The Twentieth Century Theatre Author:William Lyon Phelps 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: m THE DRAMA LEAGUE AND THE INDEPENDENT THEATRE Effect of the Great War on the drama — three English witnesses — the Drama League — a contrast between two d... more »ramatists — George M. Cohan — the independent theatre — Little Theatres in the United States — Miss Mackay's book — Antoine — the Northampton municipal theatre — the Chicago little theatre — Washington Square players — Stuart Walker — Theodore Dreiser — Hull House, Chicago — Roland Holt — the laboratory theatre at Pittsburg — Franklin Sargent — the study of the theatre at American universities — George P. Baker — the Yale Dramatic Association — graduates of Harvard and Yale. The Great War, which has in so many places transformed triviality into seriousness, which has revealed everywhere so much sublime heroism in the minds of men and women, has certainly not elevated the theatre. It seems particularly unfortunate that just at the time when we have so many able dramatists in both England and America, the level of excellence on the London and New York stage should be so low. The war is not to blame for this; the people are to blame. In order to understand why it is that during days wherein we are all witnessing the greatest drama in human history, the theatres for the most part furnish silliness and vulgarity, we must remember that before the war the mass of Englishmen and Americans looked upon play-going merely as a form of entertainment. Only the other day a man said to a minister of the Gospel, "Since this war began in 1914 I have ceased to believe in God." The minister replied, "Did you believe in Him before the war?" If dramatic art before 1914 had been a recognised part of national life and of the education of the people, had it even played so important a part as orchestral music and grand opera, we should ...« less