Johnston Considers Position of Dramatist

The noted dramatist Denis Johnston concluded the Summer School's series of three drama lectures last Thursday night. Speaking in Allston Burr Hall, he gave his views on "The Dramatist in the Theatre." Johnston, currently professor of English at Mt. Holyoke, gained much of his theatrical experience at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland under the guiding genius of William Butler Yeats.

With a schorarly yet amusing manner, Johnston said, "The course of these lectures has proceeded from theocracy through aristocracy and democracy to chaos--the actor being God, the director king, the writer everybody, and chaos TV. The writer plays the second most universal pastime of Western man, for everybody has ideas for or thinks he is capable of writing a play."

"Also, audience reaction causes revision of plays." Audience comments, however, are as a rule not good, Johnston finds. "If I do exactly the opposite of what I am told, the play will be successful."

"The theatre has two peculiar characteristics," he continued. "First? the big shots have little real knowledge of theatre. Second? everybody, no matter how little experience he's had, can suggest how to rewrite a play; but few people can or will tell the director or producer what to do once casting is completed."

"The author is usually the first person to adopt a realistic attitude toward theatre, and this is the reason that theatre groups run by writers tend to last longer than any other type of theatre organization." Among theatres formerly or presently run by writers, Johnston cited the Abbey Theatre, the Provincetown Play-house, and the Poets' Theatre here in Cambridge.

Johnston disagrees with Tyrone Guthrie's ideas about playwriting, which he feels are too romantic and impractical. But he concurs with Guthrie's statement that "the ideal stage production ought to be a cooperative undertaking of four elements--the author, director, actors, and audience."

"Ideally, however, this happy combination never takes place," Johnston said. "What inevitably happens is a compromise. The director never gets the ideal cast, so the play has to be tailored to fit the existing one. The great actor seldom gets the role he has talent to interpret, or even a chance to visualize the role except in terms of his own part."

Johnston repudiates Guthrie's theory that the author, once finished with his script, should stay away from rehearsal in order to let the director add something better to the script and have his own way about making changes. Johnston advises authors to attend rehearsals because as all theatre productions are a compromise, the author should contribute his part.

Discussing thet role of the director, Johnston said, "Fifty years ago there were only actor-managers and stage-managers, but nowadays the director's business is to comment on the play. Actually most people are very quick to assimilate new ideas, except actors--who have a certain thickness of perception which prevents them from being able to comment as well as they should."

"The time required for an actor to see the point varies from country to country. The Irish actor will see the point immediately, but two weeks later will act with exactly the same mistakes as he had before. The English actor takes a long time to comprehend new ideas, but once he gets them he will give a consistently excellent performance. The American actor varies according to school. If trained in the "method school," he has no performance at all until he gets before the audience because one doubts whether he is feeling his part."

After praising Guthrie's idea of the theatre, Johnston went on to criticize Lee Strasberg. "Strasberg sees the theatre from the point of view of the idealist, and has quite an unrealistic picture of what the medium of the theatre actually is. He seems to be under the impression that the theatre has something to do with life--by citing for us the French company of Cannes and the classic theatre of Japan, two schools that have nothing to do with 'method' acting. To say that the goal of acting is a perfect photograph of human behavior is to say that poetry must not be poetical or music musical."

"Drama is an art form, not a slice of life. It is intended to give you an emotion and an aesthetic experience the same as any other art form. The idea of producing real behavior on the stage is harmful to the aesthetic qualities of drama."

"Most of our daily life is directed not at what we do, but at what we want to conceal. But on the stage behavior has to be expressed intentionally, not concealed. This is the basis of the difference between drama and real life. And it is why true stories always make the worst plays, and why dialogue is the magic that will tell whether people are talking in life or on the stage."

Johnston not only disapproves of realism but also lashes out against the Stanislavsky method of acting. "The illusion of realism in the theatre is one of the biggest illusions of all. The slice of life is no more real than melodrama, which is considered outdated. To tell the actor to go out on the stage and imagine he's wrestling with an alligator is useless except in a play such as Peter Pan, which is not in the Stanislavsky tradition."

"It is actually better for an actor not to feel his part. The best people to convey love-making on the stage are those who don't feel it at all."

"Most of the business performed on the stage, too, is illusion. The art of creating a play is the art of creating illusion, and acting is the ability to convey the illusion of emotion. Any actor who believes he can improve his performance by carrying on stage the actual ashes of his grandmother is simply daffy."

Johnston defends the repertory theatre vigorously. "The repertory side of the theatre is the most interesting side, because it is the only place where the actor can play a great many roles and where the author can see his plays tried out without their having to be rewritten."

"The constant repetition in the repertory theatre makes for great plays, which are not constantly criticized as they are in Boston, Philadelphia and Broadway; and it is great pity there are not more such theatres."

As to how one becomes a playwright, Johnston said, "The only way to get your play read if you're a woman is to become secretary to the boss or prop girl at the theatre--in order to get to know the people who will eventually make decisions on scripts. On Friday say, 'I'll fix that for you over the weekend,' then come back with it done on Monday. The Big Boss thinks you're clever and you have a foot-hold on the ladder."

In fact, Johnston feels that one of the worst aspects of the contemporary theatre is the mania for plays "made to order" with a deadline rather than written freely for their creative brilliance and original dialogue.

'It's much easier for a woman to become a playwright than a man, because she has ways of working inside the theatre that men don't have. Men have only two ways of getting inside the theatre: one, by starting amateur of semi-professional groups of their own; and two, by having their plays read by agents in foreign countries.

"Because far hills always seem greener, it's much easier for American playwrights to get their plays produced in England than here; and conversely, for British playwrights to have their plays produced in the United States. By providing fresh material, foreign plays help independent repertory groups ot continue," Johnston ended hopefully.

Johnston was introduced by William Van Lennep, Curator of the Theatre Collection in the College Library