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 THE INSURGENT THEATRE
 
 THE 
 INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 THOMAS H. DICKINSON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 MCMXVII
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 ftlNTID IN THI VMITID STATES Or AMERICA
 
 Library 
 
 "PH 
 
 572716
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN this book it has been my purpose to treat the 
 recent events in the non-commercial theatre as 
 these refer to organization and management. I 
 have purposely made no attempt to deal with the 
 literary aspects of plays written for and produced 
 by the so-called "insurgent" theatres. This mat- 
 ter would raise a large and interesting set of 
 questions, which are not, in my judgment, while 
 the plays are in a condition of development, ripe 
 for present treatment. Those who are interested 
 in play lists will find repertories of the theatres 
 represented in this book in the Appendix. I wish 
 to express my gratitude to the directors of theatres 
 and companies for the courtesy with which they 
 have provided me with information. I am under 
 particular obligation to Miss Helen Arthur, Mr. 
 Sheldon Cheney, Mr. Charles Recht, and Mr. 
 G. P. Baker for general material, and to Mr. John 
 B. Andrews for information as to child-labour 
 laws as they apply to the theatre. 
 
 THOMAS H. DICKINSON.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE OLD THEATRE AND THE NEW ... 9 
 
 II EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 25 
 
 III THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 44 
 
 IV BREAKING A NEW FURROW 57 
 
 V THE LITTLE THEATRE 75 
 
 VI THE THEATRE AND THE LAW .... 85 
 
 VII DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 97 
 
 VIII THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 118 
 
 IX PIONEERS 128 
 
 X THREE NEW YORK THEATRES . . . .151 
 
 XI NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 186 
 
 XII THE NEW ADVENTURE 199 
 
 XIII ART AND OUTLOOK 214 
 
 APPENDIX (PLAY LISTS) 227 
 
 INDEX 245
 
 THE 
 INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND THE NEW 
 
 A CHICAGO critic, writing of Dunsany's "The 
 Gods of the Mountain," said that the seven beg- 
 gars were seven little theatre "movements" and 
 the mountain gods were an angry American pub- 
 lic come to turn them all to stone. Those who 
 venture on experiments into new forms of theatri- 
 cal activity may expect a speedy judgment. 
 Whether like that of the Chicago writer this 
 judgment withers them root and branch or 
 whether it warms them with a more sympathetic 
 approval depends upon a great many things, some 
 of them in the critic's mind, some in general cir- 
 cumstances, and a great many in the personality 
 and equipment of the reformer. 
 
 In this book I am trying to give some form to 
 events of a half dozen years in the American 
 
 9
 
 10 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 theatre. These events are of great variety and 
 present at first view a front of no great consistency. 
 At the outset the only point of agreement is the 
 implied conviction on the part -of the workers 
 that the things of the old theatre must be de- 
 stroyed and a new theatre be built up in its stead. 
 This general attitude toward the established 
 theatre has led me to call the new efforts insur- 
 gent. Differing in purpose and method all are 
 alike in that they seek to change present practice 
 to other and presumably better forms. 
 
 When one speaks of the theatre he no longer 
 refers only to play or actor or even production. 
 The term now covers all the technical, profes- 
 sional, artistic and social connections of a great 
 edifice of public amusement. The comprehen- 
 siveness of the institution itself is an index of the 
 complexity of efforts of those who undertake to 
 change it, and of the wide field one must cover in 
 attempting to survey these efforts. 
 
 Nothing is more common than discontent with 
 the state of the theatre. Did I have nothing 
 more than this to show there would be no excuse 
 for a further spilling of ink. It is the fact that 
 the vague and rather uninformed discontent of a 
 few years ago has turned into work of a more 
 expert kind, and that this work is now showing
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW n 
 
 some signs of orderly progress, that gives these 
 events such interests as they may possess. 
 
 When one is planning to make a study of a 
 large and well-known field it is well if he lets be 
 known the principles by which he has made his 
 survey and the safeguards he has placed over his 
 own judgment. For my part I admit that some 
 considerations have been constantly in my mind. 
 The first of these is that in referring to a chang- 
 ing order of procedure it is good manners and good 
 sense to avoid an appearance of censure against 
 the older order. I do not present the insurgent 
 theatres as better theatres; I present them as dif- 
 ferent theatres. 
 
 Another consideration has to do with the temper 
 in which judgments are made. Naturally one 
 wishes to be fearless of judgment both in censure 
 and praise. There must be no hailing of comets 
 as fixed stars or of promising plays as the great 
 American drama. In freeing oneself from the 
 illusion of the mystery of the stage one must not 
 surrender to the illusion of revolution. At the 
 same time the first requirement of a free criticism 
 is a catholicity of understanding. The variety 
 and distribution of the materials in the theatre 
 makes summary judgment difficult. To pass 
 judgment on the work of a particular artist is quite
 
 12 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 unjust, for not once in a hundred chances has 
 that artist been truly in control of his materials. 
 Moreover the governing factor of a theatrical en- 
 terprise is quite likely to keep itself hidden. 
 Nothing is more footless than to render praise or 
 blame to a complex of accidental forces that by 
 one means or another have got themselves gathered 
 together into a stage production. Criticism in 
 the theatre has become too much like judgment on 
 a chapter of mischances. He who would draw 
 conclusions can consider only motives and efforts. 
 At the present time results lie outside the power 
 of any man. 
 
 I have another working basis in my thinking 
 about the activities of the insurgent theatre. It 
 seems well to distinguish between the ostensible 
 purpose, the "philosophy" which workers con- 
 tinually avow for their efforts and the driving 
 power, the efficient cause which keeps them going. 
 The two are not the same thing. And of the 
 two the latter is the better. I am not even 
 aware that the workers have been able to agree 
 upon any set of principles. Their words are 
 usually half-baked, over-reaching, pontifical, full- 
 blown. The best service their words have done 
 has been to cloak resolute deeds. 
 
 Chief of the statements they have made for their
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW 13 
 
 work has been the so-called sociological argument. 
 They have held that the theatre is ill-adjusted to 
 the society that feeds it, that it is subversive of 
 popular standards, that it does not cultivate the 
 leisure hour, that it represents only certain groups 
 of our citizenship, and leaves others unsatisfied. 
 And they call for a theatre to serve a social end, to 
 develop local spirit, to give voice to unspoken 
 needs, to fill a gap in a line of institutions 
 somewhere with the church, the school and the 
 jail. 
 
 While some are making the social charges others 
 are making professional charges against the 
 theatre. They say that it is expensive in money 
 and life, that it calls for much and gives little in 
 return. They charge that it is banal, that it has 
 no standards, or is continually debasing its stand- 
 ards, that to the artist its practice is precarious, 
 and too often cruel, that it saps the springs of 
 originality and creative effort from those who 
 work within its walls. Now there is force in 
 both of these arguments. The first has the 
 warmth of a social cause. The second the impulse 
 of revolt. And yet it would not seem that either 
 one of these supplies the explanation of the the- 
 atrical activities of recent years. The true source 
 lies in the active impulses of men. The logic of
 
 14 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 events is better to be believed than the logic of 
 words. 
 
 Taking it that there was an old theatre and that 
 there is a struggle for a new theatre, what are the 
 marks by which the two may be distinguished from 
 each other*? Are there any precise features of the 
 old theatre for which the new theatre has under- 
 taken to supply substitutes'? Entirely aside from 
 what artists say about the matter and judging 
 solely from events, I think it may be said that a 
 study of recent theatrical activities will show that 
 there are such features and I am going to try to 
 make a short arbitrary statement of what I think 
 them to be. 
 
 The ideal of the new theatre may be dis- 
 tinguished from that of the old by their differing 
 standards of support. Now support is quite in- 
 dispensable in the theatre. Unlike the other arts, 
 any one of which may be considered quite apart 
 from its support, and simply as a matter of the 
 artist's own creative impulse, the art of the theatre 
 has no existence except as it is sustained from 
 without. Support is not the reward or the rec- 
 ognition of the artist of the theatre; it is the 
 prerequisite. It is the material with which he 
 works. Without it he cannot work.
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW 15 
 
 Now support is of two orders, clearly to be dis- 
 tinguished and yet mutually connected. The first 
 is that mental support upon which the success of 
 every play depends, the support of the minds of 
 the audience. The second is the financial support 
 upon which the machinery of the production de- 
 pends. Both of these forms of support must be 
 present or the play has no existence. If either 
 one of these is withdrawn the play suffers. If 
 either one is vitiated the artist suffers. A study 
 of the condition of the stage during several years 
 and the witness of the activities of the insurgent 
 theatres, lead me to believe that in neither respect 
 has support been healthy for some time past. I 
 will develop this point under Audience and Ex- 
 pense. 
 
 AUDIENCE. The audience upon which any 
 man of the theatre must depend for support of his 
 productions is incoherent, inconsistent, and not as 
 yet awakened to its power and responsibilities. 
 Studying the potential audience of the American 
 theatre we find that it falls roughly into the fol- 
 lowing classes : 
 
 Puritans. To these the theatre is still forbid- 
 den. Though they attend it they look upon it 
 with suspicion. Even when they go they hold 
 themselves rigidly and take no real pleasure in it.
 
 16 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 This is a very large group and of all the most in- 
 fluential. 
 
 Theatre-Goers. To these the theatre is a pas- 
 time only, and all theatres are in one class whether 
 legitimate, motion-picture or vaudeville theatre. 
 Either their tastes have not been developed or, as 
 is more likely, they check their taste at the cloak- 
 room when they go to the theatre. This also is a 
 large class. 
 
 Connoisseurs. By some these are called high- 
 brows. They have become so critical and expert 
 in their attitude toward a play as to be of little 
 service in its support. This is a small but trou- 
 blesome group. 
 
 Theatre-Lovers. These are to be distinguished 
 from the theatre-goers because they have taste, 
 and from the connoisseurs because they go to the 
 theatre to enjoy it and not to judge it. This class, 
 which is very small, is largely made up of for- 
 eigners, Germans, French, and Italians. 
 
 To these general classes, with their widely di- 
 vergent attitudes the American theatre makes 
 its appeal. Between the classes there is mutual 
 suspicion, and within the classes there is incon- 
 sistency and insincerity. No effort has been made 
 to specialize in the appeal to any one of the 
 classes, or to arouse in any of them a sense of re-
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW 17 
 
 sponsibility either to its own or better standards. 
 The theatre has attempted as a rule to secure the 
 largest number out of the total membership of the 
 classes. Naturally it has appealed particularly to 
 the largest class, to those to whom the theatre was 
 a pastime, and a strenuous effort has been made 
 by subterfuges and otherwise to satisfy the rig- 
 orous principles of the Puritan class. If any 
 classes were to be offended or ignored the third 
 and fourth classes were the ones. 
 
 EXPENSE. The necessity of reaching these 
 widely divergent groups has thrown upon the 
 theatre the burden of great expense. It has pro- 
 jected the theatre into the domain of big business. 
 No more could a theatre that appeals to all the 
 people proceed upon a small plan than could a 
 department store. And so the theatre has taken 
 upon itself the expenses of a commercial purveyor 
 of wares to a large and widely separated patron- 
 age. 
 
 In order to get a clear understanding of the 
 problem of expense it may be appropriate to out- 
 line the chief factors of expense in a production. 
 
 RENT. In percentages rent runs from about 
 one-third of the total income of a production in 
 the smaller cities to one-half of its income in New 
 York and Chicago. In dollars rent in the latter
 
 i8 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 cities is based upon a minimum weekly gross 
 income of from $5,000 to $7,000. If the gross 
 income is not as much as this the company is dis- 
 possessed. This means that upon the percentage 
 basis every production must pay from $2,500 to 
 $3,000 weekly rent in order to hold a theatre. 
 These figures are borne out by the flat rental 
 charged for the average New York theatre which 
 amounts as a rule to $3,000 a week. The lowest 
 annual rental for a bare theatre building in New 
 York is $32,000, and this does not include helpers 
 or heat or license. The highest annual rental runs 
 well into five figures. 
 
 BUSINESS GETTING. As each production ap- 
 peals to the entire potential patronage of the city 
 this item is a large one. Newspaper advertising 
 is the largest single detail. With paper, sign 
 boards and circulars it amounts to $1,000 a 
 week. 
 
 SALARIES. It is noticed that almost two-thirds 
 of the weekly income is accounted for before any 
 consideration can be given to the production. 
 The next item of expense is salaries. This item 
 can be set down as averaging $1,200 a week. 
 The stage crew and musicians may amount to 
 $ 1 2 more. 
 
 ROYALTY. The royalty on a new play runs
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW 19 
 
 from five to ten percent on the gross, or a mini- 
 mum of $300 a week on a play that can run. 
 
 PRODUCTION. So far no attention has been 
 given to the production itself, scenery, rehearsal 
 halls, and manager's profits. Adding up the fig- 
 ures given we have $5,625 of weekly expenses 
 before the production can be paid for. Of course 
 no estimate can be made of the cost of a produc- 
 tion but $3,500 would be a low limit of cost and 
 the high limit may amount to as much as the man- 
 ager is able to pay. And no consideration is given 
 to license fees, $500 in New York and $1,000 in 
 Chicago, for these ordinarily come in rent, nor to 
 travelling expenses of companies on the road which 
 are made up by shaving the metropolitan 
 expenses of rent, advertising and salaries. 
 
 THESE FIGURES INTERPRETED. Without go- 
 ing too far into absolute figures, certain conclu- 
 sions are forced upon one in studying the mechan- 
 ics of the present-day theatre. If a production is 
 to stay alive it must make $7,000 a week or more. 
 Only to the extent that it makes more than this 
 amount is it the source of any profit to its man- 
 agement. And it must make this not for one 
 week, nor for ten, but for a season or a series of 
 seasons if the great business edifice of the modern 
 theatre is to be supported. Translating dollars
 
 20 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 into audience the play must draw at least nine 
 thousand people a week for an indefinite number 
 of weeks. Manifestly no considerations of art 
 or idealism will affect these primary necessities. 
 
 Under such circumstances no one can wonder 
 that experiment in the theatre is difficult and dan- 
 gerous. Anyone who wishes to produce plays in 
 America, whether he belongs to the most strongly 
 entrenched groups in the theatre or is the purest 
 idealist who has come fresh from college alike 
 faces these conditions. He faces an audience dis- 
 organized, suspicious, and partly insincere. He 
 faces a high scale of expense built up in an effort 
 to draw and hold that audience. Can one be sur- 
 prised that under these conditions the zest of 
 creative work in the theatre has been almost 
 smothered? The theatre has in fact become a 
 business, but a business based upon factors no one 
 understands, upon which no one can depend, in 
 the highest degree speculative. Nothkig is more 
 futile than to blame any man or set of men for 
 these conditions. Before he does so let the critic 
 declare what he would do under the circumstances. 
 The answers of the experimenter have been illum- 
 inating. Either (l.) he has accepted the condi- 
 tions and speculated, as does the established man- 
 ager but without the latter's acumen; or (2.) he
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW 21 
 
 appeals for support to a narrow audience and 
 fails, swallowed up in expense; or (3.) he calls 
 for a subsidy as a palliation of conditions; or (4.) 
 he starts out to change altogether the principles of 
 support upon which the theatre is run. Of them 
 all the latter offers the only rational programme. 
 But it is a long hard road. 
 
 More various than the minds of men have 
 been the different purposes of those who have 
 started out in revolt against the old theatre. 
 Sometimes their purposes were confused between 
 what they said and what they thought secretly in 
 their hearts. Reduced to their lowest terms these 
 have been their purposes : 
 
 To make money. 
 
 To serve society by giving good plays. 
 
 To serve society by giving plays cheaply. 
 
 To teach something. 
 
 To produce plays as artistically as possible. 
 
 Simply to do something in the theatre. 
 Bo has the confusion in the situation itself been 
 worse confounded by the confusion in the minds 
 of those who would correct it. 
 
 Quite appropriately the first signs of insurgency 
 in the theatre came from within the ranks of the
 
 22 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 profession, from those actors who felt the new 
 business systems coming down around them and 
 sought to escape their hampering control. The 
 impulse that controlled this early insurgency was 
 that most healthy impulse on the part of the artist 
 to use his powers at their best valuation, contin- 
 ually to maintain a creative interest in his work, 
 and to put forth his own vision of truth. 
 
 To this impulse we owe the continuing pro- 
 duction on the stage of the plays of Shakespeare 
 and the courageous efforts that have been made to 
 introduce to America the best examples of the 
 intellectual drama of the Continent. Neither 
 one of these types was of an order to win the 
 largest audiences. Both depended upon the insist- 
 ent purpose of the artist to maintain on the stage 
 plays that were fruitful to him as artist at what- 
 ever expense of labor or decreased returns. The 
 classical play had so much of sanction on its side, 
 it was so harmonious with the best traditions of 
 the theatre, that it seems strange that it should be 
 classed as insurgent. Yet such has been in fact 
 the spirit of the long line of actors who for thirty 
 years have held aloft the banner of Shakespeare. 
 
 It has required more daring to take up the cause 
 of the modern European movement in drama. 
 Without a large popular sanction, resting indeed
 
 THE OLD THEATRE AND NEW 23 
 
 under suspicion and distrust, Ibsen and Shaw and 
 Hauptmann have offered to the artists simply the 
 opportunity to do as they pleased without any 
 other compensation. Few indeed have come 
 through these works to any larger power with 
 American audiences. Many have been able to 
 make success only by drawing upon the reserves of 
 popularity stored up from other less way-breaking 
 efforts. In this group Mrs. Fiske stands high. 
 She has been a true insurgent within the profes- 
 sion. And so in varying degrees have been John 
 Blair, Mary Shaw, and Arnold Daly, in their 
 insistence on doing as they pleased and not boring 
 themselves in a theatre that put a heavy price on 
 such privileges. 
 
 While the established theatre of America was 
 giving its anxious friends a hard nut to crack other 
 theatres were prospering that were run on alto- 
 gether a different system. Some of these were in 
 the old world, but some, strange to say, were in 
 America. Set away in side streets, making no 
 appeal to the many, playing the classics of many 
 languages and the newer pieces as well, these thea- 
 tres were serving their audiences and giving joy 
 to their workers. As a rule they belonged to those 
 racial pockets which are so common in the cosmo-
 
 24 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 politan life of great centers. The Irish, German, 
 Yiddish, Bohemian, and French theatres were not 
 perfect but they did show how other nations can 
 support a vital dramatic art with critical under- 
 standing and financial support. The time was 
 coming when they would serve as models for thea- 
 tres dealing with the American substance of life. 
 But before that time came great sums of money 
 were to be spent in bolstering up a system that 
 was doomed.
 
 II 
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 
 
 WHEN men first began to think of the prob- 
 lems of support in the theatre they thought of them 
 only in terms of expense and ignored the factor 
 of mental support. This was the time in which 
 subsidy was looked upon as a cure-all for .the ills 
 of the theatre. The idea of a subsidy as a sum 
 of money laid aside for the support or guarantee 
 of a theatrical venture is one of the oldest and 
 commonest of ideas in theatrical reform. The 
 idea is derived from a misunderstanding of the 
 practice and history of the state theatres of the 
 Continent and is strengthened by the American's 
 faith in the power of money to accomplish 
 miracles. 
 
 Now I am of the opinion that the subsidy sys- 
 tem of itself is not successful, that while it is use- 
 ful in pointing the way it has never yet succeeded 
 in reaching the goal. It has failed because it has 
 depended upon the power of money to do what 
 needed to be done by other means, because it is 
 
 25
 
 26 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 palliative rather than fundamental in its efforts, 
 because it has served to perpetuate a system that 
 was subversive and expensive and because it has 
 tried to impose upon theatre-goers under the guise 
 of art and at the appeal of duty a kind of play 
 they did not want and would not accept. 
 
 All of these go back to the first, that the subsidy 
 system continues in the theatre the money impulse 
 and the money control. So far from money being 
 all powerful to solve the problems of the theatre 
 it is safe to say that the dependence on money is 
 the first guarantee of failure. In practice subsidy 
 always goes on the theory that the ills of the thea- 
 tre, ills largely derived from the false standards of 
 values, can be cured by continuing those values. 
 It may be true that the cure of the ills of democ- 
 racy is more than democracy. But the cure of the 
 ills of money is less money. The subsidy system 
 in the theatre is inconsistent and palliative. 
 
 The classic example of the failure of the subsidy 
 system in America is the New Theatre in New 
 York, an example so full of lessons as to have been 
 worth the money it cost. The incorporators un- 
 dertook this project with an absolute faith in the 
 power of money to do everything they bid. And 
 they determined that there should be money 
 enough. Kings of the business world themselves,
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 27 
 
 they could not conceive that there was any 
 demesne that would fail to serve them. So they 
 fell into a series of errors. The first was the idea 
 that in building a building you are erecting an 
 institution, that you can create a theatre as you 
 create a sales organization. The New Theatre 
 came into existence as a gilded frame for a picture 
 that had not yet been painted by an artist who 
 had not yet been born. 
 
 A fallacy allied to this is the idea that you can 
 hold the artist to a schedule, that you can force 
 the processes of the theatre to suit the terms of a 
 contract. System has become very powerful in 
 the theatre but it alone could not buy the services 
 of playwrights, even the most mercenary ; it could 
 not create out of hand an audience; it could not 
 force the completion of a building and the prepa- 
 ration of a play that the opening performance 
 might be given on schedule time, nor overcome the 
 handicap caused by a false and precipitate start ; it 
 could not adapt a great hall to the requirements of 
 the contemporary play ; it could not overcome the 
 disadvantages of a scale of high prices and the 
 tone of social exclusiveness placed about the thea- 
 tre; it could not allay the suspicions of the experts 
 in the theatre. Like the middleman in Frank 
 Norris's novel who was smothered in the wheat he
 
 28 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 had made his master, the New Theatre was 
 engulfed in "business principles." 
 
 The New Theatre used its subsidy to perpetu- 
 ate the faults of the commercial theatre. True, 
 it introduced repertory, it eliminated stars, it 
 produced new plays. But in so far as the Ameri- 
 can theatre is the victim of overfeeding it magni- 
 fied the disease and offered no cure. It accepted 
 all the faults of the commercial theatre, the high 
 salaries, the tremendous property investments, and 
 tried to cure them by superfluity. One purpose 
 the New Theatre served well. It showed that no 
 amount of money can accomplish what must come 
 in the form of a change of impulse, that the stim- 
 ulus of investment must give away to the stimu- 
 lus of creation, that reform will not come from 
 overplus but from reduction to the necessary fac- 
 tors. Much of the vogue of the simpler methods 
 of production, the smaller and more modest prin- 
 ciples of staging and popular appeal, followed 
 immediately upon the failure of the New Thea- 
 tre. 
 
 After this first expensive venture there was no 
 further attempt to solve the problem of the thea- 
 tre by erecting a building. Another and far bet- 
 ter idea than this is the subsidizing of the idea, the 
 providing of a fund of money for the support of
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 29 
 
 a series of productions. Two undertakings work- 
 ing upon this plan are found in Chicago. 
 
 For these two Chicago ventures two different 
 forces are responsible. The first is the character 
 and situation of the city itself. The second city 
 of the country in size Chicago is theatrically only 
 a provincial city. Few productions outside of the 
 vaudeville field are made there. For its best 
 theatrical fare the city is as much dependent upon 
 New York as are Memphis and Madison. Now, 
 there is in Chicago a strong creative spirit not 
 only in business but in art and civic affairs as well. 
 It is to be supposed that such a city would not long 
 be content to leave unused its own inventive im- 
 pulses in the theatre. The conditions that have 
 made Chicago secondary in the field of the com- 
 mercial theatre have made her a pioneer in the 
 movement for a local theatre. 
 
 The first step for a new theatre in Chicago was 
 taken in 1906 when a group of public spirited men 
 and women organized the New Theatre of Chi- 
 cago. Twenty trustees were elected and a guar- 
 antee fund of $25,000 was raised. Mr. Victor 
 Mapes was called from the east to take charge of 
 the undertaking. Of course it is easy enough after 
 ten years to pick flaws in this early venture. The 
 repertory gives a patch-work appearance ; only one
 
 30 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 American play of any value was produced, James 
 A. Herne's "Margaret Fleming" ; in foreign plays 
 the committee was misled into offering a prepond- 
 erance of the strong meat from European tables to 
 the tender palates of the American middle- west; 
 the audience was not successfully recruited; there 
 were evidences of managerial vagueness of pur- 
 pose; the venture broke up in a division of coun- 
 cils and a loss of the guarantee. All these diffi- 
 culties could be shown without proving anything 
 at all. Probably under no circumstances at all at 
 this period could the theatre have been longer 
 lived. Nothing daunted a few years later Chi- 
 cago came forward with another plan. And as 
 she had led New York both in time and in the 
 character of her first, in her second she took a long 
 stride ahead of anything that had been done. 
 
 The second Chicago venture goes back to the 
 fact that Chicago had as one of her citizens one 
 of the most dynamic figures in the modern move- 
 ment of the stage. I will tell more of Donald 
 Robertson when I come to discuss his early work 
 in "Breaking a New Furrow." It is enough to 
 say that this early work was Robertson's real con- 
 tribution to the American stage, a contribution 
 that is not as yet enough appreciated, for which 
 perhaps the time has not yet come to speak in ade-
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 31 
 
 quate terms. This work had been done in and 
 near Chicago and had planted the city with new 
 seeds of growth. 
 
 Here comes a feature of the story somewhat 
 pathetic and altogether significant. Robertson's 
 efforts before had been artistic and scholarly. He 
 had gathered about himself an unselfish company. 
 He had introduced new plays and had started a 
 circuit. As far as possible he had worked with 
 an eye single to the true glories of the theatre, 
 without impeding paraphernalia and without con- 
 fusion of principles. He had paid a heavy price 
 in money and strength. But he had been repaid 
 in the artist's only coin, freedom for his own ar- 
 tistic impulses and growing solidity and expert- 
 ness in his group. 
 
 And then came the ambition to do the big thing. 
 I do not know whence it arose. Probably it was 
 born in many minds at once, to those of civic vi- 
 sion in Chicago meaning an opportunity to estab- 
 lish a great institution, to the artist himself per- 
 haps an opportunity to escape from the weariness 
 of his self-appointed task. When such an ambi- 
 tion comes the first thing thought of is money; 
 next to that the need of an edifice flanking the 
 other respectable edifices of the city, with flat 
 imperturbable facade, windows with blinds dis-
 
 32 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 erectly drawn, and invisible but intimate sources 
 of connection with centres of power in the Great 
 City by the Sea. 
 
 This was in 1911; a fund was raised; com- 
 mittees were established. The organization was 
 to be bi-cameral, the Chicago Theatre Society rep- 
 resenting the city, the Drama Players being the 
 expert and producing group and representing the 
 profession. I haven't the heart to tell the whole 
 story, and perhaps it isn't necessary. Again there 
 came the medley of many purposes, the dividing of 
 councils. As long as a man was searching his 
 way on a shoe-string he had obligation only to his 
 own and his company's dinner and to the word of 
 command. But when there were a hundred sub- 
 scribers his obligations were multiplied a hundred 
 fold. Where does the point of conscience divide 
 between the artist's instinctive imperatives and all 
 those dictates that come so well recommended from 
 the policies of "good business practice" 1 ? Cer- 
 tainly a large venture was compelled to do some 
 things a smaller venture needed not to do. A big 
 institution had obligations to the theatre as a 
 whole that smaller institutions did not have. 
 Professional actors were necessary. A road tour 
 was considered desirable. The repertory had to 
 be selected by an efficient system. An organiza-
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 33 
 
 tion that depended upon the largess of givers 
 could not select plays as did Garrick and Mac- 
 ready and Frohman. Plays must be selected 
 after the fashion used in locating a cigar store, by 
 a referendum to experts and a counting of the 
 passers-by. 
 
 The effort was high minded enough but it was 
 doomed to failure. No power on earth could 
 save it. The company accepted all the disadvan- 
 tages of the commercial system with none of its 
 advantages. Not only had it all the expense of 
 professional companies but more. The actors and 
 the management were all expensive. And the 
 system of administration ignored by principle all 
 the means by which a commercial company builds 
 up its returns by a slow accretion of interest and 
 a gradual expansion of profits over weeks and 
 months. 
 
 The chief results can be given in a few words. 
 By the aid of a committee a repertory was gathered 
 together of which the individual numbers were 
 good and the group bad. The repertory as a 
 whole had a singular intensity and purposefulness, 
 hardly relieved by the one or two pieces of his- 
 torical (and therefore academic) comedy included. 
 Though care was taken to encourage American 
 playwrights no excellent native plays were secured.
 
 34 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Without exception the dramatists thought that 
 what was expected of them was something "dar- 
 ing" and "strong" particularly in matters of sex. 
 The company was like the repertory, excellent in 
 members, quite without mass or group effective- 
 ness. The whole thing lacked the genius of the 
 leader to fuse elements into a whole. An inspir- 
 ing leader through the wilderness Robertson lost 
 his sceptre when he reached the temple. Above 
 all the audience was lacking. People could not be 
 lured to come. And the fact that some benevo- 
 lent people had spent $60,000 did not serve at all 
 beside the fact that men and women did not sup- 
 port the theatre with their minds. 
 
 The subsequent history of the Chicago Theatre 
 Society can be told in a few words. Though they 
 had learned an expensive lesson the leaders did 
 not entirely despair of making money serviceable 
 to the new drama. Robertson withdrew but those 
 who were left turned their attention to the sup- 
 port of little companies that here and there were 
 starting up with scant money but big enthusiasm. 
 Men's minds go by contraries. It was not with- 
 out reason that Winthrop Ames flew from the 
 vasty deeps of the New Theatre to the petite 
 spaces of his Little Theatre, or that the Chicago 
 Theatre Society turned from their expensive
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 35 
 
 experiment in theatre reform to the poorly staged, 
 frugal, but imaginative productions of the Irish 
 Theatre. The Chicago people still had a little 
 theatre, The Fine Arts, and they had some money. 
 It must suddenly have come to them that there 
 was one thing they did not have and had not en- 
 couraged, and that was the service of a band of 
 artists. For two years the Chicago Theatre So- 
 ciety supported such artists as they could find, 
 doing real service in bringing the Irish Players and 
 Miss Horniman's company to this country. They 
 ended their existence with another venture in the 
 subsidizing of an imported English stock com- 
 pany, playing English plays under the direction of 
 B. Iden Payne. This venture cost $15,000 and 
 resulted in some good productions, and the first 
 timid awakenings to life of a new audience. But 
 imported plants do not grow in American soil. 
 
 The truth of this was shown in New York a 
 few years later when in January, 1915, Emanuel 
 Reicher established his Modem Stage. Reicher 
 came to America with the prestige of a great name 
 in Germany. He was equipped by association 
 with both the Berlin Deutsches Theater and 
 the Volkstheater. He had been admired by 
 Ibsen. Early in the century he had directed John 
 Blair and Mary Shaw in their performance of
 
 36 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 "Ghosts." Moreover he had behind him a group 
 of people to whom the theatre is not a mystery, 
 who are in the habit of supporting it as a public 
 institution, as they have done the Irving Place 
 (New York) and the Pabst Theatre (Milwaukee) 
 stock companies. 
 
 But all these things were extraneous to the real 
 needs for the establishment of an American thea- 
 tre. In the making of a repertory Reicher was 
 conscious only of the principles followed on the 
 Continent. From the start there was a flavor of 
 class consciousness about the Modern Stage that 
 Reicher himself may not have intended. Prob- 
 ably New York has seen no more distinguished 
 productions than two of those presented by 
 Reicher. But it remains that in serving "Elga" 
 and "Rosmersholm," "When the Young Vine 
 Blooms" and "The Weavers" he was providing 
 alien fare. And when he joined himself with 
 The People's Theatre and The Wage Earners' 
 Theatre he completed his alienation from the 
 American audience. 
 
 Many times throughout this book I will have 
 occasion to call attention to the fact that the small 
 American cities are to be considered by themselves 
 in any view of the American theatre. A large
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 37 
 
 part of what is called the modem theatre move- 
 ment is a product of the small towns. Their 
 problem is both identical with that of the metropo- 
 lis and distinct from it. They are dependent 
 upon New York for their theatrical fare. But 
 gradually their condition has been growing more 
 desperate. Their productions have been taken 
 away from them and cheaper ones have been sub- 
 stituted until to-day the motion picture and the 
 cheap repertory company constitute their only en- 
 tertainment in the theatre. 
 
 With them it is therefore not a case of improv- 
 ing theatrical fare to the point of the absolutely 
 good. It is a question of providing for the town 
 even the average fare that the city lives on, the 
 popular successes, the ordinary good shows of the 
 cities. One can imagine the town man saying, 
 "Well enough for art, if you will only give us 
 wholesome entertainment. We do not ask for 
 Dunsany and Maeterlinck, but we would like to 
 exchange our cheap movie, our travelling burlesque 
 show, for Tt Pays to Advertise' or 'Get-Rich- 
 Quick Wallingford.' " 
 
 For a question of this kind the answer has 
 usually been sought in the local stock company. 
 Under stress of a great many attacks the stock 
 company has suffered a great deal of late. To-day
 
 38 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 there are very few towns of below fifty thousand 
 inhabitants that can support a stock company. 
 These circumstances opened another avenue for 
 experiment in the subsidizing of a theatre. It 
 would be presumed that if subsidy is ever to suc- 
 ceed it must be here. But such experience as there 
 has been only goes further to show how useless, 
 unaided financial support is when the mental sup- 
 port of the audience is not satisfactory. 
 
 Within the last five years three towns in New 
 England have undertaken to support their local 
 stock companies. The Portland Stock Company 
 lasted twelve weeks ; the Pittsfield Theatre lasted 
 about a year; the Northampton Theatre has run 
 through five seasons. The latter two are worthy 
 of some attention. 
 
 In 1911 fifty citizens of Pittsfield, Massachu- 
 setts, a city of about 30,000 inhabitants, pur- 
 chased the Colonial Theatre of that city with the 
 hope of making it as creditable to the city as 
 the library and museum. After conference with 
 expert advisers the theatre was offered to William 
 Parke on what seemed to be very advantageous 
 terms. Parke was something more than the ordi- 
 nary stock manager. He had had experience with 
 the Castle Square Theatre in Boston. He was an 
 artist, was interested in the best things, and a
 
 39 
 
 genius in the economies of production. He gath- 
 ered together a company of minimum size, from 
 twelve to fourteen people, and paid them con- 
 servatively, based upon the fact that he was offer- 
 ing a full season's contract. By strict attention 
 to details he reduced his expenses, including sal- 
 aries, royalties, and rent, to below $1,500 a week. 
 The company opened May 20, 1912, played 
 through that summer and the following winter, 
 and closed July 12, 1913. The plays produced 
 included current Broadway successes, regular stock 
 pieces, classic pieces including Shakespeare, and 
 pieces from the new intellectual drama, in about 
 equal ratio. Parke was supported by concessions 
 in the price of the theatre and by organized sup- 
 port in attendance. At the end of a year he gave 
 up the task several thousand dollars poorer. 
 
 In a venture of this kind there are always some 
 features upon which no decision can be made. 
 One of these has to do with the scale of prices. 
 In a desire to serve the greatest number Parke set 
 his prices at ten, twenty-five, and fifty cents. 
 Whether he would have prospered better at higher 
 prices is a bootless question. The other question 
 pertains to the repertory. No one can tell that 
 any other selection of plays would have been bet- 
 ter received. It is very improbable.
 
 40 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Aside from these dubious points some things 
 are clear. There was not in the city a coherent 
 audience for any one of the classes of plays offered 
 or for all combined. The audience was split by 
 its demand to laugh, to cry, to think, as all 
 audiences are. Moreover it was drawn here and 
 there by other forms of entertainment, by visiting 
 companies, motion picture shows and other stock 
 companies. The conclusion is that either the 
 already low expenses had to be reduced or the 
 guarantee fund had so to be raised as to amount 
 to an annual benefaction. The former of these 
 things could not possibly be done under the com- 
 mercial system of the theatre. Even if the latter 
 had been possible it would not have been judicious 
 to support by benefaction a thing the people had 
 showed they did not want. The decision to close 
 was inevitable. 
 
 A situation somewhat of the same type is pre- 
 sented by the so-called municipal theatre at 
 Northampton, Massachusetts. In many respects 
 this is one of the most extraordinary experiments 
 of recent years, not, let me hasten to say, through 
 anything that has been done as a "municipal" 
 theatre, or in the production of a better art of the 
 theatre, but solely as a contribution to the prob- 
 lem of the theatre in the small town.
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 41 
 
 Northampton is about two-thirds the size of 
 Pittsfield and its population is a little more diver- 
 sified through the fact that it is a manufacturing 
 town and an educational center as well. In 1892 
 Mr. Edward H. R. Lyman gave to the town of 
 Northampton a large and well equipped theatre 
 called The Academy of Music to be held by the 
 municipality and conducted for the welfare of its 
 citizens. For twenty years nothing was done to 
 put the spirit of this gift into effect. Then in 
 1912 a campaign was started, supporting com- 
 mittees were organized, experts were interrogated 
 and as a result Miss Jessie Bonstelle and Mr. Ber- 
 tram Harrison were engaged to form a stock com- 
 pany. 
 
 Both the directors were professional managers 
 of broad experience and excellent judgment. 
 What financial arrangements were made I do not 
 know. The theatre was given under a certain 
 concession and arrangements were made for a 
 guarantee fund against loss. The principles kept 
 in mind in making out the programme were that as 
 far as possible the selection should be made to 
 please the town. The theatre was to be a munic- 
 ipal theatre. No surrender was to be made to the 
 desire to do the esoteric thing; on the other hand 
 no plays of a debased order were to be considered.
 
 42 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 In deference to the civic nature of the enterprise 
 the prices were set at twenty-five, fifty, and sev- 
 enty-five cents. 
 
 Considering the purposes a truly remarkable set 
 of activities was placed in motion. The plays 
 were of the general type represented by the Pitts- 
 field list, Broadway plays, stock plays, classical 
 plays, and new intellectual drama. Both the 
 first and second seasons drew upon the guaran- 
 tees, $6000 and $2000 respectively. The play- 
 ers ended the third season $3000 to the good. 
 The fourth season also was a success, with an 
 average weekly attendance of 3681. Many times 
 during the five seasons there had been crises but 
 these had always been met by vigorous public ap- 
 peals on the part of the directors. On the face of 
 the returns it would seem that this theatre had 
 been a success. But the end of the fifth season 
 brought the withdrawal of the professional direct- 
 ors. The theatre still stands a question mark 
 before the future. 
 
 Let me say once for all that no one could have 
 done better than the management of the North- 
 ampton company has done. The plays have been 
 good. The acting has been excellent. The com- 
 pany has been well supported by a courageous and 
 intelligent committee. The trouble goes back to
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN SUBSIDY 43 
 
 the audience. The Northampton audience is not 
 only split into the four divisions mentioned in my 
 last chapter, but by racial and social subdivisions 
 as well. The audience of school-girls from Smith 
 College, by no means an uplift audience, the audi- 
 ence of the Puritans who are shown into their seats 
 as into a pew, the audience of the French-Cana- 
 dian workers from the mills coalesce with diffi- 
 culty if at all. This is not only a local situation. 
 It is the situation everywhere but Northampton 
 provides a good text. There are enough people 
 in Northampton to support a theatre if all would 
 look one way. But they are not even all willing 
 to sit together. It is said that the company was 
 severely censured for playing such an immoral 
 play as Besier's "Don!" No wonder Miss Bon- 
 stelle became discouraged. 
 
 Until you have an audience that faces one 
 way no expensive machinery of the theatre can 
 succeed except the one that appeals to the largest 
 number. The thing to do is to start measures to 
 face the audience as one, and until this is accom- 
 plished to reduce the expenses of experiment to the 
 very lowest figures.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 
 
 WHEN I say that the subsidy system is a failure 
 I naturally do not mean that the theatre can run 
 without money or that there would be any case in 
 which generous financial assistance would not be 
 useful. I mean only that money is not the first 
 and decisive need, that before money can be of 
 any use at all there must be an audience that will 
 support the theatre with its intelligence. 
 
 It did not take long to discover this need. 
 Soon after the subsidy system had shown its weak 
 spots measures were taken to organize the audi- 
 ence. It is a strange commentary on the persist- 
 ency of ideas that the first efforts of the organized 
 audiences were toward the support of the estab- 
 lished institution of the theatre. Like subsidy, 
 the federated audience was projected for pallia- 
 tion rather than cure. 
 
 A few years ago an enterprising writer on the 
 theatre made connection between his subject and 
 Tarde's theories of mob psychology. It was an 
 
 44
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 45 
 
 ingenious idea, more serviceable in adorning a dis- 
 cursive hour than in pointing a serious argument. 
 And yet when the American audience began to 
 take seriously its part in the "two hours' traffic of 
 the stage" a real advance had been made. Until 
 recently writers had been content to refer to any- 
 thing other than the consumer when it came to 
 pointing the errors of the stage. The player, the 
 playwright, the producer, were all at fault. The 
 law of supply and demand, so useful elsewhere, 
 was not held to be in force in the theatre. 
 
 But there has been a change in all that. Partly 
 as a result of new theories of social psychology, 
 partly on account of lessons learned from the early 
 experiments in a reformed stage it was seen that 
 the audience had even a governing place in the 
 fortunes of any theatrical undertaking. 
 
 Then came the movements for the enlistment of 
 the consumer in the cause of a better drama, for 
 his organization into a compact unit which could 
 be wielded for a specific purpose. When one 
 starts upon measures of reform the first instrument 
 usually employed is prohibition. In the last few 
 years there have been several measures for the 
 expression of the power of the audience through 
 organized prohibition. Perhaps the most vigor- 
 ous effort of this type was that of the American
 
 46 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Federation of Catholic Societies, which in 1915 
 signed a manifesto against immoral and demoral- 
 izing plays. Aside from the fact that this kind of 
 reform is merely repressive it fails of its stated 
 purpose. For by selecting for particular atten- 
 tion certain productions these are given a noto- 
 riety that is very effective in getting business. 
 
 Far more rational than the scheme of index 
 expurgatorius is that of collective support of plays 
 that are considered worthy. This plan empha- 
 sizes the responsibility of the audience toward 
 worthy undertakings, it compels their active dis- 
 crimination as between good and bad plays, and it 
 draws together those of like minds on matters of 
 the art of the stage. One of the first movers in 
 the federation of the audience for the positive sup- 
 port of good plays was the MacDowell Club of 
 New York City, which has for some years scrutin- 
 ized through committees the plays to be supported 
 by its membership. It was soon followed by the 
 Drama League of America, founded in Evanston, 
 Illinois, in 1910, and immediately taking its placd 
 as the strongest movement toward the federation! 
 of the audience. 
 
 The idea of federation as practiced by thd 
 Drama League depended upon certain principles^ 
 In theory it was a positive idea and not negative^
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 47 
 
 constructive and not destructive. It went on the 
 idea that the present organization of the theatre 
 should be supported, that the real hope of the 
 future lies in the fostering of the best agencies in 
 the professional theatre. The Drama League has 
 maintained this attitude always. It has been per- 
 sistent in the support of the established theatre 
 and has done little or nothing for those enterprises 
 which have started up outside the theatre. 
 
 Now there are certain difficulties in the way of 
 a proper administration of the federation of the 
 audience for the support of good plays. One of 
 these grows out of the fact that almost all plays 
 are produced first in New York. The Drama 
 League had its headquarters near Chicago, and the 
 people it was particularly designed to reach were 
 people of the smaller centres of the country. 
 With them it was not a case of choice of plays. It 
 was a case of take what they could get and be 
 thankful. It is apparent that an organization 
 founded to serve the nation as a whole could not 
 have the immediate encouraging effect upon the 
 fortunes of a play that an organization working 
 i alone in New York might have. For if a good 
 iplay needs support it needs this in the first half 
 dozen weeks of its career in New York. If it 
 does not receive support then it will not live for
 
 48 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 the smaller cities. The fact that it lives without 
 organized support argues this a superfluity. 
 
 There are also some difficulties in the adminis- 
 tration of the judgment as to the merits of plays. 
 If this judgment is to be of any use it must be im- 
 mediate and it must be expert. For these reasons 
 there is nothing else to do but to delegate the 
 selection to committees. Now the delegation of 
 this responsibility is open to grave disadvantages. 
 I am not willing to grant that any committee has 
 the judgment to say what plays should be sup- 
 ported. If anyone were able to say what play is 
 good and what play is bad the problem of the 
 manager in the selection of plays would be for- 
 ever solved. In fact no one can select. It is a 
 part of the streng-jh of the theatre that it lies so 
 much in the question zones. By what tenets shall 
 one decide what play to approve*? By the tenets 
 of things past*? Then is experiment unduly 
 handicapped. Or by the tenets of novelty*? 
 Then must all tradition and law be given up. It 
 is clear that there are no absolute tenets for selec- 
 tion. The effort to select escapes being destruct- 
 ive and arbitrary only by being futile. 
 
 As there could not be an agreement on what 
 constitutes a good play the attempts to agree only 
 made the confusion worse. It provided false
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 49 
 
 standards where before there were none. Some 
 thought a play should be well-made ; others that it 
 should be uplifting in tendency. Some would 
 bar too great frankness in the treatment of prob- 
 lems but would admit just enough frankness. 
 Few found any room for the way-breaking and 
 renovating types. Then there was the difficulty 
 that a play may be both good and bad at the same 
 time. It may be good in construction as a play, 
 bad in its morals and superb in its acting. Or it 
 may be bad in its acting and unquestioned in its 
 morals. 
 
 This point aside for a moment there are some 
 other disadvantages. The most important of 
 these is that by the Playgoing-Committee-Bulle- 
 tin system the basis of discrimination was special- 
 ized in the hands of a few. From the many there 
 was removed the necessity of inquiry as to the 
 merits of a play. It is true the forms of the bul- 
 letins attempted to palliate this by giving the 
 reasons for the choices but the fact remains that 
 the process was taken from the many and given to 
 the few. The real value of any judgment in art 
 as well as morals lies in the power of discrimina- 
 tion. By the system followed this judgment was 
 made in such a way as to make discrimination on 
 the part of the many impossible.
 
 50 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 In isolating and calling together the audience 
 the Drama League did an excellent thing. It 
 made the audience conscious of its power and of 
 its responsibilities, and it started in motion a reno- 
 vating stream of activity and discussion. But 
 the Drama League accomplished more for the 
 theatre in its study classes, lectures, discussions, 
 and conventions than in all its bulletins for the 
 reason that in the former it made the audience 
 alert. It encouraged inquiry and discussion. 
 To the extent that the Drama League limited 
 itself to the problems of the audience it has done 
 well. It has fastened responsibility where it be- 
 longs. 
 
 Like the Drama League the Drama Society of 
 New York started out to support the best things 
 in the established theatre. It began on the theory 
 that the best things find their way to the stage in 
 able productions. And so instead of trying to 
 organize an artistic theatre it tried to organize an 
 art-loving public. To this end it evolved a 
 scheme somewhat more definite than that of the 
 Drama League. Instead of bulletining a play 
 and leaving it to the good will of the member to 
 support the choice it organized a small and com- 
 pact audience which engaged itself to support the 
 best plays in New York City. Out of twelve
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 51 
 
 plays selected by the executive committee each 
 member agreed to take tickets to ten. During 
 the three years that this plan was followed, from 
 1913 to 1916, the attendance of the membership 
 at plays ranged from five hundred to nine hun- 
 dred. 
 
 Certain advantages are found in this plan. 
 The first of these is that support was supplied 
 very near the source. The second was that the 
 organization had a real contract with the mem- 
 bership whereby attendance upon the selected 
 plays could be guaranteed. And obviating some 
 of the disadvantages of the delegation of choice, 
 present here as well as in the plan of the Drama 
 League, the Drama Society worked out a system 
 by which the judgment of the play-going com- 
 mittee could be checked up with that of the mem- 
 bers. 
 
 But with all of the advantages of the scheme 
 the disadvantages were so many and the opportun- 
 ities of more direct work were so pressing that in 
 the fourth season of the Drama Society's work the 
 system of federated support upon commercial 
 productions was finally given up. It must have 
 come to the minds of the directors that however 
 far they went in supporting the established thea- 
 tre they were but throwing pebbles in the sea.
 
 52 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Meanwhile other tasks were waiting to be done 
 which the commercial theatre with all their assist- 
 ance could not undertake. So in 1916 the di- 
 rectors decided to use the force of the federated 
 audience for the attack upon some fundamental 
 problems. These problems were of two types, 
 (i.) the production and support of a Shakespear- 
 ian play rendered under new and peculiarly artistic 
 principles, by methods which drew upon scholar- 
 ship and artistry and the best traditions of the pro- 
 fessions, and (2.) the support of a plan by which 
 good productions could be offered to those who 
 desired them at a fee as low as ten cents. To 
 this end efforts have been made to interest the 
 Board of Education and to develop a People's 
 Theatre. It is clear that in these two fields lie 
 great opportunities for the federation of the au- 
 dience. Much may come from an impulse derived 
 from an audience wisely directed. Nothing will 
 come from the mere impulse of money, as witness 
 recent ten thousand dollar prizes, and the trips 
 made by emissaries of the New Theatre to the 
 homes of great dramatists, prizes and trips that 
 led to nothing and worse than nothing. 
 
 A figure who has long been on the minds of 
 writers on the American stage has been the unpro-
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 53 
 
 duced American playwright. He has floated 
 before the vision of the organizers of the New 
 Theatres of Chicago and New York, of the Chi- 
 cago Theatre Society and of many another ven- 
 ture, but he had not yet revealed himself. 
 Whether it was that the unproduced playwright 
 was but a child of the imagination or was unpro- 
 duced because he had not yet been warmed into 
 life did not immediately appear. The fact is that 
 we probably need waste no sympathy on the un- 
 produced playwright. The true playwright will 
 manage to get himself produced in one way or 
 another. 
 
 Two New York organizations have been estab- 
 lished for the particular purpose of encouraging 
 this gentleman by supplying him with a small but 
 generous minded audience. The New York Stage 
 Society was established in 1912 on the model of 
 the London Stage Society, an organization which 
 had been uncommercial, innovating and sane and 
 had used the force of an audience since 1899 for 
 the support of some scores of good plays. Upon 
 this model the New York Stage Society started in 
 to support an American drama. There were 
 among its membership 300 players, playwrights 
 and members of the world of fashion. Fees were 
 $20 a year.
 
 54 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 At the beginning the Stage Society determined 
 to produce absolutely good foreign plays and to 
 keep watch for good plays by American play- 
 wrights. It had on its board many men and 
 women from professional ranks and its associa- 
 tions were with the commercial theatre. Its 
 plays have been done almost entirely under pro- 
 fessional direction and in regular theatres. Scen- 
 ery has been borrowed from Broadway managers. 
 Little effect has been made to introduce new sys- 
 tems of production. With all respect for the high 
 principles of the Society it is chiefly remembered 
 for the mischances of its early sallies with the law 
 in connection with Sunday performances. The 
 Stage Society presented some distinguished plays, 
 among them being Masefield's "The Tragedy of 
 Nan," and Bennett's "The Honeymoon." In the 
 search for American plays the Society was not suc- 
 cessful, the only plays of distinction of native au- 
 thorship being Patterson's "By-Products" and 
 Torrence's "Granny Maumee." 
 
 The best work of the Stage Society was done in 
 the two years of the presidency of Mrs. Emilie 
 Hapgood. She vigorously pushed the work of 
 the Society out of the narrowly professional scope 
 that it had followed into broader and more funda- 
 mental fields. In the season of 1914-1915 steps
 
 THE FEDERATED AUDIENCE 55 
 
 were taken for raising a fund for bringing to 
 America Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt and 
 Granville Barker. Reinhardt was stopped by 
 the blockade, the Society found it impossible to 
 raise the $100,000 that Craig demanded, but 
 Barker came. The sum of $30,000 was provided 
 for him and there followed the Wallack Theatre 
 venture in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," 
 "The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife," and 
 "Androcles and the Lion." 
 
 This engagement was noteworthy for another 
 contribution that was made through Mrs. Hap- 
 good as president of the Stage Society. In 1914 
 Mr. Sam Hume had been showing in Cambridge 
 a set of model stages. Mrs. Hapgood heard of 
 these and made arrangements to take them to New 
 York. There followed the Exhibition of the Arts 
 of the Theatre at 714 Fifth Avenue to which must 
 be referred most of our knowledge of recent move- 
 ments in stage decoration. Represented in this 
 Exhibition were the first samples of the work of 
 Mr. R. E. Jones. Since Mrs. Hapgood's resig- 
 nation the best work of the Society has been done 
 in support of the Provincetown Players. 
 
 Another society which attempted to use the 
 power of the organized audience for the support 
 of American plays was the National Federation
 
 56 
 
 of Theatre Clubs, organized in 1912 out of clubs 
 belonging to the New York City Federation of 
 Women's Clubs. This federation under the pres- 
 idency of Sydney. Rosenfeld reached a member- 
 ship of 1300 and had produced several plays with- 
 out discovering anything worth while before it 
 went to pieces of its own weight. 
 
 The organization of the audience represents a 
 great advance toward a solution of the problems 
 of the theatre. Beginning as a repressive tning it 
 then became constructive and cooperative. It 
 bent its first energies to the support of the estab- 
 lished theatre. But the time was at hand when 
 the audience was to find itself engaging in more 
 interesting adventures still, making itself a work- 
 ing part of new movements for the complete re- 
 construction of the American theatre.
 
 IV 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 
 
 WE have only lately discovered that the theatre 
 is not a place of mystery, that it is indeed a place 
 that should be clearly understood by everyone. 
 The time in which the theatre throve in the 
 ignorance of its patrons was followed by the time 
 when its only hope lay in the knowledge of its 
 patrons. At first there was a little hesitancy on 
 the part of managers to admit the people into 
 the sacred precincts. They still tried to maintain 
 the ancient puzzle values of their art, to convince 
 the world that gold could be made from brass. 
 It was under these circumstances that the world 
 decided to write plays and the world's wife went 
 on the stage. 
 
 Suddenly, to paraphrase WTiistler, there was 
 much talk "about it and about" and the theatre 
 was abroad in the land. From the pursuit of 
 social causes, of child labor, of alleys and garbage 
 cans, men turned to the stage. From the problem 
 of the full hour they turned to the problem of 
 
 57
 
 58 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 the leisure hour, from the problems of work they 
 turned to the problems of play. It was the Rus- 
 kin and Morris propaganda over again applied 
 not to objects of utility but to objects of pleasure. 
 Like furniture, and wall paper, and town halls 
 the theatre belongs to all the people. It is every 
 man's province. It is the one art in which the 
 criteria of the expert avail not at all if the ordi- 
 nary man's "rule of thumb" is not satisfied. A 
 generation ago Matthew Arnold had raised the 
 cry, "Organize the theatre." He had been fol- 
 lowed by Jones and Archer in England and an 
 American choir took up the chorus, "The theatre 
 must be saved for democracy." A scant five years 
 ago the social significance of the drama was hailed 
 as of moment to the state. Sociologists, social 
 engineers, educators pounced upon it as a long 
 neglected but useful instrument. That all this is 
 a very recent growth is seen in the fact that up 
 until 1914 such a periodical as The Survey had 
 no room for references to the theatre. The 
 American City did not begin to notice theatres 
 until about 1915. A work which marked an 
 epoch in the social interest in the theatre is "The 
 Exploitation of Pleasure, a Study of the Com- 
 mercial Recreations in New York City" by 
 Michael M. Davis, published in 1911 by the
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 59 
 
 Sage Foundation. Leagues arose, and support 
 and subscription societies; education swung into 
 line, campaigns and propaganda ensued. We 
 have told of some of the efforts to save the theatre 
 by money and by referendum. Now come the 
 efforts to save it by exhortation and revival. 
 
 And then begins the era of experiments. 
 Placed as a rule in fields innocent of any asso- 
 ciation with the theatre, impelled by great aims, 
 handicapped by the lack of tools and of expert 
 knowledge, keyed only to more feverish activity 
 by the magnitude and complexity of the task that 
 faced them, blind to the enormity of their claims, 
 these young organizations started out to break the 
 furrow in untilled soil. Perhaps there is little 
 to be said for many of these early efforts except 
 that they undertook in the spirit of eagerness and 
 youth tasks that only these spirits would venture 
 upon. And in the general fanfare they did leave 
 room in which the artist, no propagandist as a 
 rule, could cultivate his gifts. 
 
 Early in the century the influence of the in- 
 dependent theatre movements of Europe began 
 to filter into the United States. We too had had 
 our Theatre of Arts and Letters as far back as 
 1892 but this had been too much committeed 
 and had come to nothing. The experiments of
 
 60 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Antoine, of the German Freie Biihne, of the Lon- 
 don Independent Theatre, meant little to America. 
 But the Irish Theatre seized our imagination. 
 Yeats's visit to America in 19034 had been a 
 triumphal tour, and had been followed by a call 
 for an American branch of the Irish Theatre. 
 America began to apply the principles of this 
 theatre to herself. Then in 1911 the Irish Play- 
 ers themselves came, covering the country in their 
 tour, and spreading the ideal of naturalness and 
 simplicity. The company came again the follow- 
 ing year, playing during the two seasons in a 
 repertory of a score of new Irish plays. After 
 them the Horniman company came from Man- 
 chester in 1913. Organized on a different plan, 
 far more expert, more connected with the tradi- 
 tion of the theatre, an organization of the town 
 whereas the Irish Theatre had been an organiza- 
 tion of the countryside, their influence was no less 
 strong. 
 
 Meanwhile spontaneous movements had been 
 starting up in America, They were of all kinds 
 and they made all kinds of blunders. Begin- 
 ning to show themselves about 1910 some disap- 
 peared immediately. Others more hardy or more 
 adaptable still continue. Among the early ef- 
 forts some stand out for particular attention on
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 61 
 
 account of the character of their antecedents or 
 of their professions. In the nineties there had 
 been established in the Hull House Settlement 
 in Chicago a dramatic club. This had gone on 
 for some years simply as an amateur organization. 
 Then about 1907 it began to do work of a more 
 serious and significant kind. Under the direc- 
 tion of Laura Dainty Pelham it began to produce 
 plays of the new European movement. For this 
 purpose it was well equipped. Its players were 
 recruited from those races which are more at home 
 in the theatre than are our people. The audiences 
 too were alert and ready. The players had a 
 theatre of their own. Soon they developed a 
 command of the technic of the theatre. The 
 spirit in which they did their work and the excel- 
 lent plays they produced attracted attention to 
 this group as the first "new" theatre company in 
 America. 
 
 Naturally enough many of the early compa- 
 nies in the country were directly modelled after 
 the free theatres of the Continent. It was not 
 always recognized when men spoke of "free" 
 theatres that there was no need to free the theatres 
 in this country in the way in which they were do- 
 ing this in Germany. While in Germany the 
 freeing of the theatre may mean the placing of
 
 62 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 it in the hands of the people, in this country the 
 freeing. of the theatres would rather mean re- 
 moving it from the hands of the majority. This 
 Julius Hopp, one of the first if not the first of 
 agitators for a free theatre in America, did not 
 recognize. As early as 1905 Hopp had organ- 
 ized in New York City a Progressive Stage So- 
 ciety for the presentation of radical plays. One 
 cannot decide which was the stronger in Hopp, 
 the passion for the theatre or the passion for so- 
 cial reform. We find him continually confus- 
 ing the two, now using the theatre as a means 
 of disseminating radical ideas, now organizing 
 progressive societies for the support of new plays. 
 Hopp belongs to the school of those who would 
 impose on the theatre of America the systems of 
 the Continent. After the organization of the 
 Progressive Stage Society he busied himself in a 
 series of subterranean measures for theatre re- 
 form, until in 1911 he comes forward again with 
 a scheme for the solution of the problems of 
 democracy and the stage. A great believer in 
 the power of the people, the organization of 
 human thunderbolts is Hopp's ideal of salvation. 
 Just what cause the organization of the people 
 would serve in the theatre he has not showed. In 
 fact the theatre is dull with the people's dullness
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 63 
 
 and crass with their lack of vision. If there is 
 anything in the world it needs it is to 'be freed 
 from the control of the man on the street. If 
 there is any call for a class contest in America in 
 things of the theatre it is for a class contest in art 
 in which the "good enough" of the average man 
 goes down to defeat before the "best" of the art- 
 ist. 
 
 But Hopp organized the Progressive Stage So- 
 ciety, the Wage Earners' Theatre, the Educational 
 Theatre for Schools, the Theatre League, and he 
 had a hand in Reicher's The Modern Stage, in 
 each appealing to the people as to a great be- 
 leaguered mass to solidify their interest in sup- 
 port of radical plays. In none of these did he 
 succeed and it is safe to say the class theatre will 
 not succeed in America. And yet often though 
 Hopp has failed he would be a rash judge who 
 would say that Julius Hopp had not made his 
 mark in the American theatre. Before anyone 
 else he had seen that the present system of organ- 
 ization of the theatre is wrong and had started 
 out to reconstruct that system. 
 
 Of another order and by some believed to be 
 the most dynamic force applied to the creation of 
 a new ideal in the American theatre is the career 
 and work of Donald Robertson. Only incident-
 
 64 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 ally a social worker, caring nothing for the im- 
 plications of the theatre with other forms of life 
 except as the needs of the theatre compel him to 
 take his message to the people, Donald Robertson 
 is an idealist and a poet in the theatre. I have 
 spoken of him already in connection with his 
 Drama Players of the Chicago Theatre Society. 
 The true man stands behind the work of that or- 
 ganization in the work he did in preparing for it. 
 He was reared in the best schools of English act- 
 ing. Coming to America he served as support for 
 some of the best American stars of the last genera- 
 tion. Then settling in Chicago he began to pre- 
 pare the way for pioneer work in the theatre. His 
 ideals have been truly reconstructive and truly 
 scholarly. For inspiration he goes back without 
 apology to Aristophanes and Plautus, to Moliere 
 and Shakespeare. And he holds rigorously to the 
 ancient and honorable traditions of the stage. 
 
 In opening his programme Robertson undertook 
 the herculean task of creating both players and 
 audience. For the former he wanted men and 
 women of flexibility and rich imagination and 
 experience. For the latter he wanted an audience 
 which could support what he offered in plays and 
 playing. He began by creating a dramatic 
 school. Here he gathered around him a group
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 65 
 
 of players who were soon fired with his own vision. 
 Then in the summer of 1907 the time came for 
 the next step. Robertson organized a repertory 
 company and engaged the Ravinia Theatre, a 
 theatre in an outlying summer park. There he 
 produced five plays, Moliere's "The Miser," Pail- 
 leron's "The Triumph of Youth," Ibsen's "Ros- 
 mersholm," Hauptmann's "The Coming of 
 Peace," and Browning's "A Blot on the 
 'Scutcheon." This offering of plays, so stimulat- 
 ing and yet so substantial, won immediate ap- 
 proval from critics and audiences. As the sum- 
 mer passed there came a demand for a continua- 
 tion of the work in a theatre in the city. With a 
 little assistance Robertson took the Garrick for 
 matinees, the Hull House Theatre for irregular 
 night performances, and finally the theatre that 
 was to house so many Chicago experiments, the 
 Music Hall, later the Fine Arts Theatre and now 
 The Playhouse. 
 
 I should be glad to dwell upon the achieve- 
 ments of this first year, lived through under fear- 
 ful odds, a new play to be rehearsed every week, 
 Robertson himself playing in many plays, making 
 up deficits, working with committees, conducting 
 rehearsals, blowing the fire of enthusiasm into 
 tired followers. Seventeen plays were done this
 
 66 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 first season and it was by all odds the best reper- 
 tory that has been put forth by an American 
 theatre. Between Chicago engagements Robert- 
 son and his company were travelling about the 
 country, in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, putting 
 into effect new ideas of support and of circuit. 
 
 In 1908 they opened again for a summer sea- 
 son at Ravinia Park, this time in Milton's 
 "Comus." After a successful season more sub- 
 stantial financial support was secured and Robert- 
 son was invited by the Trustees of the Art In- 
 stitute to appear in the theatre of this institution. 
 This move was significant from two points of 
 view. It was the first case in this country of the 
 recognition of the drama as a sister art by an 
 Art Institute. The association of drama, the poor 
 drab of the arts, with her more pampered sisters 
 has been in many respects fortunate for the 
 theatre. But it was not the good fortune that was 
 first manifest to the band under Donald Robert- 
 son. To them the confused situation of ticket- 
 selling in such a sacred hall was a sordid but dis- 
 tressing fact. This season spelled the beginning 
 of the breaking of the back of the enterprise. No 
 one is qualified to speak for Robertson in this, but 
 as an outside observer I should say that even his 
 broad devoted shoulders were not strong enough
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 67 
 
 to bear the weight of the conditions that were 
 laid upon him during the two following seasons. 
 What were the conditions that bowed him down? 
 The lack of a theatre; defections from his com- 
 pany; the lack of a settled company and so the 
 impossibility of keeping plays in repertory; the 
 attempt to produce too many new plays; a little 
 strain of the academic and far-fetched in the 
 choices for the second season; the lack, on the 
 part of subscribers, of a comprehension of what 
 was being undertaken, with some consequent 
 alienation; some disastrous experiments with un- 
 successful American plays; the lack of enough 
 capital to tide over bad times. 
 
 The enterprise lasted three years and then be- 
 gan preparations for the larger and less success- 
 ful venture of the Drama Players. During three 
 years 32 plays had been given in Chicago and 
 on tour, and one of the most strenuous efforts 
 for a new American theatre had made a place for 
 itself in history. 
 
 The early enterprises came to an end literally 
 because the machinery was not ready to carry 
 them. Theatres could not be had or they were 
 too expensive. There were not enough people 
 to supply understanding audiences. Actors had 
 to be paid, they were inflexible in the handling of
 
 68 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 the plays, and they were fickle. Worst of all the 
 "idea" by which the machinery might be created 
 had not yet gained currency. It was still con- 
 sidered vaporing and folly. 
 
 The serious importance of this lack of machin- 
 ery must have become apparent to many people 
 at the same time. Undoubtedly it was brought 
 home to a great many by the experiences of 
 Robertson. It was apparent that if such under- 
 takings as this were to succeed the ground would 
 have to be carefully prepared for them. If possi- 
 ble established institutions might be used as the 
 units for providing this machinery. If necessary 
 the machinery would have to be built, but how- 
 ever it was to be secured it must come and come 
 speedily. This demand explains the formation at 
 about the same time of several institutions that 
 set themselves to the preparing of the minds of 
 the audience, to the building of machinery for 
 the critical dissemination of information on the 
 theatre and of knowledge of the new movements. 
 
 Of these movements some took a local and in- 
 tensive place but one became very early of na- 
 tional scope. I have already studied one aspect 
 of the work of the Drama League of America. 
 Outside of the bulletining of plays its work was 
 so various that the term Drama League has be-
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 69 
 
 come synonymous with all the present activities 
 in the new theatre. The Drama League has been 
 the publicity committee of the whole movement, 
 managing to keep the theatre always in the pub- 
 lic eye and always on the public tongue. In 
 this country we have become very fond of founda- 
 tions, bureaus and boards of public service. The 
 purpose of these may be executive, but it is quite 
 likely to be investigative or merely conversa- 
 tional. They arise out of a desire to learn, to 
 classify, and to discuss. The passion of knowl- 
 edge, for its organization, cataloguing, and diffu- 
 sion as small talk, is very characteristically Ameri- 
 can. 
 
 It was for some such function as this that the 
 Drama League seems to have been established. 
 It was a league of those interested in the theatre 
 and concerned in its improvement. Not in the 
 least a band of experts it has been admittedly a 
 gathering of theatre-goers interested in the con- 
 sideration of the theatre from the standpoint of 
 consumers. This programme cannot be despised 
 if it is followed consistently and is clearly under- 
 stood. As long as the Drama League has con- 
 tinued an organization of talk, of the exchange 
 and distribution of views, it has served its pur- 
 pose excellently. When it tried to treat concrete
 
 70 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 problems and provide specific solutions it was un- 
 successful. Of the activities of the Drama 
 League the following may be mentioned : the sup- 
 port of professional plays; the publication of 
 plays; the encouragement of local responsibility 
 toward the theatre; the distribution of informa- 
 tion on matters of the theatre; the support of 
 periodical publications on theatre matters. Of 
 these the first two have been failures; the next 
 two have been really successful. The last has 
 been successful so far as it serves the purpose of 
 discussion, unsuccessful so far as it presumes to 
 represent authority. 
 
 An organization that undertook to develop in 
 a local way a better understanding of the problems 
 of the theatre was the Wisconsin Dramatic So- 
 ciety established in Wisconsin in 1910. Admit- 
 tedly local in character and specific in aims the 
 Wisconsin Dramatic Society continued its work 
 for four years and ceased its endeavors when the 
 preliminary work for which it was established had 
 been sufficiently done. Its methods and princi- 
 ples may be developed in a few words. The Wis- 
 consin Dramatic Society associated itself at the 
 outset with an institution of education. While 
 it was an independent organization with a mem- 
 bership drawn from all parts of the state it drew
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 71 
 
 force from the rather coherent social conscious- 
 ness that surrounded the University of Wiscon- 
 sin. The Society began with the purpose not only 
 to attack some of the problems of the theatre, but 
 to attack as well the conditions upon which the 
 theatre is supported in the minds of the people. 
 For this reason the educational work of the So- 
 ciety was stressed through the formal encourage- 
 ment of the reading of printed plays and through 
 the emphasis upon lectures on topics of the new 
 theatre. In January, 1911 a company was es- 
 tablished in Madison for the presentation of plays 
 of merit "which for one reason or another are 
 not available on the professional stage." The 
 company in Madison was followed by a company 
 in Milwaukee, and for some years these two com- 
 panies presented plays in their respective cities, 
 exchanged plays, and presented them in neigh- 
 boring cities. During the last two years of the 
 life of the Society, 1913-1915, some work was 
 done in the fostering of a Wisconsin drama by 
 the composition and the publication of plays, 
 and by the publication of a magazine. The work 
 which was carried on for four years by the devo- 
 tion of a group of workers representing many of 
 the activities of the state came to an end in 1915. 
 The Wisconsin Workshop in Milwaukee is an
 
 72 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 outgrowth of the Milwaukee department of this 
 Society. 
 
 Emphasizing more the sociological features of 
 the work of the theatre the Little Country Thea- 
 tre of North Dakota Agricultural College at Fargo 
 was established "to use the drama and all that 
 goes with the drama as a sociological force in 
 getting people together and acquainted with one 
 another." At first view this purpose would seem 
 to be aside from that of the theatre and to lie in 
 the region of social economics. But this would be 
 a narrow view. The work of the Little Country 
 Theatre in preparing its three score of plays, 
 many of them local and racial, has been a dis- 
 tinct contribution at the heart of the American 
 theatre. There are many who will undertake the 
 work of the theatre to one who will undertake 
 that fundamental work upon which the new 
 theatre must be built. A. G. Arvold has social 
 vision, and his Little Country Theatre with its 
 coffee-tower has come to be symbolic of what the 
 theatre may mean when its uses are better un- 
 derstood. In the same state has been done the 
 work of F. H. Koch in the University of the 
 State at Grand Forks. Using the instrumentali- 
 ties of the University as a nucleus Koch has done
 
 BREAKING A NEW FURROW 73 
 
 much to develop an active spirit of cooperation 
 in building up a provincial theatre. 
 
 Beginning in 1911 somewhat after the model 
 of some of the older amateur societies the Plays 
 and Players Club of Philadelphia has broadened 
 its work in such a way as to keep abreast of the 
 latest developments in the theatre. Its purpose 
 is "to associate the amateur histrionic talent and 
 playwrights of the community for the advance- 
 ment and production of amateur theatricals and 
 for literary and social intercourse." In pursuing 
 these purposes it has become a very influential or- . 
 ganization. The scope of its work is so broad, it j 
 is so thoroughly organized, its membership is so 
 large, the number of its productions is so great 
 that it serves as a stimulating example of what 
 can be done by a city in behalf of its own culti- 
 vation in matters of the theatre. 
 
 It must be remembered that this is distinctly an 
 accessory organization. It has no desire to es- 
 tablish theatres or to send out regular companies. 
 It is a clearing house, a publicity board, a promot- 
 ing committee for good drama. Partly explain- 
 ing its success, it is an exclusive club. The Plays 
 and Players Club has been in existence for six sea- 
 sons. It has a club house of its own. It is man-
 
 74 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 aged by a board of eight directors and has in its 
 working membership some of the best known peo- 
 ple of the city. It is a veritable play-factory, 
 sometimes as many as three and four plays being 
 rehearsed by different groups at one time in the 
 club house. Sixty performances are given a year 
 in centers throughout Philadelphia and in neigh- 
 boring places. No old plays are given and a large 
 percentage of the productions are the first on any 
 stage. The power of such an organization as 
 this cannot be overestimated. 
 
 What has been done in Wisconsin, in North 
 Dakota, and in Philadelphia has been repeated 
 in scores of centers all over the country. Ad- 
 mittedly work of this kind can never take rank 
 with the solid artistic achievements of expert com- 
 panies, nor with the way-breaking efforts of such 
 men as Donald Robertson. But in their func- 
 tion, in plowing the ground for a later harvest, 
 they serve a valuable if preliminary part.
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE 
 
 WHAT is the little theatre? I can imagine some- 
 one removed by but five years from a knowledge 
 of American theatrical conditions asking this ques- 
 tion with some perplexity. Perhaps part of the 
 answer to the question may have been implied in 
 what has gone before. We have seen the great 
 need of the theatre in three respects, a better 
 system of expense values; a more dependable and 
 enlightened audience; an impulse coming from 
 the artists rather than from the investors. The 
 little theatre has represented an effort to supply 
 these things. 
 
 There are some things the little theatre is not. 
 It is not a repertory theatre, a municipal theatre, 
 an endowed theatre, or an experimental theatre. 
 All of these are respectable institutions which for 
 their own sake and that of the little theatre, an- 
 other respectable institution, should be kept in 
 their proper places. It is not a repertory theatre 
 
 75
 
 76 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 in that while it may use the repertory principle 
 it is something more than a repertory theatre. 
 It is not a municipal theatre though it may serve 
 the purpose. It is not an endowed theatre for 
 the reason that the best little theatres often work 
 without funds. And it is not an experimental 
 theatre any more than any venture starting to 
 work in untried fields is experimental. The ex- 
 perimental theatre is a laboratory theatre for the 
 testing of the tools of the theatre. We will treat 
 it in a later chapter. 
 
 We may answer the question "What is a little 
 theatre*?" by reference to the activities of the last 
 five years. Judging from these it may be said 
 that the little theatre is four things. It is a build- 
 ing; it is a principle of economical manage- 
 ment; it is a cooperative guild of artists of the 
 theatre; and it is a system of alliance with the 
 federated audience. Properly it is a combination 
 of all of these things. 
 
 The little theatre is first of all a small build- 
 ing for plays given in an intimate way. It usu- 
 ally contains fewer than three hundred seats, the 
 number in some places set by law as the figure 
 upon which building requirements are stipulated. 
 The Little Theatre, the Punch and Judy Theatre, 
 the Princess Theatre, the Bandbox Theatre of
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE 7? 
 
 New York all seat approximately 300. The first 
 Toy Theatre in Boston seated under (loo) The 
 Little Theatre in Chicago seated less than a hun- 
 dred. The little theatre of the Vagabond Players 
 of Baltimore seats 62. In theory these theatres 
 are modelled after the Theatre des Arts in Paris, 
 the Kammerspiele in Berlin, the Little Theatre 
 and the Kingsway Theatres in London. 
 
 Did the term little theatre refer only to seat- 
 ing capacity all small theatres without distinc- 
 tion would belong to the class. But little theatre 
 means more than this. It is a building which is 
 run in a particular way and for a particular pur- 
 pose. It belongs to the class little theatre only 
 to the extent that it satisfies these other condi- 
 tions. The little theatre is run upon the theory 
 of absolute economy of management. Someone 
 has called it a "complete theatre reduced from 
 average dimensions." This reduction extends to 
 all the factors of the theatre, the size of the audi- 
 ence, the number of performances, the code of 
 production, the size of plays, and the budget sheet. 
 The little theatre depends upon the reduction of 
 all the factors of a production to the lowest terms. 
 Actors are not paid. Scenery is simple and made 
 at home cheaply. Plays are not paid for and are 
 given only as often as there is call for them.
 
 78 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 These requirements sharply limit the little 
 theatre. Immediately there disappear from the 
 class such theatres as Ames's Little Theatre, the 
 Punch and Judy Theatre, the Princess Theatre, 
 the Bramhall Theatre, all of which are run on 
 the business system of the professional theatre. 
 And by a paradox there appear in the list some 
 companies that play in larger theatres, such as 
 the Washington Square Players who began as a 
 little theatre company and though now playing 
 in a larger theatre retain many little theatre at- 
 tributes. 
 
 I come now to the consideration of the third 
 means of identification of the little theatre. The 
 little theatre is a guild of artists. What is meant 
 by this? We have seen that the commercial 
 theatre labors under certain disadvantages. 
 Both on the side of the money features of the 
 theatre and on the side of its artistic functions 
 the commercial theatre is full of pitfalls and dis- 
 couragements. And yet it is found that anyone 
 who tries to improve either one of these features 
 in the commercial theatre has his way blocked by 
 the very forces which he is attempting to correct. 
 The conclusion is that the only way to do it is to 
 do it from without. The little theatre is a means 
 of solving both these problems, the problems of
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE 79 
 
 expense and the problems of art. It attacks them 
 separately, but so closely do they hang together 
 that their solution is mutual. The little theatre 
 exchanges for the impulse to work which comes 
 from the promise of reward the impulse that 
 comes from the possibility of labor in pleasurable 
 enterprises. 
 
 The importance of this principle as applied to 
 the commercial theatre is not far to seek but it 
 can only be adverted to here. Much as the com- 
 mercial theatre depends upon artists it is found 
 that a large part of the expense of a production 
 is to be traced to the high money equivalent that 
 has been attached to the art functions of a piece. 
 The author, the actors, the director, the musicians, 
 the scene painter have all learned to attach a high 
 money value to service. And while the expense 
 of a production has been rising the artist has lost 
 much. He has lost for one thing personal asso- 
 ciation with his manager, which was the rule in 
 the theatre until very recently. The greatest 
 lament that went up after the death of Charles 
 Frohman came from those actors who had lost a 
 friend, the last New York manager to hold his 
 artists by force of personality. The impulse of 
 personal association in artistic work, the loss of 
 which is so much to be deplored in the commercial
 
 8o THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 theatre, comes again in the little theatres under 
 the spur of necessity. 
 
 The little theatre goes about to avoid both the 
 high expense of the commercial theatre and its 
 cold commercial contracts and it does this at one 
 blow. It does it by identifying the two, reduc- 
 ing the expense of each item to its lowest terms 
 by putting that item upon the artist to execute 
 and expecting the artist to do it for the love of 
 the work. 
 
 There remains the fourth characteristic of the 
 little theatre. I have said it is a system of al- 
 liance with the audience. The little theatre de- 
 pends upon the minimum support of an intelligent 
 audience. At the start it does not need a large 
 audience. It lays its pattern closely by the cloth 
 before it is cut. It binds the audience to itself by 
 subscriptions and guarantees. It identifies itself 
 with the audience, sometimes even drawing its 
 workers from among the audience. Not least 
 among the achievements of the little theatres has 
 been the fact that they have federated the audi- 
 ences for particular purposes, that they have given 
 solidity and direction to the interests of those who 
 were anxious for a new dramatic fare. 
 
 How have they managed this last and most 
 difficult feat? Simply through the spirit that
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE 81 
 
 was in them, a spirit to which an audience could 
 respond and which they were glad to support. 
 The little theatre has been called "a place of en- 
 tertainment for intelligent people." It has come 
 to be this through the fact that artists have come 
 to be the workers, through the fact that cheap- 
 ness of production has demanded novelty in in- 
 vention. While men work for joy and are not 
 afraid of money loss they are sure to venture 
 forth in new lines of creation which pique the in- 
 terest. Because with all their faults the little 
 theatres have done this their audiences have grown 
 and solidified. 
 
 Naturally there are some real limitations to 
 the efforts of the little theatres. They cannot 
 get plays from great playwrights, they cannot 
 hire experienced actors, they cannot use expensive 
 sets. One grants all that may be said as to the 
 acting in the little theatres. The amateur is not 
 as expert as the professional ; the new playwright 
 not as sure of hand as the Broadway favorite. 
 The best of the little theatres comes in their abil- 
 ity to make the most out of their materials and 
 continually to strive to improve these materials. 
 There are respects in which the amateur is in 
 fact better than the professional. But the little 
 theatre does not cling to him because he is an
 
 82 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 amateur. It clings to him because he is the best 
 that can be secured. And it makes something 
 out of him because he brings freshness and zest 
 to his work. But if the little theatre is so mis- 
 guided as to raise class against class, to defend 
 the amateur as against the professional, then it 
 forgets the cardinal necessity of ever and always 
 improving its work. The new playwright brings 
 something to his task that is worthy of praise. 
 He brings willingness to experiment, a readiness 
 to break established conventions, sometimes a 
 strain of unaccustomed poetry. But if the little 
 theatre forgets the important thing and searches 
 merely for the novel and the strange then it is 
 failing in its task. The one-act play has been an 
 excellent expedient for the little theatre. It has 
 been easy to write and easy to produce. In in- 
 troducing it the little theatre has rendered some 
 service to the stage. But if it begins to offer the 
 one-act play as the only form of stage art then too 
 it is setting itself apart from the rational laws 
 of growth. 
 
 The point is that the little theatres have been 
 an expedient, filling an excellent place in a transi- 
 tion state of the theatre. They have provided 
 the means by which all the necessary new factors 
 of the theatre could come together in concert.
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE 83 
 
 Artists, actors, painters, producers, organizers 
 and audience have been brought together for the 
 service of a new art for the theatre. Behind this 
 the avowed purposes, the encouragement and sup- 
 port of an American drama, the giving voice and 
 tongue to a neighborhood, the production of the ^ 
 great masterpieces of the world, the elevation of 
 the taste of the community, the improvement of 
 the canons of production and of acting, the crea- 
 tion of an audience, sink away into the oblivion 
 that comes to professions under the records of 
 deeds. The real forces that pressed the workers 
 on were the urge to do the plays they felt impelled 
 to produce, to do them by the codes their own art- 
 istic sense said was right, under methods of co- 
 operation that fed rather than starved the spirit, 
 and with the understanding support even if of a 
 few. 
 
 There is perhaps some pleasant irony in the 
 fact that the little theatre was the only type of 
 insurgent enterprise that could possibly have suc- 
 ceeded in this day of big business in the theatre. 
 It follows the wily instruction given in other ac- 
 tivities. If you would escape the claws of cir- 
 cumstance do it "through minuteness, to wit." 
 He is a bold man who attempts to meet the theatri- 
 cal dangers face to face. Broadway knows the
 
 84 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 names of some who have tried it. It knows the 
 names of none who has succeeded. If you have a 
 new word do not blow a loud blast thinking that 
 thereby the walls of the city will fall. The places 
 of power do not crumble at shouted words of 
 prophecy. Rather seek out a niche in a side 
 street, whisper your word to a chosen two or three, 
 protect yourself by your lack of pretense. Then 
 it may be that before long you too will have gath- 
 ered to yourself power. It may even be that in 
 due time emissaries will come from high places 
 bearing gifts.
 
 VI 
 THE THEATRE AND THE LAW 
 
 THE way of the innovator is not always made 
 easy for him. Many enthusiastic workers for 
 new fashions in the theatre, spurred on by the un- 
 selfishness of their aims and the reasonableness of 
 their cause, have supposed that all the institu- 
 tions of society would work in harmony with 
 them. They have been somewhat surprised and 
 discouraged when they found themselves in early 
 conflict with the law, and to some of them the 
 difficulties were so strong as effectually to discour- 
 age further efforts. 
 
 One who surveys the history of the little ex- 
 perimental theatres of the last few years, noting 
 their timid efforts to get a foothold in a busy and 
 unsympathetic world, has been slightly amused to 
 see how many of these have been hampered by 
 official interference. He sees the commercial 
 theatre going forward with no apparent atten- 
 tion from the law even while it is doing things 
 that cannot be considered of the highest social 
 
 85
 
 86 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 value. But licenses have been refused, new 
 theatres have been closed, respectable managers 
 have been arrested, the expenditures of thousands 
 of dollars have been rendered valueless through 
 the enforcement of seeming technicalities against 
 ventures that in no way bulked large in the hori- 
 zon of the law and as a rule were conducted by 
 men and women of unquestioned high motives. 
 
 Does the law discriminate against the new 
 theatres? Has there been conspiracy deep and 
 dark against the benevolent reformers of things 
 in the theatre"? It might be well for the interest 
 of this book if I could make out such a case. But 
 I cannot do so. Aside from the fact that imag- 
 ination is not the business of the law, a cold 
 blooded thing usually based upon the maintenance 
 of things as they were, I cannot find that there is 
 any real difference between the law as enforced 
 on the established theatre and on the new 
 theatres. The established theatre is run by men 
 who know the law. If they didn't they couldn't 
 run a theatre long. The new theatre is too often 
 run by people who know no more about the law. 
 than they do about the theatre. For the sake 
 of these a short statement of the attitude of the 
 law as it turns toward the theatre would seen 
 to be appropriate.
 
 THE THEATRE AND THE LAW 87 
 
 From the earliest times the law has kept a 
 peculiar hold on the theatre. It has to be remem- 
 bered that the theatre has not been with us from 
 the start. It broke its way into Anglo-Saxon so- 
 ciety from places outside the city gate and it 
 came in with the wastrels and the beggars and 
 mountebanks. Legislation on the theatre is to 
 this day tainted with these associations. The 
 least that can be said of the theatre in its relation 
 to the fundamental law is that it is under sus- 
 picion, that the presumption is against it. 
 
 Of late years the extreme presumption has been 
 somewhat relaxed. Particularly in the large 
 cities the theatre is seen to be one of the chief 
 businesses of the city. But it is a business of a 
 peculiarly public character, one of the last busi- 
 nesses involving the regular service of a large 
 number of people which has not been brought un- 
 der close public control, which remains in fact a 
 private business. The city has come to look upon 
 the theatre as a place of public congregation and 
 therefore a place to be kept strictly under the 
 public eye; as a place of large income and there- 
 fore a place to be taxed. 
 
 The laws as applied to the theatres have come 
 to be of two general purposes, for the upholding of 
 the dignities and the protection of society in its
 
 88 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 moral and social and governmental standards, 
 and for the protection of the individual member 
 of the audience while he is an attendant upon the 
 theatre. To these two classes belong all the laws 
 applied to the theatre. To the first class -belong 
 the Sunday laws, the laws against vice and ob- 
 scenity, and such censorship laws as there are. 
 To the second class belong the building restric- 
 tions, the fire and tenement restrictions, the laws 
 pertaining to the inner regulation and manage- 
 ment of the theatre. Upon the satisfying of 
 these laws depends the securing and retaining of 
 a Ikense. 
 
 Now all theatres without distinction have to 
 obey these laws, the commercial theatres as well 
 as the non-commercial theatres. In fact the com- 
 mercial theatre managers know better how to ad- 
 just themselves to the law, sometimes, be it ad- 
 mitted, to the ensign of the law, than do the 
 managers of the new theatres, and therefore they 
 avoid the public signs of discontent. But they 
 are all under continual scrutiny. The organ- 
 izer of a new theatre should not suppose that he 
 is picked out for adverse discrimination, but he 
 should attempt to learn not only the laws but 
 the particular measures by which in every case the
 
 law is put into practice. By so doing he will 
 escape much trouble. 
 
 It is not difficult to learn the laws with refer- 
 ence to theatres. As a rule the laws of the states 
 that apply to theatres are very general. The 
 states delegate to the municipality the right to li- 
 cense and regulate theatres in their own way, re- 
 serving such matters as Sunday laws and general 
 safety laws and labor laws. So the laws should 
 usually be looked up in the Codes of the Alder- 
 men of the City. For New York City the laws 
 are in Chapters 3 and 5 of the Code of Ordinances 
 under Amusements and Exhibitions and under 
 the Building Code. In Chicago the laws may be 
 found in Brundage's Chicago Code under IVC and 
 V of the Building Ordinances. For St. Louis 
 they are found in Rombauer's Revised Code of 
 St. Louis. 
 
 Let us look first at the building laws, for these 
 are the laws that must first be observed. The 
 chief purpose of the building laws is to provide 
 safety against fire and against panic. The terms 
 of these laws refer therefore to number and place- 
 ment of exits, to fireproofing of scenery, protect- 
 ing curtains, to width of aisles, to quality of 
 building material, to slope and position of audi-
 
 go THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 torium, and to the presence in the building of 
 tenements and dwelling places. One of the most 
 important laws applying to theatres as well as 
 to other businesses in New York City is the so- 
 called zone law, passed July 25, 1916, regulating 
 the height and bulk of buildings and restricting 
 the locations of trades and industries. As far as 
 this applies to the theatre it lists the theatre un- 
 der business and requires that no theatre be placed 
 in a residence district. In Chicago there is regu- 
 lation for frontage consent in residence districts 
 and for the maintenance of certain distances from 
 hospitals, schools and churches. In St. Louis no 
 license can issue except by consent of a majority 
 of the residents of the block. 
 
 At one point in the building laws there comes 
 in a distinction that has been often misunderstood. 
 It has to do with the size of the theatre and the 
 consequent restrictions as to fireproofing construc- 
 tion. Several cities, among them New York and 
 Chicago, make a distinction as to building require- 
 ments between the theatre that seats 300 people 
 and over and the theatre that seats under 300. In 
 New York City the requirements of absolute fire- 
 proof construction apply only to theatres over 
 forty feet in height, containing 5000 square feet 
 and seating over 300 people. In Chicago as
 
 THE THEATRE AND THE LAW 91 
 
 well there is a difference in building requirements 
 for theatres seating more and less than three hun- 
 dred people. 
 
 Granted that the ordinances for fire, tenement, 
 and zone restriction are satisfied in the plans for 
 the theatre, one is ready to apply for a license 
 and to pay the fee. The system of licensing and 
 control maintained by different cities varies but 
 the principles are the same. Here enter further 
 points that are often misunderstood. A license 
 is granted as a rule on account of the public char- 
 acter of an enterprise and this is judged by the 
 fact that an admission fee is charged. Contrary 
 to rather common belief there is, so far as I know, 
 no case in which a seating capacity of under 300 
 relieves from the necessity of taking a license. 
 If the little theatre is open to the public for fee 
 it is compelled to carry a license. The only way 
 in which a license fee can be avoided is by not 
 running the theatre for profit or by not opening 
 it to the general public. This is true of small 
 theatres as well as large. 
 
 The license requirements may be rapidly sum- 
 marized. In New York the license is granted 
 by a Commissioner of Licenses who has the dis- 
 cretion to include provisions which in his judg- 
 ment are necessary. The fee for theatres is $500
 
 Q2 
 
 and for separate performances is $25. In Chi- 
 cago there are 21 legal classes of amusements of 
 which only the first is important to us. The 
 license is issued by authority of the Mayor, the 
 fee depending on the admission fee to be charged. 
 If the admission is a dollar or more the fee for 
 license is $1000, if from fifty cents to a dollar, 
 $400, and the license fee runs down to $200 for 
 theatres charging a maximum of twenty cents a 
 seat. In Boston there is a licensing board on 
 which the Mayor has great powers. No fee is 
 mentioned. In St. Louis the license fee is $25 a 
 month or $150 a year. In many states and 
 cities the license fees are still merely nominal. 
 
 We come now to the consideration of those 
 laws which govern the management of the theatre 
 after it has secured a license. These are in gen- 
 eral the laws against vice and immorality, which 
 are subject to wide latitude in character and in- 
 terpretation, and in particular the laws against 
 Sunday performances and against child-labor on 
 the stage. The last two have been of some impor- 
 tance in the management of theatres. The laws 
 on Sunday observance are based on the moral prin- 
 ciples of early Colonial times when even travel 
 was forbidden. The situation in New York is 
 sufficiently typical. The Constitution of the
 
 THE THEATRE AND THE LAW 93 
 
 state has been held to give the legislature the 
 right to protect the Christian Sunday from dese- 
 cration by such laws as it may deem necessary. 
 A law that attracted a great deal of attention, 
 and still stands as the law of the state, was 
 passed by the legislature of 1860 (Chapter 501) 
 applying particularly to New York County, en- 
 titled "An Act to preserve the public peace and 
 order on the first day of the week, commonly 
 called Sunday." This act provided that it 
 should not be lawful to exhibit on Sunday any 
 interlude, tragedy, comedy, opera, ballet, farce, 
 negro minstrelsy or any other entertainment of 
 the stage, or any performance of jugglers, acro- 
 bats or rope dancers, under a penalty of $500 
 to be collected by the Society for the Protection 
 of Juvenile Delinquents, and a loss of the license. 
 
 This law was held to be constitutional and was 
 supplemented by municipal statutes providing 
 that one may not exhibit on Sunday "to the pub- 
 lic" the performance of any tragedy, comedy, 
 opera, ballet, farce, negro minstrelsy, negro or 
 other dancing, etc., "but nothing therein prohibits 
 sacred or educational, vocal or instrumental con- 
 certs, lectures, addresses, recitations or singing." 
 
 This law was so far reaching that immediately 
 there began efforts to evade it. The means of
 
 94 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 evasion was provided in the last clause above 
 quoted. As it occurs, the association of this law 
 with certain other laws of the state is rather in- 
 timate. Peaceful assembly is guaranteed on Sun- 
 day as well as on other days of the week, and as- 
 semblage for worship is protected. It became 
 necessary only to identify the theatre with peace- 
 ful assembly and assembly for worship. There 
 came the question, "What is a theatrical enter- 
 tainment, and what is a stage, legally consid- 
 ered 1 ?" Ingenious men set themselves to discover 
 subterfuges whereby the theatrical could be pro- 
 tected under the sacred. By interpretation of 
 the law theatrical was made to mean that which 
 has a curtain which rises and falls, that which 
 uses costumes and make-up and scene changes and 
 has a continuous story So with regard to these 
 things the sacred concert was invented, with no 
 change of scenery, no make-up and fancy costume, 
 and no continuous story. This played naturally 
 into the hands of the variety entertainment, the 
 only class of theatre which has successfully 
 evaded the Sunday laws. 
 
 It is not to be expected that the reforming man- 
 ager will have any intention of giving sacred con- 
 certs. But he has been concerned with two fea- 
 tures of the law which for many reasons it has
 
 THE THEATRE AND THE LAW 95 
 
 often been to his interest to evade. On account 
 of the slimness of his budget and the difficulty 
 of getting theatres on week days it is sometimes 
 desirable for him to evade the Sunday laws and 
 to avoid the payment of high fees for license. 
 How are these things done*? Either by running 
 as an organization without profit or by running 
 as a private organization without public sale of 
 seats. For many reasons the latter of these plans 
 is the more efficacious. Over private clubs which 
 make no appeal for public support the city has 
 no more control than it has over one's home. But 
 it has control of the building requirements, and 
 whether the organization runs for profit or not, is 
 public or private, these must be satisfied. 
 
 There is another type of law which has had a 
 severe influence both on the commercial theatre 
 and the new staging groups. These are the laws 
 affecting child-labor which during the last few 
 years have been passed in most of the states of 
 the union. The oldest of these laws passed 
 twenty or thirty years ago, forbid the employment 
 of children "in dangerous and immoral occupa- 
 tions" by which were meant "acrobatic, singing 
 and dancing exhibitions." Today children under 
 from 14 to 16 are enjoined from playing in places 
 of amusement, or theatres, or working at night,
 
 96 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 in thirty-one of the states. The only states which 
 have no laws on child-labor are Vermont, North 
 and South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, 
 Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Eleven 
 states made provisions against child-labor in the 
 theatre which however are subject to relief under 
 certain circumstances upon application for a per- 
 mit to Judge, Mayor, Commissioner or Inspector. 
 These states which represent the best practice in 
 safeguarding both the child and the theatre are 
 California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Co- 
 lumbia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Min- 
 nesota, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.
 
 VII 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 
 
 ONE who observes Movements, so-called, is con- 
 tinually impressed with the recurrence under vari- 
 ous names and different disguises of the identical 
 motive. It is as if behind a confused face of 
 things the driving impulses were but few and that 
 these cloaked themselves in different forms simply 
 to meet particular circumstances. Observing the 
 form one gets the sense of a tremendous confu- 
 sion of issues, forces contending with each other, 
 blocking each other, hampering by misinterpreta- 
 tion and useless duplication the accomplishment 
 of the end. But judging by the forces behind the 
 form one sees more evidence of a plan in all things. 
 For the forms are many, the forces are few. 
 
 This is no less true in the theatre than in other 
 social affairs. As one looks at the recent move- 
 ments as a whole one wonders which to be the 
 more surprised at, the general lack of real agree- 
 ment as to what is being undertaken, agreement, 
 that is, in terms and tools and ends, or the real or- 
 
 97
 
 9 8 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 derliness with which in spite of muddled thoughts 
 the different parts are throwing themselves into 
 their proper places. Throughout all these activi- 
 ties two camps appear again and again, the camp 
 of the social thinkers who look upon the drama 
 as the means of saving society, and the camp of 
 the artists who care nothing for social causes, who 
 ask permission only to work in their niche. The 
 suspicion between these two has been more fierce 
 than that between the newer and the older order 
 in the theatre. These have respectively the graces 
 of respect and fear the one for the other. But in 
 the camps there is only mistrust and the imputa- 
 tion of the confounding of great causes. 
 
 But there is no essential quarrel between these 
 two. Laud as we will the high lonely place of 
 the artist, he still works with his fellows particu- 
 larly in the theatre. And what is the social 
 worker doing but creating a theatre in which the 
 artist will have a better chance? There is not 
 even the difference that one has a purpose and 
 the other has but a blind intention to be and do. 
 Both are driven by the same motive, and by co- 
 ordinate means both are working for the same 
 object. There will probably always be the two 
 groups in the world, those who see Meanings, and 
 those who say "Nonsense." But they are not
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 99 
 
 enemies or alien to each other. Indeed both rep- 
 resent different moods in the same individual. 
 For what artist has failed at some moment of 
 weakness to see his work in terms of Man, and 
 what social idealist has not wished to dedicate 
 himself to the "God of Things as They Are?" 
 
 It often seems to one who looks on from out- 
 side that schools do not take up a thing until that 
 thing can get along very nicely without them. 
 True as this is it constitutes no charge against 
 the schools. It is not the business of education 
 to push new intellectual wares. Schools do not 
 create; they test and guarantee. 
 
 But beyond this primary function of the testing 
 of values there is another that is coming to have 
 increasing scope. It has to do with the service 
 education can perform in the creation of new 
 truth in its laboratories. The investigative and 
 constructive work of the laboratory has become the 
 rock upon which higher education is built. The 
 laboratory treats not only the exact and the nat- 
 ural sciences but it has come in late years to apply 
 itself to the social forces upon which the functions 
 of democracy depend. In this way the university 
 laboratory has become more than a place of re- 
 search into social, political and economic affairs.
 
 ioo THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 It has become a veritable pathfinder. By the logic 
 of the activity itself this laboratory work is pro- 
 gressive and constructive. It would be unfaithful 
 to the principle of truth if it did not throw force 
 behind its discoveries and endow with the warmth 
 of approval the new principles it has uncovered. 
 
 While this is the case in the utilitarian arts 
 of democracy one notices with a shock of surprise 
 that so far education has refused to apply these 
 principles to those other forces so closely related 
 with the utilitarian, the aesthetic and imaginative 
 interests of the state. On this side universities 
 continue to be simply tabulating institutions. 
 While the world outside is teeming with experi- 
 ments they refuse to provide these experiments 
 laboratory room or to give to them the use of 
 their machinery or the sanction of their names. 
 
 This is no charge against the men in the uni- 
 versities. It refers to a temper that apparently 
 governs in all institutions, a temper that presumes 
 that art is fixed and static, that it is worth while 
 only after it is dead, while politics is vital and 
 is subject to immediate judgment. This atti- 
 tude has done much to lay an improper emphasis 
 on all that pertains to literature and art in the 
 universities and thoroughly to alienate those who 
 practice the arts in our day. It has made all the
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 101 
 
 work of the universities in these fields simply a 
 survey of past processes and has closed the door 
 to any laboratory work in the living principles of 
 the arts. 
 
 These conditions are serious enough when ap- 
 plied to literature. They are absolutely fatal 
 when applied to the theatre, an art that depends 
 so largely upon instrumentalities apart from the 
 printed page, and vital to the time. A survey of 
 the place of the theatre in the modern university 
 curriculum shows some very striking things. It 
 shows that the theatre is taking a large and in- 
 creasing place in the outlay of educational work 
 and that a large share of this refers simply to the 
 critical aspects of drama study. It shows an al- 
 most hysterical activity on the part of the stu- 
 dents in histrionic matters, an activity outlawed 
 and undirected and in some cases crudely re- 
 pressed. It shows some slight recognition of the 
 dramatic as a function in education but no recog- 
 nition of the theatre as an instrument of the state. 
 And finally it shows some efforts to establish 
 within the university as a part of the investiga- 
 tive and experimental work laboratories of the 
 theatre. In the only case in which this effort has 
 been successful this laboratory lies outside the uni- 
 versity and maintains but a narrow channel of
 
 102 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 communication with the institution through the 
 medium of one man. 
 
 Without taking up here the question as to 
 whether an art can be taught it is manifest that 
 the universities could to-day be of the broadest 
 service in this active field of a reawakening 
 theatre. Nothing makes this more evident than 
 the futility of the efforts at education put forth 
 by the average dramatic school. The university 
 can apply to the treatment of the problems of the 
 theatre those methods by which higher education 
 is supported and justified, an absence of warmth 
 which is commonly known as the scientific spirit, 
 a power of analysis and organization of intellec- 
 tual materials, and a breadth of vision that comes 
 from a conspectus of all fields of human activity 
 at one view. 
 
 The drama as such is no stranger in college 
 halls. The Greek and Latin dramatists have long 
 had a place in the curriculums. With the col- 
 lapse of classical studies the Elizabethan drama- 
 tists took their place. During recent years inter- 
 est in the predecessors and contemporaries of 
 Shakespeare has opened the most active field for 
 teaching and investigation. Then the interest 
 stepped downward from these through the Resto-
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 103 
 
 ration dramatists and the dramatists of the dawn 
 of democracy in Germany, France and England to 
 Ibsen and the problem dramatists. This was 
 partly a natural flow of interest downward. But 
 largely it was a change in kind, a substitution of 
 the old safe materials for materials of a more dis- 
 putable nature. 
 
 As for college performances, these have been 
 frankly frivolous, more frivolous than the ordi- 
 nary amateur performances, or frankly academic. 
 On the side of the academic performances some- 
 thing has been done. There are many records of 
 performances in college halls of old plays that 
 could not have otherwise been seen. "The Jew 
 of Malta," "The Knight of the Burning Pestle," 
 "Ralph Roister Doister," Peek's "Old Wives' 
 Tale," "The Marriage of Wit and Science," 
 "The Two Noble Kinsmen," "Friar Bacon and 
 Friar Bungay," Shirley's "The Opportunity," 
 "The Arraignment of Paris," "Abraham and 
 Isaac" are among the plays recorded in college 
 performances. Recently this interest has been 
 greatly specialized by the encouragement of the 
 performance in college edifices by professional ac- 
 tors of the great classic plays "CEdipus Tyran- 
 nus" and "Agamemnon," "Iphigenia in Taurus,"
 
 104 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and the 
 French "Phedre" have been so given by leading 
 actors. 
 
 In another way the educational institution has 
 been of some service to the stage. It has gathered 
 together the records of the progress of human in- 
 stitutions in museum and libraries. The collec- 
 tions in American drama in the library of the 
 University of Pennsylvania provide the materi- 
 als upon which the history of American drama 
 will probably be written, perhaps by a Penn- 
 sylvania man. What Pennsylvania has in Amer- 
 ican drama is matched over a larger field by the 
 remarkable Robert Gould Shaw Theatre Collec- 
 tion at Harvard. The Dramatic Museum at 
 Columbia has begun to make collections of manu- 
 scripts, volumes and models on the practical side 
 of theatre history. 
 
 Here we have the university in a narrow field 
 serving through class-room and museum the 
 cause of the new drama. Its closer participation 
 in these interests is so far limited to the teaching 
 of the principles of dramatic writing. These 
 courses began thirty years ago when Professor 
 Hennequin added to his courses at Yale a course 
 on "The Art of Playwriting." To-day there is 
 hardly a college that does not include some such
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 105 
 
 course. Now, such a course as this standing alone 
 and unassisted is quite unscholarly. It fails to 
 take into consideration the true nature of the 
 art of the theatre which is an art of architecture 
 more than it is an art of composition. If uni- 
 versities are to be true to their principles they will 
 provide laboratories for this kind of work. 
 
 In two institutions scientific work in the prac- 
 tical art of the theatre has gone far enough to 
 warrant careful consideration. In the first of 
 these, a great university, this work has been set 
 up apart from the institution itself by private 
 initiative. In the second, a leading institute of 
 art and technical education the work has been 
 adopted by the institution itself and all the facili- 
 ties of the institution have been opened to it. 
 The latter provides the only example in the Anglo- 
 Saxon world in which thoroughly scientific work 
 has been projected in the arts of the theatre on 
 the basis of the higher education. 
 
 Of recent years Harvard has come to great 
 eminence for its activity in matters of the theatre. 
 Playwrights, designers, producers have come from 
 Harvard and have won enviable rank in the pro- 
 fession. This is to be credited to two circum- 
 stances, the fact that Boston is still rich with the 
 best traditions of American culture and the fact
 
 106 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 that Harvard has in her service the genius of 
 G. P. Baker. Baker has in him the rare com- 
 bination of a scientific mind with an alert en- 
 thusiasm in all things new and worthy. He was 
 drawn into the drama as both scholar and actor. 
 For some years he has been giving courses in the 
 history of English drama, in the technique of the 
 drama, and in the art of playwriting. Through 
 these courses he has turned out scores of workers 
 into the field of the American theatre. 
 
 It must be recognized that in these courses Pro- 
 fessor Baker has the support of the university as 
 a whole. They are as much a part of the insti- 
 tution's training for citizenship as are any other 
 courses in the curriculum. Having undertaken 
 these courses there are some obligations both to- 
 ward the students and toward the science under 
 consideration, the obligation of a thorough treat- 
 ment of this science by all the instrumentalities 
 of the institution. This obligation Professor 
 Baker was early in appreciating. And certain 
 of his students recognized it as well. And so 
 the 47 Workshop came about through the plan- 
 ning of Professor Baker and the initiative of a 
 group of young women who raised five hundred 
 dollars for the purpose. 
 
 The 47 Workshop is a college laboratory in
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 107 
 
 play construction, using the latter word in its 
 broadest sense. Its purpose is to give the broad- 
 est practical experience in the handling of the 
 factors of a production in such a way that the 
 principles underlying the processes may be un- 
 covered. The 47 Workshop was established in 
 1912 by Professor Baker and a group of Radcliffe 
 women. Its constituency is made up from greater 
 Boston without regard to college membership ex- 
 cept that the central group is composed of mem- 
 bers from Baker's classes in theory. It is gov- 
 erned by an executive committee representing all 
 the activities of the production of a play, its stag- 
 ing, acting, lighting, and composition. Professor 
 Baker's own relationship with the government of 
 the organization is intimate but flexible. For \ # 
 three years the Workshop war **^i^ in. an old 
 stable. About a year ago it was given temporary J/ 
 quarters in a university building. The produc- 
 tions are given in Agassiz Hall of Radcliffe 
 College. The Workshop draws no funds from 
 the university. It is supported by volunteer gifts 
 of from ten dollars to $250 and by endowed 
 performances sometimes given as memorials to 
 former members of the Workshop. 
 
 It is the purpose of the Workshop to supply 
 that practical training which is indispensable to
 
 <#& - '- 
 
 io8 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 / the tuition of the playwright. A play is under- 
 / taken only after the preliminary work in composi- 
 tion has been completed, when it is ready to be 
 "built." The Workshop is a trying-out place 
 not only of the work of the students but of all 
 those principles by which work in the theatre has 
 been circumscribed. It is in the broadest sense 
 descriptive and analytical, yet experimental and 
 dynamic. Only those plays are done which are 
 considered worthy and these are expected to rep- 
 resent some new departure or a venture aside 
 from principles that have become stiff with much 
 use. The plays are done by a picked company of 
 volunteer actors under the direction of Profes- 
 sor Baker. The laboratory nature of the un- 
 dertaking applies as well to the principles of act- 
 ing as to the formulas of playwriting. Care 
 has been taken to draw into the work painters 
 and designers of sets and this work too is put 
 under the magnifying lens. And particular at- 
 tention has been given to lighting, which is in 
 the hands of one of the most expert lighting art- 
 ists in the country. 
 
 A distinguishing feature of the 47 Workshop 
 is a cooperating audience. After careful selec- 
 tion an audience of four hundred people has been 
 set apart. These are invited to all performances.
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 109 
 
 In return for this attendance each one is expected 
 to send in to the committee his criticism of the 
 whole performance, acting, play, scenery, ensem- 
 ble. If a member consistently fails to report he 
 is dropped from future audiences. The audience 
 is as much a working part of the organization as 
 is the player. These criticisms are culled and 
 from them the general reactions of the audience 
 are adduced. Care is taken to discriminate be- 
 tween the reaction of the audience and an ab- 
 solute judgment. As time goes on the reactions 
 approach more nearly to absolute judgments. 
 Even when they do not they are significant of what 
 the audience demands of a play. 
 
 The system of the Workshop has served sev- 
 eral ends. It has supplied for young and inex- 
 perienced playwrights a test of their work before 
 an audience, with the opportunity to remake the 
 work after a try-out. And it has supplied to 
 the audience the material upon which to sharpen 
 and to test its own choices. To all the workers 
 it has offered the opportunity to try out new ideas 
 and to test in practice the value of old ones. And 
 it has offered an unusual means of observing in 
 one place the synthesis of all the parts of a pro- 
 duction. 
 
 I have tried to show that the 47 Workshop
 
 no THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 represents the laboratory activities of Harvard's 
 contribution to the treatment of modern drama, 
 activities which have not as yet been entirely ac- 
 cepted as belonging to the principle of the insti- 
 tution, and are therefore now an appendage. 
 The new School of Drama of the Carnegie In- 
 stitute of Technology at Pittsburgh is associated 
 with a somewhat different principle of education 
 and the Institute has accepted its principle far 
 more thoroughly than has the University. As 
 with Harvard the essential fact is that it is a uni- 
 versity with a German standard of research, with 
 Carnegie the essential fact is that it is a school of 
 the technology of the arts. Baker approaches 
 his work from the field of scholarship and rhetoric. 
 Stevens approaches his from the field of the 
 painter, the etcher, the practitioner of the manual 
 arts, and the creator of pageants. What holds 
 true of the heads of the work holds true of the 
 systems upon which their institutions are con- 
 ducted. The one is a university; the other an art 
 school. 
 
 The fact that the Carnegie Institute is a school 
 of fine and applied art is not without significance 
 in its Department of the Drama. It brings to 
 bear upon the teaching of the arts of the theatre 
 the regimen of observation, of manual training,
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 111 
 
 of eye and hand exercise that is the root of art 
 instruction. It treats the theatre as one of the 
 sisterhood of the arts. Its tuition is based not 
 upon theory but upon the training of the faculties. 
 Its rule is, first the hand and then the mind, or 
 better, the mind through the trained hand and 
 eye. That this principle is a just one is evi- 
 denced by the intellectual work involved in the 
 best painting and sculpture. There is no reason 
 why the same principle should not be applied to 
 the theatre. There is much in it to correct the 
 method of the old-fashioned dramatic school 
 which as a rule has been a bad combination of 
 theory with external practice without regard to 
 the principles of observation. 
 
 Another important feature of the Carnegie In- 
 stitute School of Drama is the fact that the major 
 influence of the school happens to be that in- 
 fluence which is having the greatest stress in the 
 new art theatre. This is not so much an external 
 as a philosophical influence. The function of 
 art in the new movement of the theatre has been 
 more than the revolution in stage design and back- 
 ground. It has been its function to subject all 
 the practice of the stage to the "pitiless method" 
 that the best artist represents. The influence of 
 the painter has been so strong that temporarily he
 
 112 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 has seemed to usurp the place of the dramatic 
 director. It has seemed that the picture might 
 overcome the drama. There is no fear of this. 
 The painter has had a real contribution to make. 
 If in making it he has pressed down the scale a 
 little to his side he has at any rate provided for 
 drama standards of judgment beyond those it 
 has been recently its wont to meet. The Carnegie 
 Institute, dedicated to the balance of all the arts, 
 the manual as well as the fine arts, has healthily 
 represented this service. It has never been the 
 habit of the directors to surrender to the pictorial 
 appeal. Perhaps because pictures are no surprise 
 to their members they have been able to subordi- 
 nate line and color and design on the stage better 
 than those who have but lately discovered the use 
 of these things in the theatre. 
 
 The principles upon which the Carnegie Insti- 
 1 tute School of Drama is conducted have been care- 
 \ fully studied and as thoroughly worked out in 
 practice. One is surprised in considering this in- 
 stitution to note that it is only four years old and 
 that it has been built up from the ground with- 
 out the advantage of models. The school rep- 
 resents a nice balance of the practice of the art 
 with the theories by which this practice is il- 
 luminated. All the facilities of the well-equipped
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 113 
 
 Institute are turned over to the School of Drama 
 for the purposes of its training. And it is for- 
 tunate that the Institute is so eclectic in its ac- 
 tivities that it is possible to find there all the de- 
 partments that make up the complex art of the 
 theatre. 
 
 Always as an ideal the School of Drama keeps 
 before it the standard of general culture. This 
 ideal is represented in the more general items of 
 the curriculum, the languages, the literatures, the 
 sciences of general learning. With this general 
 ideal it combines, to quote the notable words of 
 Mr. Stevens, the theory of "an expanded and 
 stimulated sense of resource" that comes with 
 technical training. As laid out this training is 
 both general and particular to the stage. It deals 
 with pictorial art, painting and sculpture, furni- 
 ture, architecture, and music. In subjects more 
 closely related to the theatre it deals with cos- 
 tume making, scene painting, voice training, fenc- 
 ing and dancing, and the business routine of the 
 theatre. This technical work is continually in- 
 terpreted by work of a historical nature in the 
 history of the theatre, of literature, and of folk 
 activities. 
 
 All of this lays the basis in general culture and 
 personal equipment for the more concrete work of
 
 114 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 the theatre. When it comes to this feature of the 
 work the management of the school is fearlessly 
 and explicitly professional in its leanings. The 
 work in rehearsal and acting is done by men and 
 women who are experienced in the professional 
 theatre. Effort has always been made to secure 
 as producers and coaches men of a thorough 
 grounding in the tradition of the stage who add 
 to this scholarship and imagination. No better 
 men could be thought of for these posts than 
 Donald Robertson, B. Iden Payne, and William 
 Poel, all of whom have been attached to the thea- 
 tre of the School of Drama as producers. 
 
 The School of Drama is first of all a training 
 school. As such its first fealty is to the princi- 
 ples of effective preparation of the students for 
 the profession of the stage. But the task has 
 been interpreted broadly. In these days when 
 the theatre is entering so intimately into the life 
 of all the people it would be difficult for such a 
 school not to take its place with them. This the 
 School of Drama has done for the Pittsburgh com- 
 munity. Provided with the most beautiful little 
 theatre in America it has been able to offer with- 
 out charge to select groups of Pittsburgh citizens 
 plays new and old that could not possibly be 
 seen elsewhere in productions of first merit. And 

 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 115 
 
 the audiences are selected altogether upon the in- 
 terest evinced. Anyone who really wishes to see 
 a Carnegie production has an opportunity to do 
 so. The list of plays presented on this stage is 
 distinguished and unique. It includes plays of 
 an academic interest either in play or staging as 
 well as examples of the newest styles of stag- 
 ing and play-craftsmanship. Particular care is 
 taken to encourage the attendance of students 
 from the Pittsburgh schools in the hope of foster- 
 ing in this way the most alert standards of dis- 
 crimination in the audiences of the future. The 
 School of Drama of the Carnegie Institute is a 
 distinguished example of what an educational in- 
 stitution can do for the art of the theatre when 
 its facilities are wisely bent to this end. 
 
 The movement for dramatic laboratories has 
 extended outside the educational institutions and 
 has planted separate institutions in several cities 
 in the country. As a rule this has been done by 
 those who recognized that the way was not yet 
 prepared for new theatres and that the best serv- 
 ice they could render was in the systematic train- 
 ing in discrimination and craftsmanship of those 
 willing workers who were coming into the field. 
 The purposes and methods of these institutions
 
 ii6 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 have not differed materially from those I have 
 outlined for educational institutions. They have 
 called upon their directors for a high degree of 
 devotion and self-sacrifice and have been ex- 
 tremely useful in their communities. It is mani- 
 fest that such work as this, being largely peda- 
 gogical, could not offer the rewards that come from 
 work in the theatre. 
 
 The first of these Workshops was that of the 
 Wisconsin Players established by Laura Sherry 
 in Milwaukee in 1913. The activities of this 
 workshop are various, including instruction in 
 dancing, playmaking, the rehearsal, production 
 and criticism of plays. In 1915 this organiza- 
 tion secured a building in which are represented 
 many of the interests, social and intellectual, con- 
 nected with the theatre, including workrooms, 
 libraries, a book shop, and a dancing hall with 
 facilities for a small theatre. Miss Elizabeth 
 Bingham has executive direction of the Players' 
 Workshop in Chicago, a laboratory organization 
 which has done excellent work in the production 
 of new plays, the enlisting of players and writers 
 and audience in that city. Though only a year 
 old this organization has already achieved some 
 notable results. The latest project for a theatre 
 Workshop is that of Miss Grace Griswold who
 
 DRAMATIC LABORATORIES 117 
 
 is undertaking to establish in New York an insti- 
 tution for the purpose of centralizing the various 
 activities of the theatre somewhat after the fash- 
 ion of the endowed scientific and economic foun- 
 dations. The purpose of such an institution 
 would be partly that of tuition, largely that of 
 research and centralization.
 
 VIII 
 THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 
 
 CAN there be a children's theatre? The answer 
 to this question depends upon what one means by 
 such an institution. If one means by this a de- 
 partment of the child's general education so ad- 
 justed as to involve the child's own participation, 
 using broadly the functions of the dramatic in 
 education then my answer would be that there 
 can be a children's theatre. If on the other hand 
 one means by children's theatre an institution to 
 present plays of a childish type to an audience 
 exclusively of young people, then I should say 
 that there cannot be a children's theatre. There 
 is no demand for such a theatre; it would not be 
 supported, and it would serve no good purpose. 
 Whatever may be the immediate excuse for 
 the existence of an institution, money making, the 
 serving of a temporary need, the providing of in- 
 teresting activity for the workers, or the service 
 
 of men, the continued existence of that institu- 
 
 118
 
 THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 119 
 
 tion goes back to the satisfaction of a demand. It 
 cannot exist unless it is serviceable and its serv- 
 iceableness may be measured by its support. The 
 children's theatre cannot exist unless there is such 
 a thing as a children's dramatic art. I think it 
 will be found that this does not exist any more 
 than does a children's music or a children's archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 Now this does not mean that there are not 
 some plays that are more appropriate for chil- 
 dren than others. When these plays are studied 
 it is found that their adaptability does not come 
 from any adjustment to the child mind but it 
 comes from certain absolute qualities in the play 
 itself. Truly considered a play that is properly 
 adapted to children is precisely the play that dis- 
 plays the highest qualities of artistry for adults. 
 A children's theatre is any good theatre, and con- 
 versely a good theatre is a children's theatre. 
 
 Now if this were what is meant by children's 
 theatre I would be enthusiastic for it. But this 
 is not what is meant. A play for children is 
 usually presumed to be diluted for the childish 
 taste, to treat of childish themes, in a childish 
 psychology, and with a structure puerile and 
 half-baked. Or it is supposed to be a play with 
 an easily discernible didactic value. For this
 
 120 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 kind of thing there is no demand and no sup- 
 port. 
 
 In an half dozen years a score of children's 
 theatres have been announced. All started with 
 pleasant plans, and some with sufficient money. 
 Yet none has succeeded. In 1912 a Children's 
 Theatre was established by Mrs. Georgia Wolfe 
 in the Carnegie Lyceum in New York playing 
 sketches from Dickens. Under the auspices of 
 the Recreation League of San Francisco a chil- 
 dren's theatre was established in the same year 
 by Mrs. D. E. F. Easton, the admission fee be- 
 ing set at ten cents. In 1913 a juvenile theatre 
 was announced for Los Angeles to cost $160,000. 
 The entire theatre was to be in the hands of the 
 children, the little ones being expected to write, 
 to act, and to stage the plays. The next year 
 a children's motion picture theatre was announced 
 for the same city. In 1913 the Washington Cen- 
 tre of the Drama League announced the House of 
 Play, a little theatre to seat 400 children. San 
 Francisco again came forward with a project in 
 1915, the players to be drawn from the theatres 
 and dramatic clubs of the city. In 1916 the 
 Drama League proposed to establish a children's 
 theatre in Chicago with performances on Satur- 
 day mornings at a charge of ten cents. In the
 
 THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 121 
 
 same year the Children's Playhouse was estab- 
 lished in Columbus, Ohio, under the conduct of 
 the Public Recreation Commission. In the holi- 
 days of 1916 Mrs. Alice Herts-Heniger, Miss 
 Katherine Lord and Mrs. Mary Austin arranged 
 for a series of matinees for children at a down 
 town theatre in New York in a production of one 
 of Mrs. Austin's plays. It is apparent that the 
 matter of a children's theatre has been much can- 
 vassed yet none of these undertakings went be- 
 yond the announcement stage or at best the first 
 production. 
 
 The efforts for a children's theatre were not 
 left entirely to outside experimenters. Profes- 
 sional managers took up the idea and spent some 
 thought and money on the experiment. The 
 most successful children's play given in New 
 York City has been Winthrop Ames's production 
 of "Snow White" given for 92 performances at 
 the Little Theatre in the fall of 1912. David 
 Belasco secured "A Good Little Devil" adapted 
 from the work of Mme. Edmond Rostand and her 
 son for a few performances. W. A. Brady gave a 
 beautiful production to "Little Women." None 
 of these uncovered a demand on the part of 
 audiences. The most costly venture of all was 
 the Children's Theatre undertaken by George C.
 
 122 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Tyler on the roof of the Century Theatre, form- 
 erly the New Theatre, on funds provided by W. 
 K. Vanderbilt. A theatre seating 800 was built 
 in the open air on the roof. It was beautifully 
 arranged and charmingly decorated. The designs 
 were all of a nature that would presumably ap- 
 peal to the childish fancy. Boxes were named 
 "Beauty and the Beast," "The House that Jack 
 Built," etc. The programme was pictured from 
 fairy tales and fables. 
 
 The theatre opened at a private performance 
 December 21, 1912, and to the public the fol- 
 lowing Monday in "Rackety-Packety House" by 
 Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Everything 
 possible was done to reach the attention of the 
 children and the approval of their elders. Yet 
 the theatre never played to any business of im- 
 portance, the attendance seldom rising above 300. 
 According to the director it was the most dis- 
 spiriting undertaking of his life. After a few 
 weeks the Children's Theatre was made over into 
 a restaurant. 
 
 Among those theatres which have made it a 
 point to appeal to children and have made any 
 success of the appeal the greater number have 
 been theatres that made the appeal incidentally 
 to other purposes, in which the general spirit of
 
 THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 123 
 
 the theatre is of a nature to appeal to the child- 
 like joy of men and women as well as of young 
 people. Such was the temper of the Bijou Thea- 
 tre in Boston, an advanced motion picture theatre 
 which offered a programme of pictures, travel 
 chats, and folk songs. This theatre was under- 
 taken by Mrs. Josephine Clement in 1908 and 
 ran for six years. The Neighborhood Playhouse 
 in New York has made a success in its offerings to 
 children on account of the fact that the spirit 
 of the theatre is always that of a festival. And 
 Stuart Walker has drawn a juvenile audience on 
 account of the joyo.us and unsophisticated plays 
 he has presented. Too many managers have ap- 
 pealed to children in a spirit of patronage which 
 the child is most ready to discover and to re- 
 sent. The plays which have best succeeded with 
 children have been those which were written for 
 the mature intelligences of men and women as 
 these rise to the levels of the childlike. "The 
 Blue Bird" and "Peter Pan," to mention the 
 plays which come first to mind, are plays for 
 men and women. Only men and women can truly 
 appreciate the exquisite delicacy and perfect 
 technique they display. And they were favorites 
 with children. The child's mind does not differ 
 from that of the adult. In many respects he is 

 
 124 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 a better judge for he has not schooled himself, 
 as have too many of his elders, in the council of 
 bad works. He is not ready to accept an apology 
 or to grant an insult to his intelligence. For this 
 reason Shakespeare is always a favorite with the 
 young. 
 
 There remain for consideration two organiza- 
 tions which while not children's theatres have been 
 very useful in fostering the dramatic impulses of 
 childhood. Both of these approach the subject 
 from the ground of the school rather than of the 
 theatre. It is probable that when the matter is 
 sifted down it will be found that the real call for 
 the children's theatre comes from those who are 
 interested in education rather than the art of 
 the theatre. The distinction between the chil- 
 dren's theatre and the use of the dramatic facul- 
 ties in education should be clearly drawn. The 
 first raises questions of entertainment and art and 
 its values are presumably absolute. The second 
 is a question of mental development and its values 
 are relative. We are quite willing to grant a 
 place to drama in education without granting a 
 place to the children's theatre in the catalogue of 
 the arts of the stage. Education is premised to 
 the mind of the young. It is fitting that it should 
 use and develop all the latent forces of the young
 
 THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 125 
 
 mind, and so manipulate its materials as to be 
 most useful for this purpose. This the theatre 
 cannot do without confusing its purposes. It can- 
 not obey the behest of truth and at the same time 
 the behest of pedagogical method. By the sim- 
 ple operation of natural law the matter works 
 out satisfactorily. Young people enjoy their 
 work in drama for education. They do not en- 
 joy the purposed entertainments of the children's 
 theatre. 
 
 In 1902 there was established by the Educa- 
 tional Alliance of New York City a department 
 of dramatic activity under the direction of Miss 
 A. Minnie Herts and Mrs. Emma Sheridan Fry. 
 The purposes of this work were the utilization 
 of the dramatic faculties in the education of 
 young people particularly of foreign races. The 
 work went on for seven years during which time 
 "Snow White," "Ingomar," "As You Like It," 
 "The Tempest" and a dozen other plays were 
 presented. Then in 1909 the work was discon- 
 tinued for lack of support. 
 
 Out of this early work of the Educational Al- 
 liance there came two movements in children's 
 dramatics. The Children's Educational Theatre 
 was under the direction of Mrs. Minnie Herts- 
 Heniger and the Educational Dramatic League
 
 126 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 was for some time instructed by Mrs. Emma 
 Sheridan Fry. In neither organization is the pur- 
 pose primarily one for the improvement of the 
 theatre. The primary purpose is the use of the 
 drama as an instrument in social and educational 
 work. Of the Children's Educational Theatre 
 Mark Twain said, "I consider the Children's Edu- 
 cational Theatre the greatest citizen-making force 
 of the century. I hope I may live to see it firmly 
 established." In taking the Stuyvesant Fish 
 House as the center of its activities the purpose 
 of the Educational Theatre was to utilize the 
 largest number of children possible in the produc- 
 tion of each play, and to place the complete pro- 
 duction within the reach of thousands. The 
 Children's Educational Theatre was chartered in 
 December, 1912. Though primarily for an edu- 
 cational purpose its importance to the theatre is 
 not slight, through its influence in making chil- 
 dren responsible for the standards of their own en- 
 tertainment. 
 
 Also an institution of education through drama 
 the Educational Dramatic League has operated 
 largely upon principles of system and organiza- 
 tion. Its purpose has been to formulate and 
 standardize the already broad practice of dra- 
 matics in education. No longer is there question
 
 THE CHILDREN'S THEATRE 127 
 
 as to the broad place that drama takes in the tui- 
 tion of youth. The need now is for more expert- 
 ness and a better system. For this reason efforts 
 have been put forth so to broaden the work of the 
 League as to cover the activities in clubs and 
 schools and recreation centers in New York City 
 and in the state. Fostered first by the People's 
 Institute strength was given to this work when 
 Mrs. Eleanor Robson Belmont joined it. 
 
 It is not so much the purpose of the Educational 
 Dramatic League to present plays as to work out 
 a systematic machinery by which those in charge 
 of the presentation of plays shall be instructed 
 and guided. At present there is an informal 
 working arrangement with the Board of Education 
 and with those in charge of the recreational activi- 
 ties of the city of New York to bring all the 
 dramatic forces in their charge under one respon- 
 sible administration. The time is confidently 
 looked forward to when this relationship will be 
 even more close and efficient. 
 
 Though these activities are aside from the cen- 
 tral purposes of the theatre, and therefore aside 
 from the scope of this book, one cannot avoid 
 recognizing their real potential importance to the 
 theatre.
 
 IX 
 PIONEERS 
 
 SOME years ago the Frohman offices made a sur- 
 vey of their audiences and found that women made 
 up about seventy percent, of the entire attendance 
 upon their productions. These figures have been 
 referred to as explaining the prominent place 
 women have taken in the recent movements of the 
 theatre. But the interest of women in the new 
 movements has been more than one of histrionics. 
 The theatre provided them an outlet for their 
 peculiar genius. Some years back they had turned 
 by the hundreds from women's clubs to the more 
 concrete work of political, social, and economic 
 bureaus. And now the theatre opened a still 
 wider horizon. 
 
 And it was well that it was so. Women have 
 that combination of vision, faith and inexperience 
 which was necessary in the theatre at the time. 
 Do I mean that inexperience in the theatre was 
 necessary? Precisely. Without a plentiful fund 
 
 of inexperience, without the daring that comes 
 
 128 

 
 PIONEERS 129 
 
 from ignorance of what was in store for one no 
 person five years ago would have undertaken the 
 founding of a new theatre on radical plans. The 
 experienced man of the theatre knows that the 
 path of even the established theatre is full of 
 dangers. The innovating thejirje_jmeans almost 
 
 certain disastgn "Toundertake work in it inex- 
 perience was necessary and along with women's 
 positive gifts of vision and skill they were sup- 
 plied as a rule with this negative advantage as 
 well. 
 
 Inexperience was both the cause and the curse 
 of these first ventures. The real lesson one learns 
 from them is that the lessons of the theatre have 
 to be conned whether one expects to run an art 
 theatre or a variety house, an Empire, a Hippo- 
 drome, or a Toy Theatre. These early experi- 
 ments forever dissipated the idea that there can 
 be two kinds of theatres, the theatre that appeals 
 and the theatre that presents. All theatres must 
 appeal, the small as well as the large. The faith 
 in the absolute art principle by which many 
 young producers started out, the belief that the 
 art can achieve its own support without recourse 
 to the showman's aid, was born of inexperience, 
 nothing less. It seems cruel to say so in view 
 of high protestations. But this is a point we
 
 130 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 cannot get too clearly in mind. An indispensable 
 part of the work of the theatre is that of the show- 
 man. Boggle the fact as we may no theatre can 
 get along if it has not this gift behind it. 
 
 What are the marks of the showman? All 
 great dramatists and men of the theatre are show- 
 men. I am almost willing to say that all great 
 artists are showmen. I am sure that all small 
 and successful artists whether in the theatre or 
 out are showmen. The great are showmen plus. 
 The small are only showmen. The showman's 
 gift is partly the ability to make things "stand 
 out," to "display" them. Partly it is the ability 
 to speak in terms that reach common understand- 
 ing. Partly it is ability in the organization of 
 the materials of the art for its ideal purpose. As 
 it enters into all art it is that trait of verve, apart 
 from craftsmanship, by which a Gainsborough is 
 recognized from his imitator. Sometimes it is 
 called "plunge." The theatre calls it "punch" 
 and "pep." These are not bad words. They 
 stand for a true principle in art that the artist al- 
 ways recognizes though he may not know how to 
 define it. 
 
 How much this principle is subject to abuse in 
 the theatre we all know. It is closely allied to 
 charlatanism, to the baser and more vulgar ap-
 
 PIONEERS 131 
 
 peals. There is no art in which this necessary 
 principle of all art can be so used to the distress 
 of the true artist. Confounding its abuse with 
 the principle itself, the methods of a Barnum 
 with the human cry of "panem et circenses" some 
 have thought that they could make a theatre on 
 a rigorous basis apart from the lure of the show- 
 man. And they have failed. I think it is safe 
 to say that the handling of this gift itself provides 
 a test of the fibre of the artist. Not that he shall 
 weakly discard it but that he shall use it with 
 masterful self control is the requirement. 
 
 One of these qualities of the showman has a 
 peculiar importance in the theatre. It is the one 
 that has to do with the organization of the ma- 
 terials of art for ideal purposes. The showman 
 not only has to make things stand out, and speak 
 a recognizable language. He has to be a business 
 man, an artist executive. He has to be acquainted 
 with the technique of the theatre, to know how to 
 handle the factors of a production. He has to 
 know how to keep all his forces in line and in 
 proper balance, to encourage and yet curb en- 
 thusiasm, to keep the spring of creative impulse 
 alive at the same time that he is subjecting it 
 to an audit system of expense. There is no kind 
 of theatrical company of any description, high or
 
 
 132 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 low, in which this gift is not necessary. It was 
 too much to expect this system to work in new 
 companies made up of volunteer workers, doing 
 they knew not what and subject to the gusts of 
 temperament not uncommon in the theatre. But 
 to the extent that this could not be secured fail- 
 ure was inevitable. 
 
 Lately there has been some disposition to as- 
 sume the intellectual glories of Boston to be 
 those of the past. Lest I seem to fall into this 
 error let me say that Boston is still the intellectual 
 capital of America. And if Boston is Athens then 
 Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island are 
 Attica. Not the least interesting feature of the 
 life of this district has been the persistence in good 
 standing of the social dramatic club. The Cam- 
 bridge Social Dramatic Club, twenty-seven years 
 old, The Footlights Club of Jamaica Plain, the 
 Brookline Amateurs, the Players of Newton, the 
 famous old Talma Club of Providence, with a 
 long history of excellent productions and a theatre 
 of its own, all these had entered into the life of 
 the community. The amateur was not as despised 
 on the seaboard as elsewhere. Plays were well 
 presented, the training was thorough and expert, 
 in each club there developed corps of actors in
 
 PIONEERS 133 
 
 private life who had a professional accuracy in 
 method. 
 
 In this atmosphere Mrs. Lyman W. Gale had 
 been reared. She had herself taken a part in 
 amateur dramatics at Weston, Massachusetts. 
 With her colleagues the new trends in things 
 theatrical had pointed her mind to more particular 
 problems. In 1911 she came under the influence 
 of the Irish Players who had had a season in 
 Boston. Lately she had been left a sum of 
 money. And so she determined to establish a 
 theatre. 
 
 I am not going to try to tell the intimate his- 
 tory of the Toy Theatre of Boston. No one 
 knows this fully with the exception of Mrs. Gale. 
 But I am going to find it desirable to speak of 
 it specifically, and not to hesitate in drawing con- 
 clusions from its very interesting career. Mrs. 
 Gale was so truly the mother of the theatre, it 
 reflected her own spirit and equipment so com- 
 pletely, that I am going to try to deal with it in 
 terms of her own ideals, disillusionments and dis- 
 appointments. In these more than in anything 
 else are the true problems, many of them quite in- 
 soluble, of pioneering work in the theatre re- 
 vealed. 
 
 As the idea of a little theatre rested on Mrs.
 
 134 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Gale's mind it was to be simple, honest, a return 
 to the rudimentary principles of stage practice. 
 The theatre was to be based upon the ideal of co- 
 operation among all the workers, and its conduct 
 was as nearly as possible to be gauged to the de- 
 mands and to the return. In order to support 
 the theatre in its early days generous subscriptions 
 were secured from a small circle. An old stable 
 was taken at 16 Lime Street and this was re- 
 modelled as a theatre seating 129 persons. The 
 theatre was named the Toy Theatre. One hears 
 suggestions that this first theatre was a socially 
 exclusive institution. This was not Mrs. Gale's 
 intention. She desired to secure support from 
 sympathetic people. As it chanced this came 
 first from people of means and leisure. But she 
 had no intention of making the theatre in any 
 way a class institution. 
 
 One of the first measures necessary was to se- 
 cure a corps of working members of interests sym- 
 pathetic with those of the theatre. How to get 
 that proper combination of centralization and ad- 
 visory control, of the free initiative necessary and 
 yet the wide support no less necessary was a prob- 
 lem. It was not made easier by the fact that 
 there are as many minds as men in the remaking 
 of the theatre and the director had come into her
 
 PIONEERS 135 
 
 work more expecting to experiment than with 
 settled plans to execute. The first result of these 
 conditions was a failure to secure in Boston a rep- 
 resentative committee which would stand with 
 the director before the city. In large measure 
 Mrs. Gale was compelled to stand alone. 
 
 Some principles stood out clearly. The work 
 was to be cooperative and uncompensated ; the 
 venture was to pay for itself as it went along; 
 it should depend upon and create a settled 
 audience; it was to represent new plays and as 
 far as possible tend to American plays; produc- 
 tions were to be simple. For the carrying on of 
 this programme an amateur company was gath- 
 ered together, subscriptions were called for, the 
 assistance of artists and craftsmen was enlisted. 
 Arrangements were made for playing only three 
 times a week, for subscribers, for the general pub- 
 lic and for students. So successful was the pro- 
 gramme that in spite of all drawbacks the Toy 
 Theatre ran for three years in its Lime Street 
 House and covered expenses. 
 
 Now we have to consider how unforeseen cir- 
 cumstances entered into the tale of the theatre. 
 It is the business of the theatre to call upon the 
 best artists and craftsmen in their respective pro- 
 fessions and to create an art out of their coopera-
 
 136 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 tive powers. Boston had in Livingston Platt an 
 eye and hand and constructive brain. He had 
 had some experience with little theatres in Spain 
 and in Bruges but so far his gifts had not been 
 turned to the service of the theatre in America. 
 Naturally enough such a gift as his had to be 
 used, and if there was not a place for it in the 
 scheme as outlined a place had to be made. The 
 theatre must make a way for the strongest new 
 motives or the theatre will fail. With Living- 
 ston Platt there came into the Toy Theatre a force 
 that more than any other gave it national note. 
 The fact remains that the little theatre had not 
 been built for that force. The artistic influences 
 were too emphatic and the expense was too great. 
 Eventually this force gave the whole theatre a 
 bent away from the modest and rudimentary 
 service it was expected to render. 
 
 Partly as a result of this accession to its forces 
 the little theatre in Lime Street began to prosper. 
 Here entered the second conflicting element in its 
 history, an element that finally confounded it. 
 The manager of a theatre has to handle two sets 
 of intractable instruments. The first are artists 
 who are likely to be blind to every call but their 
 own. The second are men of a colder and more 
 calculating type, the men who whisper the broader
 
 PIONEERS 137 
 
 utility values of enterprises and who fortify their 
 suggestions with all manner of high-sounding rea- 
 sons. It did not take the latter class long to dis- 
 cover the Toy Theatre, and from them soon came 
 the suggestion that a new theatre building would 
 be advantageous. 
 
 Now no one can blame the business wit that 
 saw in the Toy Theatre an opportunity for an- 
 other profitable investment. The directors of 
 the theatre were not compelled to take the hint. 
 But there is a weak point in the armor of most 
 idealists of the theatre. In one it is the call to 
 be seen in New York. In another it is the temp- 
 tation to combine in one person the arts of actor, 
 author and producer. The weak point in the 
 armor of the Toy Theatre was ^theciieare tor a 
 building. There resulted a house seating 595 
 persons and situated on the well-travelled Copley 
 Square. I am not going to question the motives 
 that entered into the building of this theatre. 
 Certain it is that the change meant a shifting of 
 values and a loss of all that the experiment had 
 represented. The theatre was undertaken at a 
 moment in which the clear ideals of the past had 
 become hazy. It represented in fact another busi- 
 ness venture attaching itself to the fledgling wings 
 of a little experimental theatre. When it didn't
 
 138 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 pay as a little theatre it was necessary to find 
 means to make it pay. 
 
 From this time on the story can be quickly 
 told. Conditions were absolutely set against the 
 little venture. It was confronted with those de- 
 lays in building and interferences on the part of 
 the law that the commercial manager knows how 
 to handle but are fatal to the novice. The best 
 months of the season were lost waiting for a build- 
 ing. A full rental of $12,000 was paid for what 
 amounted to the tag ends of two seasons. Now it 
 came to be a matter no longer of trying to repre- 
 sent ideals but of frantic effort to find some way 
 to pay the rent. The amateur company was no 
 longer to be considered. So the "professionals" 
 were turned to, the only professionals who could 
 be secured for dubious ventures, those excellent 
 persons who themselves have an axe of ambition 
 or of innovation to grind. Some good things 
 were done but not one of them was a success and 
 each venture only the further loaded the manage- 
 ment with debt. Promptly as the clock struck 
 at the end of the patch-work season the theatre 
 was taken over by the owner and given to the 
 movies. The director had lost $20,000; others 
 had lost unguessed amounts. In 1916 the theatre 
 became the Copley Square and was the scene of
 
 PIONEERS 139 
 
 Henry Jewett's interesting experiment in stock in 
 a repertory of English plays. 
 
 So ended the career of this first little theatre, 
 a notable and most instructive experiment in a 
 new field. Its list of plays was not distinguished. 
 Few new American plays of value were uncovered. 
 The enterprise displayed some of the frailer char- 
 acteristics of idealism, the characteristics that 
 make this respectable term somewhat suspicious to 
 the eyes of practical men, bearing out the idea 
 that idealism is so-called only as long as it doesn't 
 work. As soon as it begins to succeed it is no 
 longer idealism. The whole venture gives the 
 effect of the confusion of inexperience. Having 
 said this one must say also that it was absolutely 
 inevitable that the venture should have displayed 
 all these things. The director had against her 
 not only her own lack of knowledge but the gen- 
 eral misunderstanding that surrounds the ven- 
 turesome thing. Managerial control of diverse 
 forces, a mind keenly set on the important ends, 
 strong in discarding false methods and tempta- 
 tions, were too much to expect in the earliest days 
 of new theatrical enterprise. It needs to be re- 
 membered for Mrs. Gale not only that she blazed 
 a path but that her plan was right. If she was 
 unfortunate it was in its execution and not in its
 
 HO THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 design and the execution lay largely outside of 
 the control of any man or woman. 
 
 For several years Philadelphia has been vigor- 
 ously claiming the credit of being the cradle of 
 the American drama. Whether this be true or 
 not it can at any rate safely be said that Philadel- 
 phia is the home of the first little theatre that has 
 weathered all storms and persists up to this day. 
 Even in this Boston has its share, for Mrs. Harriet 
 Jay was a Boston woman before she went to 
 Philadelphia in 1911 to establish the Metropolitan 
 Dramatic School. Two years later by the assist- 
 ance of Mr. F. H. Shelton she built the Little 
 Theatre in Delancey Street, near lyth, seating 
 330 people. The theatre was opened March 3, 
 
 From that day to this the Little Theatre of 
 Philadelphia has travelled a devious and difficult 
 course. Changing form several times, many times 
 on the point of closing, it has always managed to 
 come out "right side up with care" at the end. 
 There is one page in the record of this theatre I 
 am not able to write. That page is budget. 
 Without knowing how much money has been lost 
 I cannot satisfactorily interpret the facts before 
 me. But all the evidences point to the suspicion
 
 PIONEERS 141 
 
 that this has been a rather costly venture. Some 
 of the facts I shall bring up may strengthen this 
 suspicion by revealing the evidences upon which 
 it is based. 
 
 In the first place the Little Theatre of Phil- 
 adelphia is not strictly a little theatre in the sense 
 in which I expounded this term in the chapter on 
 "The Little Theatre." It lies somewhere between 
 the little theatre and the professional theatre. It 
 is a little theatre in size and in a certain freshness 
 of appeal. It is not a little theatre in the sense 
 of reducing the machinery of production to the 
 lowest terms. It has always tried to play every 
 night in the week; it has usually had a paid com- 
 pany; its settings are expensive; it has had high- 
 priced producers ; it has paid royalty for many of 
 its plays. Evidently this theatre comes nearer 
 to the system of Miss Horniman's company in 
 Manchester than to the touch-and-go systems of 
 the little theatres. 
 
 Now these things provide the difference between 
 the heavy and sometimes prohibitive expenses of 
 professional companies and the scant financial 
 programmes of the amateur experimenters. And 
 this difference usually amounts to the difference 
 between keeping the theatre open and closing it, 
 for with an innovating run of plays there is not
 
 142 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 usually available an audience large enough to 
 support the higher-priced system. That audiences 
 at the Little Theatre have not been sufficient to 
 support this professional scale is made clear by 
 the frequent public crises through which the 
 theatre has passed. 
 
 Other evidences of the same thing are drawn 
 from the nature of the repertory of the theatre. 
 Far too large a share of the energy of the Little 
 Theatre has been expended in trying to find oat 
 what the public wants, and too small a share 
 has been given to building up a consistent policy. 
 This the theatre quite lacks. If there is any policy 
 it differs hardly at all from that of the commercial 
 theatre in trying to learn how best to purvey to 
 the audience that supports it. This has given 
 an air of confusion and the haphazard to the 
 work of the theatre. 
 
 In laying out their repertory the directors of 
 the theatre have been subject to "influences" and 
 these usually the influences of policy borrowed 
 from the commercial manager. The theatre 
 opened with a shocker and even the unfortunate 
 experience with this play has not entirely con- 
 vinced the management that the shocker is not 
 a business getter. Examples of plays have been 
 borrowed from every school and from every move-
 
 PIONEERS 143 
 
 ment. No new American play of any distinc- 
 tion has been discovered. As a final recourse the 
 theatre has fallen back on Shaw. Now, while 
 Shaw may still be the dramatist, of the highbrows 
 he no longer demands courage. He is even a 
 little trite. The one requirement of the little 
 theatre is the piquing of interest, the startling of 
 attention by a continual exercise of fancy. On 
 account of the system upon which it has run the 
 Philadelphia Little Theatre couldn't do that and 
 so it turns from shockers and scandal plays to the 
 safety of Shaw. 
 
 In pursuit of the fickle audience some really 
 excellent measures have been taken in the engage- 
 ment of good actors and producers. Among the 
 visiting companies in this theatre have been Annie 
 Russell's company in the old comedies, the 
 Theatre Frangais d'Amerique, the German Stock 
 Company from the Irving Place Theatre, and the 
 Washington Square Players. Among the pro- 
 ducers have been Frank Reicher and B. Iden 
 Payney^ Among the actors have been a dozen or 
 more of national reputation. But because the 
 theatre lacked a settled policy, or because it has 
 never held to a temporary policy long enough to 
 give it a fair trial few of these have entered into 
 the substance of the institution.
 
 144 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 These conditions are reflected in the audience. 
 This displays few marks of difference from the 
 strange nonplussed beast forever ridden by the 
 professional theatre. Though a subscription sys- 
 tem is used by the Little Theatre no specific 
 audience has been found. The theatre still ap- 
 peals by broadsides and general advertising to the 
 mass of Philadelphia's population. A city of two 
 millions is canvassed regularly to fill a little build- 
 ing seating about three hundred. Aside from the 
 expensiveness of this arrangement the Little 
 Theatre is missing a great opportunity to bind 
 to itself a specific audience, selecting itself out 
 from the population by its approval of the aims 
 and methods of the theatre. 
 
 To me the Little Theatre of Philadelphia has 
 the appearance of a little theatre that is ashamed 
 of its class. Ensconced in a small building it has 
 tried to live up to the dignities of a stock com- 
 pany. In the attempt it has found itself bur- 
 dened not only with the expenses of the commer- 
 cial theatre but with the added loads that belong 
 to the innovator. An almost unbelievable in- 
 dustry has been put into its work. Nothing but 
 blind devotion to her cause would have kept the 
 director so consistently at work during five sea- 
 sons. But unless I am mistaken she will have to
 
 PIONEERS 145 
 
 clarify either her theories or her practice in some 
 important respects before her theatre can be con- 
 sidered a success. 
 
 In a system in which inexperience and indeci- 
 sion are likely to be qualifications for leadership 
 it is grateful to the critic to find a man who bases 
 his work upon rigorous ideas. I cannot find that 
 Maurice Browne's association with the theatre has 
 been close. I do find that he has known what 
 was in his own mind and has done it rather con- 
 sistently. 
 
 The Chicago Little Theatre was established in 
 1912 by Maurice Browne and his wife Ellen Van 
 Volkenburg. A room was secured on the fourth 
 floor of the Fine Arts Building. This was neatly 
 adapted into a theatre seating about a hundred 
 people. It had a small stage, a good lighting sys- 
 tem, dressing rooms, offices and tea rooms. In 
 this the theatre was at home from the time of its 
 establishment until 1917. At the present time 
 the Chicago Little Theatre is in a transition 
 stage. But I prefer to speak of it in the present 
 tense. 
 
 The achievements and principles of the Chicago 
 Little Theatre are suggestive. It is one of the 
 few theatres which the founders are willing to
 
 146 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 admit has a purpose, the object being "the crea- 
 tion of a new plastic and rhythmic drama in the 
 United States." For my part I would be con- 
 tent had this purpose not been named. It seems 
 to limit the scope of Mr. Browne's future work 
 without in fact doing so, for I am glad to say 
 that many of the best things he has done can- 
 not be explained by this purpose. 
 
 Maurice Browne has always clung to the little 
 theatre idea in both its narrow and its applied 
 sense. He started out by believing thoroughly 
 in the illusion value of the small theatre, and in 
 the codes of production which its miniature size 
 demanded. And he believed in the little theatre 
 in its applied sense as well. By that I mean 
 that he reduced his machinery of production to 
 a point as near as possible to its support. He un- 
 dertook no expenses for professional actors, he 
 produced his plays only two or three times a week, 
 and he has developed an audience which would 
 support him. 
 
 The most noteworthy characteristic of the Chi- 
 cago Little Theatre has been the rigorous code of 
 art with which it has been conducted. I know 
 of no institution of the kind that has so consist- 
 ently kept to a pre-ordained set of principles. 
 Browne's desire has been to subject dramatic art
 
 PIONEERS 147 
 
 to a cold and logical set of principles, to expel 
 from it all the adventitious, the superficial, and 
 the temporary. He has followed his master, 
 Gordon Craig, in his distrust of personality in 
 acting. In pursuance of this position he has 
 never published programmes giving the names of 
 actors. How he has succeeded in keeping the loy- 
 alty of players under such conditions I cannot 
 imagine. It is a mark of the strength of the man's 
 own devotion that he has been able to call forth 
 so much devotion from others. I understand that 
 recently he has not been so successful in this, and 
 that some of the more troublesome recent experi- 
 ences go back to the fact that while making a per- 
 fect machine of art he has not been able to build 
 an institution of men and women. Whatever 
 may be said of art in general, or even the art of the 
 theatre as such, the business of the theatre de- 
 mands the faithful and zealous cooperation of 
 men and women who are identified with the en- 
 terprise. What he has gained in an absolute 
 sense has come at some expense to his esprit de 
 corps. 
 
 The repertory of the Chicago Little Theatre is 
 divided into two distinct classes of productions, 
 according to the system of staging followed. 
 The first class comprises all those plays of a fanci-
 
 148 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 ful or poetic nature which are subject to staging 
 by the well-known principles of Gordon Craig. 
 To Craig Browne is a faithful adherent. His 
 favorite plays, the plays by which he himself 
 stands, are all subject to staging by the plastic 
 system which by his view is the basis of all dra- 
 matic art. All the other springs of the dramatic 
 are discarded for those which lie in sense and sight. 
 This theory involves the complete reconstruction 
 of the factors of a production. It places first 
 emphasis upon the masses, the lines, the draperies, 
 the colors and the lights, by which the back- 
 grounds of the production are arranged. To this 
 principle of the plastic Browne adds another, that 
 of the rythmic element in drama. I believe he 
 applies this as well to all the factors of a produc- 
 tion but as I do not understand it I shall not at- 
 tempt to expound it, except to refer to it as an- 
 other of the abstract controls which the producer 
 holds over his productions. 
 
 The productions he has made under these codes 
 have been remarkable pieces of arrangement of 
 dramatic materials, manipulations of colors, 
 warmth, and illumination, but so distant from 
 what had always seemed drama to me as to leave 
 me perplexed. But they are more than crafts- 
 manship. They had in them many of the ele-
 
 PIONEERS 149 
 
 ments of real creation, whether dramatic or other 
 I do not know. These plays which constitute 
 Browne's first interests have not made up the larg- 
 est share of his repertory. The great majority 
 of the plays of the Little Theatre have belonged 
 to a genre of point-device comedy and fantasy in 
 which the producer has accomplished some re- 
 markable results with inexpert materials. 
 
 The Chicago Little Theatre has been a glowing 
 coal sending sparks in many directions. Not 
 alone has it been concerned with producing plays 
 for grown-ups. One of the most interesting fea- 
 tures of its work has been the Little Theatre Pup- 
 pets, created by the directors themselves after 
 study on the Continent. With these puppets 
 there has been developed one of the most success- 
 ful children's theatre adjuncts in the country. 
 In addition to this department of the work there 
 is a department of entertainments by outside 
 artists. 
 
 A study of the repertory of the Chicago Little 
 Theatre shows that the directors have been able 
 to accomplish very little for the new American 
 playwright. Nowhere in the prospectus of the 
 organization is any such purpose mentioned. In 
 fact no claim is made for an American theatre. 
 This is a little refreshing in a time when rather too
 
 150 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 much attention has been given to this particu- 
 lar angle of the subject. In Browne's idea the 
 theatre is a universal institution. It belongs to 
 no nation nor code. Its fealty is to the truths 
 only of art and beauty. Naturally a theatre 
 founded on this rock will be under some disad- 
 vantages. In theme, in manner, in types of char- 
 acter, the Little Theatre has thrown down no 
 anchor into the locality. It might as well be in 
 Paris or in Moscow as in Chicago. Chicago has 
 been proud of it but it has not been able to adopt 
 it as its own. The position of the Little Theatre 
 in its niche high up in a city building is symbolic 
 of the place it is taking within but above the 
 city's life. 

 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 
 
 No one can say that hearty labor has not been 
 put into these little theatres. Futility there has 
 been and a great deal of scattering effort. Vast 
 tasks have been undertaken and small tasks have 
 been failed in. Problems vaguely guessed have 
 been attacked with persistency worthy of clearer 
 thinking if not of better causes. Men have un- 
 dertaken the creation of an audience, the awaken- 
 ing of a social consciousness, the stimulation of 
 community self-expression when they could not 
 make out a balance sheet of expense, direct a 
 company, or handle a stage crew. By a strange 
 fate they have had a measure of success in the 
 larger undertakings while they were overcome by 
 the difficulties of the smaller. Then we see fol- 
 lowing this group another group who work more 
 concretely. Facing the high expense and prohibi- 
 tive systems of the established theatre we now 
 find the guild of artists delving down to the low- 
 
 151
 
 152 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 est terms of the art of the theatre and joyously 
 building it up again from the bottom. In the 
 cause they have expended energy, enthusiasm, 
 more or less wisdom, and hard got money. Some 
 of them succeeded, others failed because they 
 lacked that knowledge of the technique of the 
 stage as a trade that is still necessary for success. 
 Perhaps it isn't necessary to know that a prop 
 is not a stage brace, that the tormentor is not 
 the stage director, but the lack of such knowledge 
 has been a great handicap so far. 
 
 We have now to consider three theatres which 
 from the start arrange themselves on another 
 plane. All are New York theatres. All are set 
 in that Bagdad of the theatre, the city of the 
 thousand nights in one, and all are run by suc- 
 cessful showmen. Back when the twentieth cen- 
 tury was new a young man took the Castle Square 
 Theatre in Boston and put in a stock company. 
 Before long the rumor was spread abroad that 
 Back Bay had discovered Castle Square. A few 
 years later this young man had a chance to go to 
 New York to take charge of a great new theatre 
 that had been erected for a civic purpose. He 
 managed this theatre in a workmanlike manner 
 for two years, keeping his own counsel, if he had
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 153 
 
 any troubles, maintaining a discreet silence about 
 them, presenting always to the world a door-stone 
 neatly scrubbed and a front of imperturbable 
 calm. The New Theatre closed its doors and still 
 he said nothing. But his next step was charac- 
 teristic. He moved from the marble and gilt of 
 the palace in Central Park West into a little 
 theatre of his own, as extremely diminutive as 
 the other had been extremely large, as neat and 
 appropriate as the other had been garish and of 
 bad taste. The Little Theatre of New York, 
 which seats 299 people, was at the time the small- 
 est theatre in New York. It was opened March 
 11, 1912. 
 
 In studying the record of the Little Theatre 
 of New York it has to be understood that Mr. 
 Ames has explicitly gllied himself-with the pro- 
 fessional traditions of the stage. In the ten 
 years since his Castle Square days he has solidified 
 this association. He has never been a believer in 
 "movements" nor has he permitted himself to be 
 dragged into one. .His only conscious purpose, 
 so far as I can discover, has been to give good 
 playT^Jflittle bit better than seems necessary," 
 and if possible to be compensated for the service, - 
 though so far the latter feature has been sub- 
 ordinate.
 
 154 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Though he disclaims membership in a move- 
 ment there are respects in which Mr. Ames's ex- 
 perience in the Little Theatre must be studied in 
 the light of contemporary tendencies. His open- 
 ing of the little Theatre was understood by him 
 to be distinctly a step within the profession. The 
 theatre was to be conducted by a professional 
 corps, the actors were to be men and women of a 
 distinguished place in their calling, the plays were 
 to be contracted for on a royalty basis and they 
 were to run as long as possible. The audience 
 was to be secured wherever possible by the meth- 
 ods in vogue in the commercial theatre^ No 
 particular effort was to be made to attach a cer- 
 tain audience to the theatre. There was no dif- 
 ference between this and the system of the com- 
 mercial theatre except in the size of the theatre 
 nd the implicit contract that only the best 
 plays should be presented and in the best fash- 
 ion. 
 
 .And yet limit himself as he would, the opening 
 of the theatre was a commentary on the condi- 
 tions I have been discussing in this volume. Why 
 did Ames build a little theatre? I think his pre- 
 dominant aim was an artistic one. His experi- 
 ence with the New Theatre had been emphatic, 
 to say the least. What he probably desired was
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 155 
 
 a theatre in which plays of the intimate type 
 could be presented in a manner fitting to their 
 temper, a theatre in which not only the stage but 
 the audience chamber was fitly administered to 
 the mood. Whatever purposes he had outside 
 the purpose of doing the best thing well were 
 secondary. He knew that there would be a cer- 
 tain loss both on account of the limitations in size 
 of the auditorium and on account of the character 
 of his plays, but he planned to make this up by 
 charging a higher and uniform admission fee for 
 the entire house. He did this on the theory that 
 there is an audience in New York able to ignore 
 the price of seats if it gets what it wants. 
 
 At this point the first flaw in the reasoning oc- 
 curs. That there is such an audience we may 
 admit for the sake of the argument, though wealth 
 has not shown very much more disposition to 
 flock by itself in America than have the middle 
 classes or the workers. But grant that there is 
 such an audience and it does not at all follow 
 that this audience will necessarily want the best 
 play or the best acting. It may want some other 
 kind of thing represented here and there among 
 other theatres to which its fickle fancy leads it. 
 To secure an audience for the best, or let us say 
 for those fresh and creative things which at the
 
 156 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 moment seem the best to the producer, one has to 
 cut athwart the audience of money and create an 
 audience anew out of all classes. 
 
 Now the Little Theatre was under a heavy 
 expense. In land rent, investment, cost of man- 
 agement, advertising, royalty there was no ap- 
 preciable advantage over the large theatre. It 
 has always been Ames's system to ignore ex- 
 pense in getting the best players. So there was 
 no saving here. His settings offer no chance 
 for saving. All in all, his little theatre was run 
 on about the same budget of expense as an aver- 
 age sized theatre would carry. Consider this ex- 
 pense budget in connection with possible income. 
 Three hundred seats at an average of two dollars 
 and a half gives a maximum income per perform- 
 ance of $750, or an income of $6000 a week. 
 Now we know that in other New York theatres 
 a company is expected to take a minimum of 
 $6000 a week. This situation would not be so 
 bad were it not that the takings of the Little 
 Theatre have never reached the maximum. The 
 fees themselves are so high as to discourage a 
 great many people who would otherwise come. 
 We see why it has been more economical to keep 
 the Little Theatre dark than to run it, and why 
 we must agree with Mr. Ames that the little
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 
 
 theatre is at a disadvantage financially when run 
 with professional expense. 
 
 Common arithmetic is against any diminutive 
 theatre that tries to run on a professional basis of 
 expense. There is not an audience in New York 
 for plays of an innovating type willing to pay 
 what Mr. Ames asks. And even if there were 
 such an audience he would barely pay his ex- 
 penses in the Little Theatre and no more. Let 
 us look at the record of the runs of the Little 
 Theatre. The theatre was opened March 11, 
 1912. That season it played one play regularly 
 at night for eight weeks and two short plays were 
 run in for 17 matinees. The second season the 
 theatre played 19 weeks with two plays and one 
 children's play run in for 92 matinees. The 
 third season it played 28 weeks in three plays; 
 the fourth season 28 weeks in one play. The 
 fifth season was dark, and the sixth season covered 
 twenty weeks in three plays. The theatre was 
 open for business a total of 104 weeks in five 
 seasons. Counting the season as forty weeks 
 and excluding the year Mr. Ames was out on ac- 
 count of illness we have here total runs cover- 
 ing only one half of the available time. I can- 
 not escape the conclusion that the balance of prob- 
 ability was so much against a production making
 
 158 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 I 
 
 money in the Little Theatre under the system 
 by which it was run that it was cheaper to keep 
 the house dark than to play in it. 
 
 Now it must be understood that no play has 
 been given at the Little Theatre that has not been 
 in one way or another a distinguished piece of 
 
 ^work. There was hardly one that did not have 
 adherents among critics and audiences. Judged 
 by standards of success that are current these plays 
 were worthy of prosperity. And yet the dice were 
 loaded against the theatre. In undertaking this 
 venture within the professional theatre he had es- 
 sayed a hopeless task. He had gone only half 
 way and had landed outside the city. Either he 
 should have held to the theatre of ordinary size, 
 or, taking the little theatre, he should have re- 
 duced his standard of expense to fit. This Mr. 
 Ames has been unwilling to do. His artistic na- 
 ture recoils from any recession from the finest 
 standards of a production. And so he has a 
 white mouse on his hands. If anything shows 
 (the need of the little theatre movement it is the 
 little theatre that has consistently stayed out of 
 
 'the movement. For the movement has meant 
 that economy of production, that organization of 
 resources, by which the insoluble problems of the 
 professional theatre may be faced.
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 159 
 
 There are evidences that Mr. Ames has dis- 
 covered that logic lies against his plan of man- 
 agement, and that this discovery has introduced 
 into his work, mainly into his choice of plays, a 
 note of indecision and of compromise that has 
 weakened his hold on his audience. It soon be- 
 came evident that he had given up offering plays 
 to an audience and had begun to pursue the 
 audience. He always kept within the limits of 
 propriety in selection, now and then putting in 
 a little pungent sauce as an appetizer, and no 
 theatre in New York has provided such produc- 
 tions. But too soon it became a case not of the 
 Little Theatre giving its audience such and such 
 a new morsel selected by its director, but a case 
 of the director holding out a certain play to lure 
 an audience into his playhouse. 
 
 There is all the difference in the world between 
 an audience going to a theatre and a theatre go- 
 ing to the audience. When they began to put 
 up twinkling electric signs over a theatre en- 
 trance there was spelled the end of the era in 
 which the audience came to the theatre. Then 
 began the period of the feverish allurement of 
 audiences that we have been living through for 
 the last dozen years. In one week two years
 
 160 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 ago we received announcements of two new in- 
 stitutions of the theatre. In the first statement 
 neither seemed to differ much from many others 
 that had been projected. As time has passed it 
 has become clear that each had been planted in 
 a more natural soil than its neighbors, that it 
 was beginning to grow in that soil, that audiences, 
 actors and playwrights were showing a disposi- 
 tion to foster the new enterprises. In these thea- 
 tres we have seen beginning again the more nat- 
 ural process by which the audiences come to the 
 theatre. 
 
 Down in the heart of the East End of New 
 York City, in the center of a foreign city of a 
 million inhabitants, where still may be seen on 
 the streets the market wagons of Russia, there 
 lies the district out of which have come several 
 significant enterprises in the new drama. In the 
 Educational Alliance on East Broadway there 
 was established the first New York Children's 
 Theatre. The Portmanteau stage was first set. 
 up in the hall of Christadora House. And the 
 Neighborhood Players began their work as an 
 adjunct to the Henry Street Settlement. 
 
 This Neighborhood Playhouse has been vari- 
 ously regarded. It has been looked upon as an 
 important contribution of the theatre to the solu-
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 161 
 
 tion of social problems, as the offering of theatri- 
 cal art to the amalgamation of our peoples and the 
 Americanization of the foreign born, and as an 
 experiment in the creation of a theatre in the 
 midst of a society in which the materials are 
 most ready for this work. It is in the latter light, 
 I believe, that those who have been responsible 
 for the Neighborhood Theatre look upon their 
 work. They have burdened their minds with 
 very few doctrines and have permitted themselves 
 to think of few ultimate purposes. They have 
 been conscious only of using their materials as 
 their knowledge and energy dictated. 
 
 This principle is a fortunate one. We have 
 had theatres established by the fiat of directors 
 and pushed through by force of money and will 
 against serious obstacles. Here was a theatre that 
 never went further than its materials warranted, 
 that expanded always out of the funded accumula- 
 tion of past achievements. The most important 
 thing about the theatre is the naturalness of its 
 growth. What is owed to its founders is not 
 the will that established it but the wisdom that 
 was able to foster and develop latent social im- 
 pulses. Literally nothing in the Neighborhood 
 Theatre has been superimposed. Money has been 
 provided in plenty. But here it was a case of
 
 162 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 money coming to the aid of brains and understand- 
 ing and not, as has so often been the case, money 
 as a substitute for both. 
 
 A few of the circumstances that conduced to 
 the success of this theatre must be mentioned. 
 The first of these is that the theatre associates it- 
 self naturally with the play functions of society. 
 Garble and degrade them as we may, these are 
 the sources of the theatre. And he who would 
 establish a new theatre must build by these prin- 
 ciples. Now, the founders of the Neighborhood 
 Theatre knew that nothing is more inconsistent 
 with the play principles than a settled social pro- 
 gramme. For this reason the Neighborhood 
 Playhouse has never been considered a part of the 
 machinery of the Henry Street Settlement. It 
 is an outgrowth of the settlement, a flowering 
 of its spirit and work. As some one has said, 
 it is the Henry Street little girl who went on the 
 stage, over whom Henry Street keeps a benevolent 
 eye and loving care while leaving her free to find 
 her own career. 
 
 As it occurs, the natural impulses of play are 
 in this neighborhood maintained more in their 
 natural state than in any other district in the 
 metropolis. The people of the neighborhood had 
 been theatre-goers at home. They brought with
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 163 
 
 them their folk life, that flexible, garrulous so- 
 ciableness one can see it on the streets out of 
 which the activities of the festival grow. And it 
 was from these festival activities already present, 
 only directed and enriched by nurture and care 
 that the activities of the playhouse grew. For 
 several years all the activities this theatre knew 
 were simply the festivals, the dances, of the peo- 
 ple comprising the neighborhood. To-day while 
 the purely theatric doings have gone far the fes- 
 tivals continue as the source and soul of the whole 
 affair. 
 
 Let no one think I am presenting this theatre 
 as an example of spontaneous social growth. 
 Nothing is further from the truth. The district 
 would have gone on indefinitely in its own way 
 and never have been heard of for its theatrical 
 ambitions had it not been for those who were 
 wise enough to seize and develop its potentialities. 
 The important thing is the spirit in which this 
 was done. The one external circumstance that 
 cannot be ignored is the fact that in the guidance 
 of the natural forces of the district there was 
 gathered together as wise and expert a group of 
 enthusiasts as ever handled a lash line or pinned 
 on a ruff. One notices with a certain humility 
 that in the group that has guided the Neighbor-
 
 164 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 hood Playhouse to success there has been no place 
 for a man. The Misses Irene and Alice Lewisohn 
 had gone to the Henry Street Settlement to teach 
 dancing. They had discovered a certain famous 
 dancing teacher long before he had become the 
 master of the dance to the American aristocracy. 
 With them was joined in the work of the theatre 
 Miss Helen Arthur who had learned the ropes in 
 the office of the most practical manager in the 
 country. Miss Agnes Morgan had been one of 
 Baker's first pupils in drama at Radcliffe. And 
 Mrs. Sarah Cowell LeMoyne represented all that 
 was best in the tradition of the American stage, 
 in taste, in diction, and in action. To these the 
 success of the theatre is to be credited. 
 
 As has been said it all began with festivals. 
 Then about seven years ago the Dramatic Club 
 of the Henry Street Settlement was formed. 
 Plays were given once a year in Clinton Hall, one 
 of the halls provided by private interests for the 
 use of the neighborhood. These plays were re- 
 hearsed at night. Actors came from the neigh- 
 borhood and there was little difficulty in finding 
 young men and women of spirit and ability. Not 
 only the annual performance but the long course 
 of preparation came to be events of first magni- 
 tude. Meanwhile the dancing classes and festi:
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 165 
 
 vals were continuing. They were learning the 
 forms of all the countries of the old world. And 
 by natural stages there was gathered together an 
 institution without a building constructed of the 
 human fabric of a crowded neighborhood. As 
 "The Theatre" had come the time had come to 
 give it a house. And so they built a home for an 
 institution that was calling for one, not as others 
 have done, building a theatre and waiting for the 
 spirit to come and occupy it. 
 
 They tell us that when the theatre was built 
 (including ground and additions it cost about 
 $150,000) they thought they might have to wait 
 two years before they began to attract many to 
 their performances. But from the date of the 
 first opening to this the theatre has always been 
 practically sold out. It was built as a neighbor- 
 hood theatre and so it is. But in two years the 
 neighborhood has expanded to cover Greater New 
 York. Not only do the actors come from as far 
 away as Newark and the Bronx but the audiences 
 come regularly from up town. Special street cars 
 now stop before the door, and when the car stops 
 there is an exodus of passengers recruited from the 
 subway, the elevated and the river tubes. 
 
 The directors of this theatre insist that they 
 are running a theatre and not a sociological ex-
 
 166 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 periment station. And as their theatre is a suc- 
 cess it may pay us to inquire as to some of their 
 activities. At the basis of these of course is the 
 service of the neighborhood and so the larger 
 share of the work of the theatre is given over to 
 productions of a local appeal. Every night, with 
 the exception of Monday night, which is dark, 
 and Saturday and Sunday nights, is given over to 
 motion pictures. The price of admission is five 
 cents. The best available pictures are secured 
 regardless of cost, and in addition there are given 
 extra features, short talks, songs, and one-act 
 plays. This feature of the theatre's work has 
 always paid for itself. Where there is a surplus 
 it is expended on future productions. 
 
 Another neighborhood feature is the entertain- 
 ments for the children. These are given on Satur- 
 day afternoons. They grow out of the children's 
 festival groups which are attached to the settle- 
 ment. They comprise pantomimes and children's 
 plays, always dealing with original materials, and 
 produced and played by the children under ex- 
 pert direction. For these the fee is ten cents and 
 they too are self-supporting. 
 
 We now come to the larger theatrical features 
 of the work. Six years ago when they began to 
 give plays they laid the nucleus of an amateur
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 167 
 
 company. Though this company changes from 
 time to time in membership it remains stable as 
 a whole and the theatre now has an acting group 
 of thirty-five, augmented by a dancing group of 
 sixty. With the acting group, and with the art- 
 ists, light men, mechanicians, property men, cos- 
 tume workers, the producing of the theatre is done. 
 In this branch of the work the theatre has at- 
 tached itself to the newer movements in stage 
 art, for plays, playing, and setting. The stage 
 is excellently equipped. It had the first circular 
 fixed horizon j^oeetc- in the country. Experiment 
 in effects is the order and success is the rule. The 
 list of plays produced in this branch comprises 
 several of Dunsany's, many there first presented 
 in the country, several new American plays, and 
 some of the more ambitious pantomimes from 
 Russia. 
 
 For these performances a maximum of fifty 
 cents is charged. Each play is done for five weeks 
 or ten times. In order to secure variety in offer- 
 ing, after five weeks of plays there comes a fes- 
 tival period of an equal length. This department 
 too pays for itself. But no department of the 
 theatre's work is permitted to show a profit. The 
 theatre has been very hospitable in taking in pro- 
 ductions of other managements, particularly those
 
 168 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 showing novelty. .For these the management 
 sometimes makes the productions. In this way 
 David Bispham, the East and West Players, and 
 Gertrude Kingston have been given place in the 
 theatre. Behind this public work there is done 
 all the work that is necessary for the production. 
 Everything is the product of the work-rooms of 
 the theatre. Costumes, properties, scenery, light- 
 ing effects, are all made at home. The theatre is 
 a cooperative guild of enthusiastic craftsmen, 
 artists, and artisans. 
 
 The question arises, how can all this be done 
 and be made to support itself. While other thea- 
 tres are trying and failing how can this theatre 
 succeed. The answer goes back to the non-com- 
 mercial nature of the enterprise. This is more 
 important than it may seem. It depends upon 
 the hearty cooperation of interested workers. 
 The spirit of zest is kept alive by the fact that 
 the workers are always kept interested. They 
 are doing what they want to do instead of doing 
 what they are compelled to do to get an audience. 
 The expense budget has been carefully worked 
 out. The theatre, a small one seating about 450, 
 can hold between $160 and $190. This gives 
 an income for each play production covering ten 
 performances of about $1500. By careful figur-
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 169 
 
 ing the management has been able to secure the 
 usual production for just about this sum. Some- 
 times the production costs more and sometimes 
 less than the income but year by year income 
 covers expense for productions. Comparing these 
 figures with the figures given in the first chapter, 
 it is found that the expenses of the Neighborhood 
 Theatre for a production are but a small percent- 
 age of those of a commercial theatre. The 
 mechanical features of the production, staging, 
 costumes, lights, are of the very highest class. It 
 should be understood that these figures are exclu- 
 sive of any rent item, about which more in a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 The system of production has had an influence 
 on the audiences. Audiences have learned that 
 they can always see something interesting and 
 fresh at the Neighborhood Theatre. For this 
 reason they come to the theatre, they do not com- 
 pel it to come to them. Whereas the expense of 
 advertising of the commercial theatre runs from 
 15 to 20 percent, of the total income the expense 
 is reduced for the Neighborhood Playhouse to a 
 very low figure indeed. No efforts are made di- 
 rectly to lure the audience. No newspaper ad- 
 vertising is carried, and no newspaper tickets are 
 sent out. It is understood that seats are ready
 
 iyo THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 for such newspaper men as desire them but noth- 
 ing is done to urge the attention of the news- 
 papers. The audience of the Neighborhood 
 Theatre has selected itself. All that it is neces- 
 sary to do is to send out cards to the 3500 on the 
 special list and occasionally to 1800 on the general 
 list and the work is done. Unlike other small 
 theatres the Neighborhood Theatre has no sub- 
 scription list. 
 
 When we are answering the question of expense 
 in connection with the Neighborhood Theatre it 
 is necessary to keep in mind that the building, all 
 that is known as the plant, is provided without 
 rent and without interest charges by interested 
 backers. The income of the theatre has only to 
 \ pay for what goes on before the footlights. No 
 / part of it goes for any of the items which in the 
 commercial theatre amount to fifty percent, of the 
 production expense. Now it must be admitted 
 that to this extent the Neighborhood Theatre is 
 an endowed theatre. It could not conceivably 
 ] run on any plan other than that of continual sup- 
 port so far as the building is concerned. And 
 precisely to this extent the answer given by the 
 Neighborhood Playhouse as to artistic freedom 
 and support is only half an answer. It is be- 
 t cause this theatre depends more upon the wisdom
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 171 
 
 with which it has been conducted than upon the 
 gratuities with which it is endowed that it has 
 been raised above the level of the subsidy ex- 
 periments that have been such melancholy fail-^ 
 ures. The important things are the cooperative 
 method of government, the healthy relationship 
 with its patronage, the artistic freedom and fresh- 
 ness of its work, its thorough business-like econ- 
 omy without any leaning toward the box office. 
 These things make this one of the two most sig- 
 nificant theatres in America today. 
 
 We have seen that on account of its gratuitous 
 support of a building the Neighborhood Theatre 
 leaves the question of popular support of an art- 
 istic theatre only half solved. Is the problem 
 incapable of solution? It is by no means neces- 
 sary to answer this question in the negative as 
 yet. For support of a continuing optimism we 
 can refer to another New York theatre which 
 has undertaken a task even more difficult in a 
 financial sense than that of the Neighborhood 
 Playhouse and has so far progressed toward suc- 
 cess as to warrant hope for its perpetuity. I re- 
 fer to the Washington Square Players. Nat- 
 urally no one can say that this theatre has solved 
 the problem until it has behind it a fund for the
 
 172 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 support of lean years. But what this theatre 
 has already done is very encouraging indeed. 
 
 The development of the Washington Square 
 Players has been not less natural than that of the 
 Neighborhood Playhouse. The Players are the 
 outgrowth of a little group that used to fore- 
 gather in Washington Square, radicals, socialists, 
 progressives, artists, writers, and plain men and 
 women. There they used to talk until early in 
 the morning. They believed in talk, talk as the 
 alembic of deeds, the coalescence of personality, 
 the flail of values by which the false is threshed 
 from the true. Long before the Players had come 
 to pass as an actuality their coming was pre- 
 pared for in discussion. 
 
 In this early group we have the necessary fac- 
 tors of the new constitution of the theatre. Here 
 was the guild of artists whose enthusiasms took 
 the place of the cold organization by commercial 
 ^compact of the regular theatre. To such a group 
 as this the theatre presented itself as something 
 of a social adventure. All its difficulties were 
 simply spurs to endeavor, whets to ingenuity. 
 Many in the group had already tasted the joys 
 of the theatre. The others were social idealists 
 of one type or another. To all of them the 
 project spelt another opportunity in creation.
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 173 
 
 Their zeal was that of the artist spurred with 
 the discovery of a new world. There were 
 radicals from the Rand School of Social Science 
 who had proudly been the first to present Dun- 
 sany's "The Glittering Gate." One had been a 
 critic and had had a play done at the Princess 
 house of scandals and shockers and had acted 
 in Strindberg's "Pariah." Two were English 
 actors. One had been with Ames. One was a 
 patent attorney with leanings toward the box- 
 office. One of the women was an actress who 
 had wearied of the limitations of her profession. 
 Another woman was an accomplished press agent. 
 All had read plays, written plays, and either acted 
 plays, produced them or dreamed of doing 
 so. Thus in this first group there were the 
 workers, there was the will, and there was the 
 vision. 
 
 So the idea of a theatre was born. They had 
 seen enough of these efforts to know that if they 
 started they must keep on. There must be no 
 turning back. And so they projected their thea- 
 tre, their purpose being "to establish a stage for 
 experimentation, to put it at the disposal of com- 
 petent authors and producers who might have 
 something vital to contribute, to put into execu- 
 tion swiftly and without undue regard to hamper-
 
 174 
 
 ing detail any artistic idea that seemed worthy 
 of trial." 
 
 Difficulties began at once. As the little hall 
 which had been promised to them was lost 
 through delay in organizing they took an aban- 
 doned stable in 133 McDougall Street and pro- 
 ceeded to make it over into a little theatre. With 
 the first steps in building began the course of 
 training of the young enthusiasts. They ran in 
 rapid succession against all the laws framed by 
 the city to protect its citizens against the schemes 
 of the reformer. Fire laws, police laws, laws for 
 the framing of licenses were faced and succes- 
 sively satisfied. By the time they had the last 
 law quieted the landlady of the stable turned 
 against them. Another law had popped up and 
 had made her apprehensive. So 133 McDougall 
 Street was given up. The middle of the season 
 was at hand and there was no theatre. 
 
 About this time the attention of the crowd was 
 called to a venture up town. On East 5yth 
 Street stood a little theatre called the Adolf 
 Phillip Theatre, seating only a few hundred and 
 for long a burden to the owners. In December, 
 ,'1914, the New York Play Actors, Incorporated, 
 \ had taken this little theatre, renamed it the Band- 
 box and announced the opening of a professional
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 175 
 
 engagement on high art principles in Jerome K. 
 Jerome's "Poor Little Thing" from the French 
 of Jules Lemaitre. The venture, a worthy one 
 in all respects, had been well received by the 
 critics, but had died for want of support. Mean- 
 while, too, the Punch and Judy Theatre had been 
 launched and was sailing in choppy seas. Audi- 
 ences apparently had not yet learned to come to 
 the little theatres. 
 
 Nothing daunted the Washington Square 
 group, now homeless and with an opening an- 
 nounced for a week or two ahead, turned to the un- 
 lucky Bandbox Theatre as to their salvation. 
 They were able to make advantageous terms for 
 the theatre for Friday and Saturday nights of each 
 week for the remainder of the season. They con- 
 tinued rehearsals on their list of plays, made re- 
 newed attack upon their little group of friends, 
 announced their opening, and named a popular 
 price, fifty cents. At the outset it was understood 
 that no one in the company was to be paid, that all 
 income was to be used for support, and that, what- 
 ever happened, their first season was to be com- 
 pleted. As to plays they stated in their prospec- 
 tus that they intended to do "realistic, romantic, 
 and frivolous plays." Plays by Americans were 
 to be preferred in order to encourage native writ-
 
 176 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 ers, but foreign plays were always to be accept- 
 able. New ideas in stage direction and decora- 
 tion were to be welcomed. 
 
 There was quaking in a dozen pairs of shoes 
 as the plays, which had been selected for pro- 
 duction in a theatre holding a hundred and be- 
 fore a club of friends, began to approach produc- 
 tion in a theatre seating three hundred of the gen- 
 eral public. The first production was made 
 February 19, 1915. When they opened the 
 theatre the house was sold out for the first per- 
 formance, almost sold out for the second per- 
 formance, and three tickets were sold for the fol- 
 lowing Friday. After the first performance 
 everything was sold out and continued to be sold 
 out for the remainder of the season. On the part 
 of the critics the Players were immediately rec- 
 ognized for having provided "the most novel 
 theatrical opening ever seen in the city." Among 
 the points stressed in the first criticisms were the 
 freedom from commercialism, the simplicity and 
 "wistful unreality," the sincerity and humanity, 
 the freedom from theatrical ism of the playing. 
 The Washington Square Players had come at the 
 proper time. Not only were they ready for the 
 city but the city was ready for them. 
 
 The remainder of this first season and the sub-
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 177 
 
 sequent history of the Washington Square Play- 
 ers may be rapidly summarized in order that we 
 may get to the salient points in our critique. In 
 their first season the Players rendered forty-three - t 
 performances of fourteen one-act plays. Of 
 these ten were American plays. They charged 
 fifty cents admission, paid no salaries nor royal- 
 ties and came out even at the end. Rent during 
 the first season was low. The second season 
 opened October 4, 1915, in the Bandbox Thea- 
 tre, which the Players now rented for $8000 for 
 the entire season. They now had twenty-five 
 people in their group. Beginning with six per- 
 formances a week they raised their prices to the 
 one dollar standard, and paid some salaries. For 
 this season they promised to subscribers five pro- 
 ductions during a season covering thirty weeks. 
 Business began slowly this season but increased 
 with the second bill and their success was such 
 that at the end of the season they were again 
 ready to expand. 
 
 In April, 1916, it was announced that the 
 Players would give up the Bandbox Theatre and , 
 come down town to the Comedy Theatre near 
 Broadway. They first undertook a summer en- 
 gagement beginning June 5, in a repertory of suc- 
 cesses. The response not being encouraging they
 
 178 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 closed to open again in the Comedy Theatre in 
 the fall. They reopened with multiplied obliga- 
 h tions. The rental of the Comedy was $32,000 for 
 the bare building. To this had to be added 
 license and those other features which are included 
 in rent under the share system. A building op- 
 posite was taken for headquarters, workshops, and 
 a school. A company was sent on tour with a 
 selection from the repertory. The active group 
 now numbered about one hundred. In spite of 
 increased expenses the year was encouraging to 
 the directors. The standard of admission was 
 set at two dollars and under. 
 
 The third season ran through until May and 
 then began a summer engagement in two old 
 favorites and one new play. Throughout the 
 three seasons the Players have kept faith with 
 their subscribers, giving five complete bills a sea- 
 son for the last two seasons and several extra 
 productions as well. In three seasons they have 
 presented 47 one-act plays and three long plays, 
 " '"Aglavaine and Selysette," "The Sea Gull" and 
 "Ghosts." 
 
 The Washington Square Players are the first 
 company starting with the express purpose of 
 /presenting plays "not otherwise seen in the pro- 
 fessional theatre" that has been able to compete
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 179 
 
 with the professional theatre and keep alive. 
 What are the reasons for their success? They 
 have run throughout on the theory of the coop- 
 eration of the artists. The basis of association 
 has always been voluntary work. They have 
 continued this principle up to the present. 
 Though to-day a large number of the workers, 
 business staff, technical staff, and some dozen of 
 the actors are paid, the ideal of free will service 
 is still in force. Their continued life was de- 
 pendent on this principle. 
 
 The company has proceeded on the theory of 
 a continual capitalization of its accumulated as- 
 sets. To change the figure they have pyramided 
 their gains. Never going beyond a sane valua- 
 tion of the ground already gained they have be- 
 lieved that every position successfully taken jus- 
 tifies and obligates a further advance. They be- 
 lieve that there is an increasingly large public 
 for their wares. I think that in very great meas- 
 ure it is the fact that they are always on tiptoe 
 for advance that has helped them. Not for them 
 conservatism, or hanging back, or the counsels 
 of fear. Every success was a contract signed for 
 a future success. If they had stopped for a mo- 
 ment they would have fallen. Of course there 
 is another side to this that one sees very clearly.
 
 i8o THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 But at present I am dealing with the Players as a 
 success. 
 
 The Washington Square Players began with 
 the idea that the public should come to their thea- 
 tre; their theatre would not seek out the public, 
 and they have maintained this position. It is for 
 this I think that I respect them most. They have 
 held that the right and obligation rests upon the 
 artist to do what he wants to do, the thing that at 
 the time is necessary for his expression and his 
 growth. They believe that only in this way can 
 they give the audiences fresh and creative works. 
 Of course this does not mean that all their plays 
 have been good and well selected. They were 
 limited in selection by what was offered and they 
 made some mistakes, I suppose. But they have 
 had eyes where many another has been blind and 
 they do not apologize for their selections. Above 
 all the box office has never been consulted. And 
 that has been very good for the box office. 
 
 These are matters of broad principle. In some 
 narrower matters of policy and administration 
 their management has been worthy of study. As 
 a nucleus of support they have kept themselves 
 in close and sincere relationship with a group of 
 subscribers. This group, which has grown gradu-
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 181 
 
 ally, has now become the backbone of the organ- 
 ization of which the company itself is the head. 
 Not supplying a large amount of money it places 
 into the hands of the company a fund of about 
 $10,000 to see them through the season. This 
 provides a little more than $1500 per produc- 
 tion, precisely the amount we have seen is spent 
 for a production by the Neighborhood Players. 
 The subscribers pay for the production. The 
 rest of the expenses must be paid from the tak- 
 ings in at the box office. 
 
 Some principles of company government will 
 repay attention. A dramatic company differs 
 from others in that it is both a social and an art 
 enterprise. As a social enterprise it demands 
 the instrumentalities of organization, committee 
 management, centralized control and responsibil- 
 ity. As an art it requires singleness of direction 
 and individuality of initiative. How to combine 
 these things is a question. Needless to say they 
 cannot be combined perfectly. Human nature 
 is not so made. The Washington Square Play- 
 ers are not different from any other human 
 beings. Of course there have been defections 
 from the ranks. But as a rule there has been a 
 careful adaptation of distributed forces to a single
 
 182 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 aim. For this as for so much else in the organ- 
 ization credit has to be given to the real genius 
 v of the director, Edward Goodman. 
 
 Perhaps it may properly be said that the sys- 
 tem followed by the Players is the protection of 
 the individual director by a committee. The com- 
 mittee is not in authority over him. It is buf- 
 fer for him. It is eyes and fingers and functions 
 for him. Of course it is not so officially. Offi- 
 cially he is the creature of the committee. But 
 the only way in which the machine will run well 
 is for the director to be left free to operate his 
 idea through the detailing and testing processes 
 of the committee. This is shown in the case of 
 the reading and the production of plays. Nat- 
 urally one man cannot read all nor can he produce 
 all. So they are read by a reader first and the 
 possible plays only are turned over to the director. 
 But his choice is always surveyed by the com- 
 mittee and no play is produced upon which the 
 committee will not agree. And no one man can 
 produce all the plays any more than he could 
 act in all of them or create the sets. All the 
 work of the Players is delegated. Each worker 
 looks back to the group that is typified by the 
 director. But he himself is delegated. 
 
 A few points in connection with the plays
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 183 
 
 may be worth mentioning. The theatre started 
 out with the idea of doing the inaccessible things, 
 the things that pique the interest and do not in- 
 sult the intelligence. In making a repertory there 
 are many considerations, 1st, the Ideal; 2nd, the 
 Necessity; 3d, the Strategy. The first is what 
 one would do if he kept his eye only on the play 
 itself. The Necessity is what one does dictated 
 by one's means and the pressure of the audience. 
 The Strategy is what one does to put the ideal 
 over in view of the Necessity. The best strategy 
 is often no strategy for it sometimes happens that 
 the ideal goes over of itself. But not always. 
 
 On the side of the ideal the Washington Square 
 Players have stood sponsor for two kinds of plays 
 particularly. These are new American plays and * 
 the best examples of the recent drama of Europe. 
 They have done surprisingly good work in pro- 
 ducing both classes. Necessity has operated with 
 the Players only in one respect as touching their 
 plays, and that has been a very fortunate re- 
 spect. The one-act play, excellent as it is, rep- 
 resented necessity to them in three ways, in adapt- 
 ability to the scope of the authors; in adaptability 
 to the scope of the actors; and in comparative 
 cheapness of production. 
 
 When we come to strategy Mr. Goodman will
 
 184 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 not admit that it had any part in the selection of 
 the plays. I beg to suggest that there must have 
 been at any rate some unconscious strategy in both 
 the choice and placing of plays. In addition to 
 the one-act play representing necessity, it also 
 opened the door for strategy in handling an eve- 
 ning's appeal to the audience. It has made it 
 possible to provide variety, not to place all the 
 eggs in one dramatic basket. It made possible 
 the arranging of a bill from two points of view, 
 the floating of the comparatively unpopular item 
 on a bill between the more popular members, and 
 the providing of a balance of type. This has been 
 partly a mechanical matter, the balancing of a 
 kitchen with a fancy set, of satire with serious 
 plays, of American with foreign plays. Aside 
 from this there is no doubt that some numbers on 
 bills have been chosen with conscious levity. It 
 probably wasn't difficult to decide what the audi- 
 ence would want, though naturally the director 
 makes no confessions on this point. A little wily 
 placing of what the audience would want over 
 against t something that the director himself 
 wanted has saved for the Washington Square 
 Players many a beautiful piece of work. It is 
 for the strategy that contrived a hearing for these
 
 THREE NEW YORK THEATRES 185 
 
 things as well as for the insight that I am thank- 
 ful to the Players. 
 
 I will end by naming an asset and a danger of 
 the Players. The asset is their youth, their in- 
 genuity, their responsibility only to themselves. 
 These things, combined with a rather fascinat- 
 ing common-sense that I find in them, have 
 brought them to where they are. They will carry 
 them further if the danger doesn't eventuate. 
 The danger represents the one point at which they 
 have surrendered to the temptations of the com- 
 mercial method. It has to do with the large 
 rent they have to pay to play down town. For 
 my part I would rather see them pay less and 
 make their audiences seek them out. There is 
 no doubt that they would do it.
 
 XI 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 
 
 SOME day a new Declaration of Independence 
 will be written and three thousand miles of the 
 American map will arise and say to an island 
 cupped in the Atlantic seaboard, "I am." And 
 Manhattan will thereafter be a little more re- 
 spectful and considerate of the demands of the 
 country outside. Such, at any rate, is the vision 
 of some of the wise men of the West before they 
 too journey to the East and bow before the tem- 
 ples of power. 
 
 I am not going to add to the total of discus- 
 sion on "the collapse of the one-night stand," 
 and on the melancholy effect of the overlordship 
 of New York on the theatre of the country. I 
 refrain, not because the condition is not serious 
 but because in very few respects does it differ 
 from the general conditions implied in this book 
 and against which the insurgent theatres have di- 
 rected their forces. Cities outside of New York 
 
 have been the first noticeably to suffer from the 
 
 186
 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 187 
 
 present false regime of the stage. But they have 
 not actually suffered any more than New York 
 has. The same stagnation of ideas, the same dry 
 rot of the imagination that has followed in the 
 train of the commercial system has found expres- 
 sion everywhere, in the village and in the 
 metropolis. But it has expressed itself in dif- 
 ferent ways. In the great centres it has meant 
 the multiplying of theatres and attractions to lure 
 the greatest number. In the smaller places it 
 has meant the withdrawing of the occasional good 
 attraction in favor of the third or fourth company 
 of some Broadway success or in favor of the 
 ubiquitous motion picture. The insurgent thea- 
 tres have set themselves to the solution of the 
 problem in the small cities as well as in the large. 
 Outside New York they have tried to fill a place 
 too long vacant, to build up in the people of 
 small centres an interest in the theatre as a healthy 
 thing. In New York they have had to compete 
 in a field already overcrowded, to introduce in- 
 geniously the truer method in a field in which 
 false methods had become the rule. 
 
 The faults of centralized control and the travel- 
 ling company have become so manifest that many 
 have supposed that the fault was inherent in the 
 system, that no company could be good and serv-
 
 i88 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 iceable that travelled out from New York. Of 
 course that is not the case. The travelling com- 
 pany controlled from a centre is perfectly justi- 
 fiable if it supports the better order of the art 
 of the stage in acting, production, play and stage 
 economics. And there is no reason why it should 
 not support this better order except the reasons 
 that lie in narrow and destructive self-interest. 
 There are indeed positive advantages for the art 
 of the stage in the system of the travelling com- 
 pany over the systems of the local repertory and 
 stock companies. These never can and never will 
 become so strong as to represent the latest cur- 
 rents of dramatic art. They cannot provide the 
 variety of motive and type our people demand. 
 The travelling company could be a guarantee 
 that the best of the nation is brought to the door 
 of each one of its sections. The advantages of 
 economy and efficiency of the travelling system are 
 many and proper. 
 
 Why then has a system based upon travelling 
 companies been responsible for so many of the 
 evils under which the provinces have been suffer- 
 ing*? Again we find our answer in expense and 
 profits and the crux of the whole matter is prop- 
 erty interests. Ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 theatres in the country are now either owned out-
 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 189 
 
 right or controlled by one or another of two New 
 York theatre interests. By these interests thea- 
 tres are handled upon very clear and simple prin- 
 ciples. The management of a chain of theatres 
 is largely a matter of bookkeeping. First, there 
 is a certain small number of first-rate attractions 
 that can be fed out to these theatres to extract 
 the maximum of return. The time is then filled 
 in with duplicate companies of New York suc- 
 cesses, with cheap road companies in musical 
 comedy, and with melodrama. The time that 
 is left can be very profitably used by motion pic- 
 tures. By careful studying of balance sheets it 
 has been discovered in just what manner the road 
 theatre will pay the greatest returns. No room is 
 left in the programmes of these theatres for in- 
 novations and high-brow experiments. Only oc- 
 casionally are these profitable and, worse than 
 this, they clog the machine and promise to be 
 troublesome later on. There is only one man- 
 ager of a string of theatres in the country who is 
 consistently friendly to the venturesome spirits 
 of the new theatre. The others exclude them un- 
 til they have come in by a side entrance, which 
 means until their enterprises show sure and gen- 
 erous profits. 
 
 As we are trying not to deal with the impossi-
 
 igo THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 ble in this book I am going to admit at the out- 
 set that there is no way of overcoming this prop- 
 erty control in the theatre. If it cannot be over- 
 come it must be eluded. If you are a manager 
 with a new idea for the presentation of artistic 
 plays, any manager mentioned in this book with 
 the exception of Ames, you will have trouble 
 getting time in the theatres. If for one reason 
 or another you are intent on taking your plays 
 over the country you will probably try to invent a 
 system of your own by which this may be done 
 without dependence on the machinery of the es- 
 tablished theatre. This is precisely what has 
 been done. 
 
 The problem goes back to two questions. 
 Where shall we play and where shall we get the 
 local machinery for the spread of information and 
 the sale of tickets'? The last ten years have seen 
 some interesting answers to these questions. For 
 they have seen certain substitutes, college cam- 
 puses, town halls, chapels, drawing-rooms, take 
 the place of theatres, and clubs, colleges and 
 leagues take the place of the local machinery. 
 
 Ben Greet had a large share in showing us 
 that we are not absolutely dependent either upon 
 theatres or the machinery of theatrical publicity 
 for the support of productions. In England the
 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 191 
 
 custom of playing in town halls and village 
 greens was never quite lost. Some of the best 
 English stock companies, Benson's for example, 
 have maintained only the most delicate relation 
 with the professional theatre. Their real sup- 
 port lay in the civic and social institutions of the 
 provinces. 
 
 When Ben Greet came out of England with 
 "Everyman" he proceeded to throw its support 
 on the shoulders of new institutions. He recog- 
 nized the interest this play had for students of 
 literature and so he appealed to colleges to sup- 
 port it and they did so. He had presented 
 "Everyman" first at a college hall. And with 
 this play he first definitely aligned the universi- 
 ties of this country with the machinery of guaran- 
 tee and support of theatrical enterprises. The 
 significance of this innovation cannot be over- 
 estimated. His next step after creating the col- 
 lege support was to leave the established theatres 
 and play Shakespeare and the old comedies on 
 the campuses of the colleges. Thus was the new 
 system of circuit introduced. 
 
 The system inaugurated by Ben Greet was 
 taken up and pushed to completeness in this coun- 
 try by C. D. Coburn. It was he who first visual- 
 ized the situation and the opportunity. Ten
 
 192 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 years ago he outlined a system which has meant 
 the establishing of the theatrical circuit upon the 
 basis of the institutions and understandings of 
 educated people. The thing came to Coburn first 
 in the form of the problem of the artist. How 
 was the artist to secure that variety in training 
 and that independence in production that was 
 necessary to him*? The way was closed in stock 
 and on Broadway. After Mr. and Mrs. Coburn 
 had had several years' experience in stock com- 
 panies the solution came to them through a few 
 productions given in the open-air. "Why not 
 organize the colleges, in which the dramatic in- 
 terest was strong but unfused and futile, into 
 a University Theatre Association 1 ?" Coburn 
 wrote a pamphlet for this, he lectured and sent 
 out agents, and succeeded in enlisting a few col- 
 leges. The colleges were to supply the machin- 
 ery, the students and college community were 
 to supply the audience, and the theatre was to be 
 on the campus or in a college hall. The entree 
 to the colleges was secured through Percy Mac- 
 Kaye's "Canterbury Pilgrims" which was inter- 
 esting to colleges on account of its association 
 with Chaucer. The first summer they played 
 in nine colleges. Summer by summer the num- 
 ber grew and as the circuit grew the repertory grew
 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 193 
 
 as well. This was always taken from the works 
 of Shakespeare or other classical dramatists. 
 Then, in 1911, Gilbert Murray's "Electra" from 
 Euripides was added. 
 
 Mr. Coburn counts the advantages of this sys- 
 tem of circuit to be many-sided. It has provided 
 for the colleges excellent productions of great 
 plays in beautiful natural surroundings. For the 
 stage it has represented the persistence of the tra- 
 dition of the classical play. For the artist it has 
 provided an opportunity to train himself in the 
 way Irving and Booth were trained, in the mas- 
 terpieces of the world's drama. 
 
 The circuits of the colleges have been built 
 only by soul-trying energy on the part of central 
 offices. As first outlined Mr. Coburn thought of 
 a self-governing federation but this idea proved 
 impracticable. As time has passed the lines of 
 the circuit have been drawn together until to- 
 day there is in the Middle States a solid and grow- 
 ing constituency. People are learning to look 
 apart from the theatre for some of their best 
 theatrical fare. Moreover there is being trained 
 a set of local agencies for the handling of these 
 productions. It does not require a very rich im- 
 agination to see in the not distant future a thea- 
 trical edifice for travelling companies built upon a
 
 194 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 better foundation than that of short-sighted 
 profits. 
 
 Within the last two years there has been worked 
 out another ingenious scheme for outwitting the 
 disadvantages of touring in classical and new-idea 
 plays. So successful was this venture that its 
 originator found himself immediately welcome 
 upon the stages for which his own platforms had 
 been provided as substitutes. Like C. D. Coburn, 
 Stuart Walker is a trained showman with an 
 artist's itch to do what pleases himself and to 
 keep growing. While Coburn attaches himself 
 to the classical codes Walker has allied himself 
 with the newer fashions of stage art. But his 
 problem was the same. How was he to get an 
 opportunity to try these things out and to make 
 them support themselves*? Walker had had 
 enough experience with astute managers to know 
 that the best entrance to the theatre is the side 
 door, so he proceeded to find one. 
 
 I should say that Walker's chief quality in 
 the theatre is a playful and childlike art. His are 
 not children's plays but that rudimentary brand 
 by which the true principle of art is distinguished 
 from its more sophisticated show; fancy in pro- 
 duction, by which all the factors of the produc-
 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 195 
 
 tion, stage, scenery, costumes, story, and lights, are 
 handled by the free imagination of the producer 
 instead of by the principles of imitation. And 
 Walker's chief passion was lights. There had 
 been much talk about lights on the stage but there 
 were few artists of lights and few good lighting 
 systems. Walker wished to make himself a mas- 
 ter of these things. 
 
 Now there was no more an open door at the 
 manager's office for this sort of thing than there 
 was for Shakespeare and Moliere and Euripides. 
 And so, as the theatres were closed, Walker 
 thought of a little substitute by which he could 
 have all the satisfaction of experiment with little 
 expense. I do not know that he knew of the little 
 portable stages that have been carried around in 
 England, nor of M. Gemier's portable theatre in 
 France which was hauled around by a traction 
 engine. At any rate his portmanteau stage was 
 something of an adaptation of what had been and 
 was even more largely original, being enriched by 
 the principles of the new staging, by the builder's 
 own fancy, and by a very complete lighting sys- 
 tem. This little stage was set up on July 14th, 
 1915, in Christadora Settlement House, 147 
 Avenue B, in three little plays of the manager's 
 own composition.
 
 196 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Here was another expedient for the new cir- 
 cuit. As Greet and Coburn had found theirs in 
 the open-air, Walker found his in a little exten- 
 sible box, " a theatre that comes to you," per- 
 fectly equipped as a stage, which could be set up 
 anywhere, in drawing rooms, in halls, or on the 
 stages of theatres. The success of the first per- 
 formance opened up the next opportunity for 
 circuit. In referring to Walker's success with 
 his little collapsible stage I am disposed to give 
 a large share of credit to the managers who set 
 themselves to work to create for him a circuit. 
 Messrs. Elser and Janney had before them the 
 work that had been done by others in creating 
 collegiate circuits. But in large measure these 
 were not available. They had to build up new 
 circuits from the ground. Taking clubs, drama 
 league centres and colleges as a nucleus they gath- 
 ered together local groups and then knit these with 
 each other for the purposes of a continuous tour. 
 This is work that cannot be scamped. Sometimes 
 it was necessary that the advance man see and 
 talk personally with a hundred people in a day en- 
 listing interest, explaining, justifying and persuad- 
 ing. I mention this side of the work in order to 
 show that this is one necessary and difficult fea- 
 ture in the building of new circuits, However
 
 NEW IDEAS OF CIRCUIT 197 
 
 excellent the company may be its value counts for 
 nothing if this engineering work is neglected. 
 
 A short season the first year, a longer and 
 successful season the second year in plays by 
 Dunsany, Walker and others, showed what might 
 be done with this idea. The guarantee system of 
 local support had abundantly proved itself. It 
 supplied not only the sinews of money, but it 
 provided as well a group in each city of friendly 
 and helpful people who had informed themselves 
 on the facts of the undertaking and were pre- 
 pared to be pleased. Coburn and Walker have 
 proved other advantages in this system. It has 
 been found possible to give excellent productions 
 at a far lower expenditure of money than is usual 
 on the professional stage. As the productions 
 represent a new idea at the centre of which lies 
 art rather than profits audiences have been glad 
 to respond to the imaginations of the producers 
 in staging. And these have brought out some 
 really remarkable examples of beauty and econ- 
 omy. The natural harmonies of the open air, the 
 possibilities of beauty in lighted horizon cloths 
 and painted draperies have been fully utilized and 
 to the complete satisfaction of the audiences. 
 
 The door thus opened by these experimenters 
 is an important one. It should not be closed.
 
 ig8 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 The idea with which Coburn started in his Uni- 
 versity Theatre was a large and true idea. There 
 are institutions in existence which should be of 
 broader service to the theatre than they have been. 
 This obligation rests particularly on the educa- 
 tional institution. For the sake of their own 
 patrons, as well as in the service of their purpose 
 in society, they will need to take a larger part 
 in the support, financial and critical, of the better 
 . efforts in the theatre. Since the Coburns started 
 other institutions have entered the field. The 
 Drama League has it in its power through its local 
 centres to be of the greatest service in arranging 
 guaranteed tours for companies that are resolutely 
 doing good things. Lately the Lyceum Bureaus, 
 always ready to recognize a new trend, have en- 
 tered the field. What is needed is an organiza- 
 tion which will take off the hands of each com- 
 pany the necessity of building up its own organ- 
 ization. For this the Drama League is well 
 equipped mechanically if not in temper. For 
 such an organization to be the outgrowth of the 
 educational systems of the country would mean 
 a great deal both to schools and drama. And it 
 would throw in the way of some of the newer cir- 
 cuiting companies assistance that would greatly 
 aid in their work.
 
 XII 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 
 
 THERE has been more in these new theatres scat- 
 tered over the country than appears on the sur- 
 face. To many they have offered the zest of 
 new adventure, of wayfaring in social experiment. 
 The difficulties themselves stirred the interest, 
 and the fact that there was no purpose of utility 
 was a source of satisfaction. More than any- 
 thing else these theatres provided activity which 
 was its own justification and its own reward. 
 After years of good intentions there was real 
 pleasure in forgetting destinations for awhile and 
 simply doing. 
 
 The first group of the little theatres came about 
 1911 and 1912. The second and larger crop 
 came three years later in 1915. The second 
 group depended upon all that had been learned of 
 the pioneers. In the establishment of the later 
 theatres there has been put forth a great deal of 
 sound sense. We do not find young men and 
 women again attacking the tremendous problems 
 
 199
 
 200 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 that fascinated the beginners. And there has 
 come into the work a group who have had better 
 tuition. Men of professional training who be- 
 fore despised the little theatres are now glad to 
 enter their service. The graduates of the earlier 
 organizations have gone out to take leading places 
 in the new. And several have come back to 
 America after work in Berlin and Moscow and 
 Florence. 
 
 It is strange how rapidly the sanction for this 
 sort of thing grew. Soon it became possible to 
 admit you were interested in the new ideas of 
 the theatre without seeming to be a fool or a social 
 highwayman. And the resources rapidly in- 
 creased. Every city found numbers of actors 
 well enough equipped, some artists who were 
 willing to turn their hands to the new art, and 
 some experienced directors. Playwrights who 
 had needed but the slightest encouragement be- 
 gan to turn out novel little plays for home con- 
 sumption. 
 
 In respect of organization the later theatres 
 have learned from the pioneers. When these 
 theatres started the whole thing may have gone 
 back to some individual, self-elected, with the 
 command upon him. Through faults of his tem- 
 perament and also through the misfortunes of his
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 201 
 
 position as pioneer that individual was seldom 
 able to maintain an organization. We have seen 
 that success has come to some organizations 
 through their ability to put up a united face to 
 the community. Just as surely failure has come 
 without that ability. The newer societies learned 
 from the pioneers how to secure this united front. 
 They learned that however important it was to 
 have a director with ideals and vision it was quite 
 as important to have a committee management 
 to represent him before the community. It has 
 become axiomatic that no individual can stand 
 alone in this business. The attempt to do so 
 breaks the back every time. Society has a cruel 
 if efficacious way of testing the stamina of those 
 who would be her instruments. 
 
 The means by which this mass backing is se- 
 cured differs in different places. Sometimes the 
 theatre attaches itself to a social institution al- 
 ready established. In this way in ujj-6 the 
 Brooklyn Institute was used as the paternal or- 
 ganization for the founding of the JSrookljn 
 Repertory Theatre. Universities and art insti- 
 tutes have lent their strength for this purpose in 
 some cases. By all odds the best organization for 
 this use is one which has already been busying it- 
 self in the activities of applied art. To this class
 
 202 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 belongs the very vigorous and promising theatre 
 of the Arts and Crafts Guild of Detroit. This 
 theatre has been so carefully thought out, it has 
 been so fortunate in its associations and support 
 that it warrants careful consideration. 
 
 In 1915 Mr. Sam Hume was called to Detroit 
 to direct the opening production in an open-air 
 theatre built on the estate of Mr. George C. Booth. 
 Out of the Cranbrook Masque prepared by Mr. 
 Hume for this theatre developed an association 
 between Mr. Hume and the Detroit Society of 
 Arts and Crafts which is in many respects the 
 most promising in the recent movements for local 
 theatres. These promising features refer to a 
 combination of circumstances, chief of which were 
 the history of Mr. Hume and the purpose of the 
 Society. Mr. Hume had been a California man, 
 a student at Harvard under Baker, and later a 
 worker with Craig in Florence. All along a dili- 
 gent student of the new staging he had been re- 
 sponsible for that exhibition of the new stage- 
 craft which had introduced this art to America. 
 He was now ready for such a call as the Society 
 of Arts and Crafts would make. 
 
 On its side this Society was a vigorous, well- 
 established and supported organization of crafts- 
 men and artists then in its tenth year. It had long
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 203 
 
 carried on some work in historic costume, design 
 and setting, and was now ready for a more par- 
 ticular work. Out of the association between the 
 Society and Mr. Hume there first came a little 
 theatre seating two hundred or more which was 
 turned over by friends rent free to the theatre of 
 the Arts and Crafts Society for its work. The 
 first year's work was carefully organized accord- 
 ing to principles worked out by the director. Mr. 
 Hume holds strictly to the idea of the reduction 
 of factors to their simplest terms. In his first 
 statement he made this clear. "We believe it 
 wiser to start with the demand, and let our or- 
 ganization and number of performances expand 
 as the demand increases, rather than to begin 
 with the imagined demand which would leave 
 us at the end of the season with a debt." 
 Again he says, "I do not look upon the Little 
 Theatre as a laboratory where a few people 
 work out their own personal and usually very 
 queer and highly specialized ideas, but a theatre 
 which, to justify its existence, must establish 
 some definite point of contact with community 
 life." 
 
 The management of the theatre has been based 
 closely on these principles. Two performances 
 are scheduled for each play. If more perform-
 
 204 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 ances are demanded this demand must be clearly 
 shown. Work in the theatre is entirely volun- 
 tary. There is no expense for salaries outside 
 the director's fee. The audience is made up at 
 present of 400 subscribers who have engaged 
 themselves for a certain sum. Costumes and set- 
 tings are made at the theatre in connection with 
 the workshops of the Arts and Crafts Society. 
 Indicating the scrupulous economy practiced it 
 may be noticed that each production is made at 
 an average cost of $800 as compared with the 
 cost per production of $1500 for the Neighbor- 
 hood Playhouse and the Washington Square 
 Players. 
 
 Though himself an actor and writer Mr. 
 Hume's chief interest lies in the design side of 
 the stage, and his theatre shows up better on this 
 side than in its list of plays. The repertory, 
 though interesting, is not distinguished. But this 
 cannot be said of the settings. Hume's handling 
 under different patterns of set pilons on the stage, 
 his treatment of symbolical and light effects are 
 among the most practical and at the same time 
 imaginative specimens of the new staging art in 
 America. 
 
 I know no other case of a theatre so fortunate 
 as the Detroit Theatre of Arts and Crafts for as-
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 205 
 
 sociation with an artist's guild. Most other thea- 
 tres have to create their own supporting organ- 
 izations and to draw together for themselves the 
 artists who will make the productions. But if 
 the organization must be made to order I can im- 
 agine no greater source of strength than to have 
 this limited to those who take part, to have no 
 governing machinery or committees representing 
 mere administration, and to expect no support 
 and to permit no interest except upon the part 
 of those who were drawn together by delight in 
 the thing being done. This principle limits the 
 civic and business activities of the enterprise but 
 it conduces to good work. 
 
 We have heard a great deal about joy in art 
 and the play motive. The advantage of these 
 is that they are free and that they are without 
 purpose. Impelled perhaps by reaction against 
 the mean utility of the professional stage, a util- 
 ity that has destroyed the imagination throughout 
 its fabric, and as much by a reaction against the 
 intense purposefulness of many reform move- 
 ments, some organizations have come together 
 simply as playing groups of artists. There is a > 
 self-sufficiency about these that is refreshing. 
 They make no appeal to audiences, they do not 
 advertise, in many cases they make it as difficult
 
 206 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 as possible to secure tickets. But their inde- 
 pendence proves an asset for them. 
 
 Among players of this type by all odds the 
 most successful are the Provincetown Players. 
 They are successful simply because they are in- 
 dividual, free, and not anxious; because they do 
 all the work themselves and are satisfied when 
 they have pleased themselves. These players find 
 their justification in their own faith and impulse. 
 They have played one season in a little private 
 theatre in Washington Square, and they show no 
 present signs of going up town to appeal to the 
 many. In this season they did twenty-four new 
 plays, many of which were distinguished by idea 
 and some few approached excellence as plays. 
 
 Of somewhat the same order are the Vagabond 
 Players of Baltimore who opened November 2, 
 1916, in a little theatre seating sixty-two made 
 out of a former bar-room in the St. James Hotel. 
 In the first season fifteen plays were given. All 
 expenses were covered by playing twice a week 
 with a new bill every month. 
 
 The Little Playhouse Theatre of St. Louis is 
 something like the Detroit theatre on account of 
 its association with an artists' guild, though in 
 this case the bonds of association are very slight. 
 The St. Louis Little Playhouse, directed by Clin-
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 207 
 
 ton J. Masseck and Melville Burke, was organ- 
 ized to produce plays in 1916 under a supporting 
 organization called the St. Louis Society for the 
 Promotion of Drama. After an unfortunate 
 opening in some highly intense plays of the earlier 
 styles of the modern theatre movement this thea- 
 tre fell into its stride and promises an interesting 
 career. 
 
 One of the older of the little theatres of the 
 country is the one managed under the Little Thea- 
 tre Society of Indiana. This theatre society was 
 established in 1914 at about the time the patron- 
 age idea was strong among the little theatres. On 
 its governing board it has had some of the best 
 known names of Indiana's art and literature. It 
 has been well provided with subscribers and sus- 
 taining members. No city in the country is bet- 
 ter equipped^for the support of such an organiza- 
 tion. But trier little theatre has fallen short 
 through the fact that it has been too heavily ad- 
 ministered, that it has failed to draw together a 
 voluntary group of artists, and has not always had 
 responsible direction. The theatre has no home, 
 its performances having been given in the John 
 Herron Art Institute and in scattered auditoriums. 
 The repertory gives an appearance of accident and 
 confusion.
 
 208 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 Los Angeles has had several experiences with 
 little theatres and none of these has been for- 
 tunate. In December, 1913, a professional stock 
 company was called together under the title the 
 Little Theatre. As the company was an expen- 
 sive one the venture hardly lasted two months. 
 In the fall of 1916 Miss Aline Barnsdall gathered 
 together a good company in which Richard 
 Ordynski was a leading figure. An expensive 
 production was made of Ossip Dymow's "Nju" 
 with which Ordynski' s connection with the thea- 
 tre ceased. After a few weeks of further experi- 
 ment this theatre also closed its doors. Neither 
 one of these was a little theatre in the proper 
 sense of the word, and under the conditions of 
 expense with which they started there was no 
 possibility of success. After leaving the Little 
 Theatre of Los Angeles Ordynski produced 
 "Everyman" in that city under other auspices, and 
 then returned to New York for a short engage- 
 ment at the Bandbox in Dymow's play, which 
 was no more successful in New York than it had 
 been in the West. 
 
 Some of these new theatres follow the system 
 of the old amateur clubs in organization while 
 presenting the newer and experimental plays. 
 Such is the Kansas City Comedy club under the
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 209 
 
 direction of Marcus Ford. For a record of ac- 
 tivity we can find little to excel that of the Play- 
 ers of Providence, Rhode Island. This club is 
 a successor to the famous old amateur club of that 
 city, the Talma Club, the record of whose per- 
 formances goes back to 1887. The number of 
 the plays presented by the Talma Club reached 
 over a hundred. The Players were established 
 in 1909 and until the sale of their theatre played 
 in the private Talma Theatre. In eight seasons 
 they have given 92 regular performances of 53 
 different plays including many of the strategic 
 plays of the modern movement. 
 
 Active theatres are found to-day in cities all 
 over the country. The Little Theatre Players of 
 Denver were established in 1915 under the direc- 
 tion of Granville F. Sturgis, who had also been 
 active in little theatre work in Los Angeles. 
 After a company had been opened in Cincinnati in 
 1913 and had discontinued for want of support 
 Mrs. Helen Schuster-Martin in 1915 began work 
 in a larger way by providing a building and a 
 corps of efficient helpers. This Little Playhouse 
 has now been in existence two seasons and has 
 prospered in good plays. In addition to the Play- 
 house of the Wisconsin Players Milwaukee had 
 for some years a little theatre under the direction
 
 210 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 of Mrs. J. A. Stewart. In 1916 there was prom- 
 ised a little theatre building for Cleveland. As a 
 result of a change of plans an old church has been 
 remodelled for a home for the Cleveland Little 
 Theatre. The most distinctive work done for 
 this group under the direction of Mr. Eugene 
 O'Neill has been in puppet plays. 
 
 As far back as November 17, 1914, the local 
 centre of the Drama League of Duluth had 
 opened a little theatre building of its own. In 
 this theatre there have been for each season an 
 average of six little theatre productions under a 
 good local company expertly managed by Mrs. F. 
 A. Patrick and other capable workers. A little 
 theatre that promised good things for a small city 
 was the Prairie Playhouse opened at Galesburg, 
 Illinois, in 1915 by Mr. Jesse Crafton. Prob- 
 ably no theatre in a small town has attacked with 
 more wisdom and idealism the peculiar problems 
 of its position than did this little theatre during 
 its first two seasons. Another little theatre in a 
 small town has been Mr. George McCallum's 
 private theatre in Northampton, Mass. Mr. Mc- 
 Callum has expended money on this in the same 
 way that other men have spent money on first edi- 
 tions and pictures. He engaged an art director
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 211 
 
 and spared no pains in securing the most exquisite 
 beauty in his productions. 
 
 The list of little theatre companies could be in- 
 definitely prolonged and still I should miss some. 
 In January, 1917, Mr. William B. Button organ- 
 ized the Little Theatre Players of Rochester, New 
 York. Little theatres are conducted or have been 
 projected at Nashville, Erie, Richmond Hill, 
 Brownsville, Portland (Oregon), East Orange, 
 Salt Lake City, and Pittsburgh. In New York 
 there was for a time the promise of the Nine 
 O'Clock Theatre, most dainty of small theatres; 
 there are the Morningside Players who come out 
 of Columbia University, the East and West Play- 
 ers with a programme of Yiddish plays; and the 
 Bramhall Theatre, exponent of the work of one 
 man. 
 
 This latter institution commands a respectful 
 consideration, little as I am able to place it. It 
 has in it all the flavor of a personal adventure on 
 the part of its director, Butler Davenport. Like 
 some of the earlier and less successful ventures in 
 theatrical pioneering the Bramhall Theatre de- 
 pends upon the crusading spirit in one man. And 
 that man provides an unusual combination of 
 qualities. Many of these have in them more of
 
 212 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 the American stamp than the usual run of qualities 
 that have led to little theatres in this country. 
 With these qualities Davenport has endowed his 
 little theatre, a New England Americanism, almost 
 a Colonial intensity of purpose, a business acumen 
 capable of supporting an expensive venture for 
 unselfish ends, a thorough knowledge of the situa- 
 tion of the theatre, as well as an expert manage- 
 ment of all of its factors. 
 
 Mr. Davenport began this work about 1912 
 when he erected on his estate near Stamford a 
 theatre dedicated to new American plays. He 
 says that only accidentally did he become a play- 
 wright, through his desire to find plays of a cer- 
 tain truthful type. In 1915 he built himself a 
 theatre in 2yth Street, New York, which is a 
 model of all the tiny theatre building should be. 
 This he has been quietly conducting ever since. 
 In plays Mr. Davenport clings to the play of 
 "theme," this usually derived from a well-ob- 
 served American characteristic. In acting and 
 conducting he depends upon a beautiful natural- 
 ism. I can find some fault with his plays and his 
 system of organization, but I can find no fault 
 with his acting or with his productions. 
 
 I name no further theatres not because they do 
 not exist but because I must stop somewhere. It
 
 THE NEW ADVENTURE 213 
 
 has not been my purpose to iterate the details but 
 to attempt to give some background for move- 
 ments that may have appeared tangled. So I can 
 say nothing of the often promised Irish Theatre of 
 America, of the Woman's National Theatre, of 
 the projected American People's Theatre, of the 
 new Sylvan Theatre lately completed in Washing- 
 ton as the first theatre of any type maintained on 
 its own grounds by the government of the United 
 States, or of the Forest Theatre at Carmel-by-the- 
 Sea. In the spring of 1917 there comes the an- 
 nouncement of the Greenwich Village Theatre in 
 New York City. Carefully studied in plan, with 
 the promise of a good building and good facilities, 
 the venture offers some hope of success.
 
 XIII 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 
 
 WILL the insurgent theatre last? Do you ap- 
 prove of its plays'? What about the acting? 
 Should scenery dominate? These are questions 
 one continually meets in considering the recent 
 events in the theatre. Perhaps all the questions 
 are involved in the first, for plays, acting, and 
 scenery are but parts of the general idea for which 
 the insurgent theatre has stood, not to be defended 
 by themselves but as factors of a larger whole. 
 
 One thing is certain, and this answers as well 
 those who ask whether the insurgent theatre is 
 against professionalism on the stage. The theatre 
 like everything else tends to order. The insur- 
 gent movements have not been against order. 
 They have not been in favor of slipshod methods, 
 poor acting, bad balance of the parts to the whole, 
 puerile plays. They have accepted these and 
 many other disadvantages, such as debts, and hard 
 work and misunderstanding, as prices they had to 
 pay for something that had to be done. No one 
 
 214
 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 215 
 
 needs to think that any of the directors, however 
 misguided he may have been, enjoyed bad acting 
 and half-baked plays. But they enjoyed bad act- 
 ing, if artistically impelled, better than "good" 
 acting under the artificial conditions that had been 
 forced on the actor. If in destroying the theatre 
 they had to begin again at the beginning and build 
 it up painfully through crudities and failure, ex- 
 periment and adjustment, they were willing to 
 doit. 
 
 And that is what they have been doing. They 
 have never rested for one moment content with 
 an imperfection. They could not do so if they 
 would, the competition being so strong. They 
 have been quick to use the dead bodies of their 
 comrades as scaling stones, these young idealists. 
 Let no one tell me that the impulse to money is the 
 only driving power. We have seen enough of 
 other impulses in the last- five years. He must 
 have been impatient indeed who could complain 
 of the situation in these movements. For as fast 
 as a fault was found someone would correct it. 
 As fast as a new scheme was thought of a machine 
 was created to exploit it. The theatre has not 
 seen so much activity in years as the little theatres 
 have provided. 
 
 And they have all been definitely tending
 
 216 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 toward order. Will they call this new order pro- 
 fessionalism? They may if they please for if it 
 isn't professionalism the difference is only that be- 
 tween tweedledum and tweedledee. For order 
 demands machinery and machinery is run by law. 
 To serve the great mass of our people, whether 
 you give them the new art or the old, requires or- 
 ganization, it requires the showman's instinct, that 
 keen knowledge of the heart of men that makes 
 one know them and serve them well. Let us only 
 ask that they be served well, and it will make no 
 difference whether by professional or not. 
 
 It has been by subjecting themselves to the 
 tenets of order that the best of the new theatres 
 have taken their leading positions. We have seen 
 that some have been unable to stand the test of 
 common sense. The theatre demands a better 
 balance between the centrifugal and the centrip- 
 etal forces than any other business. One needs 
 to keep the "cosmic reach" and yet one mustn't 
 fly off. The test may come in the form of a road 
 tour, a new building, or the whisper of ambition 
 in association with great powers. However it 
 comes one needs to keep to the sane interpretation 
 of his strength. The theatre that first finds its 
 place, develops and magnifies this place, keeping
 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 217 
 
 close hold always on its funded assets, yet reach- 
 ing out always for the new is going to be of some 
 service to the state. 
 
 One good result of the work of the insurgent 
 theatres has been the extent to which their prin- 
 ciples have been accepted on the commercial stage. 
 We have seen many cases in which the insurgent 
 theatres have been stepping stones to the best 
 places in Broadway. C. D. Coburn came from 
 the circuits which he had built and upon which he 
 had based his training in classic repertory directly 
 onto Broadway. B. Iden Payne was the director 
 of an English insurgent company until he became 
 a very busy producer of plays in New York. 
 Robert E. Jones took but one step from unpro- 
 duced experiment outside the theatre to produced 
 success in the commercial theatre. The Washing- 
 ton Square Players and the Neighborhood Play- 
 house have sent productions from their own stages 
 directly to the houses of the most unbending of 
 commercial managers. I mention these things 
 not as success but as evidences of success that had 
 come before. In going into the professional the- 
 atre these people were taking along their ideas. 
 Gone is the old fleer, the insurgent is the outsider. 
 Today he is not discontent because he is an out-
 
 218 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 sider; he is an outsider because he is discontent. 
 And his discontent is a surer means of bringing 
 him inside than another man's conformity. 
 
 Along with the influence from those who bring 
 insurgency into the theatre is the influence from 
 those who accept it. Mrs. Fiske, Arnold Daly, 
 Mary Shaw always were insurgents within the 
 theatre. They came at a time when the dirty 
 work of insurgency had not been done by others. 
 But Arthur Hopkins, Margaret Anglin, Faver- 
 sham, Benrimo can today take without discomfort 
 the results of the researches of other men outside 
 the pale, and their prominent position on the stage 
 shows that it has paid to do so. 
 
 Will the insurgent theatres become profes- 
 sional? Yes, if by professional you mean order 
 and craftsmanship. No, if by professional you 
 mean, as you have meant in the past, false order 
 and artifice. This answer must be made to all 
 idealists about the theatre. The theatre is a busi- 
 ness. There is no plan by which it could be run 
 other than as a business. The great men of the 
 theatre have always been good business men. It 
 is a business because it involves business features 
 in the organization of workers and in the selling 
 of wares. There is no way of getting harmony in 
 a company and in a group of workers other than
 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 219 
 
 by an efficient and common sense basis of manage- 
 ment. Good- will counts for much, personality, 
 fire, zeal, count for much, but justice to all, a sys- 
 tem based on reason and economy and a due regard 
 for the best interests of all are essential. The 
 best feature of the Washington Square Players is 
 the fact that they have been able to adapt their 
 idealistic principles to a really efficient business 
 organization. 
 
 No theatre can exist without its audience. And 
 an audience cannot attach itself to a whimsical in- 
 stitution. The audience has to know that the in- 
 stitution is there rain or shine. It does not wish 
 to be made aware of the machinery, but one thing 
 it demands, absolute dependability in the ma- 
 chinery created for its service. This is no less 
 true in the institution of entertainment than in 
 transportation, no less true at a little theatre than 
 at a circus. 
 
 The result is that every company that would 
 live must adapt itself to the regulations of for- 
 mality and organization. There comes the point 
 when this is in fact professionalism. And just as 
 inevitably there comes the time when expert act- 
 ing, sane principles of staging, workmanlike plays 
 follow as by the operation of natural law. All 
 these things are in fact coming as the new theatres
 
 220 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 find their codes and are able to adapt themselves 
 to them. 
 
 As to the standards of acting and plays I grant 
 that the playing at many little theatres has been 
 faulty and that the plays have been half-done. 
 I do not know how soon some turn of fate is 
 going to change the face of the theatrical situa- 
 tion in America. But I am sure that none of the 
 work that has been done has been lost, and that 
 the faulty work has been hardly less valuable than 
 the good work for the purpose in hand. The 
 work remains in two ways, in records of deeds 
 done, plays written and performed, in actors and 
 producers instructed, in audiences stimulated, in 
 books and plays printed; and it remains also in the 
 contributions these movements have made to the 
 sum total of thinking, and to the clearing of the 
 channels of thought and communication between 
 men. The movements remain in the more re- 
 spectful attitude maintained toward the theatre 
 by critics and workers in the busy world. 
 
 These things would not have started to be 
 stopped half-way. The war is causing some un- 
 quiet hours here as in other affairs. The neces- 
 sary back-fire of every movement has already be- 
 gun to try men's faith in their works. But the 
 lessons that have been learned will not be forgot-
 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 221 
 
 ten. The theatre does belong to the people, in no 
 demagogic sense, but honestly and sincerely. It 
 is not a mystery or a thing of illusion and lies, or 
 a drab or a procurer, or a mine to be milked of 
 gold. It is a source of the great adventure of 
 democracy by which artists who work in human 
 nature study to body forth their vision of truth. 
 
 Some things have been discovered without per- 
 adventure of a doubt. Money is not a stimulus 
 to work or to imagination in the theatre. Writ- 
 ers will compose and players will act for no money 
 or little just so long as you let them build them- 
 selves into what they do. They will do it in the 
 early days for fun or in devotion to a cause, and 
 then and this is important as you support them 
 in their work with your intelligence and your taste, 
 they will do it regularly for an institution in 
 which they believe and whose servants they will 
 be. Money is not the specific. And as we dis- 
 cover this we find some codes upon which the 
 theatre of the future may be built. Endow them, 
 yes, but not with money until after you have en- 
 dowed them with brains; not with resources until 
 you have made them free to use those resources; 
 not with a building until you have provided them 
 an audience. 
 
 The artist is self-respecting, proud in the best
 
 222 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 sense. In so far as he touches society at all he 
 prefers to feel that he meets it in fair exchange. 
 He wants nothing for nothing. The artist does 
 not live who can do his best work under benefac- 
 tion. Therein lies the fault of the subsidy sys- 
 tem. It binds the artist at the very point at 
 which he can least afford to be bound, in his rever- 
 ence for himself. So the best theatre is that 
 which most cuts its cloth to the true pattern of 
 public support, not giving more than is paid for 
 and not, as is so generally the case, less, but using 
 the favor of men's understanding and support as 
 a premise by which to push forward to new con- 
 clusions. The beauty of this is that it keeps the 
 mind alert. It keeps one aware. And that is 
 the secret of the art of the theatre. 
 
 The history of these days has been one of en- 
 thusiastic effort, the chief call being to do some- 
 thing or we die. It is true enough that very few 
 knew what to do, or how to distinguish the true 
 thing from the false. For this reason the early ef- 
 forts offer a face of doubt, of mixed motives, or a 
 strain of idealism mixed with a strange over- 
 reaching of self-interest, of careful programmes 
 broken by tangled councils not only in committees 
 but in the minds of directors. The trouble is no 
 one knew exactly for what he was seeking. En-
 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 223 
 
 thusiasms were plentiful but clear programmes 
 were few. 
 
 The favorable side of this situation, which in 
 some respects seemed to mean the setting of no 
 standards at all in the place of standards frankly 
 debased, was that through it all the young work- 
 ers were learning where they were wrong, where 
 they might be right next time, and that surely and 
 not too slowly they were discovering a method to 
 which some absolute principles of judgment might 
 be applied. They were showing us in their own 
 experience what Duse meant when she said, "To 
 save the theatre the theatre must be destroyed." 
 
 In referring to the artists from whom the real 
 impulse came the best credit must be given to the 
 artists of design who a few years ago discovered 
 the theatre. Of all artists they best had the fresh 
 joy in work, the plunge of creativeness, the fra- 
 ternal spirit that were needed in the theatre. 
 When they discovered that their masses and 
 drapes and colors were indeed dramatic, that they 
 had in them the mysteries of motion and of time 
 and of passion they turned to with a ready will. 
 They brought to the theatre adventure, experi- 
 ment and a fresh vision. They brought the play- 
 ful spirit of the ateliers. Naturally in their first 
 enthusiasm they tended to depress the scale to
 
 224 THE INSURGENT THEATRE 
 
 their side. For awhile it has seemed that the pic- 
 ture was to be all of the play, the set more im- 
 portant than the story. But this is only tem- 
 porary. As time goes on the pictorial artists will 
 take their place in the full circle of the workers of 
 the theatre without jealousy and without self- 
 aggrandizement. 
 
 As for plays and players, the demand for an 
 American art of the stage and an American drama, 
 I am going to let others treat these questions when 
 the record is a little further advanced. For my 
 part I do not think we should talk very much 
 about such things. The watched pot of a na- 
 tional literature doesn't boil. I think the little 
 insurgent theatres have nothing to apologize for 
 in these respects. They have had to create new 
 material and they have had to infuse a new spirit ; 
 they could neither take the materials of the com- 
 mercial stage nor could they find the material 
 ready at hand apart from the stage. They had 
 to make it. At the start there was little to recom- 
 mend their work but the spirit. But after all 
 that was the one thing needful. As time has gone 
 on there has been added to the impulse to truth 
 a certain firmness of hand and steadiness of vision. 
 
 All in all the theatre seems to me to be today in
 
 ART AND OUTLOOK 225 
 
 the not unencouraging position of a young runner 
 who for some time has been cantering about warm- 
 ing up and now bends over the tape ready and 
 eager for a race against strong odds.
 
 APPENDIX 
 PLAY LISTS OF THEATRES 
 
 THE NEW THEATRE. Chicago. 1906-7. Victor Ma- 
 
 pes, Director. 
 
 Repertory: La Belle Sainara (d'Hervilly) ; Engaged 
 (Gilbert) ; Marse Covington (Ade) ; The Great Galeoto 
 (Echegaray) ; The Spoilers (Beach) ; The Goal (Jones) ; 
 The Son-in-Law (Le Gendre de M. Poirier by Augier) ; 
 Kerry (Boucicault) ; Elga (Hauptmann) ; Sweet Lav- 
 ender (Pinero) ; Dora (Sardou) ; The Masquerade 
 (Fulda) ; Margaret Fleming (Herne) ; The Whole 
 World (S. M. Illsley). 
 
 THE ROBERTSON PLAYERS. Chicago. 1907-9. Donald 
 
 Robertson, Director. 
 
 Repertory: The Miser (Moliere) ; The Triumph of 
 Youth (Pailleron) ; Rosmersholm (Ibsen) ; The Coming 
 of Peace (Hauptmann) ; A Blot in the 'Scutcheon 
 (Browning) ; The Intruder (Maeterlinck) ; In a Balcony 
 (Browning) ; The Intruding Widow (Lamb) ; A Night in 
 Avignon (Cale Young Rice) ; The Law (Sturges) ; The 
 Gauntlet (Bjornson) ; Keep Your Own Secret (Cald- 
 eron) ; The Inspector (Gogol) ; Sigurd Slembe (Bjorn- 
 son) ; As the Leaves (Giacosa) ; A Curious Mishap 
 (Goldoni) ; Madman or Saint (Echegaray) ; Comus 
 (Milton) ; The Chaplet of Pan (Stevens and Rice) ; 
 Rahab (Burton) ; The Prodigal (Voltaire) ; Zaragueta 
 (Asa and Carrion) ; John Gabriel Borkman (Ibsen) ; 
 
 227
 
 228 APPENDIX 
 
 Miller of Boskobel (Garland) ; The Art of Life 
 L. W. Smith) ; Torquato Tasso (Goethe) ; Tartuffe 
 (Moliere) ; Happiness in a Corner (Sudermann) ; The 
 Mayor of Zalamaya (Calderon) ; The Critic (Sheri- 
 dan) ; A Marriage (Bjornson) ; The Postscript (Au- 
 gier). 
 
 THE HULL HOUSE THEATRE. Chicago. Reorganized 
 
 1907. Laura Dainty Pelham, Director. 
 In the repertory there have been from 1907 to date 
 23 full length plays and 24 one-act plays. Important 
 plays from Repertory: The Sad Shepherd ( Jonson) ; 
 Pillars of Society (Ibsen) ; The Silver Box, Justice, The 
 Pigeon (Galsworthy) ; You Never Can Tell, The Devil's 
 Disciple, Arms and the Man (Shaw) ; The Tragedy of 
 Nan (Masefield) ; Grania, The Workhouse Ward, 
 The Rising of the Moon, Spreading the News, Devor- 
 gilla (Gregory) ; Riders to the Sea (Synge) ; Rutherford 
 and Son (Sowerby) ; Punishment (Bierstadt) ; The 
 Magnanimous Lover, Mixed Marriage (Ervine). 
 
 THE CASTLE SQUARE THEATRE. Boston. 1908 to date. 
 
 John Craig, Director. 
 
 A specimen of Stock Repertory, Jan. 5, 1914, to May 
 1O, 1915: Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, The 
 "Mind the Paint" Girl, Hamlet, Hawthorne of U. S. A., 
 All the Comforts of Home, The Great Ruby, Stop Thief! 
 Where's Your Wife*? The Girl of the Golden West, 
 Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace, The Crisis, Soldiers of For- 
 tune, The Charity Ball, Rip x Van Winkle, A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, Officer 666, the Deep Purple, The Ghost 
 Breaker, The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The Man o' 
 War's Man, The End of the Bridge, Baby Mine, Over 
 Night, Broadway Jones, Kindling, Arizona, A Widow by 
 Proxy, Graustark, The Ne'er-do-Welt, Madame X ?
 
 APPENDIX 229 
 
 Ready Money, The Thief, Paid in Full, Too Much 
 Johnson, A Midnight Bell, The Bishop's Carriage, Se- 
 cret Service, Snow White, Kindling, Common Clay 
 (Harvard Prize Play, first production). 
 
 THE TALMA CLUB. Providence. 1909 to date. H. A. 
 
 Barker, Director. 
 
 The repertory for seven seasons covers 43 plays, 
 including: The Liars (Jones); The Marriage of 
 Wit and Science; How He Lied to Her Husband 
 (Shaw); The Merchant of Venice; The Importance of 
 Being Earnest (Wilde) ; The Tyranny of Tears (Cham- 
 bers) ; Cousin Kate (Davies) ; Her Husband's Wife, 
 The Rainbow (A. E. Thomas) ; The Chinese Lantern 
 (Housman) ; Prunella (Housman and Barker) ; The 
 Neighbors (Gale) ; Mrs. Dane's Defense (Jones) ; The 
 Witching Hour (Thomas) ; The Far Away Princess 
 (Sudermann). 
 
 THE NEW THEATRE. New York. 1909-1911. Win- 
 
 throp Ames, Director. 
 
 Repertory: Antony and Cleopatra; The Cottage in 
 the Air (Knoblauch) ; Strife (Galsworthy) ; The Nigger 
 (Sheldon) ; The School for Scandal (Sheridan) ; Don 
 (Besier) ; Liz the Mother; Brand, one act (Ibsen); 
 Twelfth Night; The Witch (H. Wiers-Jenss'en, adapted 
 by H. Hagedorn) ; A Song of the People (Sophus 
 Michaelis, borrowed production) ; Sister Beatrice 
 (Maeterlinck) ; Beethoven (Rene Fauchois) ; A Win- 
 ter's Tale; The Blue Bird (Maeterlinck); The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor; The Thunderbolt (Pinero) ; Mary 
 Magdalene (Maeterlinck) ; Vanity Fair (dramatized by 
 R. Hichens and C. Gordon-Lennox) ; The Piper 
 (Marks) ; Nobody's Daughter (G. Paston) ; The Arrow 
 Maker (Austin).
 
 230 APPENDIX 
 
 THE COBURN PLAYERS. New York. 1908 to date. 
 
 C. D. Coburn, Director. 
 
 Repertory: Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, 
 Othello, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, 
 Merchant of Venice, A Comedy of Errors, Merry Wives 
 of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming 
 of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, 
 Henry V, Richard III (Shakespeare) ; Electra, Iphigenia 
 in Tauris (Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray) ; 
 The Imaginary Invalid (Moliere) ; The Canterbury 
 Pilgrims, Jeanne d'Arc, The Bird Masque, Chuck, The 
 Antick, Sam Average (MacKaye). 
 
 THE DRAMA PLAYERS. Chicago. 1911-12. Donald 
 
 Robertson, Director. 
 
 Repertory: The Lady from the Sea (Ibsen); The 
 Learned Ladies (Moliere) ; The Thunderbolt (Pinero) ; 
 The Maternal Instinct (Herrick) ; The Passing of the 
 Torch (Hervieu) ; Gold (Ancilla Hunter) ; The 
 Stronger (Giacosa) ; The Coffee House (Goldoni) ; June 
 Madness (Henry Kitchell Webster). 
 
 WISCONSIN DRAMATIC SOCIETY. 
 
 Madison Branch. 1911-1915. Thomas H. Dickin- 
 son, Director. Repertory: The Intruder (Maeter- 
 linck) ; The Master Builder (Ibsen) ; The Hour Glass 
 (Yeats) ; Glory of the Morning (Leonard) ; The Post- 
 script (Augier) ; The Neighbors (Gale) ; Dust of the 
 Road (Goodman and Stevens) ; Ryland (Stevens and 
 Goodman) ; In Hospital (Dickinson) ; The Mistress of 
 the Inn (Goldoni) ; The Book of Job (Adapt, by H. M. 
 Kallen) ; The Two Mr. Wetherbys (Hankin). 
 
 Milwaukee Branch. 1911-1915. Laura Sherry, Di- 
 rector. Repertory: Riders to the Sea (Synge) ; The
 
 APPENDIX 231 
 
 Stronger (Strindberg) ; The Revolt (Adam) ; How He 
 Lied to Her Husband (Shaw) ; Prunella (Housman and 
 Barker) ; The Marriage of Sobeide (Hofmannsthal, 
 trans, by B. Q. Morgan) ; The Feast of the Holy Inno- 
 cents (Illsley) ; Tradition (Middleton) ; Just Livin' 
 (Sherry). 
 
 THE TOY THEATRE. Boston. 1912-1915. Mrs. Ly- 
 
 man W. Gale, Director. 
 
 Repertory: Two Out of Time (O. Herford) ; In His 
 House (Middleton) ; Press Cuttings (Shaw) ; The 
 Wings (Marks) ; Between Engagements (Hedberg) ; 
 Sire de Maletroit's Door (from Stevenson) ; The Cuckoo 
 (Jeannette Marks) ; Caprice (Musset) ; Fo' Marse 
 George (Sayward) ; Fealty (Starr) ; Miss Civilization 
 (Davis) ; The Locked Door, pantomime (Briggs) ; Son 
 Average 1'Ecron Brise (Bordeaux) ; The Right to Hap- 
 piness (Sudermann) ; Fritzchen (Sudermann) ; How He 
 Lied to Her Husband (Shaw) ; The Confession (Shea) ; 
 The Silent System (Drey fuss) ; The Child in the House 
 (Howard) ; The Literary Sense (Schnitzler) ; Uncle 
 William's Lobster (Jeannette Lee) ; Hilarion ( J. Noel 
 Carter) ; The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (Shaw) ; 
 * Anatol (Schnitzler) ; * Creditors (Strindberg) ; * Joint 
 Owners in Spain (Alice Brown) ; * The Trojan Women 
 (Euripides) ; * By-Products (Patterson) ; * Catherine 
 Parr (Baring) ; * Tradition (Middleton) ; War (Fil- 
 more) ; Magic (Chesterton) ; Across the Border (Dix) ; 
 The Two Mr. Wetherbys (Hankin) ; * The Great 
 Catherine,- * The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, * Over- 
 ruled, * Captain Brassbound's Conversion (Shaw) ; 
 Change (Francis) ; * A Place in the Sun (Harcourt). 
 
 * Borrowed production.
 
 232 APPENDIX 
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE. New York. 1912 to date. 
 
 Winthrop Ames, Director. 
 
 Repertory: The Pigeon (Galsworthy); The Flower 
 of the Palace of Han (from Tcheu-Yuen by Charles 
 Rann Kennedy) ; The Terrible Meek (Kennedy) ; The 
 Affairs of Anatol (Schnitzler) ; Snow White and the 
 Seven Dwarfs (from Grimms by Jesse B. White) ; Ruth- 
 erford and Son (Sowerby) ; Prunella (Housman and Bar- 
 ker) ; The Philanderer (Shaw) ; The Truth (Fitch) ; A 
 Pair of Silk Stockings (Harcourt) ; Hush (Violet 
 Pearn) ; Pierrot the Prodigal (Wormser and Carre) ; 
 The Morris Dance (Barker). 
 
 THE PLAYS AND PLAYERS' CLUB. Philadelphia. 1912 
 
 to date. 
 
 Repertory of two seasons, 1915-1917: Miss Tassey 
 (Elizabeth Baker) ; The Tents of the Arabs (Dunsany) ; 
 Rosalind (Barrie) ; The Son and Heir (Gladys Unger) ; 
 The Green Coat (Musset and Augier) ; 'Op-o'-Me- 
 Thumb (Fenn and Pryce) ; The Land of Heart's Desire 
 (Yeats) ; Dolly Reforming Herself (Jones) ; The Brav- 
 est Thing in the World (Lee Pape) ; The Maker of 
 Dreams (Down) ; The House Next Door (Manners) ; 
 The Swan Song (Tchekhov) ; The Post Office (Tagore) ; 
 Perspectives (Mary M. Mitchell) ; The Sea Shell (Fuller- 
 ton L. Waldo) ; The Kiss (G. Paxton) ; Modesty (Her- 
 vieu) ; Masks (Blanche Dillaye) ; Lithuania (Brooke) ; 
 Suppressed Desires (Glaspell) ; Babbette (E. H. Stir- 
 ling) ; The Contrast (Royall Tyler) ; King Arthur's 
 Socks (Floyd Dell) ; The Game (Louise Bryant) ; The 
 Twelve Pound Look (Barrie) ; Trifles (Glaspell) ; An- 
 other Way Out (Langner) ; Happiness (Hartley Man- 
 ners) ; Gentlemen Unafraid (Vinton Freedley) ; The 
 Bracelet (Sutro) ; Rosalind (Barrie) ; Falstaff on Broad- 
 way (Wharton Stork) ; and eight prize plays.
 
 APPENDIX 233 
 
 THE NORTHAMPTON THEATRE. Northampton, Mass. 
 191^ Jessie Bonstelle and Bertram Harrison, Di- 
 rectors^. v 
 
 A season of their Repertory, 1916-1917 : Daddy Long 
 Legs, It Pays to Advertise, Copamon Clay, Rolling 
 Stones, Under Fire, Jerry, Hawthorne of U. S. A., The 
 Blindness of Virtue, A FuJ>House, The Old Homestead, 
 The Morals of Marcus, Don, Beverly's Balance, The 
 Squaw Man, Rosexfr 1 the Rancho, Polly of the Circus, 
 Sherlock HolmdC My Lady's Dress, David Harum, 
 Captain Jip&s, Nobody's Widow, Mile-a-Minute Ken- 
 dall, A^Message from Mars, School for Scandal, Arms 
 and >rfie Girl, Shore Acres, His Majesty Bunker Bean, 
 festones. 
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE. Chicago. 1912 to date. 
 
 Maurice Browne, Director. 
 
 Repertory: The Trojan Women, Medea (Euripi- 
 des) ; Hedda Gabler, Rosmersholm (Ibsen) ; Creditors, 
 The Stronger (Strindberg) ; Anatol (Schnitzler) ; The 
 Happy Prince (Wilde, dramatized by Lou Wall Moore 
 and Margaret T. Allen) ; The Philanderer, Mrs. War- 
 ren's Profession (Shaw) ; Deirdre of the Sorrows 
 (Synge) ; Delphine Declines (Leonard Merrick, drama- 
 tized by Oren Taft) ; The Pixy, The Mothers, The Sub- 
 jection of Kezia (Mrs. Havelock Ellis) ; The Shadowy 
 Waters, On Baile's Strand (Yeats) ; Womenkind (Gib- 
 son) ; Joint Owners in Spain (Alice Brown) ; Catherine 
 Parr (Baring) ; The Maker of Dreams (Down) ; Mr. 
 and Mrs. P. Roe (Martyn Johnson) ; The Fifth Com- 
 mandment (Houghton) ; The Constant Lover, The 
 Charity that Began at Home (Hankin) ; The Lost Silk 
 Hat (Dunsany) ; Jael (Florence Kiper Frank) ; Colum- 
 bine (Arkell) ; The King of the Jews (Browne) ; Lit!:-
 
 234 APPENDIX 
 
 uania (Brooke) ; the Pretty Sabine Women (Andreyev) ; 
 The Grotesques (Head) ; The Letter, Extreme Unction, 
 The Bachelor, The Grasshopper, Temperament (Mary 
 Aldis) ; Mary Broome (Monkhouse) ; The Hindu Gods 
 Shadow Magic (Arthur and Beryl Hight) ; Cranford 
 (Mrs. Gaskell, dramatized by Marguerite Merington). 
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE. Philadelphia. 1913 to date. 
 L IK. Mrs. H* 1 '* 1 '** J a Y Director. 
 
 l*^" Selection from Repertory: The Adventures of 
 
 Chlora (anon.) ; Ghosts (Ibsen) ; The Court Tenor 
 (Wedekind) ; Pater Noster (Coppee) ; French as She is 
 Spoke (T. Bernard) ; The Importance of being Earnest 
 (Wilde) ; Sister Beatrice (Maeterlinck) ; Tomorrow 
 (MacKaye) ; The Pigeon (Galsworthy) ; His Majesty 
 the Fool (Andrews) ; Tiger (Bynner) ; The Man in the 
 Street (Parker) ; Literature (Schnitzler) ; Pierrot of the 
 Minute (Dowson) ; Arms and the Man (Shaw) ; The 
 Rivals (Sheridan) ; The Constant Lover (Hankin) ; 
 Hindle Wakes (Houghton) ; The Silver Box (Gals- 
 worthy) ; The Critic (Sheridan) ; Lonesome Like (Brig- 
 house) ; The Admirable Bashville, The Dark Lady of 
 the Sonnets (Shaw) ; The Piper (Marks) ; The Servant 
 in the House (Kennedy) ^Cranquebille (France) ; Bar- 
 bara (Goodman) ; The Glittering Gate (Dunsany) ; 
 /Miles Dixon (Cannan) ; The Birthday (Fulda) ; The 
 Miracle of St. Anthony (Maeterlinck) ; The Carrier 
 Pigeon (Phillpotts) ; The Bear (Tchekhov) ; Simoom 
 (Strindberg) ; In April (Rose Pastor Stokes) ; The Blind 
 (Maeterlinck) ; The Lingerie Laureate (Lee Pape) ; The 
 Emperor (Richardson) ; The Manoeuvres of Jane 
 (Jones) ; Misalliance (Shaw) ; What the Doctor Ordered 
 (Thomas); The Weakest Link (Dix) ; At Night all 
 Cats are Grey (Robert Garland) ; You Never Can Tell 
 (Shaw) ; The Subjection of Kezia (Mrs. Havelock El- 

 
 APPENDIX 235 
 
 lis) ; The Doctor's Dilemma, Candida (Shaw) ; A Doll's 
 House (Ibsen). 
 
 THE 47 WORKSHOP OF HARVARD. Boston. 1913 to 
 
 date. G. P. Baker, Director. 
 
 Repertory of original plays: Lina Amuses Herself 
 (W. Fenimore Merrill) ; Educated (Marian F. Winnek) ; 
 Millo Make-Believe (Eleanor Hallowell Abbott Co- 
 burn) ; The Call of the Mountain (Edwin Carty 
 Ranck) ; Home Sweet Home (Violet Robinson) ; Ro- 
 mance of the Rose, pantomime (Sam Hume) ; Why the 
 Chimes Rang (Elizabeth MacFadden) ; His Womenfolk 
 (Abby Merchant) ; The Only Girl in Sight (Caroline 
 H. Budd) ; In For Himself (Mark W. Reed) ; Nothing 
 But Money (Margaret Champney) ; Court Favor (from 
 Oscar Wilde by Astrid Kimball) ; The Waves of Torre 
 (Ethel Claire Randall) ; Between the Lines (Charlotte 
 B. Chorpenning) ; The Purple Dream (Donald L. 
 Breed) ; The Rebound (Thomas P. Robinson) ; Plots and 
 Playwrights (Edward Massey) ; The Return of the 
 Prodigal (Lewis Beach) ; The Other Voice (Sydney Fair- 
 banks) ; Prudence in Particular (Rachel Barton But- 
 ler) ; The Wonder Worker (Lucy Wright) ; The Rescue 
 (Rita C. Smith); The Florist Shop (Winifred Hawk- 
 ridge) ; The Glory of Their Years ( J. R. Froome) ; 
 Will O' The Wisp (Doris F. Halman) ; The Colonel's 
 Comuppence (Catherine Clugston) ; Eyvind of the Hills 
 (Johann Sigurjonnson) ; Rusted Stock (Doris Halman). 
 
 THE LITTLE COUNTRY THEATRE. Fargo, N. Dakota. 
 
 1914 to date. A. G. Arvold, Director. 
 The repertory covers about eighty plays of all schools 
 of which the following are representative: A Bee in a 
 Drone's Hive (original play by Cecil Baker) ; Miss Civ- 
 ilization (Davis) ; Cured (H. C. Bunner) ; Engaged
 
 236 APPENDIX 
 
 (Gilbert) ; Every Ship Will Find a Harbor (original 
 play by Albert C. Heine) ; For the Cause (original play 
 by Charles G. Carlson) ; Farm Home Scene in Iceland 
 Thirty Years Ago (original, by M. Thorfmnson) ; Her 
 Husband's Wife (A. E. Thomas); 'Op-o'-Me-Thumb 
 (Fenn and Pryce) ; The Prairie Wolf (original play by 
 John Lange) ; The Raindrops (original play by E. V. 
 Briem and Matthias Thorfmnson) ; Ruth (original play 
 by Abbie L. Simmons) ; The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary 
 (Warner) ; The Servant in the House (Kennedy) ; Sam 
 Average (MacKaye) ; The Rising of the Moon, The 
 Travelling Man (Lady Gregory) ; The Swan Song 
 (Tchekhov). 
 
 CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, DRAMATIC ARTS 
 DEPARTMENT. Pittsburgh, Penn. 1914 to date. 
 Thomas Wood Stevens, Director. 
 Repertory: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much 
 Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, A Winter's Tale, 
 Richard II (Shakespeare) ; Iphigenia in Tauris, Hippo- 
 lytus (Euripides) ; Poetaster (Jonson) ; The Elder 
 Brother (Fletcher) ; Tartuffe (Moliere) ; Pillars of Soci- 
 ety (Ibsen) ; The Liars (Jones) ; You Never Can Tell 
 (Shaw) ; The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde) ; 
 Life's a Dream (Calderon) ; Henri Durot (Goodman and 
 Hecht) ; The Weevils (original play by Smith and Ben- 
 nett) ; The King's Threshold, The Land of Heart's De- 
 sire (Yeats) ; The Chaplet of Pan (Stevens and Rice) ; 
 The Second Shepherd's Play; Le medecin malgre lui 
 (Moliere) ; The Shadow of the Glen (Synge) ; The Be- 
 trayal (Colum) ; Dancing Dolls (Goodman) ; The 
 Neighbors (Gale) ; The Wonder Hat (Goodman) ; The 
 Tents of the Arabs (Dunsany) ; Glory of the Morning 
 (Leonard) ; The Dead are Dead (Brighouse) ; Holbein 
 in Blackfriars (Stevens and Goodman) ; Simoom
 
 APPENDIX 237 
 
 (Strindberg) ; Paolo and Francesca (Phillips) ; Macaire 
 (Stevenson and Henley) ; Deirdre (Yeats) ; The Newly 
 Married Couple (Bjornson) ; Atalanta in Calydon (Swin- 
 burne). 
 
 THE KANSAS CITY COMEDY CLUB. Kansas City. 1914 
 
 to date. Marcus Ford, Director. 
 
 The repertory covers 18 plays, including: Lady 
 Patricia (Besier) ; The Dear Departed (Houghton) ; 
 Overtones (Gerstenberg) ; The Game of Chess (Good- 
 man) ; The Pigeon (Galsworthy) ; The Gods of the 
 Mountain (Dunsany) ; Sacred Ground (Giacosa) ; The 
 Bear (Tchekhov) ; Hedda Gabler (Ibsen). 
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE. Duluth. 1914 to date. 
 
 Repertory: The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (Shaw) ; 
 The Twelve Pound Look (Barrie) ; The Workhouse 
 Ward (Gregory) ; The Dear Departed (Houghton); 
 How He Lied to Her Husband (Shaw); The Will 
 (Barrie) ; The Maker of Dreams (Down) ; The Lost 
 Silk Hat, The Glittering Gate (Dunsany) ; The Carrier 
 Pigeon (Phillpotts) ; The Monkey's Paw (W. W. 
 Jacobs) ; Milestones (Bennett, and Knoblauch) and 
 eighteen other plays, several original. 
 
 THE LITTLE THEATRE SOCIETY OF INDIANA. Indianap- 
 olis. 1915 to date. 
 
 Repertory: Polyxena (adapted from Hecuba of 
 Euripides by S. A. Eliot, Jr.) ; A Killing Triangle, pan- 
 tomime; The Glittering Gate (Dunsany) ; The Scheming 
 Lieutenant (Sheridan) ; A Christmas Miracle Play (from 
 The Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors by S. A. 
 Eliot, Jr.); Dad (Maxwell Parry); The Broken God 
 (Hortense Flexner) ; Overtones (Gerstenberg) ; The 
 Pretty Sabine Women (Andreyev) ; At Steinbergs ; The
 
 238 APPENDIX 
 
 Game of Chess (Kenneth Sawyer Goodman) ; How He 
 Lied to Her Husband (Shaw) ; The Dark Lady of The 
 Sonnets (Shaw) ; Dawn (Percival Wilde) ; The Kisses 
 of Marjorie (Booth Tarkington) ; Chicane (from Jack 
 London) ; The Groove (Middleton) ; Polly of Pogue's 
 Run (W. O. Bates) ; Laughing Gas (Dreiser) ; The 
 Farce of Pierre Patelin; Duty (Seumas O'Brien); The 
 Lost Silk Hat (Dunsany) ; The Maker of Dreams 
 (Down) ; The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde) ; 
 Lithuania (Brooke) ; Suppressed Desires (Glaspell) ; 
 Spreading the News, The Rising of the Moon (Lady 
 Gregory) ; Kathleen ni Houlihan (Yeats). 
 
 THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS. New York. 
 
 1915 to date. Edward Goodman, Director. 
 Repertory: Interior (Maeterlinck); Eugenically 
 Speaking (Goodman) ; Licensed (Basil Lawrence) ; An- 
 other Interior ; Love of One's Neighbor (Andreyev) ; 
 Moondown (John Reed) ; My Lady's Honor (Mur- 
 dock Pemberton) ; Two Blind Beggars and One Less 
 Blind (Moeller) ; The Shepherd in the Distance, panto- 
 mime in Black and White (Holland Hudson) ; The 
 Miracle of St. Anthony (Maeterlinck) ; In April (Rose 
 Pastor Stokes) ; Forbidden Fruit (Feuillet) ; Saviours 
 (Goodman) ; The Bear (Tchekhov) ; Helena's Husband 
 (Moeller); Fire and Water (Hervey White); The 
 Antick (MacKaye) ; A Night of Snows (Bracco) ; Liter- 
 ature (Schnitzler) ; The Honorable Lover (Bracco) ; 
 Whims (Musset) ; Overtones (Gerstenberg) ; The Clod 
 (Lewis Beach) ; The Road-house in Arden (Moeller) ; 
 The Tenor (Wedekind) ; The Red Cloak, pantomime 
 (Josephine Meyer) ; Children (Guy Bolton and Tom 
 Carlton) ; The Age of Reason (Cecil Dorrian) ; The 
 Magical City (Zoe Akins) ; Monsieur Pierre Patelin; 
 Aglavaine and Selysette (Maeterlinck) ; The Sea Gull
 
 APPENDIX 239 
 
 (Tchekhov) ; A Merry Death (Evreinov) ; Lover's Luck 
 (Porto-Riche) ; The Sugar House (Alice Brown) ; Sis- 
 ters of Susanna (Moeller) ; Bushido (Takeda Izumo, 
 translated by von Gersdorf and Hohl) ; Trifles (Glas- 
 pell) ; Another Way Out (Langner) ; Altruism (Ett- 
 linger) ; The Death of Tintagiles (Maeterlinck) ; The 
 Last Straw (Crocker) ; The Hero of Santa Maria (Good- 
 man and Hecht) ; Impudence (Auernheimer) ; Plots and 
 Playwrights (Edward Massey) ; * The Life of Man 
 (Andreyev) ; Sganarelle (Moliere) ; The Poor Fool 
 (Bahr) ; * Ghosts (Ibsen) ; Pariah (Strindberg). 
 
 THE NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYHOUSE. New York. Feb- 
 ruary 1915 to date. Alice and Irene Lewisohn, 
 Directors. 
 
 Repertory: Jephthah's Daughter; Tethered Sheep 
 (Gilbert Welsh) ; The Glittering Gate (Dunsany) ; The 
 Maker of Dreams (Down) ; The Waldies (G. S. Ham- 
 len) ; Wild Birds (Violet Pearn) ; Thanksgiving, Fes- 
 tival Dancers; Petrouchka, Festival Dancers; With the 
 Current (Sholem Asch) ; The Price of Coal (Brig- 
 house) ; The Marriage Proposal (Tchekhov) ; A Night 
 at an Inn (Dunsany) ; The Married Woman (Fernald) ; 
 Black 'Ell (Miles Malleson) ; A Sunny Morning 
 (Quintero) ; The People (Glaspell). 
 
 Outside attractions : Ethel Barrymore in The 
 Shadow; Ellen Terry; Robert Whittier in Ghosts; The 
 Irish Theatre of America; Frank Lea Short; Mrs. 
 LeMoyne; Gertrude Kingston in Captain Brassbound's 
 Conversion; The Great Catherine, The Inca of /eru- 
 salem; The Queen's Enemies; David Bispham in 
 Adelaide; Mary Lawton and Walter Hampden in Mac- 
 beth, abridged; Die Freie Yiddische Volksbiihne in The 
 
 * Full length play ; others are in one or two acts.
 
 240 APPENDIX 
 
 Fires of St. John (Sudermann) ; Three Generations 
 (Ronetti Romano) ; Joel (Perez Hirschbein) ; Sister and 
 Brother (Mark Arnstein) ; For Happiness, The Quest 
 (Stanislaw Pshitishewsky) ; An Enemy of the People 
 (Ibsen) ; The Last One (Hirschbein) ; W. W. Gibson 
 and Neighborhood Players in Womenkind and Holiday. 
 Children's plays: The Shadow of Shut-eye Town; 
 Snow White; The Gift of the Fairies; The Goose Girl 
 (dramatic version of Die Konigskinder) ; Hiawatha; The 
 Toy Box (Debussy). 
 
 THE BRAMHALL PLAYHOUSE. New ''York. 1915 to 
 
 date. Butler Davenport, Director. 
 Repertory: The Lost Co-reSpondent, The Depths of 
 Purity, Keeping Up Appearances, Tangled Lives, The 
 Importance of Coming and Going, Difference in Gods 
 (Davenport); The . Courtship of Then, Now and To- 
 morrow (Anna Wynne). S*~~ 
 
 ' . ' ' s, '' ' . 
 
 THE DETROIT LITTLE THEATRE. Detroit. 1916 to 
 
 date. Sam Hume, Director. 
 
 Repertory: The Tents of the Arabs (Dunsany); 
 The Bank Account (Howard Brock) ; The Wonder Hat 
 (Goodman) ; Sham (Frank G. Tompkins) ; Ephraim and 
 the Winged Bear (Goodman) ; The Revesby Sword Play; 
 Abraham and Isaac; The Chinese Lantern (Housman) ; 
 Helena's Husband (Moeller) ; Trifles (Glaspell) ; The 
 Glittering Gate, The Lost Silk Hat (Dunsany) ; The 
 Intruder (Maeterlinck) ; Lonesome Like (Brighouse). 
 
 THE WISCONSIN PLAYERS. Milwaukee. 1916 to date. 
 
 Laura Sherry, Director. 
 
 Repertory: A Blind Wife, The Rich Poor Man 
 (Walter Morley) ; The Man Who Married the Moon 
 (Charlotte Markham) ; Bubbles (Anna Hempstead
 
 APPENDIX 241 
 
 Branch) ; A Dead Soul (Austin Simms) ; The Feast of 
 the Holy Innocents (Marshall Illsley) ; Orange Blossom 
 (Phillips Chynoweth) ; Ambition, On the Pier (Laura 
 Sherry). 
 
 THE LITTLE PLAYHOUSE COMPANY. St. Louis. 1916 to 
 
 date. C. J. Masseck, Director. 
 
 Repertory: Joy (Galsworthy); The Florist's Shop 
 (Winifred Hawkbridge) ; Duty (Seumas O'Brien) ; 
 Good News (Fred Ballard) ; The Playboy of the West- 
 ern World (Synge) ; The Golden Apple (Gregory) ; 
 Nero's Mother (Phillips) ; An Eye for an Eye (adapted 
 from Roumanian by Oscar Leonard) ; Joint Owners in 
 Spain (Alice Brown) ; Arduin (Cale Young Rice) ; In 
 a Balcony (Browning) ; Ghosts (Ibsen) ; Don Pietro 
 Caruso (Bracco) ; Her Children (Robert Hanna) ; The 
 Stronger (Strindberg) ; Riders to the Sea (Synge) ; Mar- 
 got (Sudermann) ; Reflections (Margaret Ewing). 
 
 THE VAGABOND PLAYERS. Baltimore. 1916 to date. 
 
 Adele Gutman Nathan, Producing Director. 
 Repertory: The Artist (Mencken) ; Ryland (Stevens 
 and Goodman) ; A Merry Death (Evreinov) ; Bound 
 East for Cardiff (Eugene O'Neill); The Stronger 
 (Strindberg) ; The Miracle of St. Anthony (Maeter- 
 linck) ; Contemporaries (Wilbur Daniel Steele) ; The 
 Betrayal (Colum) ; Suppressed Desires (Cook and 
 Glaspell) ; The Double Miracle (Robert Garland) ; The 
 Maker of Dreams (Down) ; The Song of Songs ; Over- 
 ruled (Shaw) ; The Theater of the Soul (Evreinov) ; 
 Helena's Husband (Moeller). 
 
 THE PROVINCETOWN PLAYERS. New York. 1916 to 
 
 date. 
 
 Repertory: Bound East for Cardiff (Eugene 
 
 O'Neill) ; The Game (Louise Bryant) ; King Arthur's
 
 > d 
 
 242 APPENDIX 
 
 Socks (Floyd Dell) ; Freedom (John Reed) ; Enemies 
 (Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood) ; Suppressed De- 
 sires (Cook and Glaspell); The Two Sons (Boyce); 
 Lima Beans (Alfred Kreymborg) ; Before Breakfast 
 (Eugene O'Neill) ; Barbarians (Rita Weilman) ; The 
 Dollar (Pinski) ; The People (Glaspell) ; Cocaine (Pen- 
 dleton King). 
 
 THE PLAYERS' WORKSHOP. Chicago. 1916 to date. 
 
 Elizabeth Bingham, Director. 
 
 Repertory: Brown (Maxwell Bodenheim and Wil- 
 liam Saphier) ; The Home Coming, The Wonder Hat 
 (Goodman and Hecht) ; Ten Minutes (Oren Taft, Jr.) ; 
 Pierrot in the Clear of the Moon, pantomime (Gretchen 
 Riggs) ; An Idyl of the Shops (Goodman and Hecht) ; 
 A Man Can Only Do His Best, The Red Flag (Good- 
 man) ; The Hero of Santa Maria (Goodman and Hecht) ; 
 Dregs (Hecht) ; Civilization (E. Cook) ; Snow- White 
 (M. L. Marsh) ; The War Game (Alice Gerstenberg and 
 Rienzi de Cordova) ; The Magnet (Mary Corse) ; The 
 Man (Oren Taft, Jr.) ; The Pot-Boiler (Gerstenberg) ; 
 Poet's Heart (Bodenheim) ; The Children of To-morrow 
 (Maude Moore-Clement) ; How Very Shocking (Julian 
 Thompson) ; Mrs. Margaret Calhoun (Hecht and Boden- 
 heim) ; Skeletons out of the Closet (Elisha Cook) ; You 
 Can't Get Away From It (Frederick Bruegger) ; Rumor 
 (Bruegger) ; Out of the Dark (Donovan Yeuell) ; Ton- 
 sils (Marie L. Marsh) ; No Sabe (E. Cook) ; Where But 
 in America (Arthur Munro) ; Banbury Cross (Brueg- 
 ger) ; Beyond (Gerstenberg). 
 
 THE PORTMANTEAU THEATRE. New York. 1916 to 
 
 date. Stuart Walker, Director. 
 
 Repertory: The Trimplet, Six Who Pass While the 
 Lentils Boil, The Seven Gifts, pantomime, The Moon
 
 APPENDIX 243 
 
 Lady, pantomime, Nevertheless, The Lady of the Weep- 
 ing Willow Tree (from the Japanese), The Medicine- 
 Show, The Very Naked Boy, The Birthday of the In- 
 fanta, from Oscar Wilde (Stuart Walker) ; A Fan and 
 Two Candlesticks (Mary MacMillan) ; Gammer Gur- 
 ton's Needle (William Stevenson) ; Voices (Hortense 
 Flexner) ; The Crier by Night (Gordon Bottomley) ; The 
 Golden Doom, The Gods of the Mountain, King Argi- 
 menes and the Unknown Warrior (Dunsany). 
 
 THE BROOKLYN REPERTORY THEATRE. Brooklyn. 
 
 Feb., 1917, to date, 
 
 Repertory: The Makr of Dreams (Down); Poor 
 Little Girl (Anna Wahlenberg) ; The Finger of God 
 (P. Wilde) ; Zaragueta (Asa and Carrion) ; A Curious 
 Mishap (Goldoni) ; Household Gods (Violet Robinson) ; 
 The Subjection of Kezia (Mrs. Havelock Ellis) ; The 
 Rising of the Moon (Gregory) ; Candida (Shaw).
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Abraham and Isaac," 103 
 
 Academy of Music (North- 
 ampton), 41-42 
 
 Adolph Phillip Theatre 
 (N. Y.), 174 
 
 "Agamemnon," 103 
 
 Agassiz Hall (Radcliffe), 107 
 
 "Aglavaine and Selysette," 
 178 
 
 American City, 58 
 
 American Federation of Cath- 
 olic Societies, 46-47 
 
 American People's Theatre, 
 213 
 
 Ames, Winthrop, 34, 121, 
 
 I53-IS9, 173, 190 
 
 "Androcles and the Lion," 55 
 
 Anglin, Margaret, 218 
 
 Antoine, 60 
 
 Archer, Wm., 58 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 58 
 
 "Arraignment of Paris, The," 
 103 
 
 Art Institute (Chicago), 66 
 
 "Art of Playwriting, The," 
 104 
 
 Art of theater, Chapter XIII 
 
 Arthur, Helen, 164 
 
 Arts and Crafts Guild of De- 
 troit, 202-205 
 
 Arvold, A. G., 72 
 
 "As You Like It," 125 
 
 Audience, 15, 128, 219 
 
 Austin, Mrs. Mary, 121 
 
 Baker, G. P., 106-109, 164, 202 
 
 Bandbox Theatre, 76, 174-177, 
 208 
 
 Barker, Granville, 55 
 
 Barnsdall, Aline, 208 
 
 Belasco, David, 121 
 
 elmont, Mrs. Eleanor Rob- 
 son, 127 
 
 Bennett, Arnold, 54 
 
 Benrimo, 218 
 
 Benson, F. R., 191 
 
 Berlin Deutsches Theater, 35 
 
 Besier, 43 
 
 Bijou Theatre (Boston), 123 
 
 Bingham, Elizabeth, 116 
 
 Bispham, David, 168 
 
 Blair, John, 23, 35 
 
 "Blot on the 'Scutcheon, A," 
 
 65 
 
 "Blue Bird, The," 123 
 Bonstelle, Jessie, 41, 43 
 Booth, Geo. C, 202 
 Brady, W. A., 121 
 Bramhall Theatre, 78, 211- 
 
 212 
 
 Brookline Amateurs, 132 
 Brooklyn Institute, 201 
 Brooklyn Repertory Theatre, 
 
 201 
 
 Browne, Maurice, 145-150 
 Brownsville, 211 
 
 245
 
 246 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Browning, 65 
 
 Building Laws, 89 
 
 Bulletin, Playgoing Com- 
 mittee , 49 
 
 Burke, Melville, 207 
 
 Burnett, Mrs. Frances Hodg- 
 son, 122 
 
 Business-getting, 18, 218-219 
 
 Button, Wm. B., 211 
 
 "By- Products," 54 
 
 Cambridge Social Dramatic 
 
 Club, 132 
 
 "Canterbury Pilgrims," 192 
 Carmel-by-the-Sea, 213 
 Carnegie Institute of Tech- 
 nology ( Pittsburg) , 1 10- 
 
 H5 
 
 Carnegie Lyceum (N. Y.); 
 1 20 
 
 Castle Square Theatre (Bos- 
 ton), 38, 152 
 
 Century Theatre (N. Y.), 
 122 
 
 Chicago, 29-35, 61, 67, 116, 
 120 
 
 Chicago Theatre Society, 32, 
 34-35, S3. 64 
 
 Child-labor and the theatre, 
 
 *> 
 
 Children's Educational Thea- 
 tre, 125-126 
 
 Children's Playhouse (Co- 
 lumbus, Ohio), 121 
 
 Children's theatre, Chapter 
 VIII 
 
 Children's Theatre (N. Y.), 
 
 I2O-I22, l6o 
 
 Christadora House (N. Y.), 
 
 160, 195 
 Cincinnati, 209 
 Clement, Mrs. Josephine, 123 
 
 Cleveland Little Theatre, 210 
 Clinton, Hall (N. Y.), 164 
 Coburn, Mr. and Mrs. C. D., 
 
 191-194, 217 
 College performances, 103- 
 
 110 
 Colonial Theatre (Pittsfield), 
 
 38 
 
 Columbia University, 211 
 Comedy Theatre (N. Y.), 
 
 177-178 
 
 "Coming of Peace, The," 65 
 "Comus," 66 
 
 Copley Square Theatre, 139 
 Crafton, Jesse, 210 
 Craig, Gordon, 55, 147-148 
 Cranbrook Masque, 202 
 
 Daly, Arnold, 23, 218 
 
 Davenport, Butler, 211-212 
 
 Davis, Michael M., 58 
 
 Dickens, 120 
 
 "Don!" 43 
 
 Drama League of America, 
 46-47, 50-51, 68-70, 120, 198 
 
 Drama League of Duluth, 210 
 
 Drama Players (Chicago), 
 32, 64, 67 
 
 Drama Society of New York, 
 50 
 
 Dramatic Club Henry St. 
 Settlement, 164 
 
 Dramatic Museum (Colum- 
 bia), 104 
 
 Duluth, 210 
 
 Dunsany, I, 37, 167, 173, 197 
 
 Dymow, Ossip, 208 
 
 East and West Players, 168, 
 
 211 
 East Orange, 211
 
 INDEX 
 
 247 
 
 Easton, Mrs. D. E. F., 120 
 Economics of theatre, 15-21, 
 
 221 
 
 Educational Alliance of New 
 York City, 125, 160 
 
 Educational Dramatic League 
 (N. Y.), 125, 126-127 
 
 Educational Theatre for 
 Schools, 63 
 
 "Electra," 193 
 
 "Elga," 36 
 
 Elser, 196 
 
 English stock company, 35 
 
 Erie, 211 
 
 Euripides, 193, 195 
 
 Evanston, 111., 46 
 
 "Everyman," 191, 208 
 
 Exhibition of Arts of Thea- 
 tre, 55 
 
 "Exploitation of Pleasure, a 
 Study of Commercial Rec- 
 reations in New York 
 City," 58 
 
 Fargo (N. D.), 72 
 
 Faversham, 218 
 
 Fine Arts Theatre (Chicago), 
 35, 65 
 
 Fiske, Mrs., 23, 218 
 
 Footlights Club of Jamaica 
 Plains, 132 
 
 Ford, Marcus, 209 
 
 Forest Theatre (Carmel-by- 
 the-Sea), 213 
 
 47 Workshop, 106-109 
 
 "Free" theatre, 61 
 
 Freie Btihne, German, 60 
 
 "Friar Bacon and Friar Bun- 
 gay," 103 
 
 Frohman, Chas., 79 
 
 Fry, Emma Sheridan, 125, 
 126 
 
 Gale, Mrs. Lyman W., 132- 
 
 135, 139 
 
 Galesburg, 111., 210 
 Garrick Theatre (Chicago), 
 
 65 
 
 German Stock Co., 143 
 Germany, "free" theatres in, 
 
 61-62 
 "Get-Rich-Quick Walling'- 
 
 ford," 37 
 "Ghosts," 36, 178 
 "Glittering Gate, The," 173 
 "Gods of the Mountain, The," 
 
 i 
 
 "Good Little Devil, A," 121 
 Goodman, Edward, 182, 183- 
 
 184 
 
 Grand Forks, 72 
 "Granny Maumee," 54 
 Greenwich Village Theatre, 
 
 213 
 
 Greet, Ben, 190-191 
 Griswold, Grace, 116 
 
 Hapgood, Mrs. Emilie, 54, 55 
 Harrison, Bertram, 41 
 Harvard, 105-109 
 Hauptmann, 23, 65 
 Hennequin, Prof., 104 
 Henry Street Settlement, 
 
 160-164 
 
 Herne, James A., 30 
 Herts, A. Minnie, 125 
 Hertz-Heniger, Mrs. A. M., 
 
 121, 125 
 
 "Honeymoon, The," 54 
 Hopkins, Arthur, 218 
 Hopp, Julius, 62-63 
 Horniman Company, 60 
 Horniman, Miss, 35, 141 
 House of Play (Wash.), 120 
 Hull House Settlement, 61
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hull House Theatre, 65 
 Hume, Sam, 55, 202-205 
 
 Ibsen, 23, 35, 65 
 
 "Ingomar," 125 
 
 "Iphigenia in Taurus," 103 
 
 Irish Players, 35, 60, 133 
 
 Irish Theatre, 60, 213 
 
 Irish Theatre (Chicago), 35 
 
 Irving Place Theatre (N. Y.), 
 
 36 
 "It Pays to Advertise," 37 
 
 Janney, 196 
 
 Jay, Mrs. Harriet, 140 
 
 Jerome, Jerome K., 175 
 
 "Jew of Malta, The," 103 
 
 Jewett, Henry, 139 
 
 John Herron Art Institute, 
 
 207 
 
 Jones, H. A., 58 
 Jones, R. E., 55, 217 
 
 Kammerspiele (Berlin), 77 
 Kansas City Comedy Club, 
 
 208 
 
 Kingston, Gertrude, 168 
 Kingsway Theatres (Lon- 
 don), 77 
 "Knight of the Burning Pes 
 
 tie, The," 103 
 Koch, F. H., 72 
 
 Law and the theatre, Chapter 
 VI 
 
 Lemaitre, Jules, 175 
 
 Le Moyne, Mrs. Sarah Co- 
 well, 164 
 
 Lewisohn, Alice, 164 
 
 Lewisohn, Irene, 164 
 
 License fees, 19, 91-92 
 
 Lime Street House (Bos- 
 ton), 135 
 
 Little Country Theatre of 
 North Dakota Agricultural 
 College, 72 
 
 Little Playhouse (Cincin- 
 nati), 209 
 
 Little Playhouse Theatre (St. 
 Louis), 206-207 
 
 Little theatre, Chapter V, 
 Chapter XII, 216, 220, 224 
 
 Little Theatre (Chicago), 34, 
 
 77, 145-150 
 
 Little Theatre (London), 77 
 Little Theatre (Los Ange- 
 les), 208 
 Little Theatre (N. Y.), 76, 
 
 78, 121, 153-159 
 
 Little Theatre (Phila.), 140- 
 
 145' 
 
 Little Theatre Players (Den- 
 ver), 209 
 
 Little Theatre Players (Roch- 
 ester), 211 
 
 Little Theatre Society of In- 
 diana, 207 
 
 "Little Women," 121 
 
 London Independent Theatre, 
 60 
 
 London Stage Society, 53 
 
 Lord, Katharine, 121 
 
 Los Angeles, 120, 208, 209 
 
 Lyceum Bureaus, 198 
 
 Lyman, Edw. H. R., 41 
 
 MacDowell Club of New 
 
 York City, 46 
 MacKaye, Percy, 192 
 Madison (Wis.), 71 
 Maeterlinck, 37 
 "Man Who Married a Dumb 
 
 Wife, The," 55
 
 INDEX 
 
 249 
 
 Manchester (England), 60, 
 
 140 
 
 Mapes, Victor, 29 
 "Margaret Fleming," 30 
 "Marriage of Wit and Sci- 
 ence, The," 103 
 Masefield, 54 
 Masseck, Clinton J., 207 
 McCallum, George, 210 
 Metropolitan Dramatic 
 
 School, 140 
 "Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
 A," 55 
 Milton, 66 
 Milwaukee, 71, 116 
 "Miser, The," 65 
 Modern Stage, 35, 36, 63 
 Moliere, 65 
 Morgan, Agnes, 164 
 Morningside Players, 211 
 Municipal theatre (North- 
 ampton), 40-42 
 Murray, Gilbert, 193 
 Music Hall (Chicago), 65 
 
 Nashville, 211 
 
 National Federation of The 
 
 atre Clubs, 56 
 ""/Neighborhood Playhouse 
 
 (N. Y.), 123, 160-171, 204 
 
 217 
 
 New England, 38-43 
 New Theatre (Chicago), 29 
 
 34, 53 
 v-New Theatre (N. Y.), 26-28, 
 
 52, 53, 122, 153, 154 
 New York, 35-36, 47, 51, 53 
 
 62, 116, Chapter X 
 New York City Federation 
 
 of Women's Clubs, 56 
 New York Play Actors, 174 
 
 Nine O'Clock Theatre 
 
 (N. Y.), 211 
 "Nju," 208 
 North Dakota Agricultural 
 
 College, 72 
 Northampton, Mass., 40-43, 
 
 2IO 
 
 Northampton Theatre, 38 
 
 "CEdipus Tyrannus," 103 
 Old and new theatre, Chapter 
 
 I 
 
 "Old Wives' Tale," 103 
 O'Neill, Eugene, 210 
 Ordynski, Richard, 208 
 
 Pabst Theatre (Milwaukee), 
 
 36 
 
 Pailleron, 65 
 "Pariah," 173 
 Parke, Wm., 38-39 
 Patrick, Mrs. F. A., 210 
 Patterson, J. M., 54 
 Payne, B. Iden, 35, 114, 143, 
 
 217 
 
 Peele, 103 
 
 Pelham, Laura Dainty, 61 
 People's Institute, 127 
 People's Theatre (N. Y.), 36, 
 
 52 
 
 "Peter Pan." 123 
 Philadelphia, 73-74, 140 
 Pittsburg, 211 
 
 Pittsfield Theatre, 38-39, 42 
 Platt, Livingston, 136 
 Plautus, 104 
 Players (Providence, R. I.), 
 
 209 
 Players of Newton (Mass.), 
 
 132 
 
 Players' Workshop (Chi- 
 cago), 116
 
 INDEX 
 
 Playhouse (Milwaukee), 209 
 Playhouse, The (Chicago), 
 
 65 
 Plays and Players Club 
 
 (Phila.), 73-74 
 Poel, Wm., 114 
 "Poor Little Thing," 175 
 Portland (Ore.), 211 
 Portland Stock Company, 38 
 Portmanteau theatre (N. Y.), 
 
 160 
 Prairie Playhouse (Galesburg, 
 
 111.), 210 
 Princess Theatre (N. Y.), 76, 
 
 78, 173 
 Production, cost of, 19 
 
 difficulties of, 20 
 Progressive Stage Society, 62, 
 
 63 
 ^'rovincetown Players, 55, 206 
 
 Public Recreation Commis- 
 sion (Columbus, Ohio), 121 
 
 Punch and Judy Theatre 
 (N. Y.), 76, 78, 175 
 
 "Rackety- Packety House," 122 
 Radcliffe, 107 
 
 "Ralph Roister Doister," 103 
 Rand School of Social Sci- 
 ence, 173 
 Ravinia Park, 66 
 Ravinia Theatre (Chicago), 
 
 65 
 Recreation League of San 
 
 Francisco, 120 
 Reicher, Emanuel, 35-36, 63 
 Reicher, Frank, 143 
 Reinhardt, Max, 55 
 Rent, 17 
 
 Richmond Hill, 211 
 Robertson, Donald, 30-34, 
 
 63-67, 74, "4 
 
 Rosenfeld, Sydney, 56 
 "Rosmersholm," 36, 65 
 Rostand, Mme. Edmond, 121 
 Royalty, 18 
 Russell, Annie, 143 
 
 Sage Foundation, 59 
 
 St. Louis Society for Promo- 
 tion of Drama, 207 
 
 Salaries, 18 
 
 Salt Lake City, 211 
 
 San Francisco, 120 
 
 "Sea Gull, The," 178 
 
 School of Drama, Carnegie 
 Institute of Technology 
 (Pittsburg), 110-115 
 
 Schuster-Martin, Mrs. Helen, 
 209 
 
 Shaw, G. B., 23, 143 
 
 Shaw, Mary, 23, 35, 218 
 
 Shaw, Robert Gould, Theatre 
 Collection (Harvard), 104 
 
 Shelton, F. H., 140 
 
 Sherry, Laura, 116 
 
 Shirley, 103 
 
 Small cities, theatre in, 36-43 
 
 "Snow White," 121, 125 
 
 Stage Society, The N. Y., 53- 
 
 55 
 
 Stamford, 212 
 Stevens, T. W., no, 113 
 Stewart, Mrs. J. A., 210 
 Strindberg, 173 
 Sturgis, Granville F., 209 
 Stuyvesant Fish House 
 
 (N. Y.), 126 
 Subsidizing theatre, Chapter 
 
 II 
 
 Sunday performance, 92-95 
 Support of theatre, 15-21 
 Survey, The, 58 
 Sylvan Theatre (Wash.), 213
 
 INDEX 
 
 Talma Club (Providence), 
 
 132, 209 
 
 "Tempest, The," 125 
 Terence, 104 
 Theatre Frangais d'Amer- 
 
 iqu.e, 143 
 
 Theatre des Arts (Paris), 77 
 Theatre of Arts and Letters, 
 
 59 
 
 Theatre League, 63 
 
 Torrence Ridgely, 54 
 
 Toy Theatre (Boston), 77, 
 
 133-139 
 
 "Tragedy of Nan, The," 54 
 "Triumph of Youth, The," 
 
 65 
 
 Twain, Mark, 126 
 "Two Noble Kinsmen, The," 
 
 103 
 Tyler, Geo. C, 121-122 
 
 University of N. D., 72 
 University of Pa., 104 
 University Theatre Associa- 
 tion, 192, 198 
 
 Unproduced American play- 
 wright, 52-53 
 
 Vagabond Players (Balti- 
 more), 77, 206 
 Vanderbilt, W. K., 122 
 
 Van Volkenburg, Ellen, 145 
 Volkstheater, 35 
 
 Wage Earners' Theatre, The, 
 
 36, 63 
 
 Walker, Stuart, 123, 194-198 
 Wallack Theatre (N. Y.), 55 
 Washington, 213 
 Washington Centre of Drama 
 
 League, 120 
 *J$ashington Square Players, 
 
 78, 143, 171-185, 204, 217, 
 
 219 
 
 "Weavers, The," 36 
 Weston (Mass.), 132 
 "When the Young Vine 
 
 Blooms," 36 
 Wisconsin, 70-71, 116 
 Wisconsin Dramatic Society, 
 
 70-71 
 
 Wisconsin Players, 116, 209 
 Wolfe, Mrs. Georgia, 120 
 Woman's National Theatre, 
 
 213 
 Workshops, theatre : 
 
 Chicago, 116 
 
 47 (Harvard), 106-109 
 
 New York, 116-117 
 
 Wisconsin, 116 
 
 Yale, 104 
 Yeats, 60 
 Yiddish plays, 211
 
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