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 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE
 
 Photo by Bonnet. Courtesy (if Vagabond Players. 
 'ATCHWORK (TRTAIN WHICH SCPPORTS THE "VAGABOND" IDEA 
 A lovi'lv and simple substitution for a heavy velvet curtain.
 
 <J^ 
 
 THE 
 
 COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 
 BY 
 
 LOUISE BURLEIGH 
 
 With Illustrations 
 
 BOSTON 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 
 A O : 6 I .
 
 Copyright, 1017, 
 By Little, Ukown, and Company. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published, September, 1917 
 
 JNortooolj $rrs0 
 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
 Prcsswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 SRlf 
 
 TO 
 CHARLOTTE ELIZA BURLEIGH 
 
 WHOSE GRATEFUL NIECE CAN NEVER SUFFICIENTLY 
 
 THANK HER FOR A LIVING BELIEF 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SPIRIT OF FELLOWSHIP
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Letter ix 
 
 Introduction xix 
 
 I The Community 1 
 
 II Sociological Theatre : Playgrounds and 
 
 Pageants ...... 20 
 
 III Sociological Theatre: Caliban . . 34 
 
 IV Little Theatres 54 
 
 V Democratic Institutions .... 72 
 
 VI A College Theatre .... 84 
 
 VII The World's Example of the Community 
 
 Theatre 95 
 
 VIII What the Theatre Offers . . . 105 
 
 IX How Shall We Organize? . . . 117 
 
 X What Can Be Done With Little . . 132 
 
 XI Suggestions 144 
 
 XII The Theatrical Renaissance . . .158 
 
 Appendix 163
 
 PREFATORY LETTER 
 
 Dear Miss Burleigh : 
 
 May I thank you for letting me see the 
 proof sheets of your book "The Community 
 Theatre"? And may I congratulate you and 
 your readers on the fact, rare in this field, that 
 this book of yours has been produced by one 
 who is a worker both in the theatre and in 
 the community ; for the fusion of the arts of 
 the one with the aspirations of the other is 
 the practical ideal of the community theatre. 
 
 Actual experience in both fields should, 
 
 therefore, precede the making of books on this 
 
 most practical subject. "After the practice 
 
 — - the theory," as Gordon Craig writes at the 
 
 head of his journal, The Mask. Yet this is 
 
 too seldom the case ; for the workers most 
 
 skilled and effectual are nearly always too 
 
 definitely engaged in experiment and creation 
 
 to become commentators on their work; so 
 
 ix
 
 x PREFATORY LETTER 
 
 that, in this field, the reading public has often 
 turned too confidingly to the writings of com- 
 mentators untested by sufficient real contact 
 with their subject matter. 
 
 Your ardent and broad-spirited work speaks 
 for itself. Examining actual conditions, ar- 
 tistic and social, it points forward with vision 
 — a vision not too far-focussed for present 
 needs. In reaction to its message, it is for me 
 only to wish your book Godspeed, and to 
 touch upon a few aspects of its theme which 
 your treatment suggests. 
 
 I do this, may I confess, with the more zeal 
 because I find your pages "backing me up" in 
 so many vital things which, for a good while, 
 my own conviction and experience have brought 
 home to me. Many of these I have set forth 
 very sketchily in my volume "The Civic 
 Theatre", a bird's-eye-view record of work 
 and thoughts in overcrowded years, published 
 by Mitchell Kennerley in 1912. Again in 
 your book there are other vital matters wherein 
 I feel perhaps we differ, rather in a stage of 
 experience than in the goal to be gained. 
 
 As example of our common ground of agree-
 
 PREFATORY LETTER xi 
 
 ment, in your Introduction you aptly define 
 the Community Theatre as "a house of play 
 in which events offer to every member of a 
 body politic active participation in a common 
 interest." 
 
 In my volume just referred to, I write : 
 
 "A civic theatre is the efficient instrument 
 of the recreative art of a community." 
 
 Our definitions, you see, are worded differ- 
 ently, but clearly their meaning is the same : 
 "the civic theatre" and "the community 
 theatre" of our intent are one in idea, but I 
 think "community theatre" is the better 
 name for the idea. 
 
 In our goal, then, we are agreed. On our 
 road there perhaps at times we go by different 
 paths. 
 
 In a letter to me, referring to your book, 
 you write: "It is my aim to point out that 
 we need not wait for a revolution to found a 
 theatre which shall belong to the community, 
 if we are only willing to examine our communi- 
 ties and, as the expression is, 'begin small.'" 
 
 Now if by that expression "begin small" you 
 mean "begin modestly an immense under-
 
 xii PREFATORY LETTER 
 
 taking", I am sincerely in accord with you. 
 But the danger is lest a community, in be- 
 ginning their theatre small, should see it small. 
 
 That would be fatal ; for from its very be- 
 ginnings, however modest, the community 
 theatre must be seen large in its far-reaching 
 ideal, or it will fail. Its founders, in short, 
 must have real vision — the vision to realize 
 the deep, revolutionizing forces it sets free, 
 in order that they may control and guide them 
 to constructive social ends. 
 
 It is from that conviction that I have written 
 in a recent essay on "Community Drama" : — 
 "In approaching my subject, I can approach 
 it in no less a sense than a world sense. . . . 
 Community Drama is testable by the most 
 modest beginnings ; but the scope of its prin- 
 ciple is vast — or it is nothing." 
 
 So, though I am heartily with you in your 
 high valuation of little theatres as centers of 
 community expression, I am none the less sure 
 that numbers of such have actually failed of 
 their true mission because they have not, 
 from the start, been seen large by their founders. 
 That is one reason why I believe greatly in the
 
 PREFATORY LETTER xiii 
 
 value of large-scale community festivals as 
 leavening forerunners not only of the right 
 launching of little theatres, but of other more 
 special group organizations in social art, as in 
 community song, the dance, etc. 
 
 Such festivals, in forms of community 
 masques, dramas and pageants, awaken 
 popular imagination and enlighten public 
 opinion by the only successful means ap- 
 parently possible — the tests of actual ex- 
 perience and participation by representative 
 numbers in the cooperative arts involved. 
 
 With such purposes directly in mind, I laid 
 out the large-scale plan of the Pageant and 
 Masque of Saint Louis and the structural 
 form of "Caliban"; and personal observation 
 and experience in Saint Louis, New York and 
 Boston have borne out by results my belief 
 in the efficacy of the means employed. 
 
 To mention but one happy instance, and the 
 latest to strengthen my belief : As a result of 
 the three weeks' production of "Caliban" last 
 month at the Harvard Stadium, a permanent 
 Caliban Community League of Greater Boston, 
 comprising seventeen Caliban Clubs in differ-
 
 xiv PREFATORY LETTER 
 
 ent sections of the community, has been organ- 
 ized "to encourage and foster the community 
 ideals exemplified in Caliban by developing 
 and practicing community drama, community 
 singing and music and other community activi- 
 ties in which all citizens may cooperate" — - 
 the League having a published journal of its 
 own, "The Caliban News", and being officered 
 by sincere enthusiastic workers in the Masque, 
 backed by the loyalty of many hundreds of 
 participants. 
 
 One mistake, I think, we who write books 
 or prefaces should do our best to avoid : I 
 mean the mistake of discussing institutions, 
 organizations, classified subjects, as "things in 
 themselves" apart from the human persons 
 who actually give them form and being. Here, 
 for instance, in these remarks of mine and in 
 your book, are discussed such classified sub- 
 jects as the Community Theatre, the Little 
 Theatre, the Masque, the Pageant, the Socio- 
 logical Theatre. But, unavoidable as this 
 use of terms may be, do these things ever 
 exist as separate entities except in books? 
 When they are truly significant, are these
 
 PREFATORY LETTER xv 
 
 organic agencies ever really alive apart from 
 their creators? 
 
 Looking back over ten years or more of work 
 in this field, the truth is borne in upon me by 
 many experiences that the forms of community 
 drama, though they involve a vast social co- 
 operation, are no exception to the law that art 
 forms and their organization are the product 
 of personal invention on the part of artists and 
 organizers. 
 
 Vast spectacles and dances, in which thou- 
 sands participate in color and motion ; noble 
 compositions, in which many hundreds take 
 part through harmonious sound ; organiza- 
 tions, through which multitudes cooperate 
 without friction, unaware of the means of 
 their doing so : — all these first took form in 
 the imaginations of a very few inventive human 
 beings, single or in small groups ; and the suc- 
 cess or failure of those spectacles, dances, com- 
 positions, organizations, will depend in large 
 measure on the technical equipment and fore- 
 sight of those human first causes of their being. 
 
 So, to treat of them apart from their human 
 causes would be misleading. Little Theatres,
 
 xvi PREFATORY LETTER 
 
 Community Theatres, Sociological Theatres, 
 etc. will depend for their value — not upon 
 valuations in theory and classification, but 
 upon actually whose theatres they are: who 
 conceives them, who organizes them, who 
 operates them. 
 
 This is not to minimize the immense value, 
 sociologic and artistic, of audiences and their 
 influence on dramatic art-forms, justly em- 
 phasized in your book; but it is rightly to 
 raise to their great value the guiding and 
 creative influences of those artists of the 
 theatre, always necessarily few, whose re- 
 sponsive imaginations shape the forms by 
 means of which audiences and participants are 
 enabled to cooperate in an harmonious whole. 
 
 So in your book, if I may venture the criti- 
 cism, in emphasizing truly as you do the un- 
 doubted dramatic renaissance in which our 
 country is taking part, and even in stressing 
 the vital significance of the theatre artist in 
 general, I wish that you might have given 
 more direct special emphasis to those living 
 creative personalities in America — such as 
 Robert Edmond Jones, designer, and Arthur
 
 PREFATORY LETTER xvii 
 
 Farwell, composer — who are helping to shape 
 the destiny of the community theatre. 
 
 The social forces evoked by special genius 
 in this field are, of course, vaster than any 
 individuals involved. How efficient an instru- 
 ment of these forces he may become is the 
 test of the community artist. So it is that I 
 have seen the community drama movement 
 in America, by virtue of its own democratic 
 might, grow and flourish from almost nothing 
 to flowerings of awe-inspiring grandeur; and 
 this, with practically no support, in its strug- 
 gling stages, from popular journalism ; and 
 with no comprehending attention or valuation 
 accorded to it by those critics and philosophical 
 students of our time whom the thinking public 
 looks to and counts upon to interpret the vital 
 signs and portents of democracy. Neither in 
 journals radical, progressive, or conservative, 
 appealing to the general public, will you find 
 yet any appropriate recognition of the power 
 and the beauty of this creative movement : 
 neither in "The Masses", nor "The New 
 Republic", nor "The Nation." 
 
 Yet happily, though the social critics and
 
 xviii PREFATORY LETTER 
 
 philosophers might conceivably do much to 
 help it, this movement is self-reliant in the 
 spirit of its own workers and participants — 
 the living spirit of that art which is true de- 
 mocracy. And you, Miss Burleigh, who are 
 one of those real workers, may take joy — 
 through this gallant, interpretive emprise of 
 yours — in joining a small band of high- 
 hearted pioneers, in whose trail — when it 
 becomes well worn — the formal philosophers 
 are sure to follow. 
 
 Meanwhile, a happy work-time to you and 
 
 your book ! 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Percy MacKaye. 
 
 Cornish, N. H. 
 7th August, 1917.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Of the many changes which the past fifteen 
 years have seen in our theatre, undoubtedly 
 the most momentous is the abolition of the 
 footlights. The importance of their banish- 
 ment lies not in the artistic value but rather 
 in the spiritual significance of the achievement. 
 The footlights were a barrier between the 
 actor and the audience. By them the theatre 
 was divided into two distinct and separate 
 parts, like two countries whose common bound- 
 ary is a great river or high mountains. In- 
 deed, we spoke of the division as did the ancient 
 Romans of the Alps, referring to "beyond the 
 footlights" or to "this side of the footlights." 
 The removal of the barrier affects not only 
 the workers on the stage but those whose task 
 is to create from the seats of the auditorium 
 — for the need for active cooperation on the 
 part of the audience is fast becoming a com- 
 monplace — and it is because of this duality
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 that the innovation is more important than 
 its fellows. 
 
 How different is the New Theatre from that 
 of twenty years ago ! On the stage side of the 
 footlights there has been created a new being, 
 the artist of the theatre. And this artist of the 
 theatre, about whom much has been said and 
 written, and who is perhaps best compared to 
 the leader of an orchestra, has summoned help 
 from all the arts to weave a new texture of 
 beauty. The architect and the sculptor have 
 brought beauty of construction and cleared 
 away the clutter of unneeded detail ; the 
 painter has colored the setting with imagina- 
 tion and made meanings where before there 
 were only haphazard imitations of what we 
 see every day ; the musician has filled pauses 
 with beauty ; the dancer and the poet have 
 not been neglected ; and finally even the 
 scientist has been called in to give of his 
 knowledge. It is as if the stage had expanded, 
 pushing and pushing in growth until it burst 
 its restraint; and, flowing over the footlights, 
 it extinguished them as it went, and finally 
 reached the audience.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 For the artist of the theatre has always 
 understood that all the means at his com- 
 mand are but instruments for the service of 
 the audience. Without the audience he is 
 lost. The movement on the stage, while it is 
 the reason for the existence of the spectators, 
 cannot escape the domination exercised by 
 them. It is the aim of every artist in the 
 theatre to unite the spirits of his audience into 
 one thought and to express that thought 
 through action on his stage. So from the 
 beginning of the theatrical renaissance, of 
 which we are now a part, stage directors have 
 been reaching out over the audience, and in 
 order to encourage their spiritual cooperation, 
 have often given them an actual physical part 
 to play. The prologue once more walks our 
 boards. The "Flowery Way" down which 
 the actors come to the stage has been set up 
 in our western theatre by Professor Reinhardt, 
 following the happy custom of Japan. Mr. 
 Stuart Walker has personified the listener; in 
 one of his plays at least, " You-in-the-Audience" 
 not only speaks, but actually wanders up to the 
 stage, takes part in the play, and at last solves
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 the quandaries of the characters to every one's 
 satisfaction. It seems to me that Mr. Walker, 
 who has the instincts of the stage artist so 
 highly developed that he is able to turn from 
 writing to acting and directing with perfect 
 ease, has intuitively hit upon a great truth, 
 and has in his character of "You-in-the- 
 Audience" made a symbolical forecast of the 
 next step in the progress of the theatrical art. 
 The artists of the theatre, like the people 
 in Mr. Walker's charming play, have done 
 their very best. It is time for "You-in-the- 
 Audience" to go up and take a hand. 
 
 Now just as it is true that changes have 
 swept over the stage in the theatre, is it true 
 that something has happened to the audience. 
 The architecture of our Theatre proves it. 
 The old theatres were made up of tier upon 
 tier of boxes and galleries, while some of our 
 newer ones have less than three hundred seats. 
 When the New Theatre was built in New York, 
 its construction followed the old lines, and the 
 New Theatre failed with a promptness which 
 has been referred to many times by theatrical 
 commentators. Undoubtedly there is a pre-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 dominance of the style of play which demands 
 an audience near at hand, but is that very 
 predominance not a symptom rather than a 
 disease ? The kind of play which has an intel- 
 lectual appeal, fundamentally, will not reach a 
 large audience; the large audience demands 
 great, simple emotions : conversely, the small 
 audience demands a limited range of emotions 
 and usually will prefer to be stirred through 
 the intellect than through the emotions. So the 
 Little Theatre in New York, with its exquisite 
 productions of intellectual delicacies, may be 
 thought to limit its audience by the size of its 
 auditorium. Or, on the other hand, it may be 
 considered to be the answer to a demand made 
 by a few : the reply perhaps to the indifference 
 of thousands who have gone elsewhere for their 
 entertainment and delight. 
 
 For we have in our theatre everything but 
 an audience. Small groups of interested spec- 
 tators there are, and I am glad to believe that 
 the number is increasing. But now the mass 
 of the people, the people with simple emotions 
 and simple appreciations, are not in the theatre. 
 Where are they ? They may be sleeping ;
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 they may not know that there is a theatre. 
 Miss Jane Addams tells a poignant tale of a 
 Greek fruit vender who did not know there 
 were Americans who loved the ancient beauty 
 of his country. He had brought with him 
 mementos of that loveliness, hoping to find 
 interest in his new home; but his customers 
 refused to be led to speak of Greece's glory, 
 and it was only when he happened upon a 
 picture of the Acropolis at Hull House that he 
 revealed the sketches and drawings he had 
 made. No doubt there are people to whom 
 the theatre has not shown herself except as the 
 home of false values, the exhibition room of 
 ugliness and even of vice. How glad those 
 people would be to be discovered by the artist 
 of the theatre ! 
 
 Others of the audience for which we are 
 seeking may be in the motion-picture theatres. 
 The architecture once more seems to be a key 
 . . . the old theatres have many of them been 
 converted into "movie houses" or have been 
 replaced by buildings which follow in some 
 measure their generous lines. These houses 
 are filled not once a day but again and again
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 from morning till night. Much has been wisely 
 said and much foolishly upon this matter. 
 Authorities differ very widely upon the cause 
 for the popularity of the movie ; one would 
 have us think that it is the new art of democracy 
 in its toddling infancy ; another assures us that 
 it is popular because it is inexpensive; and a 
 third that it is a fad and will soon lose its sup- 
 porters. No doubt there is truth in each 
 statement ; but this is not the place for a pro- 
 longed discussion of the value of the motion 
 picture except as it affects the audience of the 
 spoken drama. 
 
 When the artist of the theatre looks to the 
 motion-picture house for the audience which 
 he desires, his first query will be, naturally, 
 will the audience come back to the spoken 
 drama from the silent one? Yes, a thousand 
 times yes. The motion picture may develop 
 into many things which it is not in its present 
 state, but it will never replace the spoken 
 drama. The motion-picture enthusiast does 
 not scorn the theatre. Some four years ago 
 the present writer was acting in a small, ill- 
 trained, and unpretending company whose
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 duty was to fill the gaps in the routine of films 
 in a motion-picture theatre. The manage- 
 ment boasted that their films were the best in 
 the city : the audience paid its ten cents at 
 the door and demanded full value for it. The 
 hard-working company gave hastily prepared 
 but sincere representations of good one-act 
 plays. The performance flowed steadily from 
 ten in the morning until ten at night, repeat- 
 ing itself three times during the day. If we 
 accept the theory so often put forward that 
 the movie lover loses his interest in the spoken 
 drama, we should expect to hear that during 
 the playlet the audience became inattentive, 
 or perhaps that they left the theatre when it 
 was announced. This was not true, in spite 
 of the inferior quality of the acting seen in the 
 play to that on the screen. (Inferior it un- 
 doubtedly was : the film actors were artists 
 ranging from John Bunny to Sarah Bernhardt !) 
 But, far from leaving the theatre, the audience 
 applied continually at the box office for the 
 hour of the play in order that they might not 
 miss it. The motion picture had not hurt 
 the audience for the spoken drama; indeed, I
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 think there had been the creation of an audience 
 in that theatre. Nor was its audience in any 
 way unique : it was the average motion-picture 
 audience. Its attitude, then, may be taken 
 as typical of motion-picture audiences, and it 
 is safe to assume that they are in general ready 
 to be called back into the theatre. They will 
 come no doubt with a new taste, but come 
 they will. The artist of the theatre will find 
 them with lamps trimmed and burning. 
 
 But there are other signs that the audience 
 is waiting to be called into the theatre. A 
 movement which had fundamentally no con- 
 nection with the art of the theatre has brought 
 the audience to its doors. This is the move- 
 ment of social reorganization led by the social 
 scientist. 
 
 The social scientist represents the audi- 
 torium as the artist of the theatre does the 
 stage ; he seeks to awaken his group to con- 
 sciousness of self. And after groping here and 
 there he has hit upon the value of play, es- 
 pecially cooperative play, in his work. And 
 play has led him to the arts of the theatre. 
 
 Not long ago in our puritanical order of
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 living, play was despised. Then Froebel dis- 
 covered its value as an educative force, and 
 when it had won its way so far into our lives, 
 it began to be studied for its own sake. The 
 history of play is an interesting one which the 
 world cannot afford to neglect. It carries with 
 it the sanity and joy of living, and because it 
 permits the expression of emotions, it leads to 
 art, and more than to any art, to the art of the 
 theatre. 
 
 The earlier forms of play to which the social 
 scientist turned were undeveloped expressions 
 of the art of the theatre. The playgrounds 
 for children — to be spoken of more fully later 
 on — were the first and simplest result. The 
 need for play in older children was answered 
 by dance halls and clubs, and the development 
 assumed the actual outlines of the theatrical 
 art in the first dramatic clubs created with a 
 social end. From these clubs there have grown 
 up a series of small theatres — the most vigor- 
 ous assertion by the audience that it wishes to 
 come into the theatre. 
 
 But — and this is the most important point 
 of all — the audience does not want to come-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 into the theatre to sit inert. To use again 
 the phraseology of Mr. Walker's play, "You- 
 in-the- Audience " is ready to mount the stage 
 and play his part; the artists of the theatre 
 have done all they can as yet; the progress 
 of the action awaits the worker from the audi- 
 torium ; and the most vital point becomes the 
 method by which the audience shall be taught 
 to assume its responsibilities. It seems a some- 
 what terrifying fact that the success or failure 
 of the theatre must rest with untaught and 
 untrained people. Will the art of the theatre 
 languish and die? Can the yoke of art be 
 made to fit a democracy ? 
 
 Our democracy has begun the solution of 
 similar problems. The public schools — im- 
 perfect, experimental, everchanging, but under 
 State control — are the reply to a demand for 
 ! education : the great library systems which 
 we see expanding year by year, are the answer 
 to the need for broader culture; certain arts 
 — painting and sculpture for example — have 
 half-way recognition in museums; and yet 
 none of these things, neither education, culture, 
 nor the arts of painting and sculpture, have the
 
 xxx INTRODUCTION 
 
 purely social quality which is inherent in the 
 dramatic art. For the theatre cannot exist 
 without its audience ... its immediate, liv- 
 ing, breathing audience. It is as much a con- 
 cern of all the people as the conservation of 
 resources, the direction of labor, and the pro- 
 motion of agriculture. Shall we then expect 
 to find a Commission of the Theatrical Arts at 
 Washington ? 
 
 Already certain artists have suggested that 
 something of the kind might be possible. The 
 government is fast taking over every subject 
 which concerns the public good, and making it 
 the business of the government to administer 
 such matters; why not, then, the question of 
 public recreation? 
 
 If we were a bureaucratic state, it would be 
 a simple matter to impose a system of state 
 theatres. A director is appointed, let us say, 
 a chain of theatres is built, and each is put 
 into the hands of an expert, who instantly draws 
 about him a staff of able workmen — behold 
 an efficient machinery for the production of 
 Theatrical Art ! And yet what proof have we 
 that the audience which stays away from the
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 present commercial theatre would fill the 
 vacant seats of one which came as the gift of a 
 paternal despotism ? Even if they did come 
 for a short time there are many reasons to 
 suppose that they would not continue to sup- 
 port a theatre so established. A state theatre 
 must not be a theatre which is applied to the 
 community from without or from above; it 
 cannot be the perfected dream of artists ; it 
 must spring from the dreams and needs of the 
 everyday person, the need for expression of a 
 whole community. When individual commu- 
 nities have felt the need for a group expression 
 strongly enough, when each has — imperfect 
 and struggling — an organization for the ex- 
 pression of community emotion, there will 
 come spontaneously from the whole people the 
 demand for a central art direction. It will be 
 then that the theatrical art will be in flower, 
 and until then we must look for groping and 
 imperfection. 
 
 In these chapters it is the aim of the author 
 to consider the social quality of the dramatic 
 art, the emotional needs of an ordinary com- 
 munity, and to point out that each may have
 
 xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 its greatest opportunity for perfection through 
 a theatre based upon those principles upon 
 which democratic institutions must be built. 
 
 And, since English is so inaccurate a 
 language, and since we are so susceptible to 
 catch phrases, it may be well to set down at 
 once the meaning of the term "Community 
 Theatre" as used in this volume. Later it 
 will be necessary to dissect and explain at 
 length the derivation of each phrase, but at 
 present it will be sufficient to express it as 
 clearly as possible in order that no misunder- 
 standing may arise. 
 
 The Community Theatre is a house of play in 
 which events offer to every member of a body 
 politic active participation in a common interest. 
 
 This definition is broad enough to allow great 
 latitude in its local application, a very neces- 
 sary quality in so varied and heterogeneous a 
 state as our own. It can be applied, I believe, 
 with no fundamental alteration to large as well 
 as to small communities, just as, in spite of 
 Plato's assertion that it could not, a democratic 
 form of government has been found successful 
 in states of over five thousand inhabitants.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 What growth may come to the community 
 theatre as it reaches out and grows under the 
 influence of practice it is not possible to imag- 
 ine, but we should be indeed visionless if we 
 did not believe that its flowering will exceed 
 all our hopes. It is this quality which has made 
 democratic institutions beloved of poets and 
 seers since the day of Pericles in Athens when 
 the glimmerings of democratic dawn were first 
 visible — this blossoming beyond the belief of 
 those who sow the seed. 
 
 And yet, in spite of an apparent looseness in 
 the general terms of the definition, precise 
 limits have been set for the community theatre 
 so defined. In order to see what it may not 
 and what it must not do, it will be well to study 
 with attention some of the independent, small, 
 non-commercial (in the usual sense of Broad- 
 way) theatres which have come into being all 
 over the country. They offer much that is 
 practical and helpful in the organization of the 
 community theatre, even while they prove 
 that the fact of their origin outside the ranks 
 of the theatrical profession is not sufficient to 
 endow them with magical virtues. Followers
 
 xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the Little Theatre movement have been too 
 eager to accept any independent theatrical 
 organization and to assume that everything 
 which came from such a source was invariably 
 fine. On the other hand, the enemies of the 
 movement have been quick to condemn all 
 Little Theatres as the feeble striving of dabblers. 
 As is usual, the truth lies somewhere between 
 these two extreme views. The Little Theatre 
 has made contributions to the art of the theatre 
 already, but its greatest gift is the promise 
 which it carries, the hope of the theatre as an 
 institution of the people.
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 For the use of photographs I am indebted 
 to Mr. Stuart Walker of the Portmanteau 
 Theatre, to the Vagabond Theatre in Balti- 
 more, the Forest Theatre of Carmel-by-the- 
 Sea, and the Idler Club of Radcliffe College. 
 
 To the officers of these theatres and their 
 fellows of the Appendix, I am under obligation 
 for continued courtesy. I trust that in some 
 slight way the results may prove helpful to that 
 enthusiasm of which the Little Theatre is a 
 sign. 
 
 Finally, I owe much to my generous friends. 
 But especially do I wish to thank Fraulein 
 Mayer, Mr. Sheldon Cheney, and Mr. Percy 
 MacKaye for the benefit of their experience 
 conferred by an unfailing interest.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Patchwork Curtain which Supports the 
 
 "Vagabond" Idea .... Frontispiece 
 A lovely and simple substitution for a heavy velvet 
 curtain. 
 
 PACING PAGE 
 
 The Seven Gifts 28 
 
 Played in Madison Square, before five thousand peo- 
 ple, on Christmas Eve. An excellent example of 
 simplicity of line. 
 
 Detail of a Scene from Caliban, by Percy 
 
 MacKaye 30 
 
 Setting by Robert Edmond Jones. The use of the 
 mask was revived with eminent success. 
 
 An Outdoor Play at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cali- 
 fornia 62 
 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle 70 
 
 The vigor and vitality of the old comedy emphasized 
 by the whimsy of the set. 
 
 National Sylvan Theatre, Washington, D. C. 71 
 
 On the grounds of the Washington Monument. 
 
 National Sylvan Theatre, Washington, D. C. 80 
 
 The auditorium during preparations for a perform- 
 ance. 
 
 The Chinese Lantern 138 
 
 Produced by the Idler Club of Radcliffe College, under 
 the direction of Mr. Sam Hume, 
 xxxv ii
 
 C r
 
 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Community 
 
 Why do we need a Community Theatre? 
 Let us, before deciding, look for a moment at 
 the modern community. 
 
 The dictionary says that a community is 
 "a body politic; any body of persons having 
 common interests, privileges, etc. ; a sharing 
 or participation." Further, that useful book 
 quotes in exposition of the word's use, this 
 statement from J. R. Seeley, "Three ties by 
 which states are held together are community 
 of race, community of religion, and commu- 
 nity of interest." Using this definition and 
 this quotation as a basis, let us examine com- 
 munities as we know them, to discover just 
 how closely the meaning of the word may 
 be said to apply. 
 
 Modern communities are communities only 
 1
 
 2 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 in the loosest sense in which the word can be 
 taken. A city is a great group of people liv- 
 ing within certain geographical limits. It is 
 to be sure "a body politic", but it has no 
 common interests which weld it into a great 
 whole; except in one case in a thousand there 
 is not the least sign of participation in a com- 
 mon life. This principle is equally true in the 
 small communities, but it is more self-evident 
 in a large city. The commercial organization 
 of society is based primarily upon competition 
 which has resulted in disunion rather than 
 cooperation. The effects can be most clearly 
 seen in the great centres. 
 
 What homogeneity is there in an American 
 city? Every race of the earth goes to make 
 up the citizenry. This is no longer true 
 merely of eastern cities, it is true of all cities, 
 east, west, north, and south. Nor are the 
 European and Asiatic newcomers the only 
 foreigners; there are as well those hordes of 
 country-born and country-bred city-dwellers 
 to whom the city always seems strange. Some- 
 times the inhabitants of one locality in a city 
 have brought with them traditions which they
 
 THE COMMUNITY 3 
 
 hold in common, but they are the traditions of 
 another place and of an older race than the 
 city in which they live. So we find a Ghetto, 
 an Italian quarter, a German colony, and a 
 French settlement, each preserving the mem- 
 ory of home perhaps, but entering into the life 
 of the American city of which it is a part, 
 without organization, without any definite and 
 common ground except the struggle for exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Yet all our cities have made partial attempts 
 to find some sort of common ground for their 
 inhabitants. The working people have or- 
 ganized themselves into unions of the various 
 trades, feeling for fellowship as well as for 
 financial gain. But unions are limited, and 
 they include fe,w of the people in a great city, 
 even when they are bound one to the other in 
 a kind of Super-Union. They do not supply 
 the need for an amalgamating force, but 
 rather they tend, like everything else in a great 
 commercial centre, to emphasize the difference 
 between one class of citizens and another. 
 
 To be sure, in cities everywhere a system of 
 organized play has grown up, there are munici-
 
 4 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 pal entertainments, municipal baths, and parks 
 which are certainly for all the population. 
 Notwithstanding, such provisions made by 
 the city are regarded not as a privilege, but 
 rather as a last resort; we do not find all 
 New York splashing happily in the Public 
 Baths ! Every class of citizen may be seen 
 in Central Park, to be sure; artists paint 
 it, leaders of society gallop along the bridle 
 paths, children of the very rich feed the swans, 
 and tattered little boys play at hide and seek 
 in the shade of the trees; but in all this there 
 is nothing which draws these individuals closer 
 together. There is nothing beyond what lies 
 in the common possession of paved streets 
 and a water supply. Taxes pay for the smooth- 
 ness of the lawns, everything is impersonal, 
 removed from actual experience. It must of 
 necessity be so, but think what a difference 
 could be made if the millionaire whose motor 
 slips daily along those level drives and the 
 lounger who eats his dry roll on the green 
 carpet were personally responsible for the care 
 and the beauty of that park; if, for example, 
 each threw off his coat and bent his back to a
 
 THE COMMUNITY 5 
 
 lawn mower, one day in the year, by the side 
 of the other ! Would the great park be then a 
 mere physical accident, a geographical bond? 
 But beyond the impersonal quality of public 
 possessions, all those of the city have tended, 
 because of our capitalistic and commercial 
 organization of the state, to separate individ- 
 uals into classes rather than to unite all classes 
 into a unified community. Parks, libraries 
 and even the public schools have been looked 
 upon as a beneficence, almost as a charity, 
 provided for the poor by taxing the rich. The 
 children of well-to-do parents and of the 
 professional classes are sent to private schools, 
 they play in the parks under the eyes of nurses, 
 and when they grow old enough to use the 
 library, there is little in the quiet of the great 
 reading room to inspire the feeling that every 
 reader is a fellow citizen, sharing the store of 
 knowledge for which the library stands, striving 
 for the same ideals, and equally responsible for 
 the beauty of a common life. It is natural 
 that cities built upon a basis of commercial 
 enterprise should emphasize differences in 
 wealth as they grow; the accident of locality,
 
 6 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 — rich and poor do not live side by side, — 
 such everyday matters as means of transporta- 
 tion, places and manner of worship, the devices 
 employed for entertainment, all tend to widen 
 the breach. 
 
 For example, take religion. What com- 
 munity can be united in a common religion? 
 Toleration in religious belief is perhaps more 
 fundamental than any other tenet in the 
 creed of our democracy : not only in cities but 
 everywhere. In the smallest settlements spire 
 strives against spire to attest the liberty we 
 suffer in the worship of God. Great cities 
 harbor strange beliefs, old and new, un- 
 prosecuted. But even the followers of a 
 single creed are not necessarily united. This 
 is true primarily in cities where the ritual of 
 worship varies less widely than the ritual of 
 social life. It is a tragic reality that the 
 union achieved when men kneel side by side 
 in prayer is more than offset by the fact that 
 the one walks home to cabbage with boiled 
 beef while the other is borne in a liveried car- 
 riage to the fastidious ceremony of course upon 
 course. Moreover, in cities the poor man and
 
 THE COMMUNITY 7 
 
 the rich one do not worship side by side. 
 Fashionable churches support missions which 
 share their creeds and even their management, 
 but which prevent actual contact between those 
 who should be neighbors. Once more the 
 simple accident of geography has made a high 
 barrier. 
 
 Common ancestors have vanished. A 
 common worship no longer exists. There 
 remains only the "community of interest" 
 of which Mr. Seeley speaks. Clearly our 
 cities have none. Now and then, temporarily, 
 a sporadic interest arises strong enough to 
 reach all the inhabitants : there is need for a 
 drainage system ; or, some keen demand of 
 the schools, some widespread lack in public 
 works, which molds the citizens into a single- 
 minded body. But when the end is achieved, 
 there is certain to be a lapse into the old dis- 
 organization. 
 
 The most evident needs in our modern life 
 are those which spring from great disasters. 
 For example, in Salem, Massachusetts, there 
 was a great and terrible fire, destroying life 
 and property and calling out the most simple
 
 8 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 and most human qualities and emotions. Re- 
 sponse was instant. Life grew simple in a 
 moment, and, overnight, strangers were con- 
 verted into neighbors. And as long as the 
 emotion lasted, the cooperation held them to- 
 gether; then life settled once more into its 
 normal rut. So too, on the dock of a great 
 steamship line, a group of strangers gathered 
 to say bon voyage to those who were sailing to 
 the danger zone : before the gangplank was up 
 there was a fellowship among them, and when 
 the last sight of the boat had failed, they walked 
 quietly away, chatting together like friends. 
 One after another we have seen the countries 
 of the world welded into units by the horrible 
 blast of war, by the influence of a great idea 
 clothed in terms of human emotion. Is it 
 not possible to apply the lesson which it 
 teaches to peace, to our lives as we live them, 
 day by day ? 
 
 It is more than possible — it is being done. 
 Organizations for peace are becoming more 
 and more popular : the Red Cross, which 
 originated in war, has carried its usefulness 
 over into the fighting of accidents and calami-
 
 THE COMMUNITY 9 
 
 ties of peace, the Boy Scouts are organized 
 primarily for everyday life, and here and there 
 all over the country, pageants and masques have 
 been springing up to rouse civic interest and 
 civilian pride. 
 
 The case of the city of St. Louis, although 
 most often cited, is perhaps more conclusive 
 than any other. Civic reform is valuable only 
 when it is permanent, and it will not be perma- 
 nent if it is not the work of all the citizens. 
 The few in St. Louis who felt the need of a new 
 charter and of the completion of a great- munici- 
 pal bridge, knew that these things must be 
 the work not of the few, but of the entire 
 citizenry. And with an insight which bespeaks 
 great things for our future as an artistic unity 
 and as a unified nation, they turned to the arts 
 of the theatre to accomplish the persuasion of 
 the citizens. The result was the achievement 
 for which they were seeking — the new charter 
 was made and the bridge was built — more- 
 over, there is the promise of more permanent 
 union in artistic causes in St. Louis. 
 
 But the organization of a complex and 
 diffuse group like the city is naturally more
 
 10 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 difficult than that of a smaller one. So the 
 Masque of Caliban, produced in celebration 
 of the Shakespeare Tercentenary, was less 
 visibly successful than the Masque of St. Louis ; 
 and just so the smaller and more intimate 
 attempts in villages have been more imme- 
 diately effective. However, the need for a 
 unifying force is none the less present in the 
 small than in the large community : there is 
 perhaps a more crying demand for a common 
 interest in small isolated villages than in the 
 great cities. 
 
 It used to be true of American villages that 
 they were somewhat held together by ties of 
 race. Now most villages fall into two classes, 
 those which have not been reinforced from the 
 new material, and those which have more new 
 blood than they have assimilated. Every 
 frequenter of the backwater of New England 
 is familiar with the tragedy of the town where 
 intermarriage has been the rule for four or five 
 consecutive generations, and from which the 
 youth and the rugged strength has been 
 sapped by emigration with no renewal from 
 outside. Such towns usually have an appalling
 
 THE COMMUNITY 11 
 
 percentage of degenerates and invalids, and in 
 such towns there is practically no industry; 
 the people make a living — meagre as it is — 
 and ask for nothing more. There is no joy, 
 no vitality, no life in the real sense. Social 
 life is a set of conventions, religion is the 
 following of a dogma ; men breed and feed 
 and die. Vice in the most dreadful forms exists 
 in these villages, hand-in-hand with disease of 
 body and mind. When the outside world 
 comes to visit them it brings more of a curse 
 than a blessing, for it usually comes seeking 
 pleasure, and the natives find the most super- 
 ficial and unfortunate characteristics supreme 
 in the advent of "summer people." What- 
 ever rural simplicity may have existed is de- 
 stroyed by the intrusion of a sophisticated 
 point of view, and the fraction of the country 
 folk who do not emulate the newcomer, gen- 
 erally join forces against him. 
 
 In the little village of X there is one 
 
 long main street upon which most of the four 
 hundred inhabitants live. Not far away there 
 is a summer colony centred round an hotel, and 
 scattered through the town are houses which
 
 12 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 are closed in winter, but which are still con~ 
 sidered an integral part of the village. The 
 owner of such a house, Mrs. Norman, whose 
 years of good citizenship had endeared her to 
 the community, met in a distant city a village 
 woman, Mrs. Prince. They chatted long about 
 the distant little town : Mrs. Prince had much 
 to tell of what had happened on the quiet 
 street. In leaving Mrs. Norman remembered 
 to send a message to a neighbor, the friend of 
 years, whose unobtrusive cottage lay between 
 her own large house and that of Mrs. Prince. 
 Mrs. Prince hesitated. "But I shall probably 
 not see her before you do," she said. "Of 
 course, one can not know every one, even in 
 
 X ." 
 
 Clearly there is need for some force which 
 shall offset so false a social standard, and for 
 this force it is hopeless to look to the Church. 
 Once more the toleration which is our pride 
 serves to divide rather than to weld the factors. 
 In most villages of such a type there are too 
 many churches — half filled and sleepy. The 
 unfortunate preacher is unable to do anything 
 for his parish ; often he wishes to unite with
 
 THE COMMUNITY 13 
 
 some other church and is prevented by tradi- 
 tion, and the most he can do is to struggle 
 along cheerfully, underpaid and overworked. 
 The younger people find the church stupid ; 
 there is no new life in it. They have deserted 
 the puritanical standards of their fathers, and 
 they want to dance, to sing, to enjoy life ; but 
 such matters are not considered the problems 
 for which the Church exists, and so the young 
 people gather at the corner drug store instead 
 of in the church. 
 
 In other settlements a new problem is in- 
 troduced by an influx of Roman Catholic 
 peoples. These are the towns which have 
 industries, factories, and mills to which newly- 
 made Americans are carried by their employ- 
 ment. And where lately was a quiet town 
 with traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race, with 
 a population largely "American-born", there 
 is suddenly a flood of broken English and the 
 chatter of strange tongues ; a new town springs 
 up within the old one yet apart from it. Once 
 more the problem is one of amalgamation. 
 How shall the strange elements be mingled 
 and made one ? Not through race, not through
 
 14 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 religion, but through some institution which 
 shall offer a common interest — an interest 
 which shall include all the varieties and which 
 shall by that very inclusion teach the one to 
 understand the other. 
 
 The diversity of race which is after all the 
 most outstanding fact of our population is 
 considered by many people a cause for agita- 
 tion. From time to time staggering statistics 
 are published, and intelligent people read them 
 with anxious expressions. At all times and in 
 all places, "peril" and "menace" are spoken 
 as synonyms for immigration. It is said that 
 the newcomers from Southern Europe are espe- 
 cially dangerous to our democracy — and yet, 
 democracy was first dreamed of in Greece, 
 and Rome built the first republic. 
 
 Those who have been privileged to know 
 intimately certain of our "foreign" population 
 feel quite at ease as to the outcome . . . if 
 we can make use of the good impulses before the 
 bad ones have been fostered by those who would 
 twist them to evil ends. They are so eager to 
 be Americans, so ready to believe all that 
 is fine of their new country. There is not
 
 THE COMMUNITY 15 
 
 the least hesitation in their minds as to 
 their nationality, even before the intricacies 
 of the English language are wholly under- 
 stood. It would be possible to multiply 
 examples to prove this, but one story will be 
 sufficient. 
 
 In a little New Hampshire village settled 
 long ago by straight-laced Protestants, a tiny 
 wooden Roman Catholic Church has been built, 
 in which the good Father every Sunday says 
 Mass, preaching not only in English, but in 
 French as well, for those of his flock who have 
 not yet picked up the strange tongue. The faces 
 of the congregation are laughing Celtic faces, 
 some Irish and some French : there is not one 
 Anglo-Saxon among them all. Across the way, 
 however, descendants of the early settlers still 
 gather in the half vacant and wholly uncomfort- 
 able pews of the neat white Congregational 
 Church. They speak with no little scorn of their 
 neighbors, usually calling them, "them cath'lic 
 furreners." 
 
 But one summer day when the warm air 
 inspired dullness and drowsiness, the priest 
 made an appeal to his people which rang so
 
 16 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 clearly even in his broken English that it could 
 be heard across the silent village street in the 
 calm of the long prayer. The collection for 
 the day was to be used to heat the church in 
 winter ; it was necessary that the imaginations 
 of his flock be roused. He expostulated and 
 besought them, drawing a vivid picture of the 
 shivering during Christmas Mass, and finally 
 — not without a perceptible twinkle of amuse- 
 ment — he said that he should descend from 
 the chancel and pass the plate in person. It 
 was here that his voice grew tense with indigna- 
 tion at the thought of the comparison which 
 he was about to make. "I must take the 
 collection !" he cried. "There are some people 
 who will not give until the collection is made 
 by the priest . . . and there are people who 
 give one penny Sunday after Sunday . . . 
 who give to the Church of God what they would 
 throw to a monkey sitting on the shoulder of a 
 foreigner with a hand organ!" And his voice 
 had the same note of pride which might have 
 been heard across the way among the first 
 families ! 
 
 And that "foreigner" with the monkey —
 
 THE COMMUNITY 17 
 
 what was he in his own thought? Not a 
 foreigner, not an Italian ; no, he like the 
 others, was an American. And so through all 
 the diversity of race there is in our State a bond 
 which is stronger and finer than any mere 
 physical tie could ever be — the spiritual 
 community of ideals to which Mr. Wilson 
 gave voice in a speech to new citizens in 
 Philadelphia on the tenth of May, 1915. I 
 can do no better than to set down in Mr. 
 Wilson's own words the expression of those 
 ideals : 
 
 You who have just sworn allegiance to this 
 great government were drawn across the ocean 
 by some beckoning finger, by some belief, by 
 some vision of a new kind of justice, by some 
 expectation of a better kind of life. 
 
 No doubt you have been disappointed in 
 some of us, and some of us are very disappoint- 
 ing. No doubt what you found here did not 
 seem touched for you, after all, with the com- 
 plete beauty of the ideal which you had con- 
 ceived beforehand ; but remember this, if we 
 have grown at all poor at the ideal, you have 
 brought some of it with you. A man does not 
 go to seek the thing that is not in him. A 
 man does not hope for the thing that he does 
 not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten 
 what America believed in, you, at any rate,
 
 18 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 imported in your own hearts a renewal of the 
 belief. 
 
 That is the reason why I for one, make you 
 welcome. If I have forgotten in any degree 
 what America was intended for, I will thank 
 God if you remind me. I was born in America. 
 You dreamed dreams of what America was to 
 be, and I hope you brought the dreams with 
 you. No man who does not rightly see visions 
 will ever realize any high hope or undertake 
 any high enterprise, and just because you 
 brought the dreams with you, America is 
 more likely to realize the dreams such as you 
 brought. 
 
 So if you come into this great nation, you 
 will have to come voluntarily, seeking some- 
 thing which we have to give. All that we have 
 to give is this : we cannot exempt you from 
 work. We cannot exempt you from strife, 
 the heart-breaking burden of the struggle of 
 the day that has come to mankind everywhere. 
 We cannot exempt you from the loads that you 
 must carry : we can only make them light by 
 the spirit in which they arc carried, because 
 it is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, 
 it is the spirit of justice. 
 
 Our State, even in its small communities, 
 cannot be held together by race nor by religion. 
 For a unifying force we must find a living ex- 
 pression of a great common ideal : we must 
 depend upon a community of interest : we
 
 THE COMMUNITY 19 
 
 must find an institution in which great and 
 small can find expression. The art of the 
 theatre, or more precisely, the allied arts of 
 the theatre, are utterly calculated to perform 
 this service.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Sociological Theatre: Playgrounds and 
 Pageants 
 
 A solemn small boy bent double over a 
 sand pile is not an unusual sight. Drawing 
 deep breaths in his concentration, he remains 
 absorbed until the task which he has set for 
 himself is completed. Then, with a glance of 
 triumphant pride, he is likely to turn to the 
 nearest bystander with some such brevity as 
 "See!" 
 
 It used to be only on beaches at the seashore 
 and in back yards that we came upon children 
 thus, but now even in the most crowded parts 
 of our precipitate cities, there are scattered 
 groups, the nucleus of a giant organism, the 
 germ of the recreation centre. And the flat, 
 insignificant sand bin traces its growth back 
 through a numerous, distinguished ancestry. 
 In its extraordinary pedigree are names which 
 20
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 21 
 
 seem to have little in common with an un- 
 assuming heap of sand. Plato, Kant, Hegel, 
 Schiller, Froebel, Groos, and James are there, 
 with Stanley Hall, Judge Lindsey, and Joseph 
 Lee. The thought of generations conceived, 
 and the practical, present-day energy gave 
 birth to it. But it does not rest on the glory 
 of its family tree : it is not only a descendant 
 of illustrious persons. The sand pile is already 
 an ancestor : it has given us the recreation 
 centre, the city playground. And from the 
 playground other great gifts are coming. 
 
 "See," demands the small sand digger, and 
 holds up a box cover mounded with the shining 
 grains. What do we see ? Not a mud pie : 
 this is rather a doorway opened into the long 
 corridors of man's most ancient instincts. 
 Here is the culmination of the universal im- 
 pulse to play, the psychological analysis of 
 that impulse, and its relation to the history 
 of mankind's progress. 
 
 From antiquity there has been discussion of 
 the values of play. But with the new science 
 of psychology came a discovery which gave it 
 a fresh importance, that is, that play is not
 
 22 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 only useful but actually necessary to human 
 life. The study of play and its subdivision 
 into categories is complex and often confusing : 
 it is sufficient to say that we have seen it proved 
 how play, directed, becomes education. 
 
 This great contribution to our constructive 
 philosophy came from Germany, and is amaz- 
 ingly modern. Froebel, to whom we turn for a 
 crystallization of the ideas most fundamental 
 in child psychology, assures us that education 
 must be through self-activity. The child, 
 playing, molds himself into a man. By 
 struggling with the gesture, he learns the 
 meaning. So the kindergarten, out-of-doors, 
 with its gartener to lead and direct the chil- 
 dren's happy occupation, may well be called 
 the first playground. 
 
 But when we turn to those centres of city 
 recreation which are given the name in America, 
 we find the earliest attempts coming from iso- 
 lated benevolent social organizations. The 
 first playgrounds were in Boston, but sponta- 
 neous growths having no apparent connection 
 with them followed in New York and in other 
 cities. In the year 1906, the Playground
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 23 
 
 Association of America was organized, although 
 at that time there were only twenty cities in 
 which playgrounds were being kept alive. The 
 number has grown by leaps and bounds, the 
 activities have increased and multiplied : no 
 longer a group of sand piles in a vacant lot 
 constitutes all that is necessary ; there is 
 complex apparatus and a trained corps of 
 directors. And from the impulse of scattered 
 individuals, it has become a movement of 
 municipalities. 
 
 The primary function of the playground was 
 to give space and opportunity for children to 
 satisfy their natural and necessary impulse 
 to play. Sand boxes, with other equipment 
 — swings, slides, and seesaws — were erected 
 in a vacant lot, and the playground pronounced 
 ready for use. But the friction which always 
 results from human relations was not lacking 
 in this case : trouble followed the gathering 
 of so many and so varied children in one small 
 spot : the need for a director was immediately 
 apparent. Moreover, if the play was to educate 
 as well as to occupy, it must be led into the 
 proper channels. For that play which has the
 
 24 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 highest value for the molding of the man is 
 not the individual play in a sand pile, but the 
 cooperative play of group games. 
 
 So the playground has satisfied first the desire 
 to retrace in each individual the history of the 
 mysterious race of mankind ; the little child 
 swings high and low with an exultation which 
 he does not ask to understand, and dabbles 
 in warm or moist sand, renewing some ancient 
 emotional memory. Then he grows older. He 
 comes to be aware of the existence of his fellows, 
 he is taught loyalty and team play, the value 
 of sacrifice to the whole, of which he is a part. 
 Friendship and loyalty, obedience to rules, 
 and the qualities of leadership are thus 
 developed. The intellect enters the play- 
 ground, whereupon play touches aesthetics, 
 and a new element is introduced. 
 
 It was not long after the founding of the first 
 playgrounds that the builders thought it wise 
 to make them as agreeable to the eye as 
 possible. It may have been that the folk dances 
 were made part of the programme for the 
 sake of the girls, but it seems more likely 
 that they developed naturally from singing
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 25 
 
 and dancing games, dear to childhood since the 
 beginning of time. Rhythm is an important 
 factor in play. "Dressing-up", even in a 
 kerchief and apron, is fun. The dance can be 
 exhibited to parents at the end of the season, 
 reacting pleasantly on the life of the play- 
 ground, as well as on the child, by linking it 
 with the home interests. Dances are at first 
 isolated ; then they are strung together in groups, 
 in order that they may have coherence for their 
 final performance. Have we not thus prepared 
 the way for the more complex arts of the 
 theatre ? 
 
 The playground originated for the purpose 
 of furthering physical health ; but not long 
 after it was discovered that physical and 
 mental well-being cannot be separated. From 
 disorganized material, the iron swings made of 
 gas-pipe and a teeter with one vacant end high 
 in the air, there has been a steady growth to 
 the May party whose chanting chorus merrily 
 salutes a flower-bedecked and laughing queen. 
 The child who spent his playtime in the sand 
 heap comes again to the playground for diver- 
 sion when he is older : unconsciously he slips
 
 26 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 from one stage of development to another; 
 when he outgrows the isolated digging in the 
 sand he joins group games, he becomes — as 
 Mr. Joseph Lee phrases it — "an Injun" 
 following the leader of the team; he submits 
 to discipline until he is a trained member of 
 the playground community. Upon reaching 
 this more purely mental point, he realizes 
 that he is no longer a child but that under the 
 veil of a cultivated taste has retained all the 
 child's desire to play. He wishes an in- 
 tellectual and emotional outlet in his playtime, 
 a demand which has been answered in many 
 playgrounds over the country by the establish- 
 ment of an annual pageant in which old and 
 young take part. 
 
 The pageant is the most flexible form of 
 dramatic expression. It is a loose-jointed 
 member of the Theatre Family, and an adept 
 at contortions. Since Mr. Louis Parker's re- 
 vival of the form in England, it has been 
 customary to make the pageant round the 
 history of some locality, conferring a measure 
 of coherence upon the whole by devices like 
 the chorus of monks who chanted at intervals
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 27 
 
 during the Pageant of Saint Albans. It will 
 be understood that this flexible formula bends 
 comfortably to the needs of the playground 
 director. Holidays local or national may be 
 made memorable by its adoption : Indepen- 
 dence Day or the birthday of Daniel Boone 
 may be made real to the children. High 
 lights appear upon the solid color of the rou- 
 tine ; children and parents are interested ; the 
 whole is knit together into a new vitality. 
 
 Apart from the playground, the pageant has 
 had a great development in America, but 
 before tracing that growth in any detail, let 
 us look at certain other indications of the same 
 spirit. There are village celebrations on the 
 Fourth of July, with a common set of fireworks 
 and diversions. I have heard a whole village 
 sing familiar hymns in the town hall on a 
 summer Sunday in a little Maine town : I 
 have joined the crowd round Mr. Harry Barn- 
 hardt and lifted my voice with the others who 
 a moment before were, like me, mere passers- 
 by. During the last decade many towns have 
 adopted the practice of lighting a Christmas 
 tree out of doors in some conspicuous place.
 
 28 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 No one who has wandered up Beacon Hill 
 from the crowded Church of the Advent, to 
 listen again to the clear voices of the carol lers 
 outside Saint Margaret's, will ever forget the 
 joy of the soft snow under his feet, and the 
 tingle of the Christmas air. The illuminated 
 windows of every house on the hill are a spoken 
 welcome. And when, after lustily singing on 
 the Common round the blazing tree, the friendly 
 crowd pauses to hear trumpeters announcing 
 Christmas Day from the porch of Saint Paul's 
 Cathedral, the feeling of community enjoy- 
 ment is complete. In New York, the Christmas 
 tree in Madison Square was accompanied, in 
 1915, by the performance of a Christmas 
 pantomime (of which pictures are given in 
 these pages) by Mr. Stewart Walker's Port- 
 manteau Theatre, erected there for that pur- 
 pose. The five thousand spectators stood as 
 entranced in the snow as if they had been sitting 
 in the luxury of an enticing Little Theatre ! 
 
 But because of its peculiarly adaptable 
 nature, the pageant has manifested more than 
 any other phenomena the desire of the com- 
 munity for unity and expression. Pageants
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 29 
 
 have existed always : to discover the first we 
 must pass into the time when history was un- 
 recorded. Any event presented an excuse. 
 During the Middle Ages, these spectacles be- 
 came elaborate and usual. The entry of 
 royalty into a city, a birth, a christening, a 
 betrothal or marriage, the return of a vic- 
 torious army, or the birthday of a favorite, 
 might be celebrated by the disporting of the 
 populace. In the history of France and of 
 England the outlines of many colorful pageants 
 are preserved, with plates representing the 
 richness of the costumes and elaborate de- 
 scriptions of the gorgeous trappings. The 
 whole city, young, old, tradespeople, nobles, 
 and paupers, joined in these revels : the aim 
 was to let every one share the common emotion. 
 Nor is the aim of the modern pageant differ- 
 ent, but it has added a corollary : the new 
 pageant strives to unite the body politic by 
 means of the celebration of its general joy. 
 The Master of the Revels, the Lord of Misrule, 
 has been superseded by a new master, who with 
 the functions of his forerunner has combined 
 the ambition of the statesman. His pageant
 
 30 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 celebrates a day of public rejoicing, fitly and 
 beautifully, but at the same time it must quicken 
 the community consciousness, it must revive 
 fellowship and the common ambitions of the 
 component parts. 
 
 The history of the pageant as an art form in 
 America actually goes back to the beginnings 
 of the oldest colony : the Merry Mount Revels 
 appeared in 1627. But although there were 
 sporadic instances during the first two hundred 
 years of our growth (in the Revolutionary War 
 British soldiers gave a pageant in Philadelphia), 
 the first use of the name, and the earliest cele- 
 bration in the form by which we characterize 
 our pageants was in Marietta, Ohio. In 1888 
 this romantic town was the scene of a pageant, 
 actually called by the name, in which incidents 
 from its own vivid history were represented. 
 However, the development of the pageant did 
 not steadily follow the initiative of Marietta. 
 It was not until after Mr. Parker's brilliant 
 successes in England — Sherborne, Winchester, 
 Oxford, and Bury St. Edmunds — that the 
 enthusiasm on this side of the Atlantic was 
 strong enough to make pageants numerous.
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 31 
 
 As the number of pageants increased in our 
 cities, the form became in a measure localized. 
 The pageants of the revival of pageantry, set 
 in motion when Mr. Parker in England created 
 the Pageant of Sherborne, were, as I have said, 
 loosely connected series of historical scenes. 
 There was usually some allegorical symbolical 
 figure or chorus by which they were joined, but 
 this device had little value in itself. When, 
 on the other hand, pageantry became a 
 frequent adventure of the American people, 
 the symbolical element was magnified. In 
 Mr. Parker's pageants there is a glorification 
 of the past : in Mr. MacKaye's pageant- 
 masque there is a promise for the future through 
 the reviewing of the past. No doubt the 
 Puritan blood which flows so strongly in the 
 veins of America has some part in this ten- 
 dency : it may also be caused by the fact that 
 we are accustomed to think of ourselves as a 
 nation with a future rather than a past ; but 
 the desire of the makers of the new pageant 
 to knit the community into a better whole by 
 means of it is also a fundamental reason. 
 Whatever causes and forces have contributed
 
 32 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 to this result, the symbolical character of the 
 American pageant is its most vital factor, 
 and from the symbolical pageant we have 
 developed a new form, the pageant-masque. 
 
 From the year 1911, the list of pageants 
 grows increasingly varied ; large and small 
 towns vie for first place in enthusiasm ; towns 
 and cities represented spread from California 
 to Massachusetts : no occasion seems to be 
 neglected. The Peterborough Pageant in 
 memory of Edward MacDowell, the Glouces- 
 ter Pageant, the Pageant of Wisconsin, the 
 Pageant of the Northwest — one treads upon 
 the heels of the other. But the Municipal 
 Pageant of St. Louis in 1914 has in a measure 
 established a valuable precedent, because its 
 proportions were so huge and impressive. 
 
 The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis has 
 been published, but to the student of the 
 sociological theatre the report of committees 
 compiled after the production is even more 
 interesting. This brief pamphlet is a paean of 
 praise. To read it is like listening to festival 
 music ; voice follows voice in lifting strain 
 after strain of joy, and the solos are supported
 
 PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 33 
 
 by a chorus of thousands — the citizens who 
 made the celebration a success. The bare 
 statement of work accomplished is a revelation 
 of what demands the venture made : no 
 channel of usefulness was left untapped : every 
 thread of service was gladly woven into the 
 web. But behind the setting down of facts 
 there is the same spirit in the reports made by 
 those committee chairmen that was clear in 
 the reading of the masque and the pageant — 
 the spirit of service, the spirit of fellowship, 
 the spirit of brotherhood. 
 
 Other cities have accepted the challenge of 
 St. Louis ; last season New York, and Newark, 
 New Jersey, made use of the community 
 pageant and masque. Already the banner is 
 going forward. The spirit of neighborliness 
 which gathered city children into playgrounds 
 has flourished there, and the breath of brother- 
 hood is blowing across the land.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Sociological Theatre: Caliban 
 
 Caliban by the Yellow Sands, Mr. MacKaye's 
 masque in honor of the three hundredth anni- 
 versary of the death of William Shakespeare, 
 was presented in the City of New York in 1916. 
 It was far more ambitious than any previous 
 civic attempt, for New York is of all cities the 
 most complex, the most varied in population, 
 the most volatile : to unite her shifting thou- 
 sands into even a momentary unity seems 
 beyond belief or imagination. But the in- 
 troduction of the new art form to the great city 
 was a strategical masterstroke. In this coun- 
 try no work of art may hope for acceptance as 
 long as it lacks the stamp of metropolitan 
 genuineness. If New York has seen it, the 
 others will see it. Had New York withheld 
 her attention, no heights of technical finesse 
 could have made up for the loss. Therefore 
 
 34
 
 CALIBAN 35 
 
 it demands especial attention in the steady 
 advance of the community theatre. 
 
 But Caliban has other claims to importance 
 beside the accident that New York witnessed 
 its birth : Caliban is interesting in itself, as 
 an exponent of the new form of dramatic ex- 
 pression which Democracy is hewing from the 
 rock of her people. This form is in its infancy. 
 We cannot say to what lengths the pageant- 
 masque may go. Caliban was groping. In the 
 art of the theatre a new technique of expression 
 cannot be molded behind the curtains and 
 flashed upon the stage fully finished : to do 
 this would be to reckon without the audience. 
 The artists of the theatre must submit their 
 "rough drafts" to the good will of the audience, 
 must watch the feelings of the audience with 
 beating heart, and must remodel until the 
 summit of perfection is reached. 
 
 The great size of the Shakespeare masque 
 (its popular name) makes it unusually valuable 
 as an example ; every proportion is magnified, 
 and its beauties and blemishes alike are more 
 clearly revealed. 
 
 New York flung herself with an enthusiasm
 
 36 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 amounting til most to passion into the celebrat- 
 ing of Shakespeare's anniversary. The idea 
 arose from the annual meeting of the Drama 
 League of America, and the local centre of the 
 Drama League in New York was responsible 
 for the appointment of a committee to manage 
 the celebration in that city. With the assist- 
 ance of prominent people (his Honor the Mayor 
 made it official), a great campaign was started 
 to have the three hundredth year since Shake- 
 speare's death memorable for proofs of the 
 vitality of his work. His deathlessness was 
 to be attested by great and small, professional 
 and amateur productions of his plays ; dis- 
 cussions of every question connected with his 
 life and writing were to be encouraged ; the 
 series of lectures and readings were endless. 
 Finally, as a climax, a great out-of-door festival 
 was to be given, celebrating in as fit a fashion 
 as possible the debt which we owe through 
 life and art to the master-dramatist. 
 
 It was an amazing conception. And the 
 complexity of the committee's organization 
 is staggering. It far outreaches the work of 
 that triumphant pageant committee in St.
 
 CALIBAN 37 
 
 Louis. Public schools, private schools, 
 churches, recreation centres, parks, colleges, 
 clubs, libraries, and the profession of the 
 theatre were enlisted. The limits to which 
 cooperation can be carried seem to have been 
 reached when we hear of the sick children in 
 Bellevue Hospital learning Ariel's song from 
 the Tempest, and sitting propped against pillows 
 in their little beds to sew a pasted Shakespeare 
 picture book ! 
 
 The final celebration, the culmination of all 
 these thousands of minor festivities, was to be 
 one which united all the arts of the theatre, 
 and it was with this aim in view that Mr. Mac- 
 Kaye wrote Caliban for the occasion. In order 
 to understand wherein the masque fell below 
 and wherein it far surpassed the hopes of its 
 originators, let us look for a moment at the 
 outline as it. was published in the official pro- 
 gramme. 
 
 Description of the Masque 
 
 ACTION 
 
 The action lakes place, symbolically, on 
 three planes :
 
 38 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 [1] In the cave of Setebos [before and after 
 its transformation into the theatre of Pros- 
 peroj ; 
 
 [2] In the mind of Prospero [behind the 
 Cloudy Curtains of the Inner Stage] ; and 
 
 [3] On the ground-circle of "the Yellow 
 Sands" [the place of historic time]. 
 
 TIME 
 
 The Masque Proper is concerned, symboli- 
 cally, with no definite period of time, but with 
 the waxing and waning of the life of Dramatic 
 Art from primitive barbaric times to the verge 
 of the living present. 
 
 The interludes are concerned with ritualistic 
 glimpses of the art of the theatre during three 
 historical periods : [1] Antiquity, [2] the Middle 
 Ages, and [3] Elizabethan England. 
 
 The Epilogue is concerned with the creative 
 forces of dramatic art from antiquity to the 
 present, and — by suggestion — with the 
 future of those forces. 
 
 SETTING 
 
 The setting of the Masque is not a back- 
 ground of natural landscape as in the case of 
 most outdoor pageants, but is architectural 
 and scenic. Being constructed technically for 
 performance on a large scale, by night only, 
 its basic appeals are to the eye, through expert 
 illusions of light and darkness, architectural 
 and plastic line, the dance, color, and pageantry
 
 CALIBAN 39 
 
 of group movements ; to the ear, through in- 
 visible choirs, orchestral and instrumental 
 music. 
 
 The Masque Proper is enacted by profes- 
 sional actors, who, by their speech, give the 
 motives of the large scale pantomime in the 
 Interludes. 
 
 The Interludes unfold the theme in dances, 
 pageantry, choruses and pantomime, by hun- 
 dreds of community performers. In the 
 Epilogue the professional actors and the 
 numerous community performers unite. 
 
 Corresponding to this Inner Structure is 
 the Outer Structure, which consists of three 
 stages : 
 
 [1] A modified form of Elizabethan stage, 
 here called the Middle Stage, which is a raised 
 platform, and to which steps lead from the 
 Ground Circle. 
 
 [2] The Inner Stage, shut off from the 
 Middle Stage by Cloudy Curtains, which, 
 when drawn, reveal the Inner Shakespearean 
 Scenes conceived in the mind of Prospero. 
 
 [3] The Ground Circle, between the Middle 
 Stage and the Audience, resembling in form the 
 "Orchestra" of a Greek theatre. 
 
 Beneath the Middle Stage, and between the 
 Steps which lead up to it from the Ground 
 Circle, is situated, at centre, the mouth of 
 Caliban's cell, which thus opens directly upon 
 the Yellow Sands. 
 
 All of these features of the setting, however, 
 are invisible when the Masque begins, and are
 
 40 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 only revealed as the lightings of the action 
 disclose them. 
 
 Synopsis of Masque 
 
 GENERAL THEME 
 
 The four principal characters of the Masque, 
 Caliban, Ariel, Miranda, and Prospero, are 
 derived from those of Shakespeare's play "The 
 Tempest." Through these characters the 
 general theme is developed. 
 
 The theme of the Masque is the slow edu- 
 cation of mankind through the influences of 
 cooperative art, that is, of the theatre in its 
 full social scope. 
 
 This theme of cooperation is expressed 
 earliest in the Masque through the lyric of 
 Ariel's spirits, 
 
 "Come unto these Yellow Sands 
 And then take hands." 
 
 It is sounded with central stress, in the 
 chorus of peace, when the Kings clasp hands 
 on the Field of the Cloth of Gold ; and with 
 final emphasis in the gathering together of the 
 creative forces of dramatic art in the Epilogue 
 and the final speech of Caliban to the spirit 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 Space in which to trace the many incidents 
 of the action fails in so brief a review; the 
 reader who wishes to follow the education of
 
 CALIBAN 41 
 
 the brute may seek the published version of 
 the masque. It will well repay his attention. 
 There is in the reading a unity of effect which 
 was lost in the huge proportions of the pro- 
 duction : the reader becomes Caliban, learning 
 from the colorful pageant of the author's 
 imaging how, throughout ages of time, the arts 
 of the theatre have shown that man is spirit. 
 "We are such stuff as dreams are made on — " 
 The education of mankind, in Mr. MacKaye's 
 conception, is twofold, consisting both in the 
 inspiration which comes through the minds 
 of poets and dreamer-artists, and in growth 
 under the action of cooperation. Caliban, the 
 brute part of man, is taught by the spirit which 
 is the servant of the artist ; he sees a vision, he 
 strives to realize what he sees, and then again 
 is shown another vision, rousing him to new 
 effort and new achievement. So far all is 
 clear : the scenes from Shakespeare, illustrat- 
 ing the flashes of vision through the artist, 
 were conjured up for Caliban and, one after 
 the other, showed a definite effect upon him ; 
 the pageant of history, passing in the great 
 central ring of the amphitheatre — the arts
 
 42 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 of the theatre in the broad sense including 
 song and dance — swept by to show how men 
 had played together. Caliban crept on his 
 belly, then stood totteringly erect, and learned 
 to walk like a man : Lust, War, and Death 
 were overcome one by one, and Time rose to 
 promise more than had been accomplished. 
 But in spite of the beauty and the grandeur 
 of the production, as it was given in the circle 
 of the Stadium of the College of the City of 
 New York, I found it not as satisfying as the 
 reading had been, and far less complete than 
 the jumbled rehearsal which it had been my 
 privilege to witness several nights before the 
 first performance. 
 
 The causes of this imperfection are so closely 
 associated with the audience, and are so im- 
 portant in a social as well as an artistic sense, 
 that, far from being out of place in the dis- 
 cussion, they are necessary to our argument. 
 For instance, the great audience was in itself 
 a keen disappointment. It lacked the con- 
 centration and coherence which is the most 
 impressive quality in a crowd which fills a 
 great stadium for a football game : it was ill
 
 CALIBAN 43 
 
 at ease, nervous, restless, self-conscious, curious, 
 thoughtless, and diffuse. Only a small frac- 
 tion of the thousands who flocked into the 
 oval of seats had even seen a stadium filled 
 with people : the- vastness of the assembly, 
 the amazing rapidity with which things hap- 
 pened, the mysterious sensation of listening 
 to voices which came from a block away — 
 all these new experiences created a strangeness 
 which called for some great unifying emotion 
 to weld the thousand wandering minds into 
 one mind. One such moment did come near 
 the middle of the action, a moment which 
 stood out above all others as the fiery cross, 
 which symbolized it, flamed out above every 
 other scenic effect. 
 
 Caliban, from howling brutishly on his 
 belly, had been raised to the dignity of wearing 
 the trappings of art, through the teaching of 
 his master. Full of confidence, he grasped the 
 magic wand, himself to conjure up a vision. 
 At first he was successful; then, moved by the 
 vision of Brutus to a memory of what he had 
 seen in the revels of Caligula, he lifted his 
 wand and voice, and brutish once more, sum-
 
 44 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 moned the forces of Lust, the servant of his 
 ancient god and father. They flocked in from 
 the shadows where the old god's priests were 
 lurking, up from the grass and from the golden 
 sands of Time, and overran the masque stage, 
 the Temple of Art, in a glorious sordid rush. 
 The defenders of art crouched helpless against 
 the pillars of the defiled temple ; it seemed that 
 the Spirit of Beauty, the daughter of the artist, 
 would be torn from her shrine and defiled. 
 Then, to the sound of trumpets triumphant, 
 flashed against the sky the Cross, and in the 
 inner stage, where things of the mind were 
 revealed, appeared the vision of Saint Agnes 
 and her lamb, and A Shepherd, who proved 
 to be the Master-Artist himself. 
 
 It was a great moment ; without exception 
 opinion has judged it the greatest, I think. 
 The reason is fundamental and of the most 
 vital importance. At this instant there was 
 one centre of action, not three, as there were 
 even when only one centre of action was being 
 used, and the movement shifted among them. 
 For the most part, the spoken word of the 
 masque was concentrated upon the great masque
 
 CALIBAN 45 
 
 stage, the pageant of Time swept by in the 
 great yellow circle, and the flashes of Shake- 
 speare were shown by the opening of curtains 
 at the very back of all. But, at the point of 
 which I speak, the vision of the artist stirred 
 the brute to action; he in turn roused the mob 
 into actual participation in the masque-move- 
 ment, destructive but still action — to be 
 stilled once more by the flash of an inspira- 
 tion, pictured in the area sacred to mind. And 
 this clash, bringing the most unified and the 
 most emotional moment of the masque, gave 
 the audience its biggest thrill, a fact which 
 points clearly to the one weakness of the 
 conception and stage management. 
 
 The whole fundamental idea in Caliban, 
 just like the fundamental conception of a 
 community theatre, is the value in education 
 and growth, not only of seeing, but of feeling 
 and of doing. Mankind, stirred by imagina- 
 tion through the inspiration of a seer, acts, and 
 so learns. So Caliban should not merely have 
 watched the pageant of Time, as it passed 
 before him, at the word of the artist. The 
 visions of the artist were the flashes of spirit
 
 46 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 which reached even his sordidness, but the 
 action on the sands of time — the Egyptians 
 writhing in religious ecstasy, the Greeks re- 
 joicing in the joy of perfect physical beauty, 
 and the Romans flinging the pearls of art 
 before the swine of low desires, all these were 
 not pictures thrown upon a screen for Caliban 
 to watch. They were Caliban. Caliban, wor- 
 shiping the gods of ancient Egypt with dance 
 and rhythmic motion, Caliban reaching sum- 
 mits of art, but with his feet still the feet of a 
 monster, and finally, Caliban succumbing to 
 the old monstrous strength and weakness. 
 We could have wished to see him thus clothed 
 in the garments of Time, and "taking hands, 
 upon these yellow sands." In this way the 
 continuity, which is so evident in reading Mr. 
 MacKaye's play, would have been apparent 
 in the mammoth production. 
 
 Curiously enough, the rehearsal — dis- 
 jointed, disorganized, fragmentary, and un- 
 finished — gave a feeling of unity that the 
 performance failed to give. The memory of 
 it will linger long in my mind as the exponent 
 of the Masque Idea.
 
 CALIBAN 47 
 
 Dusk was falling over the Stadium of the 
 College of the City of New York. The horse- 
 shoe of seats, curiously knit together of wood 
 and cement, was empty, suggesting for the 
 moment some dream of antiquity, some reminis- 
 cence of the Roman amphitheatre awaiting the 
 spectacle of lions or of gladiators. From the 
 flat end, where a stage had been built, the 
 hoarse shouts of the master-carpenter rose 
 over the hollow beats of a hammer. The 
 great face of Setebos, a painted horror, still 
 wet, grinned up at groups of boys and girls 
 who began to straggle in through the narrow 
 stage entrances to the grass ring in the centre. 
 Over in one corner an energetic game of base 
 ball proved that this was not the Roman 
 Empire, but the United States of America. 
 
 Behind the stage there was bustle, but little 
 confusion. Tickets were given out by assist- 
 ants, and a line had formed before a window 
 marked "Costumes", while in the dressing- 
 rooms activity was beginning, and the First 
 Aid tent awaited patronage. 
 
 With the coming of darkness the continually 
 augmented groups were drawn into a solid whole.
 
 48 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 Each group formed a quiet audience to the per- 
 formances of the others, waiting with extraor- 
 dinary patience for the call which mobilized 
 their "turn." The services of the brisk ushers 
 were rarely needed to quiet disturbance or 
 to hush talking. Through a megaphone the 
 director from a platform encouraged, ha- 
 rangued, and exhorted the hundreds of actors 
 who were taking part in the interludes. 
 
 A rehearsal, even a complete rehearsal, is 
 curiously lacking in proportion and in emphasis. 
 But here was a rehearsal only half costumed, in 
 which episodes followed each other without 
 attempt at logic. Now youths in Greek tunics 
 swept across the field, half revealed in the dim 
 light, swaying and moving like some animation 
 of an old frieze. They were followed, in 
 comical contrast, by a man in a well-cut over- 
 coat and derby hat, who rode in a chariot of 
 exotic design, drawn by half-naked slaves, 
 and balancing across his knee a Roman dancing 
 maiden whose companions ran after the pro- 
 cession with little cries. Then, with a sudden 
 change, they were gone, and the field was 
 flooded with new figures. They moved
 
 CALIBAN 49 
 
 steadily, slowly, with increasing precision to 
 the jigging strains of the Tides well Morris 
 Dance : they came on and on until there 
 seemed to be no end. These were Shake- 
 speare's own merrymakers, come to set up the 
 Maypole of Jollity on the shores of our Puritan 
 land. And, as if recognizing their importance, 
 the quiet watchers in the shadows burst into 
 applause which echoed through the spaces of 
 the great stadium like a prophecy. 
 
 Meanwhile, — unaware of the presence of any 
 one else, — the persons of the masque proper 
 were busy with their lines and action upon 
 the nearly finished stage. Over the whole, 
 the electrician sent flashes of magical light, and 
 the chorus, invisible above the stage, some- 
 times accompanied the action, and some- 
 times wandered away at its own sweet will. 
 
 From every reasonable point of view, the 
 effect should have been a hodgepodge. And to 
 the tired workers who had been struggling so 
 long to make a coherent whole, it no doubt 
 seemed a nightmare. For weeks many of 
 them had sacrificed their evenings, coming to 
 rehearsals under difficulties, and returning
 
 50 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 wearily to beds from which the ordinary busi- 
 ness of the day would call them promptly the 
 next morning. The work was done not easily, 
 but with an effort, and because of the sacrifice 
 and difficulty which they represented, the 
 pictures were strung one after the other upon the 
 spirit of fellowship as beads hang upon a silken 
 thread. Underneath and through the medley 
 throbbed the inspiration of a great cooperative 
 feeling. 
 
 . There was a friendly neighborliness about the 
 entire gathering which seemed as out of place 
 in New York as, a baby carriage in Times 
 Square. Nothing pleasant and friendly was 
 surprising. A slim lady in Egyptian draperies 
 was accosted in the shadowy region behind the 
 scenes by an Elizabethan maiden who proved 
 to be a college classmate. Not even the slight- 
 est greeting passed between them, merely a 
 brisk, casual question and answer. "Oh, 
 Ann," cried the newcomer, "have you seen 
 Marjorie Trump?" "Not since Class day!" 
 was the calm reply. "I am sorry." And 
 the Egyptian lady passed into her dress- 
 ing room without realizing that it had been
 
 CALIBAN 51 
 
 an equal length of time since she greeted her 
 questioner ! 
 
 Even more unusual perhaps was the country- 
 town joviality which prevailed among the 
 audience. Those thousands had a genuine in- 
 terest, and a curiosity which was far from idle. 
 The friendly flock on the Broadway car which 
 carried me northward might have been migrat- 
 ing toward the circus on an annual outing. 
 They were chatty. They laughed at the lack 
 of seats, even at the lack of standing room. 
 Every one felt that this was a holiday, for his 
 neighbor as well as for himself. But chief of 
 them all was the genial conductor. He begged 
 the packed passengers to "step up forward", 
 with patently false promises of "more room up 
 front." He argued that by stepping forward 
 they would be that much nearer " the show." 
 He crowded in dozens where there should have 
 been two or three ; he threatened, coaxed, 
 and wheedled until the car was shaken with 
 quick ripples of laughter. At every stop he 
 called with genial deference to warn a crushed 
 little woman huddled against the door, "Are 
 ye ready, lady dear?" in order that she
 
 52 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 might not drop out as the door opened. In 
 leaving, I expressed the desire that the conductor 
 might be going with us all. He shook his gray 
 head vigorously. "Sure," he answered blithely, 
 with a smile which would have delighted the 
 organizers of the masque could they have seen 
 it, "who would bring them all up here, if I went 
 gallivantin'?" 
 
 Then too, the bus which carried me away from 
 the spectacle was filled with people who were 
 talking of Caliban. Some were pleased, others 
 unmoved, and one or two frankly puzzled; but 
 they were all eager to discuss what they had 
 seen. " Can you tell me what it was all about ? " 
 one woman anxiously asked me. I handed her 
 a programme instead of answering, pointing 
 to certain lines ; whereupon, above the noise of 
 the jolting, she read the synopsis of the action 
 aloud, and we all listened. 
 
 However, the faults of this greatest commu- 
 nity festival which we have attempted are less 
 important than the promise which it carried of 
 progress to better and greater achievement. 
 The technique of the spectacle-drama will 
 change; the fundamental conception will not
 
 CALIBAN 53 
 
 often, I think, be as purely intellectual as the one 
 which was destined to do honor to Shakespeare. 
 Thus the audience will become accustomed to 
 thinking of itself in the large terms necessary 
 under the arch of heaven and the stars. But 
 surely the drama of the community will become 
 not an occasional occurrence, not a sporadic 
 growth, but a national institution. Caliban 
 has opened the door into an unexplored garden, 
 rich with no one knows what fruits. The com- 
 munity masque is one of the many signs which 
 point indisputably to the establishment of a 
 community theatre, for the community masque 
 has proved valuable in bringing out temporarily 
 the qualities in the community which we seek, 
 by means of the community theatre, to establish 
 permanently. The joy of play, the joy of co- 
 operation, the expression of joy through art, 
 the pleasure of creation, tin; unifying force of a 
 common interest, all were evident in the masque. 
 In a community theatre they would be continued 
 instead of lapsing at the end of one artistic 
 blooming. The masque is the apple tree which 
 flowers in the spring; the theatre is like the 
 orange, rich perpetually in blooms and in fruit !
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Little Theatres 
 
 What is often called "The Little Theatre 
 Movement" is vigorous in this country, al- 
 though it is young. Because it covers a short 
 period of time, and because it is less a definite 
 movement than a number of sporadic and inde- 
 pendent protests against an existing condition 
 which grope toward a common goal still vague 
 — for all these reasons, generalizations about 
 the Little Theatre are apt to prove premature 
 judgments. However, it may safely be asserted 
 that the enthusiasm for small theatres indepen- 
 dent of the organization which we call "the com- 
 mercial theatre" is like the spirit which initiates 
 the pageant and the community masque, evi- 
 dence of the awakening of the American audi- 
 ence to active participation in the art of 
 the theatre. In certain places interest in 
 the dramatic expression of common emotion 
 
 54
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 55 
 
 has taken the form of the pageant or the pageant- 
 masque. In others the emotion has been con- 
 fined to a smaller space and fewer people, and 
 the results have lasted a longer time by means 
 of some locally organized theatrical enterprise. 
 Each is a definite step toward the establishment 
 of the institution to be the ultimate fulfilment 
 of both desires — the community theatre. 
 
 To trace the history of the Little Theatre from 
 its beginnings on the continent, fascinating as 
 it would be, is not my purpose here. Just what 
 social and artistic influences have been brought 
 to bear on, let us say, the Prairie Playhouse of 
 Galesburg, Illinois, by such theatres as Antoine's 
 and Reinhardt's, or by the New Free Folk 
 Stage in Berlin (to which several managements 
 refer with admiration) would be an interesting 
 problem, but one which would prove, I think, 
 insoluble. The history of the Little Theatre is 
 unimportant as yet ; we must think of the 
 future and the present rather than of the past. 
 
 For convenience I have placed in the Appen- 
 dix a list of the Little Theatres of America. It 
 is as complete as possible. At this time of 
 expansion, the list must necessarily fail to
 
 5G THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 include some of the newest ventures ; no doubt 
 since the compilation fresh Little Theatres have 
 come into being, and it may be that valuable 
 but unadvertised efforts have escaped my no- 
 tice. Most fervently do I hope so, for it is from 
 these simple, unsophisticated places that the 
 theatre will draw most strength. However, 
 such examples as have come to my hand fall 
 naturally into two classes : just as the theatre 
 has been divided by the footlights into artists 
 and audience, so the new theatres have had their 
 origin upon one side or the other of that same 
 line; on the one hand there are organizations 
 which owe their existence to the inspiration of 
 some artist, and on the other there are those 
 which came from a social need visualized by an 
 outstanding figure or figures in the audience or 
 social body. These two classes might be called 
 the Art Theatres_and the Economic Theatres in 
 order that they may be distinguished. 
 
 Of the first type I shall speak briefly. They 
 have been largely a reflection of the new art of 
 the theatre as it was known in France, in Ger- 
 many, and in Russia. They are half -measures. 
 But they are not for that reason to be in the least
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 57 
 
 condemned ; rather they are to be encouraged 
 and commended, not because "half-a-loaf is 
 better than no bread ", but because as half- 
 measures they are a long step toward the thing 
 for which we are struggling. It is a bright 
 prognostication that when we look for instances 
 of spontaneous and apparently isolated attempts 
 to bring something fresh and lovely into the 
 theatre, we find many shrines with ardent wor- 
 shippers. There is a Little Theatre in Balti- 
 more and one in Los Angeles ; Louisville, Ken- 
 tucky, has one, and so has a tiny settlement at 
 Blue Hill, Maine. As far as it is possible to 
 tell, the beginnings have been practically con- 
 temporaneous. The difference of a few months 
 in the dates of founding may be disregarded. 
 
 But, in spite of a class similarity, there is 
 great variety in the details of the organization 
 of these Little Theatres. Many of the asso- 
 ciations are limited by the size of their place of 
 production to a narrow list of subscribers, who 
 make up the small audience and whose annual 
 subscriptions furnish funds for the productions. 
 Casts for such theatres seem usually to be either 
 professional actors or talented amateurs who
 
 58 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 come from without as well as within the cor- 
 porate body. Such a theatre was The Toy 
 of Boston, when it flourished in Mrs. Gale's 
 erstwhile stable in Lime Street. The Vagabond 
 Players suffer a similar limitation in their little 
 converted barroom, of which a photograph is 
 included in this volume. If the playhouse holds 
 only sixty-two persons, the clientele cannot be 
 too varied ! 
 
 Artistically, the very smallness of our Little 
 Playhouses has produced surprisingly big re- 
 sults. The Little Theatres have influenced the 
 arts of the theatre — the arts of scene-painting 
 and of acting, especially — much more than we 
 realize. Nothing could be as convincing an 
 argument for simplicity as the intimacy of a 
 tiny theatre; the scene must be cleared of too 
 much detail and clutter, and the action must be 
 restrained and perfectly simple. Mr. Livingston 
 Piatt, from The Toy Theatre, Mr. Raymond 
 Johnson, from The Chicago Little Theatre, Mr. 
 Frank Zimmerer, whose early work was done in 
 settlement houses, are names of weight even in 
 professional circles : they have been trained in 
 a hard school where distance must be a matter
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 59 
 
 of perspective, illusion, and light, and they 
 learned to make magic from that training. 
 Whatever may be said about freeing art from the 
 bonds of convention, it is conceded, I believe, 
 that limitations serve as a goad to an artist in 
 his apprenticeship. And the narrow prosce- 
 nium, the lack of space, the closeness of the 
 audience, all call for skill and ingenuity which 
 the harassed worker seldom appreciates at the 
 moment of the struggle. T he acting too __haS- 
 been si mplifi ed, and^the actor has often been 
 given opportunities of experiment and variety 
 in his interpretation which the methods of our 
 professional theatre forbid. 
 
 But what was fortunate in the artistic light 
 has been unlucky from the social angle. In- 
 stead of social theatres, we have had society 
 theatres, a wholly different matter. Naturally, 
 the fostering group, in many cases, has been the 
 group which has leisure, and that group is the 
 one which is most sophisticated, most influenced 
 by the tradition of the old theatre and of the old 
 world, the one which has least need of an outlet 
 for emotion, and which does not suffer from the 
 lack of beauty. Not long ago in a small city
 
 60 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 rich in tradition and in history, far removed 
 from the centres of artistic life, and teeming 
 with youth and enthusiasm, certain intelligent 
 people were discussing an entertainment to ac- 
 company the municipal Christmas tree. The 
 most eager of them all — the arbiter eligantia- 
 rum — shook her head regretfully. "We could 
 not do it," she said, with discouragement in her 
 face and voice, " it is too difficult to persuade the 
 young people to take part even in a small 
 performance. If we want financial support, we 
 must have people in our plays who can bring 
 their families, and debutantes have so many 
 parties that they are bored by the suggestion." 
 And instantly there came to my mind the story 
 told by Mrs. Henniger of a little girl who was 
 backward in her class at school, shy, ill at ease, 
 and seemingly stupid, until she was put into a 
 cast of The Little Princess. There she was one 
 of the children at the "party." As rehearsals 
 progressed, her shyness vanished. The little 
 girls were encouraged to work out each her own 
 individual action, and the little shy one, who 
 could not dance, wept bitterly for fear she might 
 be sent away. But when she was told that she
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 61 
 
 could think of something to do herself, her little 
 brain scurried about, and she triumphantly 
 suggested that she might turn the leaves of the 
 music for the girl who played the piano! The 
 fact that she was "promoted" that term in 
 school may not have helped the door receipts of 
 The Little Princess, but it certainly had a value. 
 And what a contrast she offers to the debu- 
 tantes who are so busy with parties that they 
 have no time for a thing of beauty ! Surely there 
 is no limitation so rigid and unyielding as the 
 barrier set up by "Society." To make the 
 Little Theatre unfailingly useful, it must be 
 freed from that bond. 
 
 Another type of the Art Little Theatre which 
 has contributed not a little to our art of the 
 theatre is that which is subsidized by a patron, 
 such as The Los Angeles Little Theatre, and 
 The Lake Forest Players, and several tiny sum- 
 mer theatres in the villages of New England. 
 Most of these have a purely local importance, I 
 think, and therefore do not call for especial at- 
 tention here. But one which flourishes under 
 a benevolent despotism has made itself so 
 noticed that we must pause and examine it in
 
 62 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 some detail — I mean The Neighborhood Play- 
 house in New York. 
 
 The Neighborhood Playhouse, in a city full 
 of theatres, far away in a quiet corner, on the 
 pitiful, promise-blessed East Side of the great 
 city, has made more than one commercial pro- 
 ducer squirm under the glare of his spotlight. 
 Unlike many or most of the Little Theatres in 
 our country, it has a deep root in so funda- 
 mental a thing as race : in its purely neighbor- 
 hood manifestation, it gives exquisite expression 
 to the beauty sleeping in the mind of the long 
 silenced Jewish people. The neighborhood of 
 which the theatre is the mouthpiece is the 
 crowded and stifled one which huddles round the 
 Nurses' Settlement in Henry Street. For years 
 the work in dramatic classes has been laying a 
 foundation upon which the beauty of The 
 Neighborhood Playhouse has been based. The 
 art classes, the sewing classes, and other 
 branches of the Settlement have made con- 
 tributions. The generous founders are young 
 women who give not only a liberal endowment 
 of money but of taste and imagination as well, 
 besides strenuous, continued, mental and physi-
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 63 
 
 cal labor. They desire ardently that the theatre 
 express all that is fine in the ancient and modern 
 life of the people. Beautiful old Jewish rituals 
 have been revived, bright with color and swing- 
 ing with the joyful motion of the East, to take 
 a place beside much that is excellent in modern 
 dramatic writing. An occasional play has been 
 given in Yiddish. The settings are unfailingly 
 interesting and often very beautiful. The 
 personnel of the cast is prevailingly of the neigh- 
 borhood, and although top hats do appear there, 
 the audience is chiefly drawn from the Lower 
 East Side. 
 
 A performance in The Neighborhood Play- 
 house is never stupid to the student. It may 
 be an interesting experiment, and often it is 
 an achievement of definite artistic value. But 
 the general policy of the playhouse is the Settle- 
 ment policy. Unusual artistic fare is provided 
 for the community under the leadership of 
 women of high ideals, but that fare is, after all, 
 given. The underlying spirit of the place is a 
 benevolent one : the people work together, they 
 give expression to emotions of their race, but 
 they are never free. It may be that the need,
 
 64 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 in the situation in which The Neighborhood 
 Playhouse finds itself, is for such an educational 
 and protective organization. The young people 
 of Grand Street are part of New York, and many 
 of them are totally unfit for the life of that city. 
 It is not my intention to criticize the evident 
 good which has been accomplished by Settlements 
 in great cities, but their policy is acknowledged 
 to be one of expediency. They are the First 
 Aid class of Social Science. They put the in- 
 jured member into a splint, but do not set it. 
 After the First Aider must come one who will 
 make it possible for Nature to finish the work 
 of healing ! So the force of humanity is always 
 making achievement, under the guidance of 
 some great constructor who leads without di- 
 recting. To return to our special instance, 
 The Neighborhood Theatre will realize the ideal 
 of a community theatre only when it becomes 
 a self-governing body. Until that time it may 
 do excellent work, but it is not providing for its 
 own future. And although this change would 
 mean a temporary lowering of the artistic level 
 which it undoubtedly has set for itself, it would 
 substitute an ever broadening horizon.
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 65 
 
 Still a third division are those theatres which 
 have taken impetus from the success in England 
 and on the Continent, of playhouses with a 
 municipal endowment. At Northampton one 
 has continued for several years to furnish en- 
 tertainment for the undergraduates and faculty 
 of Smith College as well as for the inhabitants 
 of the Massachusetts manufacturing town : and 
 in Pittsfield another with a similar endowment 
 — the shares are owned by wealthy citizens — 
 is equally successful. These theatres are, of 
 course, professional, and they take their key- 
 note from Broadway, slightly tinged with popu- 
 lar intellectualism. They often do good work, 
 and express in a certain measure the tastes of 
 the audience, but they are not the possession of 
 the audience as the community theatre should 
 be the possession of the community. 
 
 Several attempts have been made to establish 
 repertory theatres in this country. The New 
 Theatre in New York combined with a repertory 
 idea the general aim of the theatre of the com- 
 munity magnified to national terms. The ex- 
 plosion of the notion that a national theatre 
 could be superimposed, which came with the
 
 66 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 failure of The New Theatre, was the contribu- 
 tion of that organization to the history of the 
 theatre. Later, in Boston, a repertory attempt 
 was made under the title of the Henry Jewett 
 Players, but the organization as it now exists 
 is on the basis of a stock rather than of a reper- 
 tory company. Finally, in New York once 
 more, Miss Grace George made a considerable 
 degree of success with one season of repertory 
 at The Playhouse in Forty-eighth Street, and it 
 is to be regretted that it has not been continued. 
 But the repertory theatre — whatever oppor- 
 tunities it may offer to artists of the theatre — 
 is not the final goal when it is unconnected with 
 the community. And the municipal theatre, 
 financed by a few shareholders for the benefit of 
 a town or city, is not completely enough of the 
 community to satisfy the most pressing demands. 
 Here and there are theatres which call them- 
 selves experimental. One of the earliest of these 
 was Professor Baker's "47 Workshop" which — 
 taking its numerical name from "English 47, — 
 Technique of the Drama", as listed in the 
 catalogue of Harvard University — was es- 
 tablished to provide a dramatic laboratory
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 67 
 
 for the students of Professor Baker's well- 
 known course. There in the insufficient theatre 
 of RadclifFe College, the plays which are being 
 written under Professor Baker's guidance are 
 given a hearing to an audience composed of in- 
 terested people whose written criticisms are a 
 valuable part of the routine. Here everything 
 is for the benefit of the author, or, as Professor 
 Baker himself writes: "What I should like to 
 have particularly emphasized is that the 47 
 Workshop is not simply a place for the trying- 
 out of our plays, but that it is a place where 
 anybody who has anything to offer in the 
 theatrical arts may have a hearing. We have 
 at present new and promising people at work 
 on theatrical design and costumes, training in 
 acting, and in all the departments behind the 
 curtain. We have recently established a Book- 
 shop on the evenings of the performances, at 
 which any published plays of the Harvard 
 Dramatic Club or the 47 Workshop maybe had." 
 This workshop idea of Professor Baker's has 
 been developed by one of his pupils in a most in- 
 teresting way at the University of North Dakota. 
 Professor Frederick Koch went out from Har-
 
 68 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 vard to a field which is infinitely richer in dra- 
 matic promise because it is nearer to a simple 
 and unsophisticated manner of living, and he has 
 with great wisdom clung as closely as he has 
 been able to the life of his prairie workmen. So 
 vigorous is the work of the Sock and Buskin 
 Society upon which the producing of plays falls, 
 that Professor Koch is able to write, " In these 
 few years it has been demonstrated to us that 
 practically the first generation of Americans 
 from the soil, from our prairie pioneers, can 
 translate its own thrilling life into new dramatic 
 and literary forms — convincing and beautiful, 
 and promising much toward a genuinely native 
 art yet to come." 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of all Professor 
 Koch's innovations, however, are the coopera- 
 tive pageants which he has produced upon his 
 lovely outdoor stage. These were the work not 
 of one man but of a class of twenty, working 
 in close and eager consultation, and yet they 
 read most convincingly. The celebration of 
 the Shakespeare Tercentenary was the occasion 
 for a pageant-masque in which the Master 
 Playwright was shown influenced by the strange
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 69 
 
 news of far-away America, thus tying North 
 Dakota to the days of good Queen Bess — as 
 was fitting and proper. Here is a community 
 laboratory : here is a lesson for universities, and 
 a great lesson for the community theatre when it 
 shall find itself in action. 
 
 The West, because it lacks so many posses- 
 sions of the East, is bound to have many things 
 for which the East may not hope. A rural 
 theatre is one of these, where plays are produced 
 for the country folk, and which is in a measure 
 a strolling players' group. This too is in North 
 Dakota, and it is under the management of Mr. 
 Arvold and the Agricultural College in Fargo. 
 I shall say more of the universities of the West 
 in a future chapter. 
 
 The rural theatre, rich with promise of joy 
 and life for the isolated farm dweller, brings me 
 naturally in my review of the many Little 
 Theatres to The Portmanteau Theatre of Stuart 
 Walker. Here is a true revival of the strolling 
 players ! Mr. Walker's stage packs up in boxes, 
 and his lovely scenes and magic lighting are sent 
 about the country, if not by parcel post, by a 
 method as expeditious. It is a new form of
 
 70 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 theatre which had its origin strictly within the 
 professional theatre, for Mr. Walker had a long 
 training under as conservative a master as Mr. 
 Belasco, but it has in its fresh youth and en- 
 thusiasm little of the faults of the theatrical 
 profession as we know it to-day. And although 
 it is far removed from any community — it is 
 the "Theatre without a home" always "on the 
 branch " — it has a very poignant message for 
 the community theatre. 
 
 First of all, The Portmanteau Theatre has 
 shown what can be done with little money and 
 some care and brain — as no other one theatrical 
 enterprise has done. And in the second place 
 it has cut loose from much of the paraphernalia 
 which has been considered an integral part of 
 theatrical production, and has made the simple 
 playing of delightful plays as possible in a barn 
 as on Broadway. Just what the ultimate de- 
 velopment of Mr. Walker's invention may be it 
 is not possible to say, but when the community 
 theatre becomes a reality it will undoubtedly 
 find The Portmanteau Theatre — or theatres — 
 its close ally. 
 
 In the brief examination given the Art
 
 I'licit!) l>y While Studio, Courtesy of Portmanteau Theatre. 
 CAMMKK (ilRTON'S NKKDLK 
 The \i^or;tn<l vitality of the ol<J e<jinc(ly I'lnphusi/ed Ijy the whimsy of the set.
 
 LITTLE THEATRES 71 
 
 Theatres, one or two instances have been 
 touched upon which might well come under the 
 Economic Theatre as well. The Neighborhood 
 Playhouse is one of these, and Professor Freder- 
 ick Koch's Laboratory in the Bankside Theatre 
 at the University of North Dakota is another. 
 There are many settlement houses where the 
 Dramatic Club might well be given the dignity 
 of the title Theatre, but they are too numerous 
 to require more than mention as a class. One of 
 them, the Hull House organization, which grew 
 up from Miss Addams' inspiration at Oberam- 
 mergau, stands out above the others because 
 of its age and its achievement ; it has had the 
 honor of producing for the first time many plays 
 of a serious, and more especially, of a sociological 
 nature — Galsworthy's Justice was one.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Democratic Institutions 
 
 The nature of democracy makes it very diffi- 
 cult to judge the institutions of democracy, 
 and to allot to each the measure of praise or of 
 blame which is its due. Other forms of na- 
 tional organization have an immediate attain- 
 ment which constitutes success, and without 
 it they are failures. It is simple, in history, to 
 trace the criterion by which to judge monarchies 
 and empires. The essence of kingship has never 
 been more perfectly phrased than in the famous 
 words of Louis the Fourteenth when he said, 
 "L'etat c'est moi." And when the State ceases 
 to exist primarily for the king, as soon as the 
 divine right to rule becomes a matter for ques- 
 tion — at that moment monarchy begins to 
 fail. So, in an empire, if the sovereignty of the 
 empire state is diminished, if the States become 
 equal in power, the empire ceases. And all in- 
 
 72
 
 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 73 
 
 stitutions of a monarchy which do not support 
 and pander to the power of the king are failures, 
 just as imperial institutions are failures when 
 they do not support the central sovereign State. 
 But the institutions of democracy present a 
 less simple problem. 
 
 Democracy is a dynamic condition. Democ- 
 racy cannot be static. The very ideal of de- 
 mocracy implies a goal and a progress as well : 
 democracy is the growth and the ever- vanishing 
 attainment. What democracy means we cannot 
 tell : we see only something toward which we 
 must strive with the utmost zeal. 
 
 What, then, is a democratic institution? 
 How is it to be tested? In a bureaucracy, 
 which presents the most natural contrast to a 
 democratic form of government, the aim is effi- 
 ciency, the precise smoothness of a well- 
 fashioned machine. Are we to apply this 
 standard to the institutions of democracy? It 
 is done again and again, but are those critics 
 who expect a mechanically perfect operation 
 [lie wisest? Are they not thoughtless when 
 they say that our organization is too cumber- 
 some, our public schools ill-managed, that there
 
 74 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 is waste of public moneys in the administration 
 of the town and state, that good men avoid 
 politics, and that offices are filled with rascals 
 under a system depending upon the mass of the 
 people ? Is it not evident that such criticisms, 
 no matter how true they may be, are not funda- 
 mentally a criticism of democracy or of demo- 
 cratic institutions ? 
 
 When we speak of democracy we speak in 
 terms of the spirit, whereas when we put our 
 ideals into action we are forced to employ the 
 means of mind and of body. Let us look for a 
 moment at the old bromide of democratic phi- 
 losophy — "All men are created free and ecfual." 
 How many times during the long march of 
 human progress has that pillar of fire blazed in 
 hope against the clouds of tyranny? We are 
 accustomed to think of it as having its origin 
 with Christianity; but the earliest barriers 
 were down even before that time, and century 
 by century the circle has widened, including 
 more and more of humanity. Yet now, perhaps 
 more than ever before, the differences in mental 
 and moral as well as physical equipment are 
 evident. Shall we, then, in spite of the varying
 
 — «5
 
 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 75 
 
 heritage, continue to believe that there is any 
 equality upon earth? Yes, "all men are 
 created free and equal" is none the less true be- 
 cause of the manifest inequalities in mankind's 
 physical, mental, and material birthright. For 
 freedom and equality are of the spirit, from 
 which democracy seeks to remove the handicap 
 by equalizing opportunity of mind and of body, 
 since spirit is so closely wrapped in its garment 
 of environment. 
 
 Democracy seeks to equalize opportunity. 
 Opportunity — there is undoubtedly the key- 
 note of democracy. Its institutions must be 
 weighed not for what they are actually achieving 
 alone, but for what they offer to those whom 
 they influence. They must carry within them- 
 selves the seed of their own perpetuation and 
 perfection. A democratic institution is more 
 than an organization to meet certain ends, to 
 solve certain immediate problems ; it is the solu- 
 tion of those problems through the extent of the 
 future as well. It must have not only efficiency, 
 but the power to grow, and if one element is 
 to be In excess of the other, the power to grow 
 is more imperative.
 
 76 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 In a certain city there arose not long ago the 
 need for a revision of the civic affairs. Several 
 new plans were proposed, of which two seemed 
 to be more practical than any others ; namely, 
 that a commission should be chosen to control 
 the city, or that it should be given into the hands 
 of an efficiency expert, a business manager. 
 Both these plans have been adopted by other 
 cities ; there was nothing in either suggestion 
 which was revolutionary. And yet that city 
 disposed of each in turn for equally sound 
 reasons. They argued that what a city needs, 
 what a city must have in order to be well gov- 
 erned, is not a capable business man, nor yet a 
 board of three capable business men in author- 
 ity, but good citizens. The city manager may 
 do well this year and next year, but what if the 
 citizens, either from lack of interest or from ac- 
 tual evil intent, choose for that position a bad 
 man ? Will the situation not be greatly aggra- 
 vated ? An absolute — or even a powerful — 
 authority, if it be wrong, has unlimited force. 
 And if the citizens are not all keenly alive to 
 their responsibilities, the power so delegated is 
 bound to come finally into evil hands. Thus
 
 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 77 
 
 the city decided that a popular representative 
 form of city government, closely responsible to 
 the citizens, was what they wanted, and instead 
 of changing their form of administration, they 
 set out upon a campaign of stirring the citizens 
 to interest and action. The results have not 
 been startling, but the city is growing more 
 promising every day. 
 
 Democracy has always seemed to me like a 
 giant statue in the sculptor's atelier. We have 
 the sculptor, his material and his idea, and in 
 a work of art the three are separate. But in 
 the democracy they are the same. The idea 
 exists, clear as long as it can be limited, possible 
 to perfect in miniature, but having, as a part of 
 its greatness, vast proportions and an heroic cast. 
 The perfect State could be made by the assem- 
 bling of certain limited people together, perhaps 
 — if they were the right people ; and yet, when 
 the attempt has been made, it has always proved 
 that the very limitation injured the perfection 
 of the ideal. The material of which the State 
 must be formed is the people. They are un- 
 trained. They need purification. And the 
 workman, the artist, he is represented by the
 
 78 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 people, untrained and groping, gaining a tech- 
 nique and a surety as he labors, growing as the 
 work grows in beauty and in power. The very 
 conception, the very thought of perfection will 
 be at first as vague and indifferent as the out- 
 lines of the statue when the artist first takes his 
 tool in hand, but as the work progresses and the 
 workman grows, the conception will gain in 
 beauty. 
 
 If we are willing to concede that democracy 
 seeks to give an equal opportunity for growth 
 to all of its citizens, it makes the testing of 
 democratic institutions less complex. The final 
 analysis must prove whether or not they permit 
 the greatest freedom of the individual without 
 limiting the freedom of the whole and the 
 growth of the institution. The public schools, 
 which I have mentioned so often, are a case in 
 point. They offer an education to every child ; 
 they do not offer a perfect education because we 
 have not yet discovered a perfect one, but there 
 are no limits set beyond which an individual may 
 not go, and the schools carry, in their universal 
 opportunity, the possibility of attaining unknown 
 heights. The schools are open to every child.
 
 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 79 
 
 The same intellectual fare is set before all the 
 children. And no boy or girl is hindered from 
 becoming the future master of that school, to 
 carry on its ideals and teaching in a new genera- 
 tion. This fact, taken in addition to the con- 
 tinual, eager, and scorching criticism of educators, 
 is the most encouraging thing about our system 
 of education. It is alive, it is vital, it is a part 
 of the life of all the people ; in a word, it is grow- 
 ing into an expression of an ideal. 
 
 Why should we not have a national laboratory 
 of democracy, where, under conditions as nearly 
 ideal as possible, experiments in the technique of 
 democracy might be made ? Indeed there exist 
 already limited communities where useful tests 
 might be made, and where, unless I am mistaken, 
 unconscious experimentation is carried on. I 
 mean the universities and especially those of the 
 West, which are less influenced by the tradition 
 of learning inherited from Europe than are the 
 older Eastern ones. In a college we have a com- 
 munity from which the great chasms have been 
 removed. The citizenry of this community is 
 standardized by means of physical and mental 
 examination, and by the fact that the struggle
 
 80 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 for existence is removed from within the college 
 walls. Here is a group of people set above the 
 currents of thought which influence the world, 
 similarly endowed in most matters, and yet as 
 varied as humanity will be wherever it is found. 
 Surely here new forms of cooperation might be 
 given trial, and no doubt might be invented. 
 
 Student government is the rule rather than the 
 exception at the present time in colleges. For 
 the most part, this term applies to a policing of 
 the college community. Self-restraint is sub- 
 stituted for rule from above and is much more 
 successful. Curiously enough, it has also been 
 found a more stringent regime than the old one. 
 And certain educators have gone so far as to 
 express the wish that the student body may 
 soon be given a voice and a responsibility in the 
 management of affairs now considered the 
 metier of the faculty and overseers. 
 
 I remember an incident, related I think by 
 Mr. Lincoln Steffens, in an article I read in my 
 college days, which indicates the effect of such an 
 innovation. (I trust I do not distort the ac- 
 count, which I am unable to verify.) Some 
 eager American students at an Old World uni-
 
 s «s 

 
 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 81 
 
 versity found themselves listening to dry-as- 
 dust lectures. The professors meandered at 
 will over unimportant historical facts, instead of 
 speaking practically and succinctly : men who 
 had made great contributions to the science 
 and thought of their subjects never came to 
 them because of their slovenly methods. The 
 indignant enthusiasts organized a new set of 
 classes outside university control. They spoke 
 harshly to the poor Herr Doktor. They per- 
 mitted him no fooling and if he chanced to be 
 late to a lecture they took him to task. The 
 classes were a success. Who knows what the 
 casual undergraduate might not accomplish 
 under the prick of responsibility ? 
 
 "Why," cries a much-loved professor in my 
 own university, " why do they speak of 'interests 
 and activities' in contrast with studies which 
 we all know are neither interesting nor active? 
 Tell me why !" It is evident that were "inter- 
 ests and activities" assigned by the paternal 
 benevolence of an ancient curriculum, they too 
 might become sluggish and perfunctory. 
 
 Athletics used to unify colleges ; but during 
 the past decade the forces of the theatre — usu-
 
 82 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 ally called dramatics — have been gaining favor. 
 The instance of Professor Koch's department 
 in the University of North Dakota is only one : 
 varied are the rumors of remarkable work 
 which college undergraduates are doing. The 
 Stadium at Harvard was new when it was used 
 for the setting of Joan of Arc; the Yale Bowl 
 was scarcely finished when it was utilized for 
 Mr. Granville Barker's Greek revival, and for 
 the dramatic celebration of a university holiday ; 
 and we have already reviewed at some length 
 the use to which the College of the City of New 
 York put its stadium in the production of Cali- 
 ban. There is indication of the trend in the con- 
 version of the vast monuments to athletics for 
 the purposes of drama, but beside this fact 
 smaller units have also been making an impres- 
 sion on the world at large. The type of college 
 dramatic club has changed, and in place of vapid 
 imitations of what is worst on Broadway, we 
 have interesting and valuable work set before 
 us in the Yale Dramatic Club, at Harvard 
 University and at Dartmouth College. 
 
 A canvass of our colleges might prove rich in 
 discoveries for the benefit of democracy and of
 
 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 83 
 
 art. There must exist, unsung without the col- 
 lege walls, complete organisms which have 
 grown up with the college community and 
 which have the beauty of a natural growth. 
 Such is the college theatre which it has been my 
 privilege to know intimately, and from which, 
 because of my association with it, I have drawn 
 much of my data. 
 
 All this discussion of college athletics and 
 dramatics is not malapropos. If we are to look 
 to the universities as to the experimenting 
 ground of democracy, it will be well to consider 
 in detail the institutions which we find there. 
 And we shall apply to those institutions the 
 test which we apply to all the institutions of 
 democracy : we shall ask whether they fulfill the 
 great democratic demands. Have they within 
 themselves the power to perpetuate themselves 
 and in that perpetuation to become more 
 perfect ?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A College Theatre 
 
 In sketching plans for a community theatre 
 I have made continual reference to my ex- 
 perience in the Idler Club of Radcliffe College. 
 This dramatic club might well be put under 
 the head "Little Theatre", since it fulfills a 
 social need. But the community is the limited 
 community of a college, and therefore the 
 theatre stands as the result of laboratory 
 experimentation from which we may draw 
 conclusions to be applied to new conditions 
 with care. The unusual degree of excellence, 
 and the intimate response of processes to the 
 existing needs are due to the fact that the theatri- 
 cal organ is not one which was applied to an 
 already matured group, but that it grew with 
 the college from small beginnings. 
 
 When a group of women came together in 
 Cambridge to study under the direction of 
 
 84
 
 A COLLEGE THEATRE 85 
 
 Harvard's professors, they came under much 
 protest and opposition. Their common en- 
 thusiasm so removed them from ordinary facts 
 of life that they wanted nothing beyond a con- 
 secration to learning. But the attitude toward 
 women in an old university relaxed, and year 
 by year younger women joined the ranks, until 
 the social atmosphere became more normal. 
 The desire for a bond arose, and its earliest 
 satisfaction was a series of informal meetings 
 where a few of the number presented pro- 
 grammes of music, dance, tableaux, or scenes 
 from Shakespeare. It is interesting to notice 
 that these women turned naturally to the same 
 mode of entertainment and expression which 
 has been customary in every kind of social 
 group. 
 
 The efforts were successful. Gradually these 
 periodic assemblies for common amusement 
 assumed the more formal lines of a club. As 
 the college grew, those phases of the meetings 
 which were not directly associated with the 
 arts of I lie theatre were dropped. With in- 
 creasing frequency, the Idler produced plays. 
 
 But although the augmentation of the stu-
 
 86 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 dent body had crystallized the social unit into 
 the Idler Club, and had assumed the tradition 
 that a play occupy the bi-weekly meetings, 
 there was no revolutionary change in the 
 membership. Eligibility remained as wide as 
 the college gates. Any student at Radcliffe 
 may be a member of the Idler Club by paying 
 her tax of one dollar a year; she cannot be 
 otherwise disqualified. The college enrollment 
 passed the six hundred mark some time ago, 
 but the breadth of this policy is unchangingly 
 successful. And whatever other interests 
 have been added to the fullness of the under- 
 graduate life, there is still nothing which at- 
 tempts to supplant the universal function of 
 the dramatic club. 
 
 Here near at hand, is a miniature community 
 which has fostered the germ of civic unity, and 
 produced a theatre expressing the will of the 
 community itself. If I may be pardoned a 
 paradox, here is a theatre truly universal 
 within its own limits. One may say that what 
 takes place behind the walls of a woman's 
 college is not of vital importance ; and it is 
 true that the achievements of this theatre have
 
 A COLLEGE THEATRE 87 
 
 not startled the world. We must always re- 
 member that this is an experiment in the 
 laboratory. The fact that an apple fell upon 
 Sir Isaac Newton's nose — to refer to an old 
 story — was not important except to Sir Isaac ; 
 and yet it would not be possible to set down 
 in this brief space what the world might have 
 lost had the falling of that apple meant noth- 
 ing to the scientist beyond the injured mem- 
 ber. In the case of the Idler Club, I do not 
 find its productions notable, any more than I 
 find the undergraduate work in other depart- 
 ments remarkable. But the form of organi- 
 zation is imperatively suggestive. In the col- 
 lege theatre we may watch certain elements 
 at work, just as in the laboratory we watch 
 the interaction of chemicals in a glass. And 
 the results, scientifically applied to life, will 
 give us a solution of great problems. 
 
 In watching the action of the chemicals in 
 our glass, several points must be kept firmly 
 in mind. We are looking for the combination 
 of elements which shall simultaneously satisfy 
 the social scientist and the artist of the theatre. 
 The first, it will be remembered, demands an
 
 88 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 institution which shall unify the community, 
 providing that common interest which is to 
 supplant common ancestry and a common re- 
 ligious belief. While the artist demands that 
 the arts of the theatre flourish like the green 
 bay tree : he clamors for an audience filled 
 with interest and intelligence, nourishing these 
 arts as they have never been nourished, warm- 
 ing them with the sunlight of their favor and 
 spurring them to growth by the dampening of 
 their criticism. Can it be possible that the 
 little crucible of a woman's college can contain 
 elements so puissant? 
 
 Writing in 1911, while still an undergraduate, 
 the present author spoke as follows of the 
 Idler Club, — 
 
 The Club occupies a unique position among 
 the dramatic clubs of women's colleges. It 
 binds the college together in a social sense. It 
 does for Radcliffe what dormitory life, sorori- 
 ties, and athletics do for Smith, Vassar, and 
 Wellesley. With a carefully conceived and 
 smoothly running machinery which is the de- 
 velopment of years of slow growth, it is possible 
 to produce nine or ten plays a year for the 
 members of the club, that is, for college girls 
 only ; and to manage as well the execution of
 
 A COLLEGE THEATRE 89 
 
 several large plays to which outsiders are 
 admitted. This number may seem large, but 
 it could not be reduced without a definite loss. 
 If we take away even one meeting, we cut down 
 the proportion of the college population which 
 now benefits by the productions. The girl who 
 can bring tears to your eyes by the pathos or 
 the fun of her interpretation of character, the 
 girl whose artistic sense finds expression in a 
 well-set stage and in a charmingly costumed 
 picture, or perhaps the shy Freshman who needs 
 to work hard with other people to forget herself 
 — one of these will lose much if a single meeting 
 is omitted. Statistics of committees show that 
 in 1910, seventy-eight girls were used in execu- 
 tive positions beside an equal number in acting. 
 In this way girls who have administrative 
 ability are given the same opportunity to con- 
 tribute that is given to those with dramatic 
 gifts. Very often the same girl will have experi- 
 ence in both branches of play-production, and so 
 learn to bear tenderly with a tired leading lady, 
 or to have patience with an harassed costumer. 
 
 In this summing up of effects the glass takes 
 on the color desired by the social scientist. 
 Here is social unity, a bond provided. Here is 
 mention of the advantage to every sort of citi- 
 zen, the art citizen, the executive citizen, and 
 the backward one whose gifts must be found 
 and trained. Here is a system where every
 
 90 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 member of the population is given one chance 
 in the course of his lifetime — one official, active, 
 dynamic chance — and what more could the 
 social scientist ask to see in the cloudy glass ? 
 
 Resuming, the account turns to the artist 
 and his interests, in these words : 
 
 Then there is the Audience. For every play 
 that she spends behind the scenes, the average 
 Radcliffian spends twenty in the seats of the 
 auditorium. But has she become bored when 
 her course is over? No, she continues to sit 
 with unflagging interest. Her attitude has been 
 a constantly changing one. In her Freshman 
 year she never doubted that the wine was real ; 
 there was a lump in her throat at the sobbing of 
 the heroine. As a Sophomore she took delight 
 in large criticisms, often wrong, but still based 
 upon thought : she was learning that art is not 
 all emotion. By Junior year she had reached 
 the "upper-class" attitude, and influenced by 
 her own experience, had found an intelligence in 
 matters of technique, a keen critical faculty in 
 the judgment of plays, acting, and details of 
 stage setting. Four years of Idlers have taught 
 her something of what is good in acting and 
 what worth while in drama. If she wishes to 
 work more deeply upon the theatre and drama, 
 there are courses offered for her study — plays 
 by college girls are given a hearty welcome, and 
 are judged sympathetically as candidates for 
 production — it is not necessary to mention
 
 A COLLEGE THEATRE 91 
 
 that the club gives unusual chances for the 
 actress to try her powers, and for the artist in 
 color, light, and line to make experiments. 
 
 And now the glass has revealed the aims of 
 the artist of the theatre, has shown us the 
 chance for artistic growth, and an audience 
 taking a constructive part in the work of a 
 theatre. Does it not seem as if the means 
 which achieve such results might repay study 
 sufficiently to discover what fundamental rules 
 they follow ? 
 
 In later chapters I have made use continually 
 of the organization of the Idler Club, and so I 
 shall not expound every minute cogwheel 
 which goes to make the mechanism. It will 
 be sufficient to observe here the great principles 
 upon which the theatre has been erected, just 
 as when we turn to a great world-illustration 
 of a community theatre we shall see how those 
 same underlying forces have produced the same 
 results. 
 
 In the first place, the Idler Club belongs to 
 the college. It is the possession of every mem- 
 ber of the undergraduate body. The dues are 
 low, corresponding exactly to a poll tax, cover-
 
 92 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 ing necessary expenses. There are no added 
 expenses, making unexpected demands. One 
 dollar a year covers the course of all the small 
 plays. 
 
 The general administration is conducted 
 upon the lines of popular representation. 
 Every year at the annual meeting, the Club 
 chooses its officers — president, vice-president, 
 secretary, and treasurer. The president and 
 secretary are from the class which will be 
 Seniors during their term of office, the vice- 
 president will be a Junior, and the treasurer a 
 Sophomore. Just when this tradition grew up 
 is not certain, but with it came that of progres- 
 sion in office, which insures ability in the presi- 
 dent to cope with the intricacies of the highly 
 organized system of which she is to be head. 
 The Sophomore who is elected treasurer will, 
 if she prove satisfactory, pass on to the offices 
 of vice-president and president in the two en- 
 suing years, reelected in each case by the vote 
 of all the Club. 
 
 These officers form an Executive Committee 
 whose duty it is to control the business and 
 social policy of the Club. They are assisted by
 
 A COLLEGE THEATRE 93 
 
 numerous minor committees, such as the Cos- 
 tume Committee, Lights Committee, Scenery 
 Committee, Ushers Committee, which are ap- 
 pointed by the year, and many other temporary 
 ones. These committees are appointed with 
 great care, with continual regard for the fact 
 that the entire population of the college must 
 be permitted to do its part of the work. 
 
 The art administration of the Club, although 
 in some cases it may prove to be greatly in- 
 fluenced by an individual president, is not in 
 the hands of the elected officers, a point which 
 is worthy of note. The Dramatic Committee, 
 whose duty it is to choose plays and to produce 
 them with suitable assistance, is under the 
 leadership of a chairman, whose authority may 
 well be said to be the final word in the artistic 
 locale. The president is a member of the 
 committee but not the presiding officer. 
 
 In the Dramatic Committee every other 
 quality is sacrificed to artistic efficiency. 
 From the Junior class are chosen the two 
 most obviously gifted members. The first 
 year of service will be their apprenticeship for 
 the Senior season, when they will control the
 
 94 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 policy of the Club, one of them as chairman. 
 And every year a third Senior member is 
 added, who with the president — member ex 
 officio — completes the board of dramatic 
 direction. 
 
 Thus has this women's club solved the two 
 primary problems which confront democratic 
 institutions. It has related itself to the whole 
 on the one hand, and on the other to efficient 
 management. Socially, politically, and artis- 
 tically, the Idler Club fulfills the needs of its 
 small world. It is financially self-supporting, 
 and more than that, it makes every year a 
 present of money to the college. The tug of 
 forces is the same in this little "body politic" 
 as in more chaotic natural communities of the 
 world. But before drawing any parallels, let 
 us turn our attention to the outstanding ex- 
 ample of a theatre belonging solely to the com- 
 munity which has startled and moved the 
 whole of civilization.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The World's Example of the Community 
 Theatre 
 
 In the mountains of Bavaria, far in spirit 
 from the sophistication of cities, is a village 
 which has given the world its greatest dramatic 
 expression of the Christian religion, and the 
 strongest evidence of what effect a community 
 theatre, in its simple, literal sense, would have 
 upon the community. This is no limited group 
 of people. This is no brief experiment. Here 
 is a village like the others in those mountains, 
 and here, over a period covering not a few 
 years but twelve generations, has existed a 
 community theatre in its pure form. The 
 outcome of this long interaction is evident in 
 even as superficial a survey as we shall give it 
 here. 
 
 The tradition which has come down to us 
 from 1()'J:5 states that in that year a pestilence 
 
 95
 
 96 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 raged over the country about Oberammergau. 
 The ghastly contagion reached even to the 
 village, resulting in eighty-four deaths from 
 among its own ranks. The terrified assembly 
 which gathered to discuss what must be done 
 was closed by a vow to God that if He would 
 save the town from the disease, the released 
 would act the story of His Passion upon earth, 
 in solemn joy, every ten years. From that 
 day the plague ceased in Oberammergau. 
 
 Just what part or parts the monks of Ettal 
 took in the founding of the Passion Play is not 
 known ; they have had a hand, it is thought, 
 in the play as it now exists. And the gradual 
 flowering of the production is lost in the con- 
 fusion of truth with myth. But by the year 
 1870 the play was of sufficient import to be 
 the ground upon which Joseph Maier was 
 excused from military service when the Prus- 
 sian War interrupted the performances. Lud- 
 wig the Second was sufficiently interested to 
 grant this immunity and to become a patron 
 of the theatre. When peace came, the Passion 
 Play was given especially to celebrate the great 
 joy of the community.
 
 THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 97 
 
 The vehicle by which the play is conveyed 
 to its audience has kept all these years some- 
 thing of the simplicity of that now legendary 
 time when it was produced in the church and 
 the courtyard. A general committee of nine- 
 teen men control the entire preparations, with 
 many sub-committees assisting in the manifold 
 duties necessary to so vast an undertaking. 
 The general committee makes appointments 
 and chooses — a solemn matter — the candi- 
 dates to play each part! The announcement of 
 their decision is accompanied with much sorrow 
 and joy, for no person in the village is without 
 his ambition. Every girl has hoped to play 
 the Virgin Mary : one at least has postponed 
 her marriage that she might do so. And when 
 Anton Lang was told that the Christus had 
 fallen to him, he grew deathly pale before he 
 silently left the room where he had been sitting 
 with his father. 
 
 Since the world has traced its pathway up 
 the steep mountain side to the Passion Play, 
 the duties, expenses, and difficulties have in- 
 creased. There is a new theatre and more 
 splendid costumes. But these gorgeous vest-
 
 98 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 ments are still made in Oberammergau, the 
 actors have not acquired the theatrical device 
 of wigs, and the scenery is still repainted at 
 home. An amazing amount of simplicity is 
 retained. The villagers feel themselves aloof 
 from the world. The ravages of Mammon have 
 been withstood. Of all the money which pours 
 in, none is used for any but the best pur- 
 poses : two-thirds, after expenses are paid, is 
 divided among the seven hundred actors, in 
 proportion to the importance of the class of 
 each; the last third goes for the good of the 
 entire town, in 1910, for example, to change the 
 course of the Ammer, so that its floods might 
 not threaten the town. It is easy to see that 
 the pecuniary returns are not the motive power, 
 when we learn that a man who might have 
 made a fortune as an actor was paid £70 as the 
 share of the Christus in the last performance. 
 
 The action of the Passion Play has been too 
 often detailed to require an account. The 
 world is familiar with all the pageant from 
 the cannon which calls the audience to Mass in 
 the early morning to the chant of joy which 
 rises over the Resurrection and Ascension, at
 
 THE WORLDS EXAMPLE 99 
 
 sundown. The procession of the Chorus 
 through the streets, the eight-hour perform- 
 ances, the rapt reverence of the audience, and 
 the joyous inspiration of the performers, are 
 matters of common comment. Whatever the 
 play may owe to its predecessor, the Medieval 
 Mystery, just how many extraneous events 
 have been lopped off in the course of its his- 
 tory, it matters only for our discussion that 
 the play is a series of events in the life of 
 Christ, opening with the triumphant entry 
 into Jerusalem, and following the gospel story 
 closely. Between these acts or scenes are 
 placed tableaux from the Old Testament, pro- 
 phetic of the Messiah. And the whole is ac- 
 companied by a Chorus which sings incidental 
 music, rarely beautiful, not unlike the Greek 
 chorus in its function. 
 
 All this ritual is like an echo in the hurried 
 modern world ; some lovely relic of fourteenth- 
 century Italy, washed high on the mountain 
 side by the tide of artistic growth, and treasured 
 there in the isolation of its hiding place. The 
 church in the village has fostered the forms, 
 the music, the unsophisticated religious beliefs.
 
 100 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 And the school has fed the dramatic progress : 
 it has prepared simple peasants to become 
 artists. Passionately inspired by the legends 
 and ideals of Christianity, they express them 
 in work and in living. The delicate wood- 
 carving which is still their great industry, has 
 persisted through the invasion of the modern 
 tourist. How is it to be explained ? Is this 
 community a phenomenon ? Did nature breed 
 only artists here ? Or can it be that the pos- 
 session of a burning ideal, not individual, but 
 shared by every citizen alike, has transformed 
 ordinary Bavarian mountaineers ? 
 
 The growth, complex and mysterious in its 
 beauty as a spring violet, has pushed its way 
 to perfection by processes as natural and uni- 
 versal as those through which the violet passed, 
 seeking the sun. Its roots deeply penetrate 
 the foundation of religion. This is not true 
 merely because the Passion Play is a religious 
 story : it has been equally true of every drama 
 which attained true flowering. Japanese drama 
 originated in a charm against Earthquake and 
 his fearful power; the Persians based their 
 earliest plays upon religious stories ; the Indian
 
 THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 101 
 
 drama came into being when personages were 
 introduced into religious hymns ; and the 
 Greek — the joy and despair of the world of 
 the theatre — kept always in the great moments 
 of the world's highest form of drama, its early 
 intimate bond with religion. 
 
 The seed which was sown in Oberammergau 
 was the crying need of all the community. A 
 common fear and its resulting common joy have 
 bound the village into a unity which resembles 
 the interdependence of an organism. What- 
 ever crowds may flock to the theatre on the 
 celebration of the festival every tenth year, 
 although they bring wealth to the village, 
 they are not of as much weight as the little 
 circle made by the inhabitants of the town. 
 This is the real audience, which watches the 
 careful, prayerful preparation of the play from 
 day to day, whose highest conception of earthly 
 honor is the assumption of the role of the 
 Christ, and who, when asked to take 1 their 
 play traveling, replied that it would be neces- 
 sary to take as well the whole village, and the 
 Kofel which guards from year to year both 
 village and theatre. Here is perfect unity
 
 102 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 between players and audience — there are no 
 footlights to be crossed in Oberammergau ! 
 The artists and the listeners mingle and are 
 lost one in the other, in a perfection of 
 cooperation. 
 
 In this way the Passion Play and its attend- 
 ant secular performances have come to be the 
 centre of the life in Oberammergau. They 
 form the stem from which spring all other 
 activities. Carving, toy-making, and the task 
 of the herdsman continue; but it is the group 
 occupation which furnishes the chief interest 
 of the villagers. The attainment of eminence 
 in the Passion Play is their highest goal ; the 
 most rigid punishment for an evildoer is the 
 expulsion from the common work in it. 
 
 FrSulein Mayer — the Mary Magdalen of the 
 last performance — speaks with Oberammergau 's 
 own voice of what the Passion Play means to 
 her people. In a recent letter she writes : 
 
 I am seriously interested in the idea of hav- 
 ing the dramatic art introduced into country 
 communities. It is no doubt a great educa- 
 tional factor, it binds its members in a closer 
 union ; it is an ideal to which each and every 
 one can devote heart and soul. Of course it is
 
 THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 103 
 
 the individual that has to act like a stimulant 
 and set ambition, love, and enthusiasm on 
 fire, for without those three forces, nothing can 
 be gained. I will not mention the material 
 side of it, for it takes care of itself. 
 
 The Community Theatre in Oberammergau 
 is the result of centuries. It is an inborn in- 
 heritance which proves the evolution of a steady 
 living and growing into their parts. We have 
 annual plays, given in our Rehearsal Theatre, 
 where children are allowed to act and to give 
 self-expression to their interpretation, which of 
 course makes the child creative. The director, 
 who is also an Oberammergauer (years ago my 
 own father supervised the rehearsals and prepa- 
 rations for the Passion Play) may reject 
 or sanction one's ideas. They follow certain 
 tradition. However, one can create one's own 
 part, whether in the Passion Play, or in the 
 other Plays. 
 
 Since the time of Richard Wagner and Lud- 
 wig II, King of Bavaria, the drama has 
 flourished not merely in the city but to a great 
 extent in the country, where, as is the case 
 with my own village, we get the benefit out of 
 the high artistic reproductions of the theatre in 
 Munich. 
 
 Drama and Music go hand in hand, and the 
 people love to cultivate these Muses. 
 
 And Friiulein Mayer is not alone in feeling 
 that the Passion Play, the Community Theatre 
 in Oberammergau, as she calls it, is the cause
 
 101 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 of the uniqueness, rather than the result of any 
 unusual gift in the mountain stock. Mr. 
 William T. Stead wrote with no little emotion, 
 in the guide book which he made for travelers 
 to the Passion Play, of the life in the village 
 when the curious outside world had ebbed back 
 down the mountain side. His words are a 
 fitting close to our discussion. 
 
 "Their royal robes laid aside," he said, 
 "they go about their ordinary work in the 
 ordinary way as ordinary mortals. But what 
 a revelation it is of latent capacity, musical, 
 dramatic, and intellectual, in the human race, 
 that a single mountain village can furnish under 
 capable guidance, and with adequate inspira- 
 tion, such a host, competent to set forth such 
 a play, from its herders, tailors, ploughmen, 
 bakers, and the like. It is not native capacity 
 that is lacking to mankind. It is the guiding 
 brain, the patient love, the careful education, 
 the stimulus and inspiration of a great idea. 
 But given these, every village from Dorset to 
 Caithness might develop artists as noble and 
 devoted as those of Oberammergau."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 What the Theatre Offers 
 
 Institutions of democracy arc distinguished 
 by the fact that they possess the power to per- 
 petuate and perfect themselves while they give 
 the greatest amount of freedom for develop- 
 ment to the individuals of which they are com- 
 posed. The theatre is preeminent among the 
 arts in those qualities which fit it for establish- 
 ment upon a basis of democracy. For, unlike 
 painting or sculpture, the theatre is a complex 
 art. It is a composite created by uniting and 
 harmonizing the labor of all the arts. 
 
 No one is excluded from the theatre. Here 
 is a workshop for every kind of workman. 
 The impulse of imitation, the instinct of rep- 
 resentation, upon which Aristotle based his 
 theories of art in the Poetics, may here find a 
 place to grow, not only in their greatest but in 
 their humblest manifestations. It is not easy 
 105
 
 106 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 to confine the desire to create within limits. 
 The expression of the imitative faculty often is 
 remote from what we are accustomed to think 
 of as creation. Clearly it is this impulse which 
 causes the little girl to mark out with stones 
 the rooms of her "house" under the big tree 
 in her back yard, before she calls to "Mrs. 
 Robinson" to come over the fence and pay her 
 a visit. From similar stirrings rises the fascina- 
 tion which a little boy in his nursery finds in 
 building him a cathedral of blocks — -"but not 
 quite like the picture, Mother!" When to 
 announce a royal approach in a school pageant, 
 a gawky boy is changed for the moment of his 
 difficult trumpeting into a Herald of the King, 
 the charm is due to the magic of the impulse 
 to create. But these cases are obvious. 
 Clearly such impulses are trained and led 
 through the art of the theatre. It is of more 
 obscure instances that it is necessary to speak. 
 The artist cannot stand alone in the theatre. 
 He is dependent upon a host of other workers. 
 It does not take a specially trained or gifted 
 person to set up a proper range in a New 
 England kitchen, but in that act one worker
 
 WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 107 
 
 may find as much satisfaction for his impulse 
 to create as another would find in the playing 
 of Hamlet. There are innumerable little tasks 
 about the production of every play which 
 must be accomplished and which with proper 
 care can be made to do the double duty of 
 serving the theatre and the one who undertakes 
 them. A doorbell must ring at the right 
 moment — who will press the button ? Why 
 not the boy who tinkers with old electric bat- 
 teries at home and who could never do anything 
 else in the theatre because he is too shy ? A 
 pane of glass must crash to the floor outside 
 the door to make it seem that windows are 
 being broken — what a chance for the boy 
 who is destructive and likes to break glass ! 
 Bring him in and make his desire to smash 
 constructive in spite of him. A mysterious 
 gray figure must slip across the open doorway 
 in the twilight : surely this is an excellent op- 
 portunity for the little trembling grandmother 
 who has longed for years to act on the stage, 
 but who is not able to do more, since the 
 habit of her life prevents her. It is easy to 
 conjure up the picture she would make,
 
 108 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 wrapped in a long robe, faltering with anxiety 
 and desire suddenly attainable, flushed with 
 pardonable pride when the escapade was over ! 
 Moreover, there are frocks to be shortened, 
 delicate draperies to fashion, letters which 
 must be written and sealed with a splotch of 
 sealing wax. The writer remembers still what 
 energy and care she once put into such a docu- 
 ment, and the pleasure which filled her when 
 the chief actor nonchalantly broke it open ! 
 
 Closely allied to the creative force behind 
 these details is the energy which we call execu- 
 tive ability. The power to arrange and to 
 organize takes the place in certain gifted people 
 of the desire to make things. It is a necessary 
 quality, and one which will find outlet through 
 the community theatre. For the theatre, in 
 order that it produce the most finished plays 
 and that it give as much joy as possible to the 
 community, will require every ounce of organ- 
 izing power within its scope. The machinery 
 of the theatrical factory is complicated : it 
 demands attention in every great and less 
 degree. The control of the audience is an 
 important branch : the theatre should know
 
 WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 109 
 
 the feelings and hopes of its body. Moreover 
 the physical facts of production are made easy 
 by classification and arrangement : costumes, 
 wigs, and properties should be in careful order 
 and under the charge of trained workers. 
 The system of seating must be invented and 
 managed by a corps of efficient ushers. And 
 with every performance new problems will 
 arise to tax the ingenuity of the orderly mind. 
 
 The community is not to be, in the theatre, 
 like the same community in its park outside. 
 The community theatre will gather a collection 
 of heterogeneous units, but it will mold them 
 into one whole. The community in the park 
 has nothing further in common than such 
 advantages as are offered by a common locality : 
 in the theatre it is to work together, it is to 
 play together : to feel as one individual, to 
 share its laughter and its tears. 
 
 The theatre is peculiarly adapted to serve 
 as a common interest for a diverse community. 
 It has something of the emotional and under- 
 lying quality of religion, without the dogmatic 
 and metaphysical limitations of the Church. 
 It can express the beauty which religion in
 
 110 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 every form is expressing, without exciting the 
 .antagonism which follows the intricate argu- 
 ment dependent upon creeds. The theatre can 
 join the Church, and, beyond, can gather to 
 itself the social, lay endeavors, making them 
 one. Even the most Quakerish dissenters 
 from the evils of "play-acting" may be won 
 over with tact. The experience of playground 
 directors demonstrates how prejudice may be 
 circumvented. Many recreation centres have 
 met with opposition so vigorous that it seemed 
 a menace to their lives when they suggested the 
 introduction of folk dancing into the routine. 
 Yet the evident value of the rhythm and 
 vitality which are the chief characteristics of 
 the dances made strategy worth while. There- 
 fore the youngsters in those protesting vicinities 
 have been sent home talking of "fancy steps", 
 and in due time the most violent opposers 
 have joined in the general applause at the 
 exhibitions of their skill ! 
 
 Too much stress cannot be put upon the 
 value of the community theatre in providing a 
 common cause for a community. Our com- 
 mercially organized society has distorted values
 
 WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 111 
 
 by a continued emphasis upon the ability to 
 grasp until we have lost enthusiasm for the 
 power to give. In the community theatre we 
 are as individuals less concerned with snatch- 
 ing away something for selfish ends than we 
 are with contributing to the store of common 
 beauty. The qualities which are most in play 
 will be the altruistic attributes. To refer once 
 more to Fraulein Mayer's phrasing, the theatre 
 is, as she says, "an ideal to which each and 
 every one can devote heart and soul." 
 
 The community in the theatre falls into 
 three distinct groups, or better, into three 
 aspects, for the group is persistently the whole 
 community. There is the audience as a whole, 
 that personalized assembly whose thought the 
 artist of the theatre strives to vitalize. 
 Secondly, there is the artist group, the divi- 
 sion which includes in a sense the least member 
 of the audience, but which has a kernel in those 
 gifted ones to whom the artistic control will 
 be delegated. And lastly there are the 
 workers whose activities are in every branch 
 of executive management, and the multitudi- 
 nous necessary duties of production. In each
 
 112 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 aspect the theatre offers great benefits to the 
 audience. 
 
 As a whole the community audience receives 
 an intelligent relaxation to beguile its leisure 
 hours. This house of play is the property of the 
 whole community. It is based upon an intel- 
 lectual cornerstone, and is constantly changing. 
 It offers recreation, the relief and revivifying of 
 faculties fagged with labor : it offers amusement, 
 and one of its basic principles should be to make 
 that amusement coincide with the desire of the 
 audience. For the audience is its cause for 
 existence and its excuse for continuance. 
 
 Entertainment will be its primary aim : to 
 divert and to serve as a pastime will be its 
 first duty. But because the audience is to be 
 an active and not an inert recipient of this 
 entertainment, and because every kind of in- 
 fluence will be given a chance to exert itself, 
 the quality of the theatre's products is bound 
 to improve. It may do so very slowly ; but 
 it is a curious fact that human beings, by doing 
 one thing well, learn to appreciate the intrinsic 
 value of another thing well done, and growth is 
 inevitable.
 
 WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 113 
 
 After it is amused, then, the audience may 
 find an intellectual stimulus in its theatre. 
 The leisure of such a community becomes, in 
 Mr. MacKaye's vivid phrase, "a constructive 
 leisure." The art of the theatre is, like all 
 arts, based upon the emotions of the human 
 race, and is expressed through the limitations 
 of the human intellect. The most primitive 
 member of the community is moved by the ap- 
 peal to his emotions, but step by step the 
 superimposing of an intellectual appeal has its 
 effect until the form and the expression also 
 have weight. This feeling for form is the 
 beginning of the education of the audience. 
 The theatre now becomes an intellectual as 
 well as a sensuous pleasure; it satisfies the 
 cravings of the mind as well as the desire for 
 rest and relaxation. And with the birth of an 
 intellectual interest comes also a broadening 
 and a stimulation of taste. 
 
 But all these things are slow processes. 
 The audience learns through its participation 
 in the work of the theatre, through the con- 
 stantly changing demands of the theatre, the 
 work on committees and the art interpretation.
 
 114 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 The association with great works of art is in 
 itself a stimulation, but such works of art can- 
 not be used to the exclusion of less admirable 
 ones for reasons of policy and practical common 
 sense. 
 
 To those members of the community whose 
 life is to be spent in the world of art the theatre 
 opens its arms. In organization, in execution, 
 in the details of financial management, even 
 in the humanitarian sciences, the theatre offers 
 opportunities; but these are not gifts which 
 can be found in no other place. Public offices 
 unconnected with art are rich in them. But 
 the artist is handicapped : our present society 
 offers him no studio under the cold north light 
 of which he may test his visions and discard 
 them for fresh ones. The theatre gives him 
 that studio. It is — odious as the word often 
 seems — a school for artists. 
 
 No artist is forgotten : the work of each is 
 equally welcome. The musician as well as the 
 actor; the playwright, poet, and composer 
 alike; the dancer and the mimic; the archi- 
 tect and the sculptor, the painter with his 
 palette on his arm — each and every one has
 
 WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 115 
 
 his niche. They are marshalled in comrade- 
 ship : they lean one upon the other : now one 
 shall claim the chief importance, the stage's 
 centre, and now another. The arts in the 
 theatre shall rediscover the old interdependence. 
 
 It may well be said that already interaction 
 and interdependence have been established in 
 the commercial theatre. That is true, but true 
 only in a limited sense, for the restraint exer- 
 cised by the precariousness of the theatrical 
 profession disturbs the perfect balance. The 
 mingling of the arts is vital, but not so vital 
 as the existence of a true public, a living, breath- 
 ing audience. 
 
 This new audience is not to be a precious 
 body. It is not a set of dilettante sensation 
 seekers. It has normal reactions and a keen 
 interest which is practical and immediate. 
 Here is some one to listen to what the artist 
 has to say — not to listen curiously as to some 
 oddity in a museum, but to give him quiet at- 
 tention. The artist will not complain because 
 flaws are found in his work : he will take the 
 condemnation of his color-values, the discovery 
 of limping lines in his blank verse, and the
 
 116 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 shocked faces at his disharmonies, with glow- 
 ing pride because he has the real eye, ear, and 
 mind, of real people. Then the makers of 
 beauty may flourish among us as natural 
 creatures instead of anomalies, and art come 
 into its own. 
 
 After all, the sum of what the theatre offers 
 to the artist lies rather in the reinstatement of 
 art than in his personal acquisition. By the 
 establishment of the theatre in the community 
 as common property, by assembling the forces 
 of the people for general good, the arts which 
 are the fruits of the endeavor become objects 
 of civic admiration. We are a puritanical 
 country. How often do we stumble on proofs 
 of it ! We are shy of what appeals strongly to 
 our senses. We feel an uneasiness in the 
 presence of art : we distrust it as a life force. 
 But in the community theatre there is a chance 
 for art to bloom under the eye of the whole 
 people, to answer the crying need. In the 
 community theatre a universal recognition of 
 art becomes not only possible but inevitable. 
 This is the great gift of the community theatre 
 to the artist — and to all the people.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 How Shall We Organize? 
 
 To all who wish to organize a theatre in 
 their community it is necessary to say only, 
 "Begin." Begin now. If three people and 
 no more are ready, let two of them act for the 
 joy of the third ! Do not wait for a theatre, but 
 make a barn the playhouse, and give an out-of- 
 door play in the summer sunshine of late June. 
 Turn the porch into a stage, or let a parlor serve 
 the purpose to an auditorium adjoining from 
 which the dining table has been temporarily 
 removed. The Passion Play of Oberammergau 
 was first given in the church of the village, and 
 the Abbey Theatre was made from a morgue ! 
 
 If there be a village green, why not begin with 
 a pageant there ? It will help advertise. Let 
 half-hearted believers be shown the flash of 
 color and the stately movement as the town's 
 most distinguished ancestor enacts for them 
 117
 
 118 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 his most historic deeds : few will remain half- 
 hearted after they have watched the stirring 
 spectacle. First of all, let there be a living 
 spirit. If that spirit exists, if the desire be 
 alive — no matter how insignificant the spark 
 — tasks Herculean in size may be brought to 
 completion. 
 
 Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has long been an 
 advocate of the theatre as an established State 
 institution. No other person has tried so hard 
 to found a National Theatre in England. But 
 of all that he has said and written, a statement 
 made before the Harvard Dramatic Club, some 
 five years ago, has impressed itself most vividly 
 upon my memory. "The theatre needs," said 
 Mr. Jones, "not great monuments like the New 
 Theatre in New York City, but teachers, 
 enthusiasts, Saint Pauls of the Drama" Such 
 apostles of the theatre may work wherever 
 they may be : certainly the Christian religion 
 did not demand a cathedral for its early prac- 
 tice ! 
 
 It is equally unnecessary to wait for money. 
 Do not worry about luxuries ; begin without a 
 penny. The original endowment of the Abbey
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 119 
 
 Theatre was notoriously ten guineas. Poverty, 
 when it does not entail hunger, serves as an 
 invigoration. The theatre without money will 
 be limited, but not in its capacity for growth. 
 Every device of ingenuity which the moneyless 
 theatre employs will increase the wealth of that 
 theatre a thousandfold. The theatrical pro- 
 fession has been taught a great lesson about 
 expenditure. New York productions — and 
 many others as well — were challenged by the 
 artistic excellence of the Portmanteau Theatre 
 under Mr. Stuart Walker's direction. Yet in 
 his introduction to "Portmanteau Plays", 
 Mr. Edward Bierstadt asserts that money was 
 a force almost negligible in the Portmanteau 
 campaign. Mr. Walker found no lack of 
 enthusiasm for a play, the cost of which was 
 actually not one cent : on the contrary, its 
 success equalled his most expensive produc- 
 tion, the play upon which he lavished fifteen 
 hundred dollars. However, to the Broadway 
 producer it does not seem more astounding 
 that a play which cost nothing should succeed 
 than that any play could be staged with an 
 expenditure of only fifteen hundred dollars !
 
 120 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 For upon Broadway men think in thousands 
 of dollars : it is inconceivable that the theatre 
 should be established (as Mr. Walker's was) 
 with only three thousand dollars capital and 
 the vital energy of young enthusiasm. 
 
 The spirit which is not thinking of money is 
 clearly shown in Oberammergau. Fraulein 
 Mayer writes simply, "I will not mention the 
 material side of it for it takes care of itself." 
 She speaks a great truth : the community 
 theatre which will be the greatest success is 
 not the one which begins with the largest pres- 
 ent of money, but the one where the spirit of 
 cooperation and fellowship is thriving most 
 vigorously. 
 
 Begin at once with the two or three members 
 whose faith is strong. But begin upon a 
 strong foundation of fellowship. Let no limits 
 be set upon the membership : make the theatre 
 as wide as the community. Do not allow what 
 seems like the promise of an immediate growth 
 to limit and narrow the most valuable asset a 
 theatre can have. In a village every member 
 — every inhabitant — should be included : 
 neither youth nor age should be cause for ex-
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 121 
 
 eluding an interested candidate. The doors 
 of the theatre should always swing wide open 
 to the magic of the word "willing." At first 
 it will be possible to include only those who 
 come of their own desire ; when the theatre 
 has been firmly established, when it actually 
 belongs to all the community, the recalcitrants 
 will be dragged in by the tug of public opinion. 
 But in the beginning it will be well to let the 
 members feel that he who comes must bring 
 a gift, that any gift, however small, is wel- 
 comed, and that every member of the theatre 
 groups will share equally in all the privileges 
 of the theatre. 
 
 Membership in the community theatre 
 should never be limited except by the limits of 
 the community. Individual cases will expound 
 peculiar problems. The age limit is one which 
 is common to all theatres, and which will be 
 variously solved. To exclude children and 
 growing boys and girls seems not only unkind 
 to them, but also unwise from every angle from 
 which it can be considered. It would naturally 
 deprive the theatre of valuable material. At 
 the same time it would also take away some-
 
 122 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 thing which the children could get in no other 
 way — the joy of guided self-expression, the 
 possibility of cooperative work, and an interest 
 at once intellectual and amusing. 
 
 However, in every theatre it may not be 
 possible to include all children, and in that case, 
 a children's supplementary organization, which 
 could be formed, would serve as a feeder for 
 the grown-up theatre. A play given by both 
 these once a year will offer an interesting ex- 
 change of ideas. 
 
 Membership, then, is not to be limited except 
 by residence in the actual group. Villages 
 which have to meet the question of summer 
 colonists will certainly not exclude them, but 
 will take care not to let a part assume the re- 
 sponsibilities and the benefits of the whole. 
 Summer visitors will prove helpful : there no 
 doubt will be gifted and able individuals 
 among them ; but they must not carry off all 
 the honors. The theatre must let the "summer 
 people" speak, but must not aim to lisp only 
 in their words. 
 
 Closely associated with membership is the 
 question of dues — of the taxation upon which
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 123 
 
 the first financial endowment of the theatre 
 is to depend. This should be small, indeed 
 purely nominal, as the poll tax is nominal 
 — something which every one must and can 
 pay. There should be nothing resembling the 
 old initiation fee of a dramatic club. The sum, 
 of course, must be set to accord with the needs 
 and financial vision of the people : a dollar 
 is by no means a fixed sum ; there are places 
 which regard it as negligible and others where 
 its value is tremendous. In country towns 
 where barter still persists the fact that the 
 theatrical tax was one dollar a year might 
 keep many members from "joining." 
 
 Montclair, New Jersey, has established 
 during the past year a theatre whose ideals of 
 membership and whose general policy are in 
 accordance with the strictest community 
 theatre demands. In Montclair every one is 
 welcomed into the theatre : during the few 
 months of its existence, the number of members 
 has passed two hundred and fifty, if not at this 
 time three hundred. The dues are fifty cents 
 a year — moderate certainly, for a township 
 which is usually considered a rich one. This
 
 124 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 membership, however, does not admit to all 
 performances of the theatre, to which tickets 
 are sold at a basic price of twenty-five cents 
 each ; but does give one the entree to a special 
 performance at the end of the season, to which 
 no seats are sold. 
 
 This plan seems not so wise as the one of 
 having a larger tax, and giving more definite 
 meaning to its payment. Why not charge a 
 dollar and exclude from acting and from the 
 usual programme of plays all people who are 
 not members ? Let the membership committee 
 be composed of tactful and thoughtful people : 
 should any candidate appear whose inability 
 to pay a dollar was evident, let proper means 
 for the earning of that dollar be provided. If 
 necessary, have the payment of the dollar in 
 two parts ; but let the dues cover the expenses 
 of the year's list of plays. And, instead of one 
 play to which only members and their invited 
 guests may come, why not have one or two 
 plays, widely advertised and produced with 
 great care, to which the world is bidden ? They 
 will increase membership and the money in 
 the treasury.
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 125 
 
 It may be said that the first plan, the pay- 
 ment of a small tax and of letting non-members 
 as well as members see all the plays and act 
 whatever parts they can, is broader and more 
 truly democratic. On the contrary, it seems 
 to me that it is necessary everywhere in life to 
 lay equal emphasis upon privilege and re- 
 sponsibility. The theatre needs the dignity of 
 a social recognition as much as it needs the 
 money which increased membership will bring: 
 the membership should therefore have a defi- 
 nite meaning and should be defined by a 
 clearly drawn line. Those outside that line 
 should not share the advantages of those 
 inside, but no one should be kept outside 
 arbitrarily. 
 
 However small the actual number of 
 members which forms the nucleus of the 
 community theatre, it will be well from the 
 first to make it assume the outlines of a demo- 
 cratic government. It may be that some more 
 fortunate form of government, lacking the 
 defects which are so clearly recognizable in 
 the practice of democracy, the faults of wire- 
 pulling and politics and inefficiency, some form
 
 126 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 of government with less discrepancy between 
 the ideal and the exercise of the function, may 
 be discovered by our children's children. In the 
 meantime, however, we are accustomed to the 
 device of popular representation : it is a con- 
 trivance which seems natural. From the be- 
 ginning, it will be well to let every member of 
 the audience feel his own authority by sub- 
 mitting the choice of the executive staff to a 
 popular vote. 
 
 Such a course meets at once two major 
 objections : officers chosen by vote are not 
 necessarily the most efficient candidates, and 
 the audience-body is not necessarily the best 
 judge of things artistic; it will be more likely 
 to elect its officers upon a basis of political popu- 
 larity. These two fundamental difficulties 
 must be dealt with by a limitation of the power 
 of each office rather than by any restriction of 
 the power of choice conferred upon the audience. 
 The direction of the art policy will have to be 
 organized carefully, guarding against placing 
 too much power in the hands of an officer 
 liable to be influenced by politics : the whole 
 must be delicately adjusted to suit the needs of
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 127 
 
 the audience as well as those of the most favor- 
 able art conditions. 
 
 The president, vice-president, secretary, and 
 treasurer, may be elected by the audience. 
 The pull of politics will no doubt be evident 
 at once : parties will form, perhaps, one leaning 
 towards a definite art policy, and one strongly 
 in favor of popular control at the expense of 
 artistic achievement. But these two parties 
 are best calculated to make the theatre an 
 answer to the dreams of both its founders. 
 Neither the aims of the artist of the theatre, 
 nor those of the social scientist will be wholly 
 neglected through an over-attention to the 
 claims of the other; a proper balance will be 
 maintained, not the result of inertia, but the 
 vital balance which comes from the opposition 
 of strong forces. 
 
 To add to the efficiency of the executive 
 corps some form of progression in office may be 
 adapted to each community. In a town made 
 up of every kind of person, the simple method 
 which the Idler Club has developed at Rad- 
 cliffe College would prove too obvious. Be- 
 sides, it might be difficult to find a person
 
 128 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 who could sacrifice so much time to the theatre 
 for three or four consecutive years. If, how- 
 ever, the officers be elected from those who have 
 served upon one of the numerous committees 
 of management (which will be treated in detail 
 at a later point), and if the chief executive 
 must be elected from the officers of the pre- 
 vious year, it will accomplish much the same 
 results. No executive officer will come to his 
 post without training of some sort in the 
 practical work "behind the scenes"; and the 
 presiding officer, during two years of service, 
 will have learned the details of his machinery, 
 its powers and its limitations. 
 
 The president's chief qualification should 
 be rather for execution of practical detail 
 than for art creation in the theatre. The 
 director of the art policy should not be a person 
 who is chosen by the vote of the audience : 
 his characteristics are rarely those which would 
 make him sufficiently popular to win him an 
 election. The art direction should be removed 
 as far as possible from the effects of politics : 
 the management should lie in the hands of an 
 appointed officer. His appointment must not
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 129 
 
 rest in the hands of one person, but should be 
 subject to the approval of several : the presi- 
 dent who is entering office, taking counsel with 
 the retiring president and with the art director 
 of the previous year, and limited somewhat in 
 his action by their opinions, might control 
 the decision. The committee which with the 
 director is to execute the art policy will in turn 
 be chosen by the new director and the new 
 president, still advised by the experienced 
 officers of the former year. 
 
 The matter of the term of service for a 
 director is another point which must be 
 differently decided in different localities. No 
 doubt at first there may be one person who 
 stands out as preeminently the director. It 
 would be unwise to put into the office people 
 utterly unfit for its duties simply because of a 
 rule that the director must change every twelve 
 months. Indeed, I am inclined to the belief 
 that a longer term of office will prove more 
 satisfactory. On the other hand, there is 
 danger in one person's too steady control of 
 the art policy : terms of office should not be 
 unlimited. And from the committee under the
 
 1150 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 director there will come candidates filled with 
 promise and fresh ideas. 
 
 These chief officers then, the president, the 
 vice-president, the secretary, and the treas- 
 urer, form the Executive Committee. They will 
 control broadly the plans of the theatre and 
 its general management. In their turn they 
 will be assisted and supported by a large number 
 of minor committees, appointed and reinforced 
 every year, which carry on the difficult special 
 services of the ordinary running of a theatre. 
 The art director with his committee will pro- 
 duce, stage, and coach the actors of every 
 production. He will, moreover, read the plays, 
 with the assistance of the Play-reading Com- 
 mittee, and choose his programme. For his 
 assistance there will be maintained a Com- 
 mittee on Costumes, a Committee on Settings, 
 a Committee on Lighting, a Committee on Wigs 
 and Hairdressing, and a Committee on Prop- 
 erties. These specialized groups will be able 
 to tell him exactly what exists in the stock of 
 the theatre, and will arrange that he gets what- 
 ever he needs. Their duties and their train- 
 ing will be examined in the next chapter.
 
 HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 131 
 
 Thus, with a careful protection of the art 
 direction, and the limitation of the powers of 
 the executives who depend directly upon 
 popular election for their offices, it will be 
 possible to establish a system of checks and 
 counter forces upon the whimsical will of a 
 democratic control. And although when the 
 organization is founded with a small circle 
 only — the two or three members mentioned 
 at the beginning of this chapter — it will not 
 be possible to follow so elaborate an arrange- 
 ment, the details may well be kept in mind, 
 for the growth will be rapid, and the need for a 
 fair assignment of duties will promptly be 
 forced upon the organizers.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 What Can Be Done with Little 
 
 Technology of production in the theatre is 
 not the concern of these chapters. It belongs 
 rather to each individual who will find himself 
 in control of the artistic problems. But there 
 are certain experiences which taken in conjunc- 
 tion are an argument against those members of 
 the theatrical profession who feel the need for 
 great sums of money in the launching of any 
 theatrical enterprise. It is possible to create 
 fine stage effects with only the smallest re- 
 sources. 
 
 A number of books upon the new theories 
 of stage decoration are named in the Appendix. 
 They dwell upon the importance of eliminating 
 details and speak at length upon abstract 
 questions : they are valuable to the student 
 and to the would-be producer. Design, color, 
 light and shade, contrast, spirit, and mood of 
 132
 
 THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 133 
 
 the play and of the scene, are details that 
 demand an ultimate attention ; but it is much 
 more likely that the first question the director 
 will have to meet will have a more pressing 
 form. He will not be asked for a solution to 
 any problem in theoretic design : he will be 
 importuned to make a garden which shall 
 satisfy every one. And can a garden be made 
 without money ? 
 
 There is little an artist cannot do when 
 cornered. I remember, in the whitewashed 
 basement room which served for an atelier for 
 the scene painter of the 47 Workshop at Har- 
 vard, watching the final strokes put on a 
 fountain. Two paint-daubed workmen hung 
 over it. They gloated over the tiny thread 
 which silvered into the basin. Even in the 
 harshness of the daylight the painted wood 
 and canvas looked like a relic of Medieval 
 Italy. Under lights it took on a far-away 
 reality : the silver ribbon purred caressingly 
 against the distorted gray -green mouth. Yet 
 to the artist and his turpentine scented assist- 
 ant the chief factor of the triumph lay in the 
 origin of the grinning face and the hollow bowl.
 
 134 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 The humble beginnings of that Italian foun- 
 tain were a child's Santa Claus "false face", a 
 wooden chopping bowl — deftly sawed into 
 shape — and a bit of tarnished silver braid. 
 
 The statement that economy and great art 
 are inseparable has become platitudinous. 
 The worker in the arts should not feel stinted, 
 but he should be convinced that he must avoid 
 effort — effort in his materials, effort in his 
 thought, and effort in his methods. There 
 must be exertion and struggle, but the result 
 of the labor should be so simple and so natural 
 that it seems wholly effortless. Again and 
 again there are two possible ways of expressing 
 an idea — the simple way and the complex or 
 sophisticated one. It has been a fault of our 
 theatre that it too often takes the complicated 
 rather than the straightforward way. 
 
 Elsewhere I have spoken of Mr. Stuart 
 Walker's Portmanteau Theatre. The require- 
 ments of Mr. Walker's stage are such that he 
 has been forced to employ the most simple 
 means, even had he not been drawn to simple 
 things by his tastes. The photograph of The 
 Seven Gifts, the Pantomime which the Port-
 
 THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 135 
 
 manteau Players gave in Madison Square, 
 shows how simple a picture may be without 
 losing anything of loveliness. The unaffected- 
 ness of the design, the repose of the figures, 
 and the elimination of every unnecessary 
 detail, are characteristic of Mr. Walker's work. 
 He drops his deep blue curtains, moves a table 
 and two whimsical chairs to his forestage, and, 
 behold, we are in "a room just up-stairs." Or, 
 with a soap box and a generous supply of 
 imagination, he turns that same forestage for 
 us into the bank of a river. 
 
 The primary (or I might have said, kinder- 
 garten) productions which I have mentioned 
 may teach much to the beginner in the theatre. 
 (To follow Mr. Walker's more venturesome 
 flights would require his trained corps of 
 artists.) There are many plays which can be 
 staged amusingly without expenditure of 
 money, if only thought and skill are available. 
 
 One small stage with which I have been long 
 familiar was built by an architect whose ideals 
 aimed at stability rather than pliability. The 
 walls are inexorably plastered and painted. 
 Out-of-door scenes are often the despair of the
 
 136 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 producer ; but, making a virtue of its weakness, 
 he continually used the stage as an interior 
 with telling effect. Panels of wall paper ap- 
 plied with thumb tacks changed the room from 
 a New England colonial parlor to a Louis XVI 
 boudoir, at a cost which was utterly negligible. 
 Or again, with a hanging of inexpensive chintz, 
 it became a modern English drawing-room. 
 And the wall paper as well as the chintz could 
 be rolled up and packed away in a small space 
 when not in use. 
 
 The use of screens and of hangings has totally 
 altered our ideas of stage illusion. It is not 
 necessary that every least can of sardines be 
 in place, in staging a scene in a grocery store. 
 The shop may be as living and as spiritually 
 true when it is made of a deal table, a row of 
 wooden boxes which have cranberries and 
 carrots peeping out, and a tall bucket or so 
 in the background. A beautifully embroidered 
 scarf hanging on a dark screen may change a 
 bleak hall into a regal throne-room, and long 
 soft curtains may be turned into a forest, a 
 peasant's hut, or a lady's chamber by the use 
 of a single property in each separate scene : by
 
 THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 137 
 
 the adroit placing of shadows to simulate the 
 woods, by the rough hewn bench of the peas- 
 ant, and by the delicate prie-dieu with a 
 scarlet cushion upon which the lady kneels. 
 
 The same property may be used again and 
 again. In the property room of the Idler Club 
 is a silvery whistle which was originally ac- 
 quired to indicate the passing of the midnight 
 flier. It tooted much like a locomotive and 
 sent little chills down the backs of the listeners. 
 But since that day the gleam of that whistle 
 has served many a purpose. Once it was the 
 flashing revolver which kept the villain at 
 bay until the hero arrived to clasp the fainting 
 heroine : again it was valuable family silver, 
 looted by burglars from the safe : it whistled 
 outside for everything from a tugboat to a 
 policeman : it was a toy in the nursery and 
 part of a soldier's equipment. The cost of 
 the whistle was twenty-five cents, eight years 
 ago : it is as fresh and energetic, as shrill 
 and ear splitting to-day as it was the day it 
 was triumphantly unwrapped for the admiring 
 ears of the greenroom assembled ! 
 
 The Chinese Lantern bv Lawrence Housman
 
 138 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 suggests endless trains of thought in the psy- 
 chology of stage illusion. In China the 
 heaviest carved furniture is in use. The 
 houses are not, like those in Japan, built of 
 paper. People do not sit on the floor. And 
 yet Mr. Housman has given directions for all 
 these things, and when under the inspired 
 direction of Mr. Sam Hume, the play was 
 produced in Cambridge, friends of the author, 
 who had lived for twenty years in China, could 
 not say too emphatically that it was exquisitely 
 Chinese. The color and the light which played 
 against the soft-tinted, glazed background 
 followed the emotion of the play step by step, 
 and wove into its texture a faint Orientalism, 
 as delicate and fanciful as a dream. Only the 
 slightest suggestion of the charm of the staging 
 can be found in the photograph of the set, by 
 Mr. Hume and Mr. Gardner Hale, which is 
 shown on the opposite page. 
 
 Every one has been astonished at some time 
 by the marvel of a simple charade, by the in- 
 finite variety of a table cover, and the charm of 
 a garment worn upside down. One member 
 of a family assumes a strange wild aspect when
 
 THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 139 
 
 he is dressed in the garments of another : a 
 collar and black coat put on backwards quickly 
 change the enfant terrible into churchly solem- 
 nity. There is little difference in producing a 
 vast spectacle : the proportions are larger, but 
 the elements remain the same. 
 
 Costuming a play is a much simpler matter 
 than many people suppose. It is not necessary 
 to consult a costumer, to hire elaborate hideous- 
 ness ; it is not even necessary to buy expensive 
 materials. From attics and old trunks the 
 most amazing treasures may be dragged to 
 light. Old evening frocks can be altered in the 
 twinkling of an eye by a free use of safety pins 
 to almost any picturesque period. A beaver 
 hat is sure to lurk in an unexpected corner. 
 An ancient military cloak will shake out the 
 scent of old romance from its folds along with 
 the flutter of dust and moths. The pretty 
 paraphernalia of our grandmothers, the fans, 
 the high-heeled slippers, the quaint coquettish 
 sunshades, need not remain in seclusion. They 
 should take their proper places. 
 
 When the first Peterborough Pageant was 
 produced in memory of Mr. Edward Mac-
 
 140 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 Do well, Professor George P. Baker and the 
 Committee were at a loss where to find hoops 
 and the calico prints which were needed to make 
 the Civil War scene — to be played in the plain 
 light of day — untheatric and real. Professor 
 Baker delights in relating how he found 
 everything, even the hoops, packed away in 
 the dingy recesses of the village shop : and he 
 adds, with a twinkle of humor, that the store- 
 keeper was finally prevailed upon to sell them 
 at less than the wartime prices ! 
 
 The most impressive Morocco who ever sued 
 for Portia's hand wore a costume which could 
 be duplicated by the skilful draping of a linen 
 sheet, and the apt twist of a Turkish bath towel. 
 It was straight and long and princely : its 
 whiteness threw into fatal relief the mahogany 
 of the Oriental skin. The audience felt with 
 the lady the little shudder of racial mistrust 
 even while it drew a quicker breath at the 
 startling beauty of the suitor. 
 
 Many years ago I was present at the pro- 
 duction of a nursery play which well might 
 have been called " The Exploits of an Apron.'" 
 There were other actors, but through five
 
 THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 141 
 
 acts the apron — the full white apron such as 
 nurses wear over comfortable laps — made its 
 entrances and exits. There was no act in 
 which it did not vary its performance : there 
 was no single scene in which it did not appear. 
 In the first act it was a plain apron, spreading 
 its whiteness over the knees of the nurse of the 
 heroine ; no sooner was the curtain up on act 
 two than the apron was discovered suspended 
 round the neck of the hero — a simple valiant 
 butcher boy ; the third act, by skilful manip- 
 ulation, used it for a court train at a ball ; 
 in the fourth it was draped about a large doll 
 who interpreted the part of a foundling, and 
 in the last it framed the heroine's sad face, as 
 she droopingly sought the haven of a convent, 
 serving as wimple and as coif at once. And, 
 like many stories of childhood and of children, 
 the memory of that apron seems to me less 
 an anecdote than a parable. It carries much 
 instruction for the costumer. 
 
 Elaboration of detail and the expenditure of 
 large sums of money are not indispensable. 
 Out-of-door plays may be staged simply and 
 without much money. It is not necessary to
 
 142 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 have an expensive stage. It may be that the 
 Town Hall was built upon Doric lines, or that 
 some generous inhabitant of your village has a 
 lovely sloping orchard — they will serve the 
 purpose of a setting for beauty. Use what is 
 at hand thoughtfully and with taste : the 
 result will be satisfying. 
 
 It cannot be reiterated too often, "Make use 
 of what you have." Look upon everything as 
 possible theatrical material. There will appear 
 many strange new lights upon old objects. 
 This advice is valuable not only in the pro- 
 cesses of production, but as well in the choice 
 of a theatre, in the selection of casts, and in 
 the everyday social routine of the theatre. A 
 brief review of the theatres in the Appendix 
 will show the variety of the houses of play 
 which already exist : schoolhouses, stables, 
 the floor of a loft-building, and even a converted 
 barroom are among them. Of the last charm- 
 ing interior a photograph is included, which is, 
 I think, suggestive of much that might be 
 done, with its use of old church pews, and 
 patchwork curtain. 
 
 Do not overlook the usefulness of the thing
 
 THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 143 
 
 that is near you. Keep your productions sane 
 and reasonable. Let them be proportionate to 
 the surroundings. Do not try to follow in 
 detail a production of Henry the Eighth by Sir 
 Herbert Tree if your stage is set up shakily 
 against the rough timbers of a barn : think 
 rather of strolling players and the simplicity 
 of the Elizabethan theatre. Remember that 
 a production is as much an entity as a sym- 
 phony is : carefully eliminate contrasts which 
 will bring in discords where there should be 
 harmonies. 
 
 But above all it will be the spirit of joy — 
 the joy of creation — and the inspiration of 
 working together which will contribute most 
 to the beauty of the theatre. Do not let that 
 precious attribute escape : it is priceless above 
 emeralds. With joy and with cooperation, it 
 is possible to pass to the uttermost bounds of 
 achievement, and the possession of money 
 matters very little.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Suggestions 
 
 To harmonize and to create a balance between 
 the social and the artistic forces in the theatre 
 requires the most delicate manipulation. 
 Labor — the privilege of service — must be 
 so divided that no one is excluded from his 
 just proportion. It may be well to consider 
 in turn the duties of each office in relation to 
 the other cogs in the wheel of production, and 
 in relation to the audience-community. 
 
 The Executive Committee is to control the 
 general management. It is composed of the 
 president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, 
 and chairman of the Membership Committee. 
 In the earlier days of the theatre, there will be 
 more work for the committee as a whole than 
 when the routine is established, for it must 
 assemble to meet crises, sudden demands of 
 this or that party, to discuss the trials of each 
 144
 
 SUGGESTIONS 145 
 
 individual officer, and to knit the tangled 
 threads into a smooth and pleasant fabric. 
 At all times its function will be to untie knots 
 of executive policy. 
 
 The president is, of course, the chief execu- 
 tive and the presiding officer, and as such must 
 possess qualities of worth in management and 
 in meeting people, tact and quick-wittedness, 
 directness of thought, and speed in action. 
 The president should not be an artist of the 
 theatre, primarily ; nor is it, on the other 
 hand, necessary that this officer be a person 
 trained in one of the social sciences, but rather 
 a person of average administrative ability 
 who has been trained carefully in the minor 
 matters, and whose social gift is somewhat 
 unusual. The president should be a person 
 who has no difficulty in obtaining the vote of 
 something over the majority — a good popular 
 candidate. The social gift and the background 
 of training which make the officer familiar 
 with the means of production at his command 
 are the most salient characteristics which he 
 need possess. 
 
 Unlike most vice-presidents, the vice-presi-
 
 146 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 dent of our theatre is to be a busy and important 
 person. He works behind the scenes however. 
 Let him be chairman of the greenroom com- 
 mittees. This is in reality the position of 
 Chairman of Chairmen, for under him will 
 stand in turn the heads of each individual unit 
 into which the process of production is divided. 
 The vice-president will know what money can 
 be spent in the course of the season upon all 
 the branches of the greenroom work, he will 
 decide how these sums are to be allotted, after 
 consultation with the under-chairmen. He is 
 the representative of the greenroom in the 
 Executive Committee. 
 
 The secretary has obvious duties, as has, 
 indeed, the treasurer. In large communities 
 they may be given assistants : in small ones the 
 duties of both may be consigned to one person, 
 or combined with those of the chairman of 
 the Membership Committee. This last-named 
 official is of vital importance to the newly- 
 established theatre, and should be a perfect 
 fusion of tact, advertising ability, enthusiasm, 
 and intuition! He is the sociological head of 
 the theatre, and in his hands should be placed
 
 SUGGESTIONS 147 
 
 the authority to do all that is possible to en- 
 courage the growth of the membership list 
 until its compass is the breadth of the com- 
 munity. After that, with the help of an effi- 
 cient committee, he should keep closely in 
 harmony with all the members, acting as a 
 thermometer and a barometer for the Executive 
 Committee, and the producing staff. 
 
 Of the appointed officers, the director is 
 most important. In many cases, some one 
 person with appropriate qualifications will 
 stand in evident contrast to the rest of the 
 community. However, when this is not true, 
 the appointee should be skilled in handling 
 material, both theatric and human, and should 
 have a definite knowledge of the tastes and 
 interests of his audience. He should be sup- 
 ported by a committee of interested people, 
 with a decided gift for the details of actual 
 stage work. In the hands of the director's 
 committee will rest the production of plays and 
 the problems of casting, the "coaching" of 
 the actors, and the general artistic oversight 
 of the season. 
 
 The minor committees are assembled in
 
 148 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 ranks under these staff officers. The Com- 
 mittee on Costumes will organize and arrange 
 costumes, keeping those which are made in a 
 suitable order and providing costumes for each 
 play as it comes up for consideration. The 
 Committee on Make-up will assume the re- 
 sponsibility for the wigs and the beards, will 
 apply rouge and powder, will become proficient 
 in the difficult manipulation of cosmetic. 
 Scenery, lights, and properties — each needs 
 an able corps for its direction. 
 
 The committees are appointed for the 
 season; they work together through a series 
 of plays. But at the same time there are 
 temporary committees which cooperate with 
 them, each serving for one production. If 
 there are to be six plays during the season, there 
 are six committees, each turning its attention 
 to one play. A chairman, with two or three 
 assistants, will be sufficient. These temporary 
 executives work in direct connection with the 
 member of the director's committee who is 
 staging the play ; they call upon the permanent 
 committees for assistance and for advice. 
 
 When the temporary chairmen are chosen
 
 SUGGESTIONS 149 
 
 by the Executive Committee, the most careful 
 attention should be paid to the advice of the 
 chairman of Membership. It will be well in 
 choosing them to take prominent persons from 
 every faction of the community life and to 
 select them with attention to many matters 
 beside a gift for the theatre. This serves an 
 obvious social purpose, the programme will in- 
 terest one and then another subdivision of the 
 audience as a whole — the season will belong 
 to the entire community. 
 
 The choice of plays demands the careful 
 attention not only of a Play-Reading Com- 
 mittee, but of every one connected with the 
 enterprise. Some one has wisely said that 
 Broadway needs play readers no longer be- 
 cause even the office boys are reading plays. 
 In the community theatre it will be regrettable 
 if half the audience is not discovering plays for 
 production. While the theatre is a small 
 group, this assistance will be all that the 
 director and his committee require, but when 
 the intricacies of stage direction are multiplied 
 by the augmentation of the theatre's size, the 
 buffer value of the Play-Reading Committee
 
 150 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 becomes instantly apparent. By the time the 
 membership has reached, say three hundred, 
 there will be need of a committee, constantly 
 reading, wandering up and down the world 
 in search of new material. They serve as the 
 beaters in an Indian hunt, to rouse the quarry. 
 It is the duty of the director and his com- 
 mittee to act the part of the sportsman whose 
 shot commits them to production. 
 
 In the Appendix is a list containing several 
 books which will be of help in planning balanced 
 programmes, or which will offer fields of forage 
 for those who are unaccustomed to play reading. 
 More than that, the Drama League has much 
 to say about courses in reading and the study 
 of the drama. These matters will fall naturally 
 under the direction of the Play Committee: 
 courses in the history and technique of the 
 drama will stimulate an interest in the literary 
 value of the theatre. Such a branch of the 
 theatre's work might well be intrusted to the 
 Play-Reading Committee. 
 
 The difficult task of assigning parts — the 
 casting of plays — falls, in the last analysis, 
 to the director. He is of course open to sugges-
 
 SUGGESTIONS 151 
 
 tion. And in several well conducted theatres 
 it has been found that a system of trials is 
 more productive of good actors than any other 
 method of filling the parts. At Montclair, 
 where the democratic note is vibrant, the 
 candidates are tried more or less publicly. Mr. 
 Harold Howland writes : 
 
 One of the trial evenings of the Players is 
 an attractive occasion. Twenty-five or thirty 
 persons sit round informally — the Producing 
 Committee, the producer of the Play, candi- 
 dates, members of the General Committee. A 
 makeshift scene is sketched in with random 
 tables and chairs and what not. Two or three 
 at a time the aspiring players read short scenes 
 from the play as directed by the producers. 
 Sometimes the logical players for certain 
 parts are apparent without extended hearing. 
 Sometimes the casting of a single part requires 
 many trials and even the combing of the 
 community for the right material. But the 
 democratic free-for-all method seems to work. 
 Splendid material appears from unexpected 
 and unknown quarters. . . . 
 
 The method of trying candidates for each 
 play, although undoubtedly superior to that of 
 casting by guess or by fancy, has several draw- 
 backs. It concentrates competition : there is
 
 152 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 the danger of hard feeling between the winner 
 and the loser. It takes much time : the 
 committees must try all comers, and some of 
 them will be those who have "tried" for every 
 part in the history of the theatre. More- 
 over, very talented persons must be dragged 
 out to go through the routine with every one. 
 It was to offset such economic waste and 
 such friction that during my own direction 
 of an unimportant organization, I instituted 
 annual trials. A certain time was set aside 
 for all people who wished to act to appear 
 before the judges : scenes from standard plays 
 which had variety and range were designated : 
 the judges were given pencils and slips of paper. 
 Then in careful order, sets of two or three would- 
 be actors came and played their scenes. The 
 most assiduous notes were made upon each 
 performance : the judges consulted together, 
 and a list was made in which the limitations 
 and possibilities of each performer were set 
 forth for future use. This list was to provide 
 the casts for the season's productions. 
 
 The concentration of examining the actors 
 eliminates the need for repeated trials whenever
 
 SUGGESTIONS 153 
 
 a new cast is necessary during the busy season ; 
 but it will be well to announce fresh ones to 
 reinforce the first, as new material arises 
 quickly, and the list should be kept vital. 
 This list is the community theatre's Stock 
 Company. From it — however large it may 
 be — the director should choose as many actors 
 as possible during the year. In the ideal 
 community theatre, every one would be given 
 a chance to try everything which he wished 
 to do : in that striving limited human version 
 which we are forced to organize, it is possible 
 to approach the ideal from afar. A girl who 
 has nothing to recommend her to the audience 
 except a desire to play Ophelia cannot, ob- 
 viously, be put into such a part. But she can 
 be studied and slipped into a tiny place some- 
 where : she can be given the satisfaction of 
 feeling that she has played one part : with 
 proper training she may even come to larger 
 ones. There is a story, much-repeated, that 
 one of the most famous of our musicians was 
 urged, as a girl, to stop singing because she 
 had no voice. 
 
 The sketch permitted by this brief space
 
 154 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 can do little but outline possible courses of 
 action. Every facet of the theatrical gem may 
 have unlimited attention. The Music Com- 
 mittee advises and provides music : the artists 
 are gathered into a studio group : workshop 
 opportunities are endless. A large theatre 
 may have a library ; even the smallest will 
 find a bookshop useful in which to offer for 
 sale plays old and new during the performances. 
 The acting may be regulated by a Trials Com- 
 mittee: when the first agony of showing what 
 they can and what they cannot do is over, 
 let such a committee seize the aspiring actors 
 and give them direction in diction, lessons in 
 dancing, or courses in pantomime and inter- 
 pretation. It is possible to elaborate the 
 edifice endlessly. 
 
 The progress of a play through the channels 
 of this complicated machinery would happen 
 somewhat after this fashion. At the com- 
 mencement of the season, the president would 
 notify some prominent person that he was 
 to have charge of the fifth production. The 
 date of his production assigned, he would be 
 asked to consider and to submit plays. Mean-
 
 SUGGESTIONS 155 
 
 time, the director with his committee and the 
 Play Committee would also be reading. 
 
 A week before the time for rehearsals to 
 begin, the manager would be invited to meet the 
 Director's Committee. In this meeting as much 
 consideration as seemed compatible with the 
 general policy of the year would be shown his 
 desires ; he would be consulted in matters of 
 the play, the cast, and the selection of artistic 
 advisers. But in the final instance, questions 
 must be decided by the director. 
 
 Rehearsal of the play would be put into the 
 hands of the director's assistant, a member of 
 the committee to whom the production came 
 in rotation. He will assume responsibility : 
 he will discuss the play with the director : he 
 will be allowed great freedom in his control, 
 and will be led rather than directed. 
 
 The cast will be selected from the acting 
 list. It may be that one part or another can- 
 not be decided : trials for that part will be 
 privately provided to decide it. The cast 
 will assemble, and the play will be read to them. 
 Certain large lines of its form will be suggested. 
 Then they will be expected to study, and at
 
 15G THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 first the director's assistant will allow them 
 great liberty in working out their own ideas, 
 cutting out only those conceptions which 
 make a blatant disharmony with the whole. 
 
 The rehearsing of the play may be done in 
 several ways. Every director has his own 
 methods. But two things are important : the 
 director-in-chief should be the court of last 
 resort, and the director's assistant in charge 
 should be given great freedom. It is unwise 
 to allow promiscuous suggestion from whoso- 
 ever happens to be present at a rehearsal. 
 All directions should come through the person 
 in command. 
 
 As the play progresses, the manager and his 
 committee consult the branches of greenroom 
 direction. Costumes, scenery, and lighting 
 must be thoroughly discussed : experiments 
 must be made. If the closets do not contain 
 the proper material to twist into use, the studio 
 department will be called into play. So it 
 goes. On the day of dress rehearsal, all the 
 departments will be assembled with pencil 
 and with pads, to jot down suggestions for the 
 director.
 
 SUGGESTIONS 157 
 
 And when the premiere, the first night, the 
 production actually arrives, the signal which 
 darkens the auditorium and sets the curtain 
 in slow motion is like a lever which releases a 
 steady, efficient machine. Everywhere each 
 tiny part slips into action. There are mem- 
 bers who sit in quiet corners, waiting for a 
 chance to do some inconspicuous service with 
 the same eager keenness that shines on the 
 heroine's delicately rouged face. And across 
 the wholly eradicated line of the footlights, 
 there comes a whisper of sweetness, which is 
 the fragrance of fellowship.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Theatrical Renaissance 
 
 The enthusiast and the sluggard are equally 
 susceptible to the human failing of impatience : 
 the seer of visions, beholding his dream afar 
 off, chafes at the stretch between himself and 
 his accomplishment : the disbeliever cannot 
 look beyond present imperfection. 
 
 ( The community theatre will suffer both from 
 those who believe in it too much and from those 
 who have too little faith in its power. ) As an 
 ideal it will satisfy : it offers to the community 
 the common interest which is lacking, and to the 
 arts of the theatre it offers a permanent home^ 
 The community will have an interest wide 
 enough to include all its members and yet deep 
 enough to hold them all. The theatre arts will 
 find a place to expand and to grow. 
 
 But the practical application of the ideals of 
 democracy to the theatre as an institution 
 158
 
 THE THEATRICAL RENAISSANCE 159 
 
 means very distinct limitations. / The ideal is 
 not that of a connoisseur : it is the joyous ideal 
 of a creator. The art which will be produced 
 by a theatre so governed and so manned with 
 artists will be the tiny acorn of art from which 
 the oak tree will not come except by a process 
 of slow growth. 
 
 The working of the community theatre must 
 be attended with faith and with no discourage- 
 ment. Friction is bcund to arise, friction which 
 seems about to prevent the accomplishment 
 even of the most minor ends. But with faith 
 and courage, such friction can be turned into 
 power and made to propel the machine. 
 
 It would be madness to expect that because 
 a theatre is established in a community, it 
 would instantly begin to produce art which 
 would rival in beauty and in technique the art 
 which has acquired its richness through genera- 
 tions of tradition. The first struggles of the 
 average community theatre will not compare in 
 ease of expression with the theatre as we know 
 it. They will be fantastic and often grotesque 
 to a trained eye and ear. But if they have a 
 sincere foundation and if they cling to their
 
 160 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 
 
 naivete, there is no limit to be put upon their 
 ultimate achievement. 
 
 For this reason, the community theatre 
 carries a promise to the theatre as an art, which 
 is not equalled, I think, by any other possible 
 theatrical ideal. The arts in the theatre are 
 given every opportunity. The new forces of 
 art which the theatre has so recently been feel- 
 ing, are given a twofold reinforcement. The 
 community theatre spreads news of them to 
 every member of the theatre : it creates an 
 audience which not only understands art, but 
 which comes clamoring for the gifts of art; 
 and it takes away from the theatre the danger 
 — the stultification and oblivion — which 
 hangs over it now upon its present commer- 
 cial and speculative basis. 
 
 The renaissance of the theatre in our time 
 has long since begun to affect us. The stirring 
 of fresh life is evident in each new theatrical 
 production upon Broadway : it does not neglect 
 the smallest stock house in the country. We 
 are obliged to acknowledge its existence and 
 its vitality ; we are glad to recognize that the 
 art is assuming control. And how may we
 
 THE THEATRICAL RENAISSANCE 161 
 
 best help that tremendous achievement to its 
 fullest growth ? 
 
 In answer to this question I have submitted 
 these outlines for the community theatre, a 
 house of play in which events offer to every 
 member of a body 'politic active participation 
 in a common interest. It is not to be judged 
 as the full-blown flower of art : it is not even a 
 bud about to open. Rather it might be called 
 the soil — fertile and fragrant — in which the 
 seed is to be sown. The infant art of the theatre 
 is to be rocked in this cradle. 
 
 And may we not hope that if it has the in- 
 terest of the community, the growing taste and 
 curiosity of its audience, combined with a 
 group of artists whose lives have been freed 
 from the canker of distrust and the fester of 
 the desire for gain, may we not hope that the 
 theatre of the community will, as it develops 
 new strength, bring new art forms and new 
 vigor into the art of the theatre? This gift 
 would be the final achievement towards which 
 we must labor in the Theatre of Democracy.
 
 APPENDIX 1 
 
 The list of theatres which follows will indicate in 
 part the variety and vitality of the new theatrical 
 enthusiasm. It can do little more. At this moment 
 when fresh ventures are being made in untried 
 fields every day, such a list must fall far short of 
 completeness. In the comment there has been no 
 attempt at criticism and no effort to classify either 
 the output or the organization. The notes have 
 been chiefly compiled from the statement of some 
 member of each theatre's staff. 
 
 BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 
 
 The Vagabond Players 
 
 Organized in 191G by Mrs. Nathan and Mr. Sax 
 to produce new works by American authors and 
 important plays by foreign writers which would not 
 otherwise be seen in Baltimore. The theatre is a 
 converted barroom (see photograph) seating sixty- 
 two people. The organization is supported by sub- 
 
 1 List is alphabetical. 
 163
 
 164 APPENDIX 
 
 scriptions and gives performances twice a week, pre- 
 senting three one-act plays a month for five months. 
 These plays are selected by a committee of five 
 members and acted by casts chosen by trial from all 
 interested persons, under the direction of Mrs. 
 Nathan and Mr. Sax. All services are given. 
 
 BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 
 
 Greek Theatre 
 
 An out-of-door theatre which follows Greek lines 
 in its design. Is in close association with the Uni- 
 versity of California. Professional performances 
 are often given there beside notable productions by 
 the students of the university. 
 
 BETHEL, MAINE 
 
 A converted stable which is at the service of all 
 the community who wish to join in theatrical work. 
 Seats one hundred fifty people and has a comfortable 
 stage. Under the direction of Miss Schornle of Cin- 
 cinnati, and the patronage of Mr. W. J. Upson. 
 
 BLUE HILL, MAINE 
 
 A private open-air theatrical stage cut out of the 
 rock, with the lovely peak of Blue Hill towering 
 over it.
 
 APPENDIX 165 
 
 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 Toy Theatre 
 
 A group of amateurs who carried on interesting 
 experiments in production in a tiny theatre made 
 from a stable. When the subscribers grew numerous, 
 an attempt was made to build a larger theatre and 
 move into it, but the theatre is now occupied by a 
 stock company, and the Toy organization no longer 
 exists. Founded 1910. Closed 1915. 
 
 BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 
 
 Community Theatre 
 
 Organized in 1917 by Henry B. Stillman, for the 
 common use, pleasure, and instruction of the com- 
 munity. A company of professional actors under 
 an experienced director. Aim is to establish a per- 
 manent self-supporting repertory company. Sup- 
 ported partly by subscribers. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 The 47 Workshop 
 
 Founded in 1914 by Professor George Pierce Baker 
 to give a hearing at Harvard University and Radcliffe 
 College to any one who has something interesting to 
 offer in the theatrical arts. Plays are chosen by Mr. 
 Baker with the approval of the Executive Committee,
 
 166 APPENDIX 
 
 and cast by them from a company of players who 
 have been tested in former plays reinforced by less 
 experienced actors. The audience consists of people 
 deeply interested in the arts of the theatre, willing 
 to cooperate with the work, at least financially; 
 it is limited to four hundred by the lack of accommo- 
 dation : new members are proposed and seconded 
 by old ones. The audience is required to send in 
 a written criticism of the performance, from which 
 the names are removed before submitting them to 
 the author and workers. This device proves satis- 
 factory and helpful. The theatre is the inadequate 
 Idler Theatre of Radcliffe College. 
 
 CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA 
 
 Forest Theatre Society 
 
 First production in 1910 was due to the efforts of 
 literary people in Carmel. The theatre is an outdoor 
 one. The society is supported by its members and 
 assisted by the business men of the town. Mem- 
 bership is unlimited : fee one dollar a year. Under 
 the direction of a council of fifteen members who are 
 elected annually. This council chooses plays, and the 
 director is appointed by them. There are standing 
 committees on Plays, Costumes, Finance, Member- 
 ship, Programmes, and Publicity. The plays pro- 
 duced are original — unacted — in so far as is pos- 
 sible, and often written by local playwrights.
 
 APPENDIX 167 
 
 The production of an annual Children's Play is 
 a feature of the programme. 
 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 The Hull House Players 
 
 The dramatic group of the Hull House Settlement, 
 which came originally, Miss Addams tells us in her 
 history of Hull House, from the inspiration of the 
 Passion Play at Oberammergau. Its audience is 
 made up of the settlement people and of interested 
 outsiders; the company is chiefly of the neighbor- 
 hood, under the direction of Laura Dainty Pel- 
 ham. Has produced many interesting sociological 
 plays. 
 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 The Little Theatre 
 
 Founded 1909. Has produced every kind of play 
 under the direction of Mr. Maurice Browne. Has 
 lately received an endowment. 
 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 The Players Workshop 
 
 An experimental theatre where ideas may be 
 worked out in practice. It gives plays by Chicago 
 writers only, and nothing but first productions.
 
 168 APPENDIX 
 
 Each programme is played for six nights in one week. 
 The settings and costumes are designed and made in 
 the studio of the organization. 
 
 CINCINNATI, OHIO 
 
 Little Playhouse Company 
 
 Founded by Mrs. Helen Schuster-Martin. Pro- 
 duces unusual plays. Seeks to become a community 
 venture. Company is part professional, on nominal 
 salaries. 
 
 CONTOOCOOK, NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 The Putney Hill Improvement Society, organized 
 for the betterment of rural conditions, has a theatri- 
 cal department. The theatre is a converted disused 
 schoolhouse which holds one hundred twenty-five 
 people. A committee is chosen to manage each pro- 
 duction. 
 
 DETROIT, MICHIGAN 
 
 Arts and Chafts Theatre 
 
 Has just finished its first season — an artistic 
 achievement of note, under the direction of Mr. 
 Sam Hume. Subscribers, who are represented in 
 the management by an advisory committee, support 
 it. Its purpose is defined as "entertainment and 
 art" but it seeks to express the spirit of the locality 
 by producing plays written there.
 
 APPENDIX 169 
 
 FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 Little Country Theatre 
 
 An organization of amateurs under the leadership 
 of Mr. Alfred Arvold and connected closely with the 
 extension work of the Agricultural College. It gives, 
 among other plays, those of pioneer life which are 
 most suited to the country audiences for which it is 
 organized. The company shifts from one commu- 
 nity to another. A department of dramatic literature 
 is also part of the work, and there is a valuable loan 
 dramatic library. The theatre is a remodelled 
 chapel. The effects have spread to South Dakota, 
 Montana and Iowa. 
 
 GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 
 
 Little Prairie Playhouse 
 
 During the past season has produced monthly 
 programmes of long and short plays of a serious 
 nature, among them an original play by the 
 director, Mr. J. A. Crafton. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 
 
 Little Theatre Society of Indiana 
 
 Organized in February, 1915, at the suggestion of 
 Professor William Jenkins. Affiliated with the local 
 Drama League. Has no theatre. Work of an ex-
 
 170 APPENDIX 
 
 perimental nature, not always under a professional 
 director. Objects are "the experimental and reper- 
 tory presentation of both approved and untried 
 dramatic works, and the development of the re- 
 sources of the community in the creation and in- 
 terpretation of vital and artistic plays." Member- 
 ship of three classes by which association is chiefly 
 financed. But performances are open to the public, 
 and the players need not be members of the society. 
 (The coming season may see a limitation of this 
 policy.) 
 
 LAKE FOREST, ILLINOIS 
 
 Lake Forest Players 
 
 Organized by Mrs. Arthur Aldis for the pleasure 
 of the players and their friends, as an experiment 
 and an adventure. The theatre is a converted 
 wooden house. In its seventh season, which 
 covers the summer months. 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 
 
 Little Theatre 
 
 Control was assumed in 1916 by Miss Aline 
 Barnsdall and the Players Producing Company. 
 Mr. Richard Ordynski made several productions 
 during the season 1916-1917. The theatre will 
 reopen in 1917-1918 under the Player Producing 
 Company.
 
 APPENDIX 171 
 
 MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN j 
 
 The Little Theatre of Milwaukee 
 
 Founded in 1912 to provide good dramatic fare 
 for Milwaukee, and in its present policy aims to 
 follow the New Free Folk Stage in Berlin. Theatre 
 seats one hundred fifty. Membership unlimited; 
 dues three dollars a year. Conducts an open-air 
 theatre in summer, and opens its doors to all Chil- 
 dren's Players beside giving plays for children. 
 The director-producer is assisted by an advisory 
 board of prominent persons. Plays are acted by 
 amateurs : services are all given. Under the direc- 
 tion of Mrs. Edith Adams Stewart. 
 
 MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN 
 
 The Wisconsin Players 
 
 Organized as the Wisconsin Dramatic Society and 
 Players with a purpose akin to that of the Abbey 
 Theatre in Dublin. Two years ago it abandoned 
 its branch in Madison, which had formed an "ex- 
 change company" up to that time. Has a theatre, 
 conducts a workshop to encourage experiment in 
 the arts of the theatre. Membership open to all who 
 are interested. Dues include all the activities of the 
 society. Non-members admitted to plays. Origi- 
 nally under the direction of Mr. Thomas Dickinson, 
 now directed by Mrs. Laura Sherry.
 
 172 APPENDIX 
 
 MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY 
 
 Montclaib Platers 
 
 Open to the entire community. Dues fifty cents 
 a year: tickets for individual performances sell at 
 twenty-five cents. Players chosen from the com- 
 munity by competition. Direction and production 
 by members. Executive Committee select plays. 
 High School used as theatre. First season has 
 roused great enthusiasm. 
 
 MOUNT TAMALPAIS, CALIFORNIA 
 
 The Mountain Plat 
 
 Founded in 1913, since which time there have been 
 annual productions. The original owner, Mr. Wil- 
 liam Kent, deeded the amphitheatre to the trustees 
 to be held forever for The Mountain Play. Visitors 
 are urged to spend the day upon the Mountain, and 
 thousands take advantage of the invitation every 
 year. The earliest play was acted by students from 
 the University of California. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Bbamhall Platers 
 
 A professional company under the direction of 
 Mr. Butler Davenport, who is the author of some 
 of their plays as well. Opened in 1916.
 
 APPENDIX 173 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Community Chorus 
 
 Organized by Harry Barnhart, Director, January 
 6, 1916. Has sung every week since its organization 
 and has invited everybody freely to sing with it. 
 Holds "Sings" in Central Park every Sunday after- 
 noon with from five to ten thousand persons present, 
 besides producing such choruses as Handel's Messiah 
 and Haydn's Creation with from one to two thousand 
 voices. 
 
 (Not a Theatre, yet important to the Theatre.) 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 The Grammercy Players 
 
 An organization announced to open in 1917-1918, 
 under the direction of Mr. Edwin Hopkins. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Greenwich Village Theatre 
 
 Announced. 
 
 "No set policy will be adhered to regarding the 
 length of plays presented . . . plays by the more 
 important European dramatists . . . particular at- 
 tention to the younger American playwrights . . . 
 an occasional classical play revived. A company of 
 professionals who are amateurs in the sense that
 
 174 APPENDIX 
 
 they love acting as an art and are willing to forsake 
 the commercial theatre with its long runs and set 
 methods in order to do good work." 
 
 (From the Advance Announcement) 
 
 Is to include also Sunday evening concerts and will 
 present to the public unusual artists — musicians 
 and dancers — some of a type whose art would be 
 lost in a large concert hall. 
 
 Another activity is to be "conferences" — not 
 stereotyped lectures, but talks in which the audience 
 takes part. Besides, it plans to hold art exhibitions 
 so that younger men may be given a chance to 
 exhibit. 
 
 ' NEW YORK CITY 
 
 The Marionette Theatre 
 
 A fairy tale theatre for children which has its head- 
 quarters at Richmond Hill House, 28 Macdougal 
 Street, under the direction of Remo Bufano. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 MORNINGSIDE PLAYERS 
 
 Organized in the season 1916-1917 by Mr. Hatcher 
 Hughes of Columbia University together with several 
 of his pupils. Includes Mr. Clayton Hamilton and 
 Mr. Barrett Clark on its executive force. The 
 membership is not limited to those interested people 
 who are actually connected with the University . . .
 
 APPENDIX 175 
 
 any one offering his services as actor, manager, 
 playwright, or producer is eligible. The two pro- 
 ductions last season were made in the Comedy 
 Theatre : the organization has no home and no spe- 
 cific audience. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Neighborhood Playhouse 
 
 The developed dramatic classes of the Henry 
 Street Settlement beautifully housed in the theatre 
 which was the gift of the Misses Lewisohn. Pro- 
 duces Jewish Festival Plays, short and long plays of 
 every description, and is constantly responsible for 
 the introduction of good professional companies to 
 Grand Street. The artistic staff is an excellent one 
 and the resident actors skilled amateurs. Its work 
 is constantly varied and interesting. The manage- 
 ment of the theatre is in the hands of a board of 
 management : the audience is primarily drawn from 
 the neighborhood of the Lower East Side; but all 
 New York wanders in from time to time. 
 
 The theatre was built in 1914 : before that time 
 productions had been made in a near-by hall. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 The Playhouse 
 
 In 1915-1916 Miss Grace George established a 
 repertory company in The Playhouse, producing a
 
 176 APPENDIX 
 
 new play every month in the face of the continued 
 success of each new 'production, which would have 
 enabled a lazy manager to fall into the " long run " 
 habit. The announcement has just been made 
 that the theatre is to be reopened for the season 
 1917-1918. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Portmanteau Theatre 
 
 (Not in the strict sense a social theatre, since it 
 does not limit itself in any way by direct connection 
 with any audience; it is, however, of vital importance 
 because its ingenuity and its simplicity may lead to 
 the accomplishment of almost any ends.) 
 
 Mr. Stuart Walker's complete theatrical stage, 
 which can go to the ends of the earth at a moment's 
 notice. It requires a room sixteen and one half 
 feet high, twenty feet long, and forty feet wide. 
 The company is a repertory company made up of 
 talented young professional actors who regard 
 acting as an art. The artistic staff is unusually 
 gifted and efficient. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Provincetown Players 
 
 Called "The Playwrights' Theatre." An experi- 
 mental theatre which began at Provincetown, Mass- 
 achusetts, when a group of authors interested in
 
 APPENDIX 177 
 
 dramatic writing gathered there for two consecutive 
 summers. In the summer of 1915 this group made 
 their first productions. In 1916 they moved into the 
 Wharf Theatre. In the winter of 1916 the first New 
 York productions were undertaken. Tickets are 
 sold only to subscribers, and the membership is so 
 much in demand that many season-subscribers were 
 refused last year. Plays are written and produced 
 by the active members : services are free with the ex- 
 ception of two officers who give all their time to the 
 management. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 Washington Square Players 
 
 Originally a group of interested non-professional 
 people who began acting for their own amusement 
 and have progressed to the Bandbox Theatre for a 
 much talked-of season (1915-1916) and have followed 
 it by meeting Broadway upon its own ground in the 
 Comedy Theatre (1916-1917). They have done 
 many interesting and some startling plays. 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 The Theatre Workshop 
 
 Organized in November, 1916, for the purpose of 
 centralizing the various creative interests of the 
 theatre for their mutual inspiration and for the 
 non-commercial enlargement of their opportunities.
 
 178 APPENDIX 
 
 Has among its departments, Playfinding Committee, 
 Associate Players, Production Department, Stars 
 and Directors, and an Extension by which plays 
 may be sent with good casts to schools or towns 
 desiring them. Depends upon subscription for 
 support. 
 
 NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 Northampton Players 
 
 A professional company which is somewhat re- 
 sponsible to the town for the success or failure of its 
 productions. Organized in 1910. Under the direc- 
 tion of Mr. Bertram Harrison. 
 
 ORANGE, NEW JERSEY 
 
 Blythelea Players 
 
 An amateur organization following the lines of a 
 club, which has a theatre in Llewellyn Park on the 
 estate of Mrs. C. C. Goodrich. The theatre is 
 remodelled from a stable and carriage house, and is 
 furnished with many conveniences such as a dome 
 for lighting and an otherwise adequately equipped 
 stage. Plays are produced for members and their 
 guests, and then are repeated for some charity. 
 The work is all voluntary and is under the di- 
 rection of Mr. Howard Greenley, the architect of 
 the theatre.
 
 APPENDIX 179 
 
 PETERBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 The Edward MacDowell Memorial Society has 
 made a habit, since the year 1911, of producing a 
 Festival upon a beautiful outdoor stage on the 
 MacDowell estate. The colony of artists which 
 assembles there for the summer has given its services, 
 and the village has an excellent choral organization. 
 Mrs. Edward MacDowell is the moving spirit of the 
 group. 
 
 PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 Pittsburgh Theatre Association 
 
 In its first season. Hopes to develop into a per- 
 manent art theatre. Under the direction of Mr. 
 Thomas H. Dickinson. 
 
 PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 Pittsfield Theatre 
 
 A stock company which is supported by interested 
 townspeople who own stock and control the policy 
 to this extent. 
 
 PLAINFIELD, VERMONT 
 
 Village Theatre 
 
 The stage of the Town Hall, reconstructed by the 
 cooperative effort of the selectmen and Mr. Howard
 
 180 APPENDIX 
 
 Hart, is used for frequent village entertainments 
 and for productions by the summer visitors as well. 
 Has a curtain painted by Mr. Maxfield Parrish. 
 
 ROCHESTER, NEW YORK 
 
 Tiie Little Theatre 
 
 Founded under the auspices of the Drama League. 
 Audience unlimited by membership. Produces one- 
 act plays of every variety with amateur casts drawn 
 from a group of about one hundred members whose 
 services are given. Play-reading committee of three 
 chooses plays. First season. 
 
 SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI 
 
 Little Playhouse Company 
 
 Productions limited by the stage of the Artist's 
 Guild Theatre. Audience limited to members of 
 society. Has subscription list so large that actors 
 and stage hands have been paid from the first. 
 Policy for next season undetermined, as it is changing 
 directors. Has been under the direction of Doctor 
 Masseck. 
 
 SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA 
 
 The Little Theatre 
 
 Incorporated in February, 1917. Composed of 
 one hundred active and forty associate members.
 
 APPENDIX 181 
 
 Under the direction of eleven corporate directors. 
 Is the outcome of the production of two plays, and 
 expects during the next season to produce one 
 programme a month, under the direction of a pro- 
 fessional coach. Casts are composed of amateurs. 
 There is no theatre as yet, but negotiations have 
 been made to remodel an abandoned church de- 
 signed by Cass Gilbert. 
 
 UNIVERSITY, NORTH DAKOTA 
 
 Sock and Buskin Society 
 
 "Little Playhouse" 
 
 "Bankside" 
 
 A dramatic laboratory under Mr. Frederick 
 H. Koch of the Department of English. Member- 
 ship limited to forty and based upon competi- 
 tive trials. Programmes carefully planned in co- 
 operation with the Department of English. Has 
 two theatres — The Little Playhouse and The 
 Bankside, an outdoor theatre with a stream flow- 
 ing between stage and audience. Has been doing 
 constructive work for twelve years. Under Mr. 
 Koch's direction has produced two pageants {Pag- 
 eants of the Northwest, 1912, and Shakespeare the 
 Playmalcer, 1916) which are unique in that they 
 were written by a class of twenty students in col- 
 laboration.
 
 182 APPENDIX 
 
 WASHINGTON, D.C. 
 
 Drama League Players 
 
 Organized 1916-1917. Supported by subscrip- 
 tion, but audience not limited to subscribers. Plays 
 chosen by a committee of the Drama League. Will- 
 ingness to serve the only qualification for mem- 
 bership. Services given. Uses a normal school as 
 a theatre. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D.C. 
 
 Sylvan Theatre 
 
 An out-of-door stage and auditorium (see photo- 
 graphs) built and to be maintained by the War De- 
 partment in its administration of the Park system 
 of the District of Columbia. May be used for any 
 performance or play which has the approval of the 
 Office of Public Buildings and Grounds. Plan 
 contains seats for five thousand but only twenty- 
 eight hundred were used at the initial performance : 
 these seats are arranged with no cross aisles, so that 
 the view is unobstructed. The acoustics are said 
 to be good. The United States supports the stage, 
 including such details as lighting, policing, and the 
 management of tickets. Other expense falls upon 
 the company giving the production.
 
 APPENDIX 183 
 
 NOTES 
 
 The author's information in regard to the theatres 
 in the following cities is limited to hearsay accounts 
 of their existence, as letters directed to their manage- 
 ments have unfortunately failed to elicit response, — 
 
 Bartlesville, Oklahoma. 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
 Evanston, Illinois. ' 
 
 Louisville, Kentucky. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 
 
 CALIBAN 
 
 Since these chapters went to press there has been 
 a new production of a remodelled Caliban in the Har- 
 vard Stadium. Naturally great strides have been 
 made in the technique of the new art of which Cali- 
 ban is the exponent. In the perfect circle made by 
 stage and audience, practically all the text was 
 heard. The mechanical device was elaborated, a 
 steam curtain which hid the inner stage added ma- 
 terially to the sense of illusion, and such old theatri- 
 cal tricks as the trapdoor were employed with the 
 most telling results. But the community spirit was 
 once more of most importance. Behind the scenes 
 it was vividly alive, just as it had been in New York 
 a year ago: "out front" it seemed more vital. It 
 may be that the recent declaration of war, and the
 
 184 APPENDIX 
 
 fresh passages in the play which seemed to touch 
 that declaration, had put the spectators in a receptive 
 mood. At any rate, the Community Drama (for Mr. 
 MacKaye has avoided the critics by changing the 
 name of his erstwhile masque) rolled up fresh enthu- 
 siasm with each passing day until performances long 
 exceeded the advertized number. If some force in 
 the community had been at work for months before 
 the rehearsals organizing and advancing this very 
 enthusiasm, the giant task to which Miss MacKaye, 
 Mr. MacKaye, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Brown bent them- 
 selves (with the help of thousands) would have been 
 much simpler. As it is, Caliban was so filled with 
 beauty and the promise of beauty that we may well 
 say, with the pale-faced shopgirl who followed me 
 down the Stadium steps, in the face of war and in the 
 face of sacrifice, "Ain't it wonderful to be livin' 
 now?" 
 
 OBERAMMERGAU 
 
 The war has swept through Oberammergau. Miss 
 Madeline Doty tells in an article in a recent Atlantic 
 of how she found privation and unhappiness in the 
 village when she visited it some months ago. And 
 now Anton Lang, the Christus loved of thousands, of 
 the delicate body and spiritual face, must experience 
 the reality of Golgotha : the drink of vinegar and 
 gall is set to his lips : he is to descend into actual 
 service in the German army. How many times, I
 
 APPENDIX 185 
 
 wonder, has he prayed before the altar in the moun- 
 tain Church, murmuring in words familiar the peti- 
 tion that the cup might pass from him ? The cruci- 
 fixion which he has suffered in spirit has come to 
 him, and with him, to all his neighbors. We cannot 
 be amazed that the Oberammergauers are broken- 
 hearted and that in their discouragement they despair 
 of mending their exquisite fabric. But whatever 
 ancient traditions of beauty may be snapped by the 
 war, surely, when it is over, Oberammergau will re- 
 turn to its greatest joy. And because the spirit of 
 the Passion Play has spread across the sea to us, 
 because we are beginning to realize the strength of 
 Community Drama, it may fall to us as a duty to 
 help restore the actuality to that little village. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 Playgrounds. 
 
 Chubb, Percival, & Associates: "Festivals and Plays 
 
 in Schools and Elsewhere." Harper, 1912. 
 
 An illuminating book, filled with suggestions for the 
 
 celebration of special occasions. 
 Curtis, Henry S. : "Education through Play." Mac- 
 
 millan, 1914. 
 
 Addressed to those who are interested in play as an 
 
 educational factor. 
 
 "The Practical Conduct of Play." Macmillan, 
 
 1915. 
 
 An excellent text-book : gives aims and spirit as 
 
 well as methods.
 
 186 APPENDIX 
 
 Froebel, F. W. A. : " Menschenerziehung." 1826. 
 
 A discussion of the child, largely before seven 
 
 years. 
 Lee, Joseph: "Constructive and Preventive Philos- 
 ophy." New York, 1902. 
 
 "Play and Playgrounds." Boston, 1906. Pam- 
 
 plilet for practical uses. 
 Leland, Arthur, and Leland, Lorna. "Playground 
 
 Technique and Playcraft." Basette, 1909. 
 
 Contains an excellent short sketch of the philosophy 
 
 of play. 
 
 Pageants 
 
 Beegle, Mary Porter, and Crawford, J.: "Community 
 
 Drama and Pageantry." Yale University Press, 
 
 1916. 
 
 Has a bibliography of pageantry which will prove 
 
 valuable to the organizers of pageants. Also directs 
 
 the pageant from its beginning. 
 Davol, R. : "Handbook of American Pageantry." 
 
 Taunton. 
 
 A review of the new pageantry in America. 
 Bulletins of the American Pageant Association. 
 
 Give lists of pageants as they are produced from 
 
 time to time, and discuss questions of interest to the 
 
 producers of pageants. 
 
 Oberammergau, the Passion Play 
 
 Burton, Lady Isabel. 
 
 An emotional account by an ardent Roman Catholic. 
 Blondel, Georges : "Le Drame De La Passion." Paris, 
 
 1900.
 
 APPENDIX 187 
 
 Jackson, John P. : ''The Oberammergau Passion Play." 
 London, 1880. 
 Account of stage, setting, and procedure. 
 
 Mallory, Gerald : "The Passion Play at Oberam- 
 mergau." Boston, 1872. 
 
 Moses, Montrose J. : "The Passion Play of Oberam- 
 mergau." Duffield, 1909. 
 
 A translation of the text as well as an historical 
 resume and short critical discussion of the origin of 
 the play's form. 
 
 Stead, William : "The Passion Play at Oberammergau." 
 Stead, London, 1910. 
 
 A careful account written in Oberammergau. 
 Contains emotional reaction as well as good pic- 
 tures. 
 
 State Establishment of Theatres 
 
 Archer, William, and Barker, Granville: "Schemes 
 and Estimates for a National Theatre." Duffield. 
 A treatment of the National Theatre from an 
 English point of view, which contains practical 
 discussions of value to the organizer. The duties 
 of various staff members are treated at length and 
 lists of plays are suggested for the Stock or Reper- 
 tory Company. 
 
 MacKaye, Percy: "Caliban by the Yellow Sands." 
 Doubleday, Puge, 1916. 
 
 The text of the Shakespeare Tercentenary Masque, 
 witli an account of the methods employed in its 
 production. 
 
 "The Civic Theatre." Kennerley, 1912. 
 A collection of valuable and inspiring sketches.
 
 188 APPENDIX 
 
 "The Masque of Saint Louis." 
 
 Text of the masque produced in Saint Louis as a 
 
 civic venture. 
 
 "Substitute for War." Macmillan, 1915. 
 
 A cry for beauty in service. 
 
 "Report of Committees of the Saint Louis 
 
 Masque." 
 
 An illuminating account of a city working together 
 
 for civic betterment and enjoyment. 
 
 The New Theatre 
 
 Craig, Edward Gordon: "On the Art of the Theatre." 
 Chicago, 1912. 
 
 Filled with the voice of prophecy : most inspiring 
 to the artist of the theatre. 
 
 Carter, Huntley : "The New Spirit in Drama and Art." 
 London. 
 
 An account of changes in the Continental Theatre 
 and in England. 
 
 Cheney, Sheldon: "The New Movement in the 
 Theatre." M. Kennerley. 
 Delightfully clear account of the new art ideals. 
 
 Moderwell, H. K. : "The Theatre of To-day." Lane, 
 1914. 
 
 An able summing up of the forces at work in the 
 new theatre. 
 
 Gregory, Lady Augusta: "Our Irish Theatre." Put- 
 nam. 
 
 The aims and methods of the Irish Theatre move- 
 ment set forth in an interesting and readable fashion.
 
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