B ooks about Russia customarily end with a chapter entitled '‘Whither Russia?” I do not wish to seem to strain for originality when I substitute for that a chapter called "Whither America?” I do so because my chief concern is with tomorrow in our own country. The future of the Soviet theatre is, after all, in the hands of the Bolsheviks. The problem is theirs, not ours. The line the future will take there is as unpredictable as manifestations of the creative urge always are. However, before I left Moscow I had been developing a theory of my own, that in the work of the last very few seasons, perhaps only two, all the theatres of Moscow were becoming more alike. The Moscow Art Theatre, in productions like its recent and popular "Pickwick Club,” or its earlier "Dead Souls,” while not working from quite the same point of view as the externalists, yet was moving toward a realism that was beyond its old quasi-naturalism and which had some Meierholdian elements in it. Its latest theory of physical action was a clue. Nemirovich-Danchenko in his musical studio was himself resorting to some of Meierhold’s inventions to help him express his new musical synthetic realism.
In the Meierhold camp, on the other hand, there was a gradual falling back to more realistic elements, and the retreat (or advance if you prefer to consider it so) would have been farther if Meierhold had listened to the demands of the day. But, as it was, constructivism was well on the
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way out, wilder experiments were over; foreigners found "La Dame aux Camelias” of 1934, in outward appearance at least, much more realistic than they had expected. Tai- rov’s "Optimistic Tragedy” revealed how far he had moved away from the formalisms of "Salome” and "Phedre” toward a common neo-realistic meeting ground with the other great schools; and the various studios and theatres under the influence of Vakhtangov were all in one way or another working toward a sort of halfway point between Meierhold and Stanislavski.
In examining each theatre’s individual development, I have shown how the trend has been toward the new "socialistic realism.” It seems to me that it is this which is the common denominator of the immediate future. It is coming about already. For to get rid of its naturalism, the Art Theatre has sought elements from the other extreme, and Tairov and Meierhold, to replace their formalisms, have done the same. None has done more than borrow a few externals, but that has seemed to do the trick and they are all already able to offer up their interpretations of socialistic realism. That the theatres are still quite different is because as yet none of them is quite sure what this new style is, and because each is still strongly bound to its past forms. But it would seem that they may become more and more similar as they pass in time from the assumption of new external forms to a grasp of internal meaning.
Will this then mean that eventually, because of the exigencies of the new phase of the Revolution, a standardization of method and style will take place, that when the first shock of the upheaval of everything in Russia has been stabilized and life becomes calmer, the theatre will lose the vitality of its individual expressions which has made it so varied and so vivid? Were three New York producers presenting the same play at once, it might
be very possible to see the first act in one theatre, the second in another, and the third in a third and still receive a fairly unified impression of the play, for the idiom of the New York theatres is on the whole a common one. In Moscow ten years ago this would have been impossible, for there were as many completely different vehicles for the expression of an idea as there were theatres. What will the situation be there five years hence?
If realism is the art of a materialistic society (and it does seem true that a mind preoccupied with things and material progress will create realistically in art; the triumph of realism in late nineteenth-century Europe and in America today points to such a conclusion), then so long as the Soviet Union remains in its present materialistic mind, realism will be its most satisfactory medium. But as materialism is not an end but a means in the Communist state, and since Stalin’s most recent pronouncement has been that the elevation of man above the machine must now be the aim of Russia, perhaps it will have its effect on the doctrine of socialistic realism in art. Perhaps the inherent mysticism of the Russian will reassert itself in romanticism and poetry. These may not, it is true, replace realism, but may instead give to it new vitality; on the other hand, there may be a return to a dozen different styles.
But after all, as I have said, the future of the Soviet theatre is in the hands of the Russians and we can only look on curiously as they work out their salvation. The future of the American theatre, however, is in the hands of ourselves. My constant desire throughout my year of observation of the theatre in Europe, and particularly during the six months in Russia, has been to discover things which I could relate to our own stage.
I have throughout this book suggested comparisons between Moscow and New York in which our theatre stood
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to lose thereby. But when we come right down to it, many of those things which I wish our theatre were also doing are not feasible—at least not now. Take the matter of rehearsals, for instance. One of the outstanding differences between the Moscow theatre and the New York theatre is that the former takes about four times as long to produce a play as does the latter. The result is not four times better, but it is quite a little better. If we rehearsed in New York four times as long as we do, would our productions be any better than they are? I doubt it. In fact, they might be far worse. For our casts would go stale. Used to an intensive rehearsal schedule and accustomed to going not much beyond the surface in their study of a play, our artists would grow restive and become muddled if a director led them through four months’ preparation of a performance. The American mind is perhaps more intuitive than the Russian and less analytic. This I must and do bear in mind. But at the same time I believe that we would have even better productions if we followed the Russian rule, "Never present a play to the public until it is ready.” Perhaps sometimes it would only take a month, and all very well; but sometimes six weeks’ or two months’ or even possibly three months’ work would improve it. I have seen many good actors take three of the four week rehearsal period hunting for the character they were to play. When they found it, there were but four or five days left to rehearse the part. By the end of the first month of performances they were good and had got into the stride of it, a stride which should have been reached before the play ever opened.
A long-time system of rehearsal is, however, obviously impossible on Broadway in the present state of affairs. Actors would not trust themselves, nor would they be allowed to by Actors’ Equity Association, to a manager who said, "Your services will be required in rehearsal over
an indefinite period—perhaps one month, perhaps three; at least, until we are satisfied that the play is in condition to present.” The only circumstance under which they would agree would be if the manager were willing to give them full pay during rehearsals. The manager cannot afford to do this, for there is always the chance that the play will fail and he may never get his money back from it.
The conclusion that we reach, therefore, is that New York would not find it feasible to emulate Moscow in making perfection a goal in art because it cannot afford to. It cannot take the time to make a good thing better. It cannot take the time because time means money, and money is the most important stake in the eyes of all.
Thus we come to the major problem of our theatre: the degenerating and deadening effect of commercialism in it. The American theatre is a selfish and a moneymaking enterprise, not an art. I said in a previous chapter that America does not know what a theatre that exists for its audience is. The theatre in America exists for everyone but the audience. It exists, first and foremost, for the real estate men who own the buildings that house these products of our spirit; for the big business men and the wealthy fellows who back shows for the gamble and for the money they hope to get out of it; for the theatrical magnates of the show business, who know their trade— and that is what it is—and are in it, too, for the money they can make. The theatre exists next for a set of highly egotistical, selfish, shrewdly ambitious men and women so that they may flaunt their egos and parade themselves and their charms before a gullible crowd, fill their pockets with dollars, see their names in lights and their faces smiling back at them from the expensive fashion magazines. They submit themselves to the commercially minded magnates because they are commercially minded too.
Unionism in the theatre is the twin evil of commercial-
ism and is its child. Because of the exploitation of the capitalist producers, labor organized for defense and offense, and now is as great a menace to independent artistic creation in the theatre as commercialism. A dozen of the things that contribute to the Moscow theatre’s excellence: the masterful use of musical effects in drama, the creation of certain complicated scenic effects, the long period of rehearsal with all props and with full sets and lights, to mention but a few, are all impossible in New York because the Unions’ rules regarding regular and overtime wages make their practice prohibitively expensive. "Beating the Unions” has become a popular game with certain producers and the struggle between them is disgusting to artists who hate to see the stage turned into a petty battlefield.
The trouble is that there are not enough people—producers, artists, or union men—who are willing to make sacrifices for the theatre. Do not call it sacrifices if you’d rather not; say rather that there are too few people who are willing to put the theatre before their individual desires and demands. There is nothing to be sneered at in making a living from an art. The Russians are doing it, for that matter, and I am not crying out against material reward for artistic enterprise. I do not approve of artists going hungry for their art, but I do say that if the glorification of the box office and of the pay check continues much longer, it will bring about the destruction of our theatrical art. If the films are to kill the legitimate stage, it is much more likely to be done through the effect of Hollywood money-mania on our artists’ psychology than by any triumph of one artistic medium over another.
A few years ago the hope of the American theatre was seen by some to lie in the non-commercial Little Theatre movement throughout the country. Time has lessened the optimism of that report, not because the movement has turned commercial, but because many people now feel that,
as Broadway is the feeding post of the money-minded, over-egoed, professional artists, so the Little Theatre is the parade ground for equally ego-stricken dilettantes hungering for "self-expression.” A young friend of mine, the director of an average Little Theatre, writes me justifying his recent resignation by saying, "The trouble with little theatres lies in the fact that they are essentially affectations. The people who sponsor them are rarely quite sure what they are all about; they just seem like a good thing and the people, straining and striving just a little, get self- conscious about them. If there was ever an indigenous impulse toward dramatic art in this state, it has been shamed out of existence by the elegance and sophistication of the movies.” 1
Is the theatre in our country then to fall prey either to commercialism or to "artiness”? I purport to be neither a Jeremiah nor a John the Baptist. The cry I voice is a familiar and an old one, I know that. But I have seen the theatre regarded as an art and a very high one where I have been, its artists selfless, not selfish. Of course, I can recommend certain parts of the Stanislavski system to the attention of our actors, I can point out the value of the maquette to the designer and show new uses for the revolving stage to the technician; but these things would not improve the New York theatre. Many of our actors act quite well as it is, most of our designers design quite well, and our stage mechanics are far superior to Moscow. It isn’t these things, anyway, which really make the Moscow theatre fine. It is the belief and its practice that the theatre is ennobling, that it is not a quick and flashy way to make money and gain publicity, that its participants must serve with humility the needs of their fellow men, whether those needs be to laugh or to cry, to be edified or to be inspired.
1 Exception must be made to acknowledge the excellent accomplishments of the Pasadena Community Playhouse, the Cleveland Playhouse and a few others.
I do not say, even, that the Revolution alone accomplished this in Russia, for I remember that the Moscow Art Theatre considered itself a non-commercial idealistic group of true artists long before 1917. The good Russian artist seems always to have been actuated by some force outside himself. Before the Revolution, it was devotion to art, afterwards to this was added devotion to fellow man —to the Mass, as proletarian theorists would call it. The Revolution was responsible for this latter motivation and for giving it expression on a large scale.
Furthermore, I do not say that there must be a revolution to accomplish this in America. In part it can come from within the theatre. As the leavening forces, I look at two heartening presences. One is the arrival on Broadway in ever-increasing numbers over the last five or ten years of what I might call "intelligentsia.” Many well-educated, university-trained young people with a knowledge of the history of art and of the social and economic problems of the day, coming from colleges where theatre practice is well taught, have decided to make the art of the theatre their profession (not their business), and have accepted the system of Broadway for the time being, although they despise its commercialism and dislike its pettiness, because it seems the only way of learning more about its practice. The other is the arrival in the last less than five years of an increasing number of artists with a class consciousness who are anxious to create a theatre which will exist for its audience and not for the box office. These artists are interested in the social and political propaganda drama and disdain the Broadway "success” type of play. The success of "Peace on Earth,” "Stevedore,” "Waiting for Lefty,” has heartened them and quite justifiably.
There are dangers in store for both elements. The former may easily fall into the stream of commercialism through its attendant lures; their education has been a capitalistic
one—the golden calf, although hazy in outline, looms in the background. The latter may become so absorbed in a future state of society that it will lose its realistic value in the expression of contemporary American problems. The United States is not now a socialist state and the proletarian theatre must not forget this. The Left theatre in America must not imitate the Left theatre of Communist Russia until its environment is more comparable. And it must remember that even in the Left theatre of Communist Russia, it is not only what you say but how you say it that counts. The Soviet theatre has been great, not because it was a propaganda theatre, but because it used propaganda and converted it into art. Most Soviet dramaturgy has been bad because it has not done so. Propaganda can serve art by giving it renewed meaning and purpose and a new virility. But art cannot serve propaganda.
Casting about for a constructive idea instead of more warnings, to offer to these two hopes of mine, I return to the Moscow theatres and find the structural organization which both groups, and any other artists working for creative excellence in the theatre need—the collective permanent theatre. This is, to be sure, no new suggestion. A not inconsiderable amount of talk about group theatres and the creation of several have taken place in the last few years. In one or two instances some of the most significant work being done in New York is in these collectives, particularly the Group Theatre. However, wide expansion of this idea for the organization of the professional theatre is attended by many difficulties.
In the first place, under the present commercial organization of the profession, or indeed under any system, to finance a collective theatre over long periods of non-productivity when a sizeable company of artists must be supported, requires a tremendous outlay of money with no immediate return in sight. In the second place, a group of
artists must be assembled who will be willing to turn their backs to tempting offers from the outside because of devotion to a collective enterprise which may be less remunerative financially; who will be willing to subordinate their individual ideas of creation to group creativeness; who will be willing to forego stardom and its luster to become pieces in a mosaic. This group must be so united in common knowledge of what it wants to say and how it wants to say it that it will be willing to make these sacrifices (for they would be looked upon as such, I am sure) in order to accomplish it. The most difficult thing about the whole procedure would be this last—to find fifty or a hundred artists in America who could agree to a common aim.
Nevertheless, such a collectivization seems to me essential to the development of higher art in the theatre of our country. No one denies that a great symphony orchestra must be a collective of artists who will assemble together for constant practice and performance for a year or many years. Orchestras are not "cast” a few weeks before a concert, hastily rehearsed and disbanded afterwards. If the performance of plays is to be simply a collection of solos rendered simultaneously in as many different keys as performers find suitable to their vocal registers, then perhaps the comparison with an orchestra is unjustified; but if it is to be an orchestrated ensemble (the very use of the word seems to be necessary) in which every player complements every other, in which ideas and emotions are to be expressed in a flow of vocal and visual harmony, then the production is as difficult as the performance of a symphony and needs the same long and studied synchronization of its participating interpreters.
In the group theatre there can be more time for rehearsal, more development of a style or a system of acting and production, deeper mutual understanding among the artists of
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their common artistic principles, a definitely defined line toward advancement of the art of the theatre, to replace the helter-skelter molecular movement of the present system. In the group theatre many of the contributing elements to the final superiority of form of the Moscow theatres can be explored, elements which I need not resummarize now, for they have appeared throughout this book.
The collective theatre composed of a group of artists has been the unit of dramatic production throughout the history of the theatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the theatre was at its high point in Germany, France and England. The breakup of the collective was caused by the growth of individualism and the beginning of the "star system” in the last century, and it resulted in the exploitation of the individual artist which ended in commercialism. It is only if the individual will once again submit himself to the permanent theatre organization and accept economic protection as well as artistic inspiration therefrom, that these artists can assist the "liquidation” of commercialism, as the Bolsheviks would put it.
I am well aware, however, that the collective theatre in itself is no insurance against commercialism. It is easy to imagine a Broadway composed of a number of collective theatres, all giving beautiful ensemble performances, but each of whose aim would simply be the making of more money through its collective strength than could be acquired by every artist working individually. Group theatres which became theatrical "trusts” would be the final step in destroying whatever artistic integrity is left to the New York theatre.
I am obliged to admit, therefore, that the collective theatre idea is no panacea. It is, again in the end, as in the beginning, a question of motive—what our workers in the theatre are willing to put into it; what they wish to get
out of it; what they want to make of it, an art or a business. If there are artists who believe in the theatre as a stimulating force in society and as a medium for the creation of beauty, then banded together in groups, and only so, can they carry the theatre on to the accomplishment of those ends.
Some readers may have expected that the returned student from Moscow, if he did not demand that the American theatre become at once proletarian, would at least urge state control of the theatre. The elimination of commercialism has been effected by government ownership in Russia, and would be effected by the adoption of the same arrangement in the United States. I have not, however, demanded the former, nor do I urge the latter.
I make no plea for the expansion of the proletarian theatre in America which will be in advance of the expansion of the proletariat itself. The United States is a bourgeois country; there continues, for better or worse, to be a great and powerful middle class in America. The theatre there must continue to address itself to that class, not exclusively to be sure, for it is imperative that the theatre admit the existence of other classes in our country and serve them as well; it must admit, too, the struggle between classes. But the theatre must follow life, express it, interpret it, move with it and change with it. If it cannot, it dies. That lesson from the Marxists it may be well to ponder. If our society is a capitalist one, then our theatre owes—not allegiance to capitalism at all—but owes to that society the exploration of its problems. If its major problem is a life and death struggle for existence against a rising proletariat, then the theatre must not close its eyes to that; and if the proletariat ever wins in the struggle and a new system begins, then—and no sooner—is the time when the theatre must turn proletarian.
There has been desultory talk of a state theatre, a "national theatre” in the United States. To this I am likewise opposed for two reasons. One objection, and the one most commonly advanced, is that the theatre stands to lose its freedom of expression if it were subsidized by the government. This is very possibly true, although I believe that influences just as powerful can be brought to bear on unorthodox dramatic expression under the present organization of the theatre by those very forces which dictate the policies of the government itself. Limitations to freedom of expression have been as flagrant in privately endowed institutions of learning in America as in the state-supported ones. However, any move which would curtail the freedom of our playwrights to face whatever problems of our life they wish, as they wish, would be unfortunate.
It is very possible that the boundaries which the Communist regime has set up for thought in the Soviet Union have had their effect upon the drama of Russia which, as I have pointed out, does most surely lag behind the other arts of the theatre. The dramatists are, it is true, the first artists of the theatre to be affected by loss of intellectual freedom. However, I believe that the battle cry for freedom-in-art has been shrieked a little more loudly than is necessary, particularly in respect to the Soviet theatre. Freedom in art really means only one of two things, either the unrestricted right of the artist to comment upon life as he sees it, or else his right to withdraw from life altogether and to escape into his art.
The restriction to keep within the tenets of Marx-Lenin- ism seems to me no sharper than the restriction by which the sculptors and glass-makers of Chartres were bound to keep within the theology of the equally strict and equally narrow medieval church. They seem to have managed to create something living and beautiful and, what is more, universal, despite the fact that there is no window illus-
trating the Koran, no porch dedicated to Buddha, and no piece of sculpture which seems to suggest a representation of a pre-incarnated Mary Baker Eddy. (Incidentally, let those who decry the very presence of propaganda in art remember, the whole of Chartres cathedral was, and still is, a glorious piece of simple and direct propaganda.)
What the mourners for the lost freedom of expression in Soviet Russia fail to realize is that life as the Soviet artist sees it, is the realistic life of the Communist state. He sees it with Bolshevik eyes, not from the nostalgic bourgeois point of view. And seeing it thus, he has no desire to make use of the second privilege which freedom must grant: the right to escape. Art as an escape is impossible in a state where people have nothing from which to escape. People who glory in the triumph of socialism have no desire to escape into an art which pays no attention to it. Art has been escapist only when society has lost its self-confidence. When it has been sure, as, in the Middle Ages, society was sure of the Church, or hopeful, as in the Renaissance, when men looked to a newly opening future, art and life have been one. Only when society has been confused and upset, as in the dawn of industrialism and the early days of the new scientific materialism when its confidence in accepted truths and customs has been broken, has art fled from life into artificial creations of its own imagination. Insofar as the liveliness of its art is concerned, the Soviet theatre is neither better nor worse for its government control.
My chief objection to the state subsidies for our theatre is that there is no demand for it. America has no right to a national theatre until the nation calls for it. The movement for a state theatre must not come from artists who believe that they could work more easily if the pressure of commercialism were removed, or that they would have a broader scope for proselytizing their art. The movement must come from the taxpayers who would have to sup-
port the state subsidy. When and if the people of our country really want and feel the need for a national theatre, as the Viennese, for instance have wanted and needed their music and opera, then it should be brought into being. Otherwise our state theatre would be as empty and as purposeless as the Comedie Frangaise is today.
But as a matter of fact, our country is not dramatically minded, it does not care two hangs about the ‘'great art of the theatre.” It does not hunger for spectacles to feed its soul, as Stanislavski claims the Russian nation does. State subsidies for major league ball teams would be more highly acclaimed by our citizenry than the patronage of Washington on Broadway. If the government were to enter into the motion picture industry and bring an end to the commercialism of Hollywood by creating a state cinema, it would be infinitely more justified. The movies are a popular art in America, the theatre is not, seldom has been, and I doubt if it ever will be. Supply will not create demand. There is no demand for a state theatre.
The people of Moscow want the theatre, they need it, it is part of their souls. The people of New York do not need the theatre. A show, yes; an amusement to escape from monotony and routine and worry, yes; but a fine art, not yet. If they did, they themselves would demand no more of the clap-trap circus tricks which they see at every turn. They would order an art to come out of the mess and feed them, and I think it could and would come (just as it sometimes does). America has fine playwrights, a larger aggregation of them than any other country can boast of today. It has good directors and actors and designers. The theatre could be a tremendous power in our world if the people wanted it to be. The Soviet theatre has risen to a peak because the people of Russia have pushed it there.
The future of the American theatre rests with America,
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and Moscow-bred missionaries who have envisioned the Soviet theatrical apocalypse can do little. Not they or anyone else can make the people want the theatre, but they, with the help of everyone else, can make the theatre fine for the public which does want it.
APPENDIX
I
regisseur’s report on "aristocrats” to the artistic COUNCIL OF THE VAKHTANGOV THEATRE,
JANUARY 17, 1935