The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-16
The World of
the Theatre
BY HAROLD EDGAR
NEW LIFE

After cloying series of sweet plays.
this department turns with sense of
refreshment ito the copy of New
Theatre" organ Of the Workers The
atre of the U.SA., just issued, and
to the Program of the Theatre of
Action" just received from the Work
ers' Laboratory Theatre.
The literature of the Workers The
atre in this country has the oppor-
tunity at the present moment of max
ing really original and valuable con-
tributions to our general literature of
the theatre. Writing about the the
atre on Broadway is almost exclus-
lively limited to the hit-and-run re-
views of the journalistic chain-gang.
The reviewers, honest enough fellows
for the most part, are familiar with
all the minute gossip of show-busi-
ness, but are woefully lacking in the
most elementary information about
the real theatre. The CRITICS of the
liberal weeklies write more expanS-
lively and are somewhat more "sensi-
tive" but they remain strictly within
the confines of Bachelor of Arts
conception of the theatre. And such
a monthly as Theatre Arts, though
it has performed a valuable function
in it's time, is SO anxious to please
everybody, to avoid polemics, and to
escape the dogmatic that it lacks all
substantial character.
The Workers Theatre publications
are not bound by the many fears of
the bourgeois press and therefore they
are in position to strike out boldly
and make new discoveries for them
selves An analysis of acting on the
Broadway stage from the revolution
airy point of view, for example, though
difficult thing to do, might prove
extremely illuminating; study of
the work of men like Robert Edmond
Jones or Lee Simonson, not in the
Sugar-water style in which most ar
ticles on such subjects are written, but
done with trenchant MARKHAM OBJ
jectivity, would be genuinely instruc-
tive; articles on the Stanislavsky sys-
tenn of acting, on the relation of the
atre organization to theatre art, on
the technique of Soviet playwriting,
on the history of the proletarian ele-
ments in American dramaturgy, on
revolutionary dramatists through the
ages-all of these subjects and many
more would provide excellent mate
rial for renewed investigation.
The first issue of New Theatre"
formerly known as Workers The
atre'D begins promisingly with an
sWers to QUESTIONABLE on the pros
poets for the American theatre by
various well-known theatre people
and writer's, including Sidney How
ard, Barrett H. Clark, Michael Gold,
Albert Maltz, Paul Peters. The ques-
tons themselves tend to oversimpli-
fication in the answer-yes-or-no ira
dition, and the replies suffer as a
result. Nevertheless, the idea of such
QUESTIONABLE is good one, and
when all the answers have been pub
lished we shall have an interesting
document to examine. Mordecai
Gorelik's article on scenery is also very
much in the right direction. Gorelik is
one of the most important scene de-
signers in the American theatre and
his writing is strongest where it re-
ferS to actual matters of craft. The
more Workmanlike it becomes the
more useful it is.
In general, however, New Theatre"
gives evidence of one serious error,
an error shared by many who enter
the field of revolutionary culture. On
the one hand it proves the need for
a workers theatre and the inevita-
bility of it's rise by pointing to the
collapse of the bourgeois theatre; on
the other hand it stands somewhat
in awe Of bourgeois technique. What
is wrong with this Is that it unwit-
eingly robS the workers theatre move
ment of its own organic and indie
pendent basis. The revolutionary the
atre must develop not because the
bourgeois theatre is at its last gasp
the present season thus far has been
exceedingly prosperous on Broad
Way-but because it alone has the
seeds of life in it, it alone is signifi-
cant for the future, it alone proceeds
from the creative soil of reality with
the aim of reacting on life. enrich
ing it, changing it. Actors, play
Wrights, scene designers must come
to the revolutionary theatre not be-
cause they will go hungry on Broad
way-with the least sign of "recov-
cry" such as the number of hits now
running, this argument loses some
of its validity-but because the whole
set-up of the Broadway theatre leads
inevitably to artistic sterility and
death.
More important still, the proletariat
creates it's own needs, It's ow, Hfo
orce, its own detectives which the
bourgeois theatre, even if its !, TX
were better, could not satisfy. Finally,
the Broadway theatre, like many Of
society, is a fully grown fruit which
gives very little nour.shmano
its bourgeois audience, or, to put it
more accurately, the Amer.c0:1 49,
atre is weak even from any sound
standards of bourgeois art. That is
why, though certain things can be
! learnt from tit has it's talented
| craftsmen-its technique should not
be taken as final in any sense The
| Moscow Art Theatre before the rev.
olution was bourgeois theatre, so
were the theatres of Meyerhold, Tai
ROY and others, but many of our suc-
cessful theatres reveal a stagecraft
that, aside from sheer mechanics, is
childish from any legitimate artistic
standards. Much of the direction of
O'NeilPs "Ah Wilderness, for ex-
ample, is amateurish, and there is
hardly a moment Of genuine acting
from one end of Sailor, Beware" to
another.
This means then that the workers,