CLEARING AHEAD!

What looks to be a patch of blue sky is visible through the clouded outlook of the American stage in the plans already under way to form a National Theatre. Fifty-six representative theatre directors and producers have organized in New York to put the scheme into effect and their first effort is about to be launched. Their main purpose is to build up a last ditch defence in the losing battle of the legitimate stage, outside of the four or five largest cities, against the advance of the "movies".

The ultimate disappearance of footlights before the glare of motion-pictures has seemed at times probable. Thousands of smaller American communities once used to boast some sort of true stage--if it were only for an occasional appearance of little Eva and two cocker-spaniel blood-hounds -- where now a "Palace" of the "Silver Screen" throws its bright lights upon Main Street. And the advent of life like color into the "movies" is already tending to make their hold the more secure. But even the best created picture, as long as it cannot reproduce the human voice, must fall short of the highest dramatic art.

The proposed National Theatre comes at a critical moment. With Augustus Thomas engineering the project and such geniuses in their varied fields as David Belasco, George M. Cohan, Arthur Hopkins and the Shuberts promising their full support, some highly interesting results are to be looked for.

One object of the Theatre is to found a National School of Dramatic Arts where playwrights and actors will be encouraged, trained, and transported to every section of the country. In addition Little Theatre movements, amateur Theatrical Clubs or Drama Leagues all over the United States will be given every assistance, being permitted even to produce the current successes of New York, from where guidance will be sent them.

It is hardly expected as yet that another Comedie Francaise will be the outcome, but it is hoped that through-coordination, and by means of one large point of reference from which others may draw inspiration, a definite national character will be stamped upon American dramatic art where now only inchoate commercial enterprises exist.

With this National Theatre now more than an ethereal scheme, St. John Irvine's plaintive suggestion that the only way out of the present dramatic slump is a Moratorium on the theatre for twenty years, appears to have found an answer.