quiet, regenerating realities. For those have chiefly concerned a few artists, and many, many plain people, mostly young people. But artists and young people, especially when they are happy in what they are doing, are seldom given to critical valuation of their actions. They are aware, often intensely aware, of a great movement on which they are borne along: but the source and the goal of their mov- ing is vague to them. 8 COMMUNITY DRAMA Then is needed the great interpre- ter — a searching imagination, critical, and prophetic, to clarify the meaning and purpose of this living momentum. That is to-day what the social move- ment vaguely called Pageantry pro- foundly lacks — its authentic inter- preters. In dramatics and civics a thousand routineers glut the columns of the press with their daily and weekly cleverness or platitude : but where the great tides of drama and civic life meet and mingle, to give birth to a new life- stream for human intercourse, there are still primeval silences of under- standing, broken only by the voices of a few prophetic pioneers. The more 9 COMMUNITY DRAMA pity for this lack of interpreters in America, for this new life-stream is one of the very arteries of our future democracy. So it was, nearly a century ago, when the inarticulate gropings of so- cial democracy were waiting for a synthetic expounder to blazon the phi- losophy and the vision of socialism. Then came Karl Marx, and now the great stream he charted has been sounded and explored by thousands, and has taken its relative place on the map of social discovery. By analogy, what is needed to-day is a synthetic philosopher for Com- munity Drama — one who shall con- 10 COMMUNITY DRAMA structively chart its immense aesthetic and sociological meanings; a George Brandes and John Dewey in one to clarify this new-world art of democ- racy. Yet perhaps even more than these would be needed to identify that amorphous art with its reality — in- stinctive religion. For that, indeed, in essence, is what Community Drama is — the ritual of democratic religion: plastic, aspiring, playful, creative, child-like, religious instinct: the social religion of the only commandment of Christ: neighborliness. For it leads to a very simple creed, this community drama — neighborli- ness : to love one's neighbor enough to 11 COMMUNITY DRAMA discover God in him. But those who see God believe in Him. And those who believe in Him express their be- lief, and so they create symbols of it; but because their belief is deep with emotion, and with conflict of emo- tions, they create dramatic symbols — dramatic art, communal dramatic art. And so we reach back to the old beginnings of civilized man — to the dramatic religion of early Greece, to the dance, the chanted speech, the choral song, the organized pageantry of cooperating neighbors, expressing the God in themselves. It is the story of the folk arts of all European peoples. Our own modern 12 COMMUNITY DRAMA cultures in art consist mainly in rem- nants and ruins of these communal folk arts, which the armored tanks of Machine Industrialism have left stand- ing in the No Man's Land of National Competition. In the new age before us, it is not for us, as individual archaeologists, to patch and remodel those ruins; it is rather for us, as cooperating artists, to build from the ground up fresh homes and temples of the communal imagina- tion. I wonder if I can suggest how this applies to community drama to-day. Consider for a moment that consum- mation in art of the Antique World — 13 COMMUNITY DRAMA the Parthenon ; consider one of the con- summations of the Middle Ages — the cathedral at Rheims. As a result of the competitions of the merely national mind, the cannon of the Turks have left in ruins the one, the bombs of the Prussians the other. Now I think it has never been em- phasized — at least, to point a mod- ern moral in social art — that each of these temples (itself the perfect flowering of many human generations) was the home and holy place of — community drama. In the marble friezes of the Parthenon Phidias por- trayed — what? Phases of the dra- matic rites of his ancient community; 14 COMMUNITY DRAMA on the cathedral at Rheims are sculp- tured — have we ever thought about it? — actors in dramatic rituals of a mediaeval community. These facts are not often interpreted by modern professors of drama, or by dramatic critics on Broadway; but are they not pregnant with meaning for our own to-morrow ? For me at least they mean this : that the golden age of community life and art does not lie be- hind us, but before us — that the same colossal impulses of social art which created those perfect examples, are in- stincts perennially human, and may be organized again, by will and imagina- tion, to still nobler consummations. 15 COMMUNITY DRAMA So on the No Man's Land of to- day's waste, destruction and industrial anarchy, the community dramatists of to-morrow — the engineers, archi- tects, dancers, musicians, artists, lead- ers of religious play — shall organize in beauty the communities of Every Man's Land. A far cry — is it? — from that crude little pageant, last week, in the subur- ban slums! A far cry indeed; yet it is only a far cry that is heard by the gods. And often the gods' answer comes quickly. In the autumn of 1913 such a far cry was called in the community of St. Louis from a little group of some 16 COMMUNITY DRAMA dozen citizens. On five nights of the following May, half a million specta- tors, and seven thousand participants, shared there in a civic ritual of their own. " Oberammergau ! " said one who sat in the audience (Mr. Ben Greet); "I can think of nothing else than Oberammergau, to compare this to." And more than two years afterward, the Mayor of St. Louis (Henry W. Kiel) telegraphed to the Caliban Com- mittee of Greater Boston : — The Pageant and Masque produced in Saint Louis in 1914 was of incalcu- lable benefit to the city. The produc- tion received the hearty support of the citizens and instilled in them a new civic spirit which resulted in the adoption of 17 COMMUNITY DRAMA a new city charter and the voting of bonds for the completion of our muni- cipal bridge where similar bond issues had been refused before. One night at that time, after the third performance, I stood talking with one of the Scotch group, recruited from all parts of the city. "A funny thing this," he said to me; " I wouldna have thought till now that those dagoes could be such damn good fellers. We're proposin' to form a permanent club — us Scotch and the dagoes and German lads — just to keep in touch and not let us forget this." And those of twenty nationalities who sang together there in the com- 18 COMMUNITY DRAMA munity chorus are still singing together — permanently organized. After all, the International Mind needs no travel to foster it: here im America, it might be made a hardy home-product, by a sprinkling of the right soul mixture: two parts imagi- nation, and one part patience — is a good mixture. Neighborliness in a little town may beget the neighborliness of nations. The International Mind is the neigh- borly mind, though the neighborhood be but a village; but the merely na- tional mind is the unneighborly mind, though the nation boast its hundred millions. Let me not be misunder- 19 COMMUNITY DRAMA stood. Nationality is a precious thing; solidarity of national spirit is an in- spiring thing; but the spirit of nation- ality need not be — it must not be — opposed to the spirit of humanity. Whenever it becomes so, every true patriot must — for his country's sake — rebel from it to this larger allegiance ; for to serve one's country well is to help it serve the world. The difference is between mine and ours. My country, my town, my flag, my culture — this attitude incar- nates the very spirit of egoistic un- neighborliness; but our country, our town, our flag, our culture — this spirit implies that sharing of one's own 20 COMMUNITY DRAMA which recognizes the world as one com- munity of neighbors. But this is the very watchword of community drama. "My pageant" is inconceivable. "Our show" is the typ- ical vernacular of every civic festival. There is, however, this tragic defect in neighborliness, that it is likely to be slack and static, whereas its opposite tends to be dynamic and thorough. War is the efficiency of unneighbor- liness. Community Drama seeks the efficiency of neighborliness. It seeks to provide — and, rightly organized, it does provide — a substitute for in- effectual goodwill in the effectual def- inite processes of cooperative art. 21 COMMUNITY DRAMA It takes its first hints from child- hood. Children are nearly always def- inite and cooperative. When child neighbors meet, they play together; that is, each relates himself to a com- munity process; or if they squabble, they cooperate in groups to do so. The games of childhood, modern survivals of ancient folk art (when they have not been perverted by a spirit of mili- tary nationalism), are, then, first les- sons in community drama. "Here we go round the mulberry bush!" — not "here / go round," but "we" It is always "we," among chil- dren : we small neighbors, linked hand in hand, each self-subordinated but 22 COMMUNITY DRAMA definitely related, in rhythm and line and motion, to the larger, self-includ- ing circle — symbol of the world itself. The production of the "CEdipus" of Sophocles is but a perfect maturing of such childhood art. So from as little and homely a thing as a "mulberry bush" we may culti- vate and gather fruit of the Interna- tional Mind. And now I hope I shall not be con- strued as meaning that all which is needed to solve the World War is to vote a general May festival. (Such has been the fate of other comments of mine on "A Substitute for War.") I will add, then, rather obviously, 23 COMMUNITY DRAMA that I am referring for the moment not to May festivals, nor to Central Powers and Allies, but to a natural in- stinct in childhood — the play instinct of neighborliness — which, if culti- vated scientifically, for some genera- tions, might well revolutionize society by extirpating the unneighborly causes of war. But this task itself is no child's play. For to carry onward this cultivation over the borders of childhood into the leisure hours of a weary and disillu- sioned maturity of toiling millions — that becomes a task for expert science, the science of cooperative expression which is dramatic art; a task as vari- 24 COMMUNITY DRAMA ous and universal in scope as the labors of engineering and architecture. This science or art (which you will) has for some hundreds of years of the Traditional Drama of Modern Europe been the expert servant of Commer- cialism, in the task of catering amuse- ment to the leisure chiefly of the upper and middle classes. So it has charmed and mystified the world for centuries. So it is still very busy and expert on Broadway and the Strand and in the capitals of Europe. But now, in our twentieth century, here in America, the social workers of democracy are just beginning to see that this science of the Magician, 25 COMMUNITY DRAMA whose scope includes both Harlequin and Hamlet, presents an expert meth- od to achieve their own different end and object — the regeneration of the leisure of all classes. Why not, then, apply it to this ob- ject? They have begun to do so, with encouraging results. Speaking simply from my own experience, as author or director or both, I have been witness to those results in at least three large- scale festival tests : the first at Glouces- ter, Massachusetts, in 1908, the sec- ond at St. Louis, in 1914, the third at New York, in 1916 (the production of "Caliban"). Concerning these I have written 26 COMMUNITY DRAMA elsewhere. To touch on their many- sidedness here is beyond my present scope. But it is significant to mention that one of the community results of "Caliban" in New York was the for- mation there of a permanent asso- ciation of those connected with its production headed by the Mayor's committee, whose chairman, Mr. Otto H. Kahn, in launching the new associa- tion, was warmly supported by social thinkers as widely divergent as Mr. James M. Beck and Mr. Morris Hill- quit. On a smaller scale I have watched the same principles at work — nota- bly in the application of the theatre's 27 COMMUNITY DRAMA art to social service for a great national and international cause — the conser- vation of birds. In 1913 "Sanctuary," a bird masque, was produced some twenty miles from a railway at the bird sanctuary of Ernest Harold Baynes in the little town of Meriden, New Hampshire. Since then, that little masque has met its social-service test by definitely establishing more than a hundred bird-clubs and numer- ous sanctuaries throughout the States, and by enlisting the participation of over four thousand children in the masque itself. What, then, is the psychology of this new application of the art of the thea- 28 COMMUNITY DRAMA tre to social service? What spiritual change does this new method of social science achieve, or seek to achieve, in community life? This: to construct and make per- manent fresh channels for social con- sciousness; to convert the mentality of competition into the mentality of cooperation; to create, in every home community, habits of the International Mind. But more than a technique of coop- eration, does the method involved in Community Drama give scope for developing that "quality" in human beings, which undoubtedly is devel- oped by the searching tests of war, 29 COMMUNITY DRAMA and concerning which Sarah Bernhardt writes of the soldiers of France, who attended her dramatic performances on the battle front : — They did not suffer in the tragedy of the play; they rose to it. They did not cry with watery tears that streamed down their faces; the tears just filled their eyes so that they could see better the great destiny of their own lives. If the meaning of this "quality" implies the happy rendering of human souls in service to a cause infinitely larger than themselves, beneficial to the world through their own commu- nity; if it implies increased initiative, energizing of the will, the discipline of patience, the poise of self-restraint, 30 COMMUNITY DRAMA the releasing growth of self-expression, and the spiritualizing ardor of self- sacrifice — yes, all of these qualities of the great "quality" heroism are as implicit in the social meaning of Com- munity Drama as in that of war. That both seldom measure up to the full standards of their quality is as true of the one as of the other. Of Commu- nity Drama, at least, the worst that can be uttered of its failures is the stigma of flamboyant and ineffectual goodwill; whereas the reverse image of war's heroism is unutterable bru- tality. During the rehearsals of the Masque of St. Louis, the young man who en- 31 COMMUNITY DRAMA acted the part of St. Louis was nearly always enthusiastically prompt. The month was May. He was a medical student. His final examinations, on which his professional career might depend, came the first of June. Yet he was never absent. One day, however, about ten minutes late, he rushed in, out of breath. "Sorry, sir, to be late," he said. "What was the matter?" "Beg pardon, sir," he answered, "I — I got married, — I just came from the church." Hastening from the altar to enroll in khaki has grown common for young men in these days. This young man 32 COMMUNITY DRAMA was perhaps the first to hasten from the altar to his post of discipline — in a Community Drama. Prophetically, perhaps, he may not be the last. To him, his community — a far greater concern than his private affairs, a wedding breakfast, or a doctor's de- gree — his community had called him. That was enough. His reply was wholly spontaneous, but it was none the less responsible, definite and dis- ciplined. There are no court martials in community masques; personal re- sponsibility and public opinion take their place. If St. Louis the Actor had deserted the Masque, St. Louis the City would have disowned him; 33 COMMUNITY DRAMA but of course he would never have dreamed of deserting. At the production of "Caliban" in New York, the community chorus sat concealed above the stage, wholly out of sight of the performances. After the last performance, one of the sing- ers, whom I had never met, a shop- girl, came to me and said, with deep feeling : — "Why has it got to end?" "You 've enjoyed seeing it?" I asked tentatively. "Oh, seeing it; I didn't mean that," she answered. "I mean, just being in it — singing with the others." "But not seeing it?" I asked again. 34 COMMUNITY DRAMA "Oh, no, I've never seen it. I sing alto, and there were n't enough altos to be spared to get off and see it. But I'll never get over the joy of being in it as long as I live. Things are differ- ent now. It was wonderful. I wanted to thank you." Indeed, it was wonderful: Shut away from the show itself, with some hundreds of others, in a crowded wooden loft, not even her name in the long lists on the programme — but, singing, and "in it!" I wanted to thank her, but I could n't if I 'd known how. She had hurried away, weeping. These are but two instances, out of thousands (many more poignant), of 35 COMMUNITY DRAMA a kind of education in human "qual- ity," which our educators and states- men have too long ignored. There is, in brief, a hardihood born of joy, as well as of pain, resulting even more in social good, provided it be submitted to the tests of social disci- pline. That discipline is found in art, community art, for which the art of the theatre is capable of providing the supreme method. That art itself is expertness, discipline, efficiency, organ- ization to the nth power — or it is nothing. And that it is not — nothing, many hundreds of years of infinitely varied resourcefulness have given proof — behind the scenes. 36 COMMUNITY DRAMA Now the time has struck for that expert art to come forth in the open — for the roof of the traditional theatre to be undomed and let in the ancient stars, for its walls to be pushed back by a million aspiring arms of the peo- ple, till the soul of the community per- forms its magic rites behind the scenes as splendidly as among the inspired congregators of the amphitheatre. Outside of those traditional walls the people are surging in an amazing civic consciousness. Out of a mighty need, our people are crying out for co- operation — a valid means of coopera- tion — as never before; but they do not yet realize that the doors of those 37 COMMUNITY DRAMA thousands of commercial playhouses, which call them nightly by millions, enticing billions of their dollars annu- ally — that those doors lead inward to a laboratory of art, that has nothing inherently to do with commerce, the art of the theatre, which offers them an expert, scientific method of social cooperation as far in advance of the dull and bungling methods of tradi- tional civics as the automobile out- dates the one-horse shay. There in the art of the theatre our social workers should delay no longer to search for what they are seeking; there emphatically our organizers of pageants must look for their expert 38 COMMUNITY DRAMA leaders, if the pageantry movement in America is to rise permanently to its rightful power of social regeneration, and not peter out through the failures of a glorious goodwill to be as glori- ously efficient. This cannot be emphasized too much : the art of pageantry is the art of the theatre, or it is nothing. That is why it has often seemed to be noth- ing, when its organizers have failed to realize the nature of what they were organizing. That, indeed, is why I think the name itself, Pageantry, is misleading; for pageantry, in its right meaning, is but one phase, and not at all the most 39 COMMUNITY DRAMA important phase, of this cooperative art of the theatre; and that is why I greatly prefer the name Community Drama, to designate both the move- ment and the method, which are in- volved in this new American relation of art to democracy. Once realizing, then, that in this movement and method we are con- cerned with an expert art, we shall realize that its destiny will depend upon expert artists as community leaders. We must be no more toler- ant of bad art than of bad civics, for bad art is bad sociology and bad edu- cation. If it is to achieve its constructive 40 COMMUNITY DRAMA ideals of peace, Community Drama must be organized with the perma- nency and trained efficiency of the regular army — for it represents the beginnings of an army of peace. It cannot be made in committees, or by committees; in its early stages, it must indeed be fostered by committees, but it can only be made by trained crea- tive artists, expert in the art of the theatre and inspired by the spirit of the community. Only so can the art spirit inherent in every community find its authentic leadership. These artists themselves must be social-minded; the committees must be art-minded. The artist leaders are 41 COMMUNITY DRAMA the officers of the staff, under one director general; the army they lead is recruited from the community on the largest scale practicable. The com- mittees are the volunteer citizens, who help to supply this staff and army of art with recruits, subalterns, eco- nomic supplies, production grounds, housing, etc. For a national community drama — with the growth of this movement in the future — a national civic theatre would appropriately be responsible for the staff, and the government itself for the committees. The multitudinous aspects — eco- nomic, artistic, sociologic — of such 42 COMMUNITY DRAMA organization are not within my pres- ent compass. I have dealt, by sug- gestion, with a few in my book on "The Civic Theatre." 1 Here I can only emphasize the central thought of my subject. Neighborliness: I would like to come back to that word and thought, and repeat it with the word drama. Neigh- borliness and drama, the two are so seldom encountered on Forty-second Street! And yet, even in the commercial- ized world of amusement, what else is it often but the vague, lonely yearn- 1 The Civic Theatre, Mitchell Kennerley, New York. 43 COMMUNITY DRAMA ing to be neighbor to some one, which draws many idle thousands from the hotels to the playhouses, and more working thousands from homes of the poor — mothers with their knitting and children, boys with their chums, men with their cronies and sweethearts — to crowd the dim-lit caverns of the movies? But none of these take part in — none of these create the illusions of their amusement. There in the houses of commerce is no ritual : there is merely a mute spectatorship, paid for to those who know and care nothing for that nudging, dumb aspiration to become neighbors. 44 COMMUNITY DRAMA But with Community Drama, there it is otherwise. There is participation; there is creative expression; there is neighborly ritual. For community drama is nothing else than the tech- nique of neighborliness — the art, par excellence, of resolving the estrange- ment and conflict of social elements into harmony. Dealing with, and appealing to, groups, it is then essentially an art of symbolism: for only a symbol car- ries meaning in the large, to a mul- titude, and by a symbol only can a multitude cooperate to express an emotion in common. Neighborliness — symbolism — 45 COMMUNITY DRAMA drama: these three. In our new ritual of democracy, the last only is added to the master method of the great sym- bolist of Nazareth, to complement and organize for our day and race the sim- ple message of his one social command- ment. Indeed, if the inheritance of Greek culture had permeated the race of Palestine in the days of Christ, Jesus himself must have become the mighti- est of dramatists, as he was the great- est of moral symbolists; for to attain the community objects of his teach- ing, he could not have ignored, and the poet in him must soon have mas- tered, the technique of assembled mul- 46 COMMUNITY DRAMA titudes created by iEschylus and Sophocles. "The Good Samaritan," "The Casting of the First Stone," "The Things which are Caesar's," — these might have survived to-day as the texts of dramas once chanted, danced, and acted in the people's theatres of Jerusalem — if the dra- matic inheritance of Euripides had been available to Jesus. With these things in mind, then, interpreting the essence of my sub- ject as I see it, my ideal of commu- nity drama is this : By means of large and nobly sensuous symbolism, to har- monize the complex art inheritances of 47 COMMUNITY DRAMA drama with the simplicity of Christ's social message, for the inspiration and expression of growing democracy. In brief, splendidly and efficiently — to be neighbors. THE END APPENDIX APPENDIX Some Accounts of the Production of a Community Drama In reference to the New York 1916 production of "Caliban," mentioned in the foregoing essay, the following ex- cerpts from accounts of the event in the New York press at the time may be of pertinence for the reader. New York took a long step ahead of the rest of the dramatic world last night with the presentation of Percy MacKaye's Masque, "Caliban." Nothing quite so magnificent has ever been shown in this city or in the country. For the first time in the history of the arts of the theater it is America that has evolved a new dramatic form, as potential in its way as any of the products of modern Europe. A New York poet, aided by fellow-artists and the men, women, and children of this big and 51 APPENDIX busy city, conceived and visualized for 15,000 spectators at a single performance a pageant drama that will accomplish but half its pur- pose if it fails to revolutionize the theater and dramatic art in many of its aspects. Purely as a community undertaking, the production of " Caliban " was unique. The Masque would have been a tremendous success if all the seats in the Stadium, which had been doubled for the purpose, had re- mained empty. We have seen the Russian ballet, the color- ful dance drama, combining music, movement, and color; we have seen the Greek classics re- vived in a new manner by Granville Barker in the big outdoors; we have had an Isadora Duncan Dionysian festival indoors; we have seen the wonderful art of Joseph Urban; we have, in short, followed the new workers in the theater in all their brilliant achievements, but last night an audience saw for the first time a coordination of all these forces — a pro- duction that combined within its scope all that is best in the work of the creators of beauty in the theater. It was a true history of the arts of the theater, in which all these arts in their most improved forms were em- 52 APPENDIX ployed; yet the Masque had a form and method all its own. That is why " Caliban" is unique, and that is why its creator, Percy MacKaye, stands today as the foremost worker in the American theater, a man who cannot be ignored henceforth in recording the evolution of the art of the theater. — Brook- lyn Eagle. The 15,000 persons who journeyed from every corner of the city at sundown to the vast open-air theater on the Heights, found prepared for them there an extraordinary pageant, a spectacle of memorable beauty. The staggering undertaking had been carried through with no visible mishaps worth men- tioning. The Masque is a success, and remains a notable achievement. It was a fine thing to have done. It is an unforgettable thing to see. — New York Times. In scope, in beauty, and in large significance it fulfilled and surpassed all that had been promised for it. With almost magical effects its scenes and actions reached back into the cycles and centuries of antiquity, and voiced or visualized them for the awed thousands in the audience. Something of the majesty of 53 APPENDIX a ceremonial entered into the enactment of this classic Masque; the multitudes partici- pating broadened it into a carnival fete; a play it was, an epical drama, in which antiq- uity and modernity joined hands and danced upon the "yellow sands" of now, within the outward circle of eternity. — New York Morning Telegraph. It was little less than a stroke of genius to blend a basic allegory of the human soul with the majestic movement of drama through the civilized ages. Such an achievement is surely a foretaste of the eventful realization of the democratic ideal, when art will be made not only for the people, but also by the people, and all the people will cooperate to make the common life more beautiful until the communal life itself shall become a living work of art. — New York American. The wonderful pageants of the interludes are sights never to be forgotten. No one who cares a whit for the art of the theater should fail to see this most remarkable community masque. — New York Evening Sun. 54 APPENDIX The story and plot are simplicity itself. The attendance at the "Caliban" perform- ances at the City College Stadium raises the question of enlarging the Stadium for similar community uses in the future. That this vast shrine of athletic sports should have been ren- dered inadequate not by football but by the pro- duction of drama and pageantry is a curious outcome. — New York World. The production proved remarkably success- ful for the manner in which it fulfilled its func- tion of being a community masque, enlisting the services of people from every section of the city, geographically and socially, and in the matter of obtaining public support. It is estimated that 135,000 persons had seen the Masque. The demand for seats had been so great that several extra performances were added. — New York Times. " The most wonderful spectacle I have ever seen," said my companion as, engulfed in the crowd, we moved slowly out of the Stadium. " Caliban: By the Yellow Sands," should be given again and again. To the stadiums and the parks of our democracy " Caliban " will, I hope, introduce a form of entertainment 55 APPENDIX equaling in popularity and surpassing in beauty and wholesomeness the vast spectacles of the Roman Coliseum. — Ernest Hamlin Abbott, in " The Outlook:' And out there in the starlight at the Stadium, under the open sky and in the amphitheater, black with people, and the great arc lights flashing on the three stages of the pageant as community group after community group passed in review — the Pan-Hellenic League, the East Side Settlements, the Greenwich Villagers, the Bronx district, the schools, the representatives of all races, classes, and con- ditions in the great city — I saw the benig- nant ghost of Steele MacKaye looking down on his dream come true through his son. — Henry E. Dixey, in " The Chicago Sunday Herald:' It ranks in the field of spirit with the epoch- making inventions in the field of material things. Percy MacKaye has linked the pageant ambition with an ambition no less than Hellenic — in the mood of Plato and Soph- ocles. — John Collier, in " The Survey." 5C> APPENDIX The production deserves to be recorded as a civic event of almost unexampled magnitude, achieved by the concerted effort of all classes of a great community. Mr. MacKaye has suc- ceeded in achieving the apparently impos- sible. — Clayton Hamilton, in " Vogue." The Masque leaves immense impressions on my mind. It is in effect inspiring, gigantic, grand. One's reflections broadly encompass a picture of the evolution of man from his brutish nature to the appreciation of the power of love in its highest by the civilization conceived by art. Two hours or more of beautiful visions, of beautiful trysts. To many present its inspira- tion was akin to the good to the human soul of a great and glorious religious picture of pageant upon pageant such as no one man alone has ever seen, yet such as this old world has borne — harmonious color and move- ment, samplers of physique and soul, which we apprehend is man's true birthright, created by him, built upon the apprehension that something burned within him that would make him greater than the brutes! One might take one's eyes from the pag- 57 APPENDIX eantry without losing its effect: crescents of colors, with 18,000 human beings in full view; the blue, star-dented sky, the rays of blue, amber and gold, and pink from the lighting towers, the hush and reverent expectancy of that spellbound, multitudinous audience, a gentle breeze to fan the garments of the play- ers into graceful folds, the ring, thunder, and echo of the actors' voices, all spoke of the potency and beauty of humanity. — St. Clair Bayfield, in " The Stage," London. Aside from the sumptuousness of its actual physical representation upon the stage, there is a blinding glory in the very conception of the magnificent Masque, " Caliban," devised and written by Percy MacKaye. The Masque is a structure of music, light, dance, acting, song, scenic values, pantomime — the whole builded into a monument of dramatic art that lifts as the apex of its upward- pushing pyramid the " spoken word." — Re- view of Reviews. There is now no longer any question that Mr. MacKaye's conception of community art is established in America. — The New Re- public. 58 APPENDIX In the bowl of the Stadium of the City Col- lege of New York, lighted with the glare of powerful lights, an audience of 15,000 people gathered last night to see Percy MacKaye's Shakespeare Masque, the largest dramatic rep- resentation ever given in this city. For hours before " Caliban: By the Yellow Sands" began crowds poured from the subway, drove up in automobiles, and arrived on busses, filling the streets and filing slowly into the great open-air theater. They came from all parts of the city, from the East Side and West Side, and some even from Boston and Philadelphia. Clouds had lifted, revealing a clear, star-lit night. Slowly the white of the Stadium and the gleam of the scaffolding disappeared as black figures took their places, until the amphi- theater was filled with a huge crowd, expect- ant, motionless. — New York Evening Post. APPENDIX The Mayor's Honorary Committee for the Production of " Caliban " in New York Otto H. Kahn, Chairman Herbert Adams Dr. Felix Adler Jacob P. Adler John G. Agar Robert Aitken Winthrop Ames Donn Barber Joseph Barondess Mrs. August Belmont Gutzon Borglum Chancellor Elmer E. Brown Henry Bruere Arnold Brunner Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler Abraham Cahan Mrs. William Astor Chandler William M. Chase Joseph H. Choate Thomas W. Churchill Paul D. Cravath John D. Crimmins George Cromwell R. Fulton Cutting Walter Damrosch R. S. Davis Henry P. Davison Robt. W. deForest Mrs. Camden C. Dike A. J. Dittenhoefer Cleveland H. Dodge Caroline B. Dow Frank L. Dowling Mrs. H. Edward Dreier Max Eastman Samuel H. Evins John H. Finley Ned Arden Flood Daniel C. French Charles Dana Gibson Bertram C. Goodhue Rt. Rev. David H. Greer Jules Guerin Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim Mrs. Benjamin Guiness Norman Hapgood Mrs. J. Borden Harriman William Laurel Harris Col. George Harvey Timothy Healy A. Barton Hepburn Morris Hillquit James P. Holland Rev. John Haynes Holmes Frederic C. Howe Arthur Curtiss James Mrs. Paul Kennaday Dr. J. J. Kindred Darwin P. Kingsley Lee Kohns Dr. George F. Kunz Thomas W. Lamont Dr. Henry M. Leipsiger 60 APPENDIX Adolph Lewisohn M. J. Lavelle, V.G. Walter Lippmann Philip Lydig Clarence H. Mackay Miss Elizabeth Marbury Edwin Markham Miss Helen Marot Dr. Brander Matthews Rev. Howard Melish Dr. Appleton Morgan J. P. Morgan Dr. Henry Moskowitz Adolph S. Ochs Ralph Pulitzer Percy R. Pyne, 2d W. C. Reick Elihu Root Edward A. Rumely Jacob M. SchiS Mortimer L. SchiS James Speyer Francis Lynde Stetson Frederic A. Stokes J. G. Phelps Stokes Josef Stranksy Oscar S. Straus Augustus Thomas Louis Untermeyer Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt Oswald Garrison Villard Miss Lillian D. Wald Dr. James J. Walsh Cabot Ward J. Alden Weir Charles D. Wetmore Edward J. Wheeler F. W. Whitridge Thomas W. Whittle George Wickersham William G. Willcox Dr. Stephen S. Wise H. J. Wright CALIBAN BY THE YELLOW SANDS A Community Masque By PERCY MACKAYE Music by ARTHUR FARWELL For the Benefit of The Metropolitan Chapter AMERICAN RED CROSS and the RESERVE OFFICERS TRAINING CORPS at Harvard University CIVIC DIRECTORS D. M. Claghorn, General Director B. S. Pouzzner, Assistant General Director Ernest Harold Baynes, Campaign Director T. D'ARCY BROPHY, Administrative Director Hazel MacKaye, Community Director Margaret Wilson Shipman, Recruiting Director 62 PRODUCTION STAFF Producing the Masque, in co-operation with the Author at the HARVARD STADIUM June 28 to July 9, 1917 Producing Director Frederick Stanhope Designer of Scenes and Costumes Robert Edmond Jones Director of Orchestra and Chorus Arthur Shepherd Director of Dances Stage Manager Virginia Tanner Irving Pichel Director of Lighting Theodore Brown 63 CALIBAN COMMITTEE OF GREATER BOSTON 420 BOYLSTON STREET Tickets : 4 1 5 Boylston St. Telephone Back Bay 8966 His Excellency Samuel W. McCall, Governor of Massachusetts Honorary Chairman Honorable James M. Curley, Mayor of Boston Chairman Governor's Committee Ralph Adams Cram, Chairman Henry V. Cunningham, Vice-Chairman Executive Committee Frederick P. Fish, Chairman George W. Coleman, Vice-Chairman Harold Peabody, Secretary Charles F. Allen, Treasurer Mrs. W. E. Birdsall Judge Leveroni Mrs. Charles Burbank I. W. Litchfield D. M. Claghorn Miss Ellen F. Mason Louis A. Coolidge Fred W. Moore Ralph Adams Cram James P. Munroe Henry Cunningham Miss Marion C. Nichols Howard H. Davenport Miss Julia C. Prendergast Carl Dreyfus Daniel L. Prendergast Charles L. Edgar B. S. Pouzzner Mrs. George R. Fearing George S. Smith Mrs. W. F. Fitzgerald George W. Tupper W. T. A. Fitzgerald Addison L. Winship Mrs. A. W. Kaffenberg 64 Finance Committee N. Penrose Hallowell, Chairman Allston Burr E. V. R. Thayer W. E. Chick Bowen Tufts James Jackson Edwin S. Webster Sabin P. Sanger John Noble, Counsel (of Loring, Coolidge & Noble) State Street Trust Company, Depository (€bc iTiibcrsibc press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FAC LITY AA 000 337 207 5