New Britain Herald Newspaper, February 11, 1927, Page 3

DRAMA CONFERENCE ISHELD AT YALE 300 Leading Dramatists o Cozntry at Sessions New Haven, Feb. 11 (A—Three hundred men and women from 23 states, who make the drama their life work, assembled here today to attend the conference on the drama at Yale university. For two days they will talk drama, hear drama and see drama in all of its phases, and will be addressed by mhn, who while classified as non-profession- als, rank high in the dramatic pro- fession. The delegates were welcomed to New Haven and to Yale by Presi- dent James Rowland Angell of the university, who expressed the opin- ion that “the fact that this nation- wide conference is occurring at a great university center is .a circum- stance whose significance may well be weighed. “Of all the arts,” President An, gell said, “the drama probably makes the widest appeal and has had perhaps the most checkered career. Serving at many stages in history as the handmaid of reli- gion and th: medium of expression for group ritual and ceremony, it has at other times been arrayed against religlon and regarded by the pious as the underminer of morals, the destroyer of faith. Theater of Today “The theater of our own day has run the gamut of these his- torical extremes, giving us at times a stark simplicity or por- trayal, demanding the utmost play of imaginatiod on the part of the spectator in order fully to sense the meaning of the dramatist, again offering more or less subtle symbolim as a clue to the pur- port of the play, and finally draw- ing upon all the resources of mod- ern science and art in the way of scenery, setting, lighting and myriad media by which the mind is captured and the feelings moved. “We at Yale are the natural heirs of the Puritan tradition with its suspicion of the arts and its acute hatred of the stage and its people. But this tradition has been softened in the passage of time, in part perhaps because art is too in tegral a part of life to be perma- nently excluded, and in part be- cause our Puritan stream has been incessantly mingled through the centuries with currents of other stock holding other appreciations |of the intrinsic values of life. | “It should not be forgotten that | Yale has long offered instruction itouching various aspects of drama- |tic history and literature, much |less that the Yale undergraduate [has a considerable tradition of in- terest in dramatic production. In- | |deed be it said to his great credit, | |that this has for many years typi- | |cally taken the form of presenting | Iplays of establishedd worth, inter- |spersed with occasional plays { written by students. One would not | {be pharisaical, but, when com- | pared with the so-called musical | |show which too often represents | |the highest dramatic flight of stu- | |dent organizations these achieve- | ments of the Yale students are 'highly pralseworthy. Interest Is Spreading “Now few social phenomena are !more striking than the recent |spread of Interest in the drama |throughout the United States. It is |not simply, nor perhaps primarily |that the metropolitan centers have found -it- difficult to build theaters {fast enough to satisfy the demand |for that fact has explanations {which run in part to the craving of |the crowd, and especially the new- ly rich, for excitement and amuse. | ment, but it is rather the extraor |nary extent of what may be called | la serlous interest in the drama | which has spread to every hamlet |in the land. Apart from the seri- lous interest to which I allude, |there is naturally a .wide area of relatively spurious, or at least su- | perficial, interest, which is, at best, first cousin to the childish delight |in ‘dressing up’ and ‘showing off’ to say nothing of the hardy annual crop of buddding geniuses, who must, at whatever cost to neigh- Ibors and friends, be seen upon th stage. When one speaks of a seri- | ous interest, one may ask to be {onerated from implying anything | of an up-lift character. The drama | has perhaps suffered almost as| much from its up-lifters as from | its debauchers. One means ‘serious’ | {in the sense of sincere, honest, |thoughtful. To what extent the moving picture has contributed to, or detracted from, this tendency, 1 do not attempt to discuss. In any |event, the spoken drama has sud- | |denly come into a new public es- | {teem and thousands of persons are today eager to identify themselves |with its development where scores lcould a few years ago have been ! enlisted. “Under such circumstances, it has | semed appropriate to the university, | and the imagination and generosity of Edward S. Harkness has made it | possible to attempt the interesting venture which Porf. Baker and his colleagues have herc launched More Talent Desired. “As a result of this and other NEW BRITAI'N DAILY HERALD, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1927, cver, we may hope not only for a fresh flowering. of dramatic talent in all its phases but also for the gradual developments of a more in- telligent and becoming taste on the part of the patrons of the theaters, our day inevitably has a commercial or financial aspect and it cannot, if it would, wholly divorce itself from the box office’ index of the prevail- ing taste of its public. Therefore, | whatever makes for a more thought ful and discerning appreciation is to the ultimate advantage of the theu- ter, viesved as one of the significant factors in the.socicty of our time. The Public Demand. “Whatever may be one's view -of the dictum art for art's sake and however pertinent one may regard morals in the evaluation of works of art, the brute fact remains hat people stubbornly insist on ‘apply- ing an ethical or social critericon to art, and certain types of drama in particular are just now passing through stormy seas of threatened censorship, because they are alleg.d to offend taste, or to corupt morals or both. Certainly if the communit may insist that physical sewage be properly disposed of in w menacing -to health, it is esually justified in protesting against the pollution of its sources of moral de- | s cency. Furthermore, one must ad- mit that any institution which touches so intimately, as does the theater, the life of our people, and especially our youth, must comfort itself with some regard to the ac- cepted cannons of decorum. The community will not indefinitely tol- crate the parade of social filth for purely mercenary motive nor will it allow the urge of so-called self-ex pression to Indulge ftself in indagent exposure of diseased or obscence im- pulses. These things may flourish for a time, but they always lead to a reaction which Is destructive t9 the finest and most enduring uses of the theater, and. as such, may well be recognized and dealt with in the home of its friend Dean Meeks Speaks Dean Everett V. Meeks, of the Yale School of Fine Arts, in welcom- ing the delegates, pointed out that while “it has been, is and always will be recognized the function ot an academic Dody to study the lessons of the past,” it has been found at Yale “that the active minds of the | young men and women studenis of today are no longer satisfied with a curriculum of study which merely leads to an understanding and knowledge of the art of the past; they are strongly attracted to the possibllities of creative work, par- ticularly in art. “And so almost overnight,” Dean Meeks continued, “through the vi- sion and generosity of a devolved | aluminus, Yale was able to contem- plate the supplementing of a com- parative program of historical and with an equally comprehensive pro- | gram of historical and literary aca- | demic study in the drama with an | equally comprehensive program of instructions in creative dramatic art. In consequence we have about today this splendid plan manned by a capable and enthuslastic facult; under the direction of an Inspiring and beloved leader in dramatic teaching, George Pierce Baker. Powerful Factor “You are entering into practically every important community as a powerful educational factor. Your | work is a splendid one and deserves inter- | the heartiest support of all ested in making American life more beautiful, more complete. How great, therefore, is our common obligations to continue to stick to the ideals of truly written, truly acted and truly presented drama, conceived in art, produced artistically and acted with art. At this time of agitation against the so-called degenera play and of varlous movements pro- posing a censorship to cure it, it seems as if an almost providential opportunity has been given us to prove our usefulness in maintaining such standards “And so if I speak by profession as an artist and educator may I k perhaps as a no less devoted n in the drama. It seems to me hatever we do in art we must have the element of beauty permeat- ing its central theme. In this way we avoid on the one hand the un- wholesomeness of morbidity, or on ther the colorlessness of sweet- | So that T be- lieve that 1l our art, in wh ever form the creative atristic mind finds expression in this present day, if we are to carry on the living flame we must bear this imposed aesthetic condition in mind. T am thinking of no restricted middle ground, what T am thinking of are certain limits beyond which we must or s in not go, certain elemental canons of | construction bound up with the very concept of art that we must respect. Tt is those very limits which make our work more us | interesting, keep us | | Last night was not a good one by any means. There was static and | there was no chance of reaching out to corral western stations until after midnight, locals came through strong, but we encountered several varieties of buzz, etc., etc., and volume wasn't what it should have been. WTIC couldn’t its anniversary pro- station officials were Hartford station pro- and varied program, to of interest to gram it desirous. vide guaranteed tiresome ft one with the feel- should have enjoyed hearing mor nny and His Gang presented a 1 offering in the form of a cr zing stunt. 1t was evident ny’ been listening Raboid, who broadcast some ngs from the station week. Skinny answered to have been the studio ing the announcers, the and the boys “up on the operators. The answers One of the director, will be ake to conduct his k in the morn- That's all right, r audience will be in the \'s short tense mysterious man- burlesqued We liste the feat on and oft to many of presented by WTIC and, thinking, the program There on our mettle. It is the artist who | not only has his head in the clouds but his feet on the ground who suc- ceeds. By the very nature of things he is a glant.” 11 HURT IN EXLPOSION Montreal, Que., Feb. 11 (P— Eleven persons were injured, some seriously In an explosion of gas in the cellar of a store yesterday. The explosion occurred after two plumbers, had becn removed from the cellar, where they had been working, overcome by gas. The ex- plosion then occurred and exerted its full force on the group. The win- dows of the store were blown out. Sirius, often called the dog star, is the most brilliant star. Tt is thir- teen times as large as the sun rd Erva Giles Levitow's ensemble, delightful | usual, and we als d the * and Weather” the Blue Boys. doesn’t seem to sion to the a T which go w s Blue Boys pro- gram. He sounds as if he were rid- ing over a rough road in an automo- bile. Later still we heard as played by Walter Dawl Capitol theater orga quit. What went af report on. We presume that things kept going until 3 o’clock, but you'll have to hear it from someone else, not us. This fellow Morpheus is a least we found that to | be our experience. Locals and semi- | ave picked a bet- | to| | WJZ came through well with no fading and no distortion. We heard a specialty group in a delightful lit- | tle. program of popular melodies. A mandolin and guitar selection, “You Know sad I Know” was offered, a vocal cherus fitting into ceeding® ¥ery aptly. Later a violin | Solo was presented. While not of the regulation popular type, it appealed and we4 entitled "A Trge in The Park.” « .. WOR, Newark, decided to give us a deal last night, so we were able to hear the report of the mixed doubles, rofessional tennis. It wa d Lenglen versus K and Brown and the former duo won the affair, although the announcer stated that Mary Brown was playing t | best game on the courts. The an- nouncer apparently believed that no one was listening to him, since he spoke in a low tone of voice such as is employed by undertakers, pan- handlers and braries and hospital wards. Every so often he woke up and dealt a hand {in a fairly loud tone, guite conven- | tional, so to speak. We'd hate to 1ear that fellow broadcast a hockey game. He'd probably fall asleep. As far as ton, he would make an iPrL":i‘lvn: Coolidge. sey NY, New York, came ud and clear and we same condition _prevails tonight, since the proceedings of a bull fight will be broadeast. Everything will w the pro- | Richards ' o visitors to public li-| ‘:\rrm\gfid so that the audience will Little Girl, A Little Boy, A Little think’ it is tuned in om a genuine Moon.” The latter was cute as the Spanish bull fight and the announcer deuce. And along came the bloopers said last night that it will be impos- | and took away all our enjoyment. sible to tell the real from the imi-|They staged a duel with swords at 20 tation, or words to that effect. At paces or some such drivel, so we any rate, we imagine there'll be lots | left. of fun, so tune in on WRNY, New York, 374 meters, at 10:15 o'clock this evening. Really, individuals, we ha ver heard the station come in better than it did last night. We couldn’t say the same for any of the For some unknown reason we hit Here's a communication. That is, it was written by one of the boys here in the office, who handed it to us with the request that we insert it in this column: A battery-charging west end has been ¢ weird reception in that part of ti city of ing to report Complaints have been made to the proprietor of the place, sometimes with nd some with none, but always the crashing and muttering is present in ker a night or so late could have any objection to battery rging during day, but irate s of the d t feel that the rrent should be turned off at night to enable radio fans to hear some- thing other than interference. P WGY, Schenectady, = or two points off came. through without any inte ng except er anyway. A played a saxophon: WRNY's loud and rence from station in the ing some . employing 1positions. the to get. The sounded like was too lively ey trying ct idow—did something that spe Widow,” but that. y > up such nor were the you WLWL. New York, came thro ¥ omparatively 50, tha but it wasn't loud. A violin s “Lullaby,” transmitted well WGBS, offered mong “A e static New York was heavy at re Julia Roth Hall of Fame in 1015, was the first person of the theatrical profes- to win that honor. A w The Dickinson Drug Company 169-171 MAIN ST. Chamois Washable 75¢ $1 $1.50 Malt Nutrine 250 Bottle Nursing Bottles 8 oz. 2 For 5C Baby Nipples Sheepwool Sponges 50c C & C Ginger Ale $2:25 5. Seidlitz Powders Box of Three 7c Rhinitis Tablets WHISK BROOM Extra Quality 29¢ 2A BROWNIE CAMERA While They Last $2.63 | similar undertakings the country | literary academic study in the drama |great guy. Half Strength 1 50 Bottle Kiddie Castile Picture Soap Box of Six Cakes 15¢ Diamond Dyes All Colors 9¢ Putnam Dyes All Colors 7c 0dd Compacts 39c¢ 2 For 50 Country Life Cigars $2-50 Box of 50 $l .25 Box of 50 Valentine Motto Hearts 39C Lb. Clysmic Water Pints $1 '98 Dozen —Just For Tomorrow! 1,000 Lbs. 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