The Parish Theatre Author:John Talbot Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III PRESENT CONDITIONS IN THE PARISH THEATRE This brief account of the new institution, as a department of a world-wide movement called The Amateu... more »r Drama, or better, The People's Drama, leads to the question of the skeptical: Where is it to be found? and to the question of the more intelligent: How is this parish theatre carried on? Both the pious and the skeptical will resent the very name of the new institution, no less than the fact. What! that thing which we have denounced all our lives, and which has been denounced by churchmen since the days of St. Jerome, now an institution in the very bosom of the Church! The parish theatre forsooth! Display it to us, set it forth, drag it into the light, that all men may see! A play here and there at intervals is of no importance, but an institution! Shade of Bossuet! The parish hall is well known in this country, as it was known for centuries throughout Europe and Asia. It is a necessary convenience for every society. I have estimated that three thousand parish halls exist in the United States. The figure is not absolute, but it is under the actual number. These parish halls are the home of the parish theatre. Most of them have astage, with scenery, lights, furniture; but it matters not how poor that stage may be, so inveterate is the love of the drama among the people, they will stage a play of some kind a few times a year. While doing parish work on Lake Champlain thirty years ago, the town hall was my home for the parish theatre. It had no stage, scenery, lights or curtain, so the players manufactured them of their own accord. In time they made it worth the while of the local magnates to build a proper stage with all the accessories. This improvement brought in the travelling professional companies, whose skilled per...« less