ALL SILENT

Greater Boston comprises one of the largest potential theatre audiences in the country, yet from March twenty first until April sixth every down-town theatre will be dark. Boston has never been famed for its hospitality to the drama, yet it seems incredible that a city of this size should be so completely unresponsive to the legitimate stage.

The theatre-powers have decreed that Boston is not a profitable location dramatically, and in many respects this opinion is thoroughly justified. The only plays that ever manage to hold a theatre open any length of time are usually of the variety of "Abie's Irish Rose." If this is what the public wants, the blame certainly can not be laid to the producers for not risking their money to bring something better. When the talking picture absorbs that audience it is inevitable that the theatres should become dark.

That section of the population who would support plays of a higher calibre either go to New York to satisfy their theatrical appetites or else stay at home in Boston, repelled from the theatre by stupid and unnecessarily stringent censorship. It is useless to blame the producers or the dramatist if the city insists upon emasculating nearly every play that ventures into this frigid atmosphere.

Nor is it only the unfair restrictions of the city that smother the Boston stage. With two exceptions, the public press of the city is concerned with the theatre only as an advertising agent. The healthy atmosphere of interested and intelligent criticism that lends interest to the stage in other cities of similar size is entirely lacking here. This fact, along with unintelligent censorship and a general lack of a real theatrical interest on the part of the public almost justifies the statement that Boston gets only what it deserves.