Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1924-05-17
DRAMATIST AND THE THEATRE.


She is white.
DRAMATIST AND THE THEATRE.
What is the theatre for if not to
show mans struggle, whether he IS
black, green, orange or white, TO COZ,
quer life; his effort to give it meaning!
Doesn't that struggle, that endless ef-
fort to conquer life, show that man
loves life? 1t may conquer MIN. hut IL
never beats him, else he would have
stopped struggling 10000 years ago
And the function of tn 1ramai,st
as O'Neill sees it is to use all the faclli
ties of the theatre to make his Poetry
visual.
"The dramatist does not present life
but interprets it within the limitations
of his vision" he said. Elise he's no
better than camera, plus a d1cto-
graph. The dramatist works just as
Beethoven did, employing every sound
in existence, molding tones, giving
them color, new meaning, thus Great
ing music Well, whan dramatist in
terprets the world, and thus creates
his own world, he uses the human soul,
all life if you like, as keyboard He is
the creator of this world and like all
creators absolute boss. If he isn't a
sound creative architect his structure
crumbleS."
''You don't believe in naturalization
then, do you?"
"Naturalism is too easy" said
O'Neill. ut would, for instance, be =
perfect cinch to go on writing Anna
Christies' all my life. I could always
be sure of the rent then"
WAS it very successful?' / asked.
well, it ran for more than season
in New York, a year on the road and
for more than hundred performance
es in London. 1t is enormously success
full as a moving picture. 1t goes all
over in stock. But / don't choose TO
write naturalistic Anna Christies' all
my life. consider it the least worthy
of my plays with one possible exception
though, / think the last act, which
was so criticized as conventional, was
the most courageous and original act
of the play. However, the point l wish
to make is that I'm not writing any
more Anna Christies' because the pure
" naturalistic play doesn't interest me
any more, never did interest me
much"
"Why?"
Because you can say practically
nothing at all of our lives sincee 1914
through that form. The naturalistic
play is really less natural than a rom
antic or an expressionistic play. That
is, showing a lot of human beings on a
st"ge and letting them say the indenti-
cal things in theatre they would say
in drawing room or a saloon, does
not necessarily make for naturalness.
It's what those men and women do
not say that usually is most interest
ing.
"Then I don't think it is the aim of
the dramatfst to be true to life but
to be true to himself, to his vision,
which may be of life treated as fairy
tale or as dream. Conceive of life
as huge mass of clay and the dramat
list scooping up some of it, creating Ger
tain forms with his imagination and
art, and then calling in his fellows and
saying to them, Here you are as god
like beings
1T is rather difficult to do that
through the naturalistic form The prin
cipal reason why my Welded was
misunderstood by some was that I err.
ed when I conceived the dial que
against a naturalistic setting. My mo-
ton was to have a man and woman
lovers and married enact their spirit
ual struggle to possess one the other. 1
wanted to give the impression of the
world shut out, just Of two human be-
ings struggling to break through
an inner darkness.
But the sets which I described in
my stage directions were so natural
that they inevitably conjured up ell
the unimportant paraphernalia of liv-
ing. daily existence. to stand between
the life of my characters and the lives
in the audience"
New York Times. May III