GOOD-BY, STAGE SCENERY, GOOD-BY

Ettore Marroni

THE unexpected has happened.

We are returning by leaps and bounds to the archaic simplicity of the Elizabethan stage-settings.

We are going to say good-by to a lot of nonsense in staging and scenery—to David Belasco's exquisite artificialities, for instance; to all the elaborate, mechanical apparatus of modern stage-craft. A few critics, like myself, have always thundered against that superfluous realism which attracts the spectator's attention away from the action and the dialogue—the very essence and beauty of a great play. Now that we have, through sheer fatigue, stopped raving and have sunk into a discouraged silence, the public scrambles to fill the Greek theatres, amazed at its rediscovery of true dramatic art.

We may expect further revelations. The Movies are a stern rival and a great many poor theatrical managers will be driven into artistic economy. We will be treated to an astounding simplicity of setting. In the name of Art, we will be deprived of ticking clocks and real open-fires and thousand dollar Turkish rugs. In another year we may. see the Follies, draped in barrel-staves, dancing against a whitewashed background. The tired business man will have to develop an imagination.

In the past, scenery has been the stagemanager's chief stock-in-trade. Each one strove to out-do the other in sunsets, sandstorms, real rain and mahogany. We have had pretentious, sumptuous, expensive stagesettings—a veritable crescendo of bad taste.

The Muse of the theatre has got to a point where she is swathed in rich stuffs from head to foot, laden with artificial diamonds that rattle with every step like a fool's bells, so wrapped in stiff brocades, so hung with tassels and ribbons that she trips where once she trod majestically; wriggles a feeble gesture where she used to fling her arms in heroic attitudes.

WHEN a play is swaddled in expensive scenery the spectator is tickled optically but never emotionally. He does not weep because a human creature's heart is torn. He does not palpitate with sympathetic fear. He does not watch a soul stripped for his delectation and thrill with delicious anguish. He is not amazed by purity and horrified by evil. He does not watch the lucid phantoms of passion rise from the obscure depths of life and experience. He misses all the wealth of sensations felt by the mob that swairmed the marble, sun-flecked amphitheatres of ancient Greece, that crowded Shakespeare's theatre, that has filled gallery and pit a-down the ages. Instead, he balances his opera-glasses on his nose and tries to discover whether the silverservice in the first act is sterling or whether or not the heroine's jewels are paste. He confuses the ornament with the substance. He is in that ideal state where he hears nothing that is said, sees nothing that is done on the stage. The drama is only a pretext, like a cup of weak tea at an afternoon reception. The frame grows larger and larger until it swallows up the picture. The play has to bow to the accessories.

The illusive magic of the theatre cannot be materialized because the drama is really only a succession of SPIRITUAL MOMENTS. Can you imagine the poetic fancy, the heroic imagination of iEschylus or Shakespeare expressed by a whirring motor, a blaze of electric lights, or a scene-shifter hurrying an elaborate " drop " into place? That is what the twentieth century has tried to do. This is a mechanical age and we have demanded a mechanical satisaction for our aesthetic needs. We have sought our epics in the wavering automatism of the cinematograph. We have given our actors crowns of solid gold and hushed the poetry on his lips. It is only another indication of our intellectual degeneration that we are bored by a comedy of manners unless the leading-lady is gowned by Lucile!

WE have been deceiving ourselves. All our elaborate mimicry, our calcium moons, our willow trees and evening mists, our slow dawns and purple twilights have not fooled us for an instant. We have pretended to blink in tropical electrical sunshine, to be sea-sick on mechanically tossing stage yachts, to shiver in stage snow-storms. Now a reaction is here.

The electrician and the scene-painter, the costumer and the wig-maker have had their day. Now the poet is here; symbolism, suggestion, a stage like Palladio's classic theatre at Vicenza, with the scenery cut into the solid stone, as immovable and unchangeable as the pyramids. The thing has come suddenly, helped along by hard times, and welcomed because we are really tired of "spectacles."

Man is going to exercise his imagination.

So, Mr. Belasco, hang your stage with mists of mosquito netting, dress your players in shadowy cheesecloth, and find us a Play!

We are ready.