The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-01-11
Notable Articles
In Soviet Issue
Of New Theatre
NEW THEATER, January, Special
Soviet Issue; Organ of the League
of Workers Theatres. Film and
Photo League and Workers Dance
League. 10 cents.
EDWARD DAHLBERG

Reviewed by
EDWARD DAHLBERG
NEW THEATER MAG AZINE,
~ edited by Herbert Kline and Leo
T. Hurwitz and others, has today
$4,000 readers; a year ago it had
an audience of $500. The editors
are celebrating the first anniversary
with a special Soviet issue compiled
in Moscow by Jay Leyda and Pearl
Attasheva.
The first article, Yesterday, by
Anatoli Glebov, Soviet poet and
dramatist, is a slender but poignant
picture of the workers theater Of
Old Russia. The workers, living in
! scrawny consumptive districts very
much like the pellagra- ridden COM
pany towns in West Virginia, longed
for club house, a home made the
ater, g tree, something green, a
park. But in this down at-the
industrial alley, which Glebov de-
scribes, there was nothing. The
clubhouses of that time, which were
also the theaters, were under
the patronage of the Peoples Tenn
perance Society, and were breeding
grounds for hooliganism and drunk
enness.
Glebov presents a documented
letter written by seventy-five work
/ M, y11OuaJ ~, ciIl- NHaVa,,foa
turing Company OF that semi-feudal
period. This workers statement has
the same uneasy and disturbing eff
feet upon the reader as some of the
passages out of Dostoievsky's Poor
People or Gorki's early short stories.
1--WE in our district" they wrote,
lack everything. There isn't even
place to spend the few days and
evenings that we don't work. To
sit whole day in the bedroom is
both tiresome and boring, and to
stay outside, in front of the house
is strictly forbidden. AS a result,
unwillingly people go to the saloons
and wine cellars. There you have
everything: wine, beer, harmonica
players, acrobats, prostitutes and
even places for sexual relations. In
our district there isn't even single
park.
In Soviet Theater Today, Helm
rich Diament, editor of Information
al Theatre, writes g.. the U. S.
S. R. has $50 professional theaters
and 1857 workers theatersp
THE two most exciting articles in
the entire magazine are, The
State Jewish Theater, by Leon
Moussinac and MeyerhOld's New
Theater, by H. w. L. Dana. The
Jewish theater, modelled upon the
geometric canvases of Marc Cha
gall, the painter, reveal profound
ly imagined stage of scenic pig
ments and highly styled symbol
isms which make the mechanical
contrivances of the Broadway the
alter, with it's simplified photo
graphic gesture, seem puerile. Only
Artef, in its remarkably beautiful
production, Recruits, has shown
such audacity.
In the Soviet Union realism has
not been copyrighted; there is no
single grooved approach to objects;
a table or wall may be imagined
or perceived in thousand different
ways. Meyerhold, for instance does
not believe in Photographic repre-
sentation, but bases his theater
aesthetic upon Pavlov's condition
alism' Dana, explaining Meyerholds
way of seeing, writes: " 1t is not
necessary to have the stimulus of
the actual objects. 1t is sufficient
to have the stimulus of conditions
associated with them which pro-
duce the emotions through the
power of suggestion
What is particularly heartening is
that these Soviet articles are shot
through with the problems of the
individual the concrete living man
as opposed to the truncated, jour-
nalese protagonist.
"Eisenstein even declares" writes
Marie Seton in A New Generation,
today that typeage is passed" and
adds, quoting Marx: "All emanci-
patton leads back to the human
world, to relationships, to men
themselves" Articles by Eisenstein
on the cinema, and Chen Ivan on
the dance, emphasize this approach.
ALEXANDERS appraisal of Mel
n vim Levy's Gold Eagle Guy, al
though correct, is not specific
enough, and is too much of for
mutation. He devotes almost as
much time and paper to the Ibis
toric functions" of the playwright
and his interpretations become
asides instead of arising out of the
context of the authors materials
and intentions. However, as OPP
posed to stencilled reviewing, one
should not fail to mention Ben
Blakes From Agitprop to Realism,
which gives precise and thought
full approach to the repertory of the
w. L. T.
New Theater is an incontestable
proof that mass audience can be
had for a cultural magazine; the
stage, the novel, the poem has been
too little considered as a political
weapon; This vital revolutionary