WALTER PRICHARD EATON ACCORDS HIGH PRAISE TO UNIVERSITY DRAMATIC CLUB

Walter Prichard Eaton '00, dramatic critic of the New York Sun and the New York Tribune, and a recent speaker at the Union, has taken the presentation of the Dramatic Club's "Mr. Paraclete" on Tuesday as the occasion for setting forth his views on the new movement in the drama, in particular as they apply to the universities and colleges of the country.

At present Mr. Eaton is engaged in a country-wide crusade against stage slang such as appears in "The Butter and Egg Man," "Is Zat So?," and other New York successes. His contention is that plays using such slang, though sometimes really worth while, will never live, simply because in a few years, these slang phrases will have changed, and will be entirely unintelligible to the theatre audiences ten years hence.

Mr. Eaton's article, written especially for the Crimson, is herewith reprinted in full.

The theatre does not have to be a professional organization. A theatrical production consists of a drama, an actor and an audience. The greatest section of this country is no longer served by the professional theatre. The movies and the theatrical concentration in New York have effectively put a stop to the once so popular theatrical company on the road, but the place of these troupes is being taken by the amateur performer. Not the amateur in the old sense, but the really serious minded person who is willing to spend some of his spare time on the stage. This whole movement is giving the theatre-going public a new cultural interest and is giving the would be actor a chance for self-expression.

Baker Leads Dramatic Renaissance

The whole renaissance of amateur theatricals on a dignified, sane scale owes its origin to George Pierce Baker and to the universities throughout the country which have followed in Harvard's footsteps. Today state legislatures are in favor of the theatre movement in their universities and have even endowed creative dramatic schools where an M.A. in Drama is equal to an M.A. in any other field. This type of thing is vastly stimulating as well as hopeful and interesting.

The movies have destroyed the old theatrical popularity of the road companies, but like an earthquake they have succeeded in doing away with the old and fragile and have caused the building up of something lasting and beneficial. The influence of the dramatic work around Harvard was great. This is not meant as a compliment, but as a fact.

Dramatic Club Plays Big Role

The Harvard Dramatic Club, especially since the official abandonment by Harvard University of courses in practical theatre art, seems to me to have an important function, the function of keeping alive or of awakening among students of the rising generation, a serious interest in the problems of the contemporary theatre, and of giving them, also, an opportunity to practice the arts of the theatre.

I think it is not sufficiently realized yet that a considerable bulk of the real experimentation going on in our playhouse owes its inception, if not its actual carrying out, to college trained men, many of them trained at Harvard, and several, at least, in the Harvard Dramatic Club. It is at present difficult if not financially impossible, for the so called commercial theatre to take experimental productions on tour. If the country is to see what is new and fresh in the dramatic world, amateur dramatic groups have still very largely to exhibit it, and by exhibiting it to train, slowly, sufficient appreciation to make possible its wider, professional dissemination.

Nothing in recent years has hurt me more than to see official Harvard repudiate the amateur theatrical leadership it had so bravely assumed, and nothing would buck up my pride more than to see the Harvard Dramatic Club so supported by undergraduate enthusiasm that it could carry on the good work whatever the attitude of the authorities. The theatre of tomorrow belongs to the youth of today. The Harvard Dramatic Club is youth, I hope confident, I hope daring, I hope full of the will to experiment. Personally, I am getting a bit woary of "Scholarship". I want education that calls forth the creative side of youth, and puts no fetters on it in the process, except the fetters of artistic sincerity.