Theatre is a school
in itself where people are taught to appreciate beauty and ethical
values and to solve the eternal problems of good and evil.
Whats Theatre? Why has it lasted so long? What does it mean to us? We
know that it offers amusement and pleasure, but then so do lots of other
things. Is there something special to itself that it offers us? Clearly
there is, otherwise the Theatre would not have gone on so long and in so
many different places.
During the last thirty years the Theatre has had to meet three
challenges from radio, cinema, and television. All three produce drama
of a sort, all possess important advantages.
As a rule it doesn't cost as much to see a film as it does to see a
play, and films can be seen in a great many places that have never known
a theatre. Radio and television can be enjoyed at home, with a minimum
of effort, turning the living room into a playhouse.
And all three, because they are produced, for a mass audience, can offer
casts of players that only the best theatres could afford.
Already many people tell us that with their television sets at home and
an occasional visit to the movies, they no longer need the Theatre and
do not care whether it lives or dies.
Such people do not understand that the Theatre is the parent of these
new dramatic forms. Without a living Theatre where writers, directors,
designers and actors could learn their jobs, movies and television plays
would be very crude indeed.
In a very good restaurant we have a dinner that is specially cooked for
us: in a canteen we are merely served with standard portions of a
standard meal. And this is the difference between the living Theatre and
the mass entertainment of films, radio and television. In the Theatre
the play is specially cooked for us. Those who have worked in the
Theatre know that a production never takes its final shape until it has
an audience.
With films, radio, television, the vast audience can only receive what
is being offered. But in the Theatre the audience might be said to be
creatively receptive, its very presence, and intensely living presence,
heightens the drama.
The actors are not playing to microphones and cameras but to warmly
responsive fellow-creatures. And they are never giving exactly the same
performance, if the audience tends to be heavy, unresponsive on a wet
Monday, perhaps the company slightly sharpens and heightens its
performance to bring the audience to life, and vice versa if the
audience is too enthusiastic. Film and television acting is much smaller
and quieter than that of the Theatre. Nevertheless, with a very few
exceptions the best performers of film and television are actors and
actresses from the Theatre, which has taught them their art.
It is the ancient but ever-youthful parent of all entertainment in
dramatic form. Much of its work, especially under commercial conditions,
may often be trivial and tawdry; but this means that the Theatre should
be rescued from such conditions. For in itself, as it has existed on and
off for two-and-a-half thousand years, the Theatre is anything but
trivial and tawdry. It is the magical place where man meets his image.
It is the enduring home of "dramatic experience", which is surely one of
the most searching, rewarding, enchanting of our many different kinds of
experience.
I
enjoy going to the cinema or theatre, because its a recreational
activity - you have fun there. Everything is live on stage! One
sees the actors at work, every movement is full of artistry and
elegance.