The art theatre; a discussion of its ideals, its organization and its promise as a corrective for present evils in the commercial theatre

Front matter

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Preface

This book has grown out of an unusual combination of circumstances. The first impulse toward its writing came when I was interested, more than a year ago, in a project (lately deceased) for an art theatre in Berkeley. The problems arising then sent me searching through a mass of fugitive material. One result was a determination to prepare "a model plan for an art theatre in a small American city." In the light of later experience I am duly thankful that I did not complete the plan with my then purely theoretical knowledge.

Instead I went to Detroit, where I saw from the inside the inauguration of activities at the Arts and Crafts Theatre, and had to do, in a subordinate capacity, with all but one of the subsequent productions. Last winter, as partial preparation for editing the newly founded Theatre Arts Magazine, I visited most of the progressive producing groups and little theatres of the East and Middle West, thus finding opportunity

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for comparison and study of practically all the important manifestations of the new dramatic spirit in this country.

In spite of the indefiniteness of aim in such theatres, and the patent instability of their organization, I became convinced that in their activities lay the only real promise of a better dramatic art in this country. Because their roots were in native soil, I felt that here were beginnings of true community theatres — which collectively would be our ultimate national theatre. And because they were in the hands of artists, who, if immature and unsteady, were still sincere and forward-looking, these playhouses seemed clearly the forerunners of an American art theatre.

Their greatest fault was to be found in confusion of ideals and lack of organization and defined purpose. Each group was working blindly, without profiting by the mistakes of others, and without a definite basis for understanding the movement in its broader aspects. My first hope in this book is that it may provide accurate data about the most successful little theatres and art theatres; and that in its reconsideration of the ideals and aims of the movement, it may bring artists to a clearer conception of their creative duty — and perhaps inspire some with new enthusiasm and determination. Inci- 6

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dentally I wish the volume to provide an account and analysis of the achievement of the Arts and Crafts Theatre in Detroit during its first season — an achievement important enough in the history of the insurgent movement to warrant a permanent record.

My point of view differs from that of some other writers about little theatres, in that I consider them important only as steps toward something better. In all the excitement about little theatres we are in danger of losing sight of the higher ideal — the art theatre. I have tried to keep that ultimate ideal constantly in mind.

I am aware that my arraignment of the business theatre is too sweeping to be universally just. I know that there are exceptions to the rule of cut-throat business methods and art-blindness in the commercial theatre — that there are still actors who retain a dignified conception of their profession, and artists who have not prostituted their talents to commerce. But continued association with the theatre only strengthens my conviction that the arraignment is substantially true and just.

While this book is much more the result of independent thought and experience than was an earlier one, in which I tried to sum up modern tendencies in the theatre, I am still indebted to the writings of Huntly Carter, Gordon Craig and

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H. K. Moderwell. I owe thanks also to Maurice Browne, Sam Hume and other theatre artists with whom I have talked over art theatre problems personally. Mr. Eric T. Clarke has put me under obligation for many suggestions in connection with the chapter on Organization and Management; and to William F. Gable I express cordial thanks for personal encouragement and inspiration.

Small portions of the material here presented have appeared in the pages of Theatre Arts Magazine; but the book is substantially new — written almost entirely during the summer of 1917.

S. C.

Contents

Preface 5

Chapter I Present Conditions in the American Theatre 13

Inside and outside the commercial theatre — The business theatre and profits — The immature little theatre movement — First steps toward an art theatre — How the American theatre became commercialized — Effects upon playwriting, acting and stagecraft — Need for a new theatre — The great problem: How to professionalize the insurgent groups while preserving the amateur spirit

Chapter II The Coming of the Art Theatre 32

The American problem in the light of Europe's theatres of thirty years ago — The Theatre Libre movement — Its service in ridding the theatre of artificiality and traditional stupidity — Its shortcomings — Beginnings of the art theatre movement — Gordon Craig — Adolphe Appia — The Moscow Art Theatre — Its lessons for American progressives — The Munich Art Theatre — Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater — The Abbey Theatre — Effects of the art theatre movement on the European theatrical situation — Why America has no professional art theatre — The New Theatre failure — America's first steps toward the art theatre type

Chapter III Ideals of the Art Theatre 56

The distinguishing mark of art theatre production — Its "art value" — The synthetic ideal — Appia's "inner unity" — Craig's synthesis of movement, light, colour and sound — Stylization — Undiscovered arts of the theatre — The experimental ideal — The ideal of sound management — The ideal of intimacy — Its mistaken aspects — America's progress toward art theatre ideals

Chapter IV The Artist-Director 74

Enlightened artist-directors our first need — Craig's ideal artist of the theatre — Huntly Carter's ideal of group-direction — The practical figure — The artist-director a modern creation — The

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German regisseur — Sam Hume as an American example — His qualifications and ideals as typical of the artist- director — Maurice Browne as example — His methods and ideals

Chapter V The Question of Acting and Actors 96

Low state of American acting — Beauty of speech — Rhythm of movement — Group action and pictorial composition — How art theatre acting may differ from commercial acting — The discredited star system — The curse of personality — Must we import actors for our art theatres ? — The little theatres and amateur acting — Advantages in use of amateurs — Disadvantages — Professionalizing amateurs — The amateurs of Moscow and Dublin — The actor's estate under the art theatre

Chapter VI The Question of Plays 124

The art theatre play and the journalistic drama of the commercial theatre — The "advanced" ideal vs. "pleasing the public"

— Sam Hume's theory of meeting the public half-way — Analysis of plays at the Arts and Crafts Theatre — Maurice Browne and the no-compromise attitude — Relation between Chicago Little Theatre's plays and its financial troubles — Catholic choice of plays necessary — The classics — Poetic and realistic — Native and foreign — Encouraging native writers — The repertory system

Chapter VII The Question of Stage Settings 144

Stage decoration and the synthetic ideal — Evils of the old stagecraft — Belasco and the naturalistic revolt — The artists' revolt — The improved pictorial setting — The plastic setting — The decorative setting — Stylization — Symbolistic settings — Light and color — Unifying devices — Gordon Craig's screens

— Sam Hume's adaptable setting

Chapter VIII The Question of Audiences and the Community 175

Necessary relation between theatre and community — Organizing audiences without supplying theatres — Where the Drama League fails — Defining a community theatre — Potential audiences in American cities — Advantages of the subscription system

— The Free Folk Stage of Berlin — Extension work through the schools — Theatres as social centres — The Ypsilanti Players — The Prairie Playhouse — Settlement playhouses — The Neighborhood Playhouse and the New York situation

Chapter IX Organization and Management 188

Lack of business efficiency in little theatres — Value of sound management — The three-fold system of organization — The con-

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trolling group — Questions of ownership — The artist-director — The business manager — His duties — System in handling money and book-keeping — Budget-making — Income and expenditures during an average little theatre season — Advertising — The venal press as a factor in the degradation of the theatre — Endowment

Chapter X Buildings and Equipment 217

The synthetic ideal and theatre architecture — The architecture of the show business — First steps toward the ideal building — Design and decoration — Stage equipment — Size — The ideal playhouse of the future

Chapter XI Unrealized Ideals 228

S lightness of the insurgent achievement so far — The ideal American art theatre — The way of its coming — Present foundations

Appendix: Productions at the Arts and Crafts Theatre, Season of 1916-17, with Casts 241

Index 247

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Helena's Husband (Frontispiece)

2 The Intruder facing page 20

3 The Constant Lover facing page 30

4 The Chinese Lantern facing page 50

5 The Glittering Gate facing page 64

6 The Romance of the Rose facing page 82

7 The Lost Silk Hat facing page 100

8 Sam Hume as Abraham and Frances Lousrhton as

Isaac facing page 116

9 Lonesomelike facing page 130

10 The Wonder Hat facing page 150

11 The Tents of the Arabs facing page 162

12 Helena's Husband facing page 172

13 Abraham and Isaac facing page 182

14 A Doctor in Spite of Himself facing page 192

15 A Doctor in Spite of Himself facing page 212

16 Suppressed Desires facing page 224

Note on the illustrations: All the illustrations are from photographs by Frank Scott Clark, and all represent productions at the Arts and Crafts Theatre of Detroit. Eleven of the settings shown are arrangements of the permanent adaptable scene designed for the theatre by Sam Hume. He made most of the adaptations, certain ones being worked out in collaboration with Miss Katherine McEwen. Detailed descriptions and ground plans of the more important scenes will be found in the chapter on stage settings.

Chapter I Present Conditions In The American Theatre

THE art theatre has no past in America. Even in the present it is but lightly involved in the dramatic situation. But for the future — the only direction of time that really counts when an art is young — it is the one certain corrective for the evils now existing in the playhouse.

In considering the theatre as an art it is possible to overlook almost entirely the recognized playhouses and so-called "artists" of today, and yet lose nothing of substantial worth from an evaluation based on lasting standards. The entire organized institution of the theatre in America, as it is known to nine out of every ten intelligent people, may be safely disregarded by the writer who is concerned with world movements and art values.

Thomas H. Dickinson recently said that the history of the English theatre of the last twenty years had been a history of "outsiders." Insofar as America has had any dramatic history worth recording in the last two or three decades, it too is concerned only with outsiders. The inside institution is important only as a background and contrast: for the illuminating mistakes it has made, for keeping alive a noble tradition (which it failed to live up to), and for setting up an absolute dictatorship which, within the last five years, has irritated and stimulated a few thinking artists into revolt.

The forces that count in the theatre today are the forces of revolt. The actual progress toward an ideal theatre has been made in fly-by-night projects, by dissatisfied groups, by outcasts. These outsiders have usually been rich in ambition and artistic impulse but bankrupt in money and business control. The future of the theatre as an art, nevertheless, lies in their hands. It is bound up with qualities and refinements so foreign to the existing institution, and its development demands abilities so clearly impossible under the present organization, that the only salvation lies in further development of the insurgent movement.

A survey of present conditions, while leaving no doubt about the immense material strength of the 14 regular theatre, and the anaemic weakness of the outsiders, still discloses a general condition of restlessness and a gradual but steady gain on the part of the minority. It shows, moreover, a real fear in the ruling mind on account of the petty encroachments already made by the insurgents, as if the established faction sensed the certain crumbling of the present order.

The American commercial theatre, organized as an all-embracing, interlocking system, is conducted as a speculative institution, with its first object the making of profits. It would be idle to say that it has nothing to do with art, since that is in one sense the sole commodity in which it deals; but its art is the art of commerce, the art that will please the greatest number of average people, the art that seeks its appeal in sentiment and prettiness and sexual emotion and situations begetting uncontrolled laughter — a sort of Hearsf s-Cosmopolitan-Ladies' -Home- Journal art. Insofar as it touches within the boundaries of the art that is both true to life and spiritual, it does so through chance inspiration and accidental co-ordination.

Occasionally one sees in a Broadway theatre a production that stirs the soul, that evokes that

IS mood which is a response to art alone. But the next forty or fifty productions are so completely innocent of any suspicion of spiritual values that one is forced to put down the exception as a random thrust. In the end it always comes back to the same analysis : the American commercial theatre is organized to earn profits in competition, and its art will always be pulled down to that standard which experience has shown will please the largest group of money-spenders. The art that goes beyond the obvious is discouraged, and the art that reaches down to deeper truths goes unrecognized.

If our sculpture were produced under such a handicap we should never have a St. Gaudens or a Jo Davidson, but only a race of manipulators and imitators producing those horrid sweet statuettes which our pseudo-art stores now import from Italy by the thousand, for "the art trade." And if a group of businessmen controlled all the studios and galleries as absolutely as they control the theatre, we should never have a Sargent or a Davies, but only a race of Harrison Fishers and Howard Chandler Christies and similar corrupters of the art morals of the newsstand public. The theatre alone has been so fettered that it has stifled creative effort, discouraged originality, and driven out the true artist. 16

Under such conditions it would be useless for the artists to try to compete with the majority theatre on its own ground. The Washington Square Players, for instance, have suffered a distinct loss on the artistic side due to the competition they have had to meet on the business side since they elbowed their way to Broadway. Such a group may be able to stick until it makes its permanent place in the dramatic business world ; but in the meantime its position both financially and artistically is likely to be precarious. The normal corrective is far more likely to be something distinctive that will grow out of the little theatres, something entirely disconnected from the regular organization, endowed if necessary, but always devoted primarily to art rather than profits, and pursuing its way without regard to competition — unless, indeed, the regulars come over into the new fold, and meet the competition of art on its ground. Then everybody will be an outsider and nobody unhappy.

II

What one has to place beside the discouraging picture of the commercial theatre does not at first beget much comfort. The "little theatre movement," distinctly valuable in its small way, is yet hardly more than a promise. The faults of the little theatre are obvious: an alarming tendency to fade away before the first summer comes, a fine scorn of business management, and lack of confidence and stability of purpose. It is sometimes timid, frantically disclaiming any intention toward reform, and admitting only a desire to "please ourselves"; and sometimes boastful, calling attention to its littleness as if that in itself were a virtue, instead of simply a sign that it hasn't grown up. It is, nevertheless, the most hopeful thing in the theatre world today, because its roots are in native soil and because it is reaching up beyond those realms of commerce and materialism in which the business theatre constantly exists. It is rich, moreover, in those things that the other theatre lacks: artistic taste, cultural background, creative energy, and imagination.

As these two, the Goliath and the potential David, stand side by side, we who have a vision of a true art theatre — something dedicated to vital plays, inspired acting and creative staging, wellmanaged, combining the insight of the amateur spirit with the solid core of hard work and finished achievement of the professional stage — we sit by, sometimes, to be sure, wringing our hands in despair, at others believing fondly that the 18 youngster will grow up into ways that are both beautiful and wise.

A year ago the prospect was black enough ; but the season just closed has afforded many reasons for renewed hope. The Chicago Little Theatre emerges from its worst storm with three years of financial security ahead; the Arts and Crafts Theatre of Detroit, with no other endowment than freedom from the rent burden, closes a series of typical art-theatre productions with a clean record both artistically and financially; a score of new groups with artistic possibilities have sprung into being ; and Dunsany, most typical of the new dramatists, has achieved wide popular acceptance solely through the insurgent groups.

Even though we see clearly that America has not yet developed one normal, permanent art theatre, we who care, have seen the time ripen for the establishment of such a theatre : we see its distinctive technique taking shape; we see artists worthy of it — playwrights, directors, designers, even actors — struggling up out of the average little theatre incompetence; we see other important artists, now dissipating their talents in the commercial theatre, who could be cured of the conventional mannerisms and taints and brought over to a soundly organized progressive institution ; and we see millionaires curious about the new theatre, and trembling on the verge of endowment. Some day we shall shove two or three of them over the edge, and I am confident that we shall be able to show that beyond lies a field as inspiring for them as for the artists. These millionaires, moreover, live not only in New York but in Detroit, not only in Chicago but in San Francisco ; and they will build not an aristocratic national theatre but native art theatres. (A real millionaire is not necessary. A quarter- or even an eighth-millionaire would do, if he saw the true relative value between art and his business.)

If we have seen each new attempt fail so far, it has been sometimes because wealth tried to take the place of artistic taste, instead of endowing the artists, or because artistic enthusiasm refused to link up with the practical budget-making common sense which is the only excuse for asking wealth to co-operate. But no matter how many failures there have been, the spirit of the little theatre and community theatre has persisted, and new perceptions of theatre art have developed; and I for one believe actively in the swift coming of organizations to conserve that spirit and satisfy those perceptions, organizations combining high purpose, sound management and willingness to work hard through the urge of art 20

— the only combination that spells good dramatic art.

HI

Let us for a moment strike back a generation or two and see how the American theatre became so thoroughly commercialized. Thirty years ago America owned excellent repertory and stock playhouses and great actors, and the drama gave promise of developing side by side with the other arts. Through some fault it degenerated instead, and came to a place of actual degradation in the art world.

Twenty-two years ago two groups of influential managers combined to control a larger field of production than either could dominate alone. The alliance became so powerful that other managers joined, either in the hope of sharing the larger profits or in self-defence. The "syndicate" adopted the methods common to lawless "big business" of that day. It started a merciless campaign to stamp out competition and kill off rivals. It bribed into its ranks as many big men as it could, and then frightened into line as many more, big and little, as could be bullied. Then it fought the remaining few, managers and actors, by relentless warfare, closing theatres to them, and using all the familiar tactics of the lockout.

After a short campaign so few rebels remained that the American theatre lay practically helpless in the hands of a few New York speculators. No cornering of a market was ever more skilfully or completely manipulated.

Certain gains under such a monopoly are easily recognized. For owners of theatres outside New York the new system meant a continued succession of companies with tried plays, in place of the previous uncertain bookings. When rightly man T aged it prevented two similar and worthy productions playing in opposition one week, with an empty week following. The theatre market was in a sense stabilized. And of course the combination was a success from the speculators' standpoint. Wasteful experiment was eliminated, profits formerly scattered to a hundred independent agencies now flowed regularly to the one headquarters in New York, and price-raising was possible on a cornered commodity.

It is necessary to add, before turning to the other side of the case — the losses entailed in the commercializing process; — that about a decade ago there came a revolt against the syndicate. It succeeded to the extent of opening the field to a rival business organization. The burden was partially lifted from the shoulders of the small owner of theatres on the road, and the small pro- 22 ducer came back into the field under definite limitations. But it was distinctly a business revolt, and it failed to change conditions so far as the artist is concerned. He remained either a servant of the businessmen or an outsider. We now have two co-operating syndicates instead of one.

The evil effects of the system in general were: loss of freedom for the artist; destruction of the training-grounds in which both actor and playwright had formerly gained experience and early success; and ruinous control by New York over all the important theatres in the country. Repertory suffered a quick death, since one long run costs less money than frequent change of bill ; and independent experiment soon disappeared. In those individual contributive arts that go to make up the larger art of the theatre — playwriting, acting, staging, decoration — the havoc wrought was so great that we have not today one actor to compare with the best of the repertory days in this country, nor one playwright comparable to a score developed in the progressive movement in the European theatre, nor one director or decorator worthy to be placed beside the thirty or forty enlightened ones in Europe. We have not, indeed, one theatre artist of any sort who is internationally important. i In the matter of playwriting, centralized control of all the theatres in the land meant standardization of types of production, so that the dramatist who brought forward anything new found every trying-out ground closed to him. "Kept" playwrights became the rule. It was easier and safer to repeat a proven formula, or adapt a foreign success, than to risk money on untried types of play. If a native playwright did get by with an undoubted success, it was easier for the manager to repeat variations on that than to give the next fellow a chance. Such a false standard of lavish, if inartistic, staging developed, moreover, that it cost a manager approximately $5000 to try out a play. Under such a burden of expense even those producers who retained some desire to encourage native art hesitated to touch anything new. The American playwright for two decades thus was left without laboratory or studio. Only with the coming of the little theatres, and especially of such organizations as The Provincetown Players and the Players' Workshop, has his testingground been to some extent restored.

For the actor the conditions were — and are — even worse. The breaking up of the repertory and dignified stock companies destroyed the training school where so many of the older artists gained their most fruitful experience and inspiration. It made the living of the actor insecure, 24 there being no longer any chance of association with the same company in a permanent home for even a season at a time. Even actors of the highest class are today required to live lives of perpetual uncertainty, because their contracts are dependent solely upon the financial success of plays and companies chosen and presented without regard to their own preferences and ideals. They have no choice but to seek peripatetic employment under a system that makes permanent interest impossible, and one that denies leisure for proper study of their art.

But perhaps the most destructive practice in this connection was that of creating and exploiting "stars." The star system implies on its face an unbalanced and undemocratic art, in which the poor is necessarily placed beside the worthy. Of the stars themselves little need be said. Some of them are potentially great actors and would show it if they could cut loose from the system. But it cannot be insisted upon too strongly that star production is pernicious for the minor actor. Not only does it create a false ideal in the company, an ideal that impels the young actor to cultivate and parade every idiosyncrasy of personality and learn every trick which might lead to stardom, but it deadens originality and precludes breadth of training and understanding, by condemning the rising artist to year after year of type parts. The long run and the star system are largely responsible for that dearth of intelligent clean-speaking actors which exists on the American stage today.

The businessmen who changed the actor's attitude from that of an artist to that of a mere wage-earner are further responsible for the recent wholesale desertion from a great art to a great industry. I refer, of course, to that tide of promising actors who are showing their apathy by going over to the well-salaried but inartistic moving picture business. Had the ideals of the playhouse not been lost, monetary advantage would not have decided their choice.

The effect of the system in the matter of staging was no less unfortunate than in the fields of playwriting and acting. The lack of artist-directors, which today seems the chief obstacle in the way of developing art theatres, is directly due to the standardization of methods in the regular theatre. The business man took control and delegated the designing of the settings to one helper, the designing of costumes to another, the stage management to another. He insisted, moreover, that each one of these helpers do his work in a way that squared with accepted notions of stage art, in this case, of course, business art. Under such a system initia- 26 tive in stagecraft was crushed, the ambitious young artist who went into scenic design soon became a machine, and play production in America finds itself twenty years behind its German counterpart.

Recently the businessmen woke up to find that European theatres had discovered methods of staging infinitely better than the accepted ones, and that in this country certain little theatres and an opera house had imported or developed artists capable of creating some of "the new effects." The commercial managers immediately bribed the best of these artists to come to their rescue. The results were interesting from a purely decorative standpoint, but something was lacking. Broadway pieces were decked in the clothes of the new stagecraft — but remained vulgar. The point that both sides overlooked was this: these artists can do their best work only when they are given full charge of the production (if they are directors as well as designers), or when they work with other artists and not with businessmen. So long as a single business man is allowed to leave his business office and interfere with activities behind the curtain, the sort of staging that creates artistic illusion and unity of impression will be impossible in the theatre. Joseph Urban and Robert Edmond Jones take orders from the shopkeepers in the theatre; and their work is so changed that the spirit of the new staging still finds truer expression in Chicago or Detroit than in New York.

In one other direction the theatre system has put us decades behind the best development of the Europeans. In theatre architecture we are still struggling along in a musty, Victorian sort of way. With a few notable exceptions (for the most part products of the little theatre movement) our playhouses are not in any sense temples of art, but only vulgar amusement palaces. At best they are showy and ornate; at worst they are inexcusably gilded and varnished and stencilled. They reflect the taste of the businessmen. Again it is business art, designed to attract the average. 1 In the atmosphere created by such architecture, true theatre art is all but impossible.

Such are the losses to the contributive arts, which have resulted from the organization of the theatre as a business. To these I may add one other misfortune : the people of this country have lost all respect for the theatre. They visualize it as a business, like insurance, or selling grocer-

1 1 think that I have adopted the phraseology of Max Eastman here. In his book "Journalism vs. Art" he stated very clearly the case of business art as it concerns the American magazine. In writing of the very similar case of the American theatre I have found it difficult to avoid one or two of his phrases — for which I hereby acknowledge indebtedness.