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Page 50
Perhaps the greatest lesson of 'Sumur�n' is for stage managers. All of
them might profit by an intensive study of this production.
IN BALTIMORE.--The fashionable dramatic club of Baltimore, known as
the Wednesday Club, expects to develop a theater for regular amateur
performances. This playhouse will be modeled on Boston's 'Toy Theater.'
AGAINST THE SPECULATOR.--The Chicago city council has offered to reduce
the theater licenses in amounts from one thousand to five thousand
dollars if the theater managers will refuse to take back from agencies
unsold tickets. Nine managers are said to have agreed to do so. This
will aid the public to get good seats without paying advanced prices.
Any gleam of civic interest in the real welfare of the theaters is most
welcome.
The editor of the _Playfarer_ will be glad to receive information
about any American dramatic venture, no matter how small or seemingly
insignificant.
* * * * *
THE PLAYHOUSE
BY CHARLOTTE PORTER
_Civic Experiments in Massachusetts_
When we say 'Civic Theater' we are all so used to thinking in terms of
money that we think of nothing but a theater financially supported by
a city or community. Yet there are other ways of support that are more
vital.
A civic theater cannot be created by money, although it requires it.
Intelligence demands, therefore, when we say 'Civic Theater,' that we
think at once and foremost of these other more vital ways of support.
Fortunately we can appeal to historic life for light on these other and
more vital ways of support by city or community. Historic life can show
us well-ascertained facts concerning drama that has been supported by
the civic life of its whole people, and expresses, in consequence,
the life of its men of genius, and of its interpretative artists and
artisans, along with its racial genius.
Because historic life at its great moments of dramatic activity can show
us these facts and supplement the bias of the present moment toward but
one way of support, I shall appeal to it to make our definition complete
and sound.
Yet because we all, first of all, are the children of our current
notions, and only in a deeper sense, when we think below the bias of the
moment, the children of all life's experience, I shall call attention
first to two or three facts of civic life here in Massachusetts which
illustrate merely the financial support of a theater by a city or
community.
It seems to me significant that already one of our own states, and that
state Massachusetts, offers an example or two of this least vital but
most obvious necessity of financial ownership or support of a city's
main theater.
Northampton is the town in Massachusetts which took the lead in this
respect. It was first to secure ownership of a theater.
A native citizen of Northampton, Mr. G.L. Hinckley, who knows the town
well, at my request has written the following report of it:
'The Academy of Music of Northampton was presented to the city of
Northampton by Mr. Edward H.R. Lyman, of Brooklyn, N.Y. In making this
gift it was his desire to benefit his native town by providing it with a
safe, handsome, and well-equipped theater of a suitable size.
'The academy has a building to itself. It is set some fifty feet from
the main street, and has a very attractive fa�ade. On one side is a wide
street and on the other a small park, which extends behind the academy.
In appearance it is, therefore, more like a municipal building than the
ordinary theater, and in two respects is safer as regards fires: in the
first place there is no other building within one hundred feet of it;
and in the second, it is far easier for an audience to leave quickly.
The interior leaves nothing to be desired as regards vision or
acoustics. The house seats almost exactly one thousand, not including
its boxes.
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