New Britain herald., 1918-11-22
ACTORS HAVE LONG
 TRIPS IN FRANCE
Those on Hut Circuit Experience
 No Little Difficulties

Pittsburgh, Pa, Nov. 22.-The 'shut l circuit of theatrical performances in 1 the American army in France is per haps the longest and largest in the world. Thomas Wood Stevens, head of the Department of Dramatic Arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technolo- gy, who has just returned from France where he was associated in the production Of soldier talent shows, estimates that a single company play ing every right to different soldiers, would require eleven years to go through the American army in France.
 '"The general scheme of diversion for our men in France" said MT. Stevens tis in three general divisions. There Is the Over There Theater League, represented in New York by Gearge M. Cohan Winthrop Ames and James Forbes; the French concert companies managed by Walter John son, and the Soldier Talent Shows,
 under the direction of Joseph Linden
 Smith. MT. Stevens went to France
 primarily to help MT. Smith with the
 Soldier Talent Shows. Together they
 selected 25 lcal directors for these
 performances with the various Young
 Men s Nnf1SIlan ASSOCldtlOn ulVlSlOIetl
 headauarters. Now F. c. Cater, chief secretary of the Y. M. c. A. in France
 has asked for more directors, and the
 Carnegie Institute has announced that
 as soon as the influenza quarantine
 is lifted it will begin to train 25 addi-
 tional men and women Y. M. c. A.
 workers for this work. l. Difficulty of transporting properties
 and costumes Is one of the hardest
 problems in improvising shows for the soldiers, according to MT. Stevens. They had to be carried in small valises instead of draws, piled high with trunks and the directors had to make their shows fit on the small stages of the "Y' huts instead of the big 1 theater stages.
 "One of my jobs has been to dis l cover or write plays for use where no costumes or props, even citizens 1 clothes can be had; that Is to say sol l dier plays, not war plays" said MT. 1 Stevens. My first effort in this direc- l tion, called Three Wishes has been 1 given in a dozen camps at present but | we want other plays just as we need ] many more directors. The twenty i five we have at work are far too few. One of the main performances given Tor the Am er1can SOld1erS was that or
 a festival play presenting the main 1 features of the life of Joan of Arc,"
 written by MT. Stevens. Tt was pre- scented at Domremy, the home of Joan three days after the great American l drive on the St. Mihiel salient and dur { ing it's performance Liberty m otors on ] the way to the front were purring over the heads of the audience. Miss
 Marie Young played the part of Joan, 1 but the performance as a whole did 1 not depend upon the professional ac-
 tors but upon numerous soldier play 1 CTS who had been rehearsed for three l weeks. Twenty-Five hundred soldiers | attended the performance, although none of them are stationed at l Domremy.
 The American front was for many
 months in the section of French Lor- ! raine associated with loans career
 and it is said that more than 5O,OOO
 American soldiers have made pilgri-
 images to the house where she was | born.