April 20, 1928 — University of Pennsylvania Mask and Wig Foundation, Philadelphia PA

 

That the University of Pennsylvania has asked a few playwrights to come to you and talk about their craft is another and very important proof that the interest in the theatre in America is growing with a flood-like force —rapidly and steadily. We might call it the uprising of the amateur theatre. I doubt if you know how really strong and widespread this is.

One standing in the middle of Broadway can see a vast network spreading from the remotest parts of the country — all reaching out in some way towards Broadway, and it’s amazing how closely all these threads keep in touch with the professional theatre and how much they know about what is going on in it.

This isn’t a matter of private theatricals but the theatre in miniature —set in motion in all its parts — playwriting, acting, making scenery and costumes and above all directing. The passion for directing plays seems to be the germ that has bitten us as a nation most virulently — to say nothing of building theatres. So many perfectly good barns from Texas to Maine have been converted into theatres, we might almost call it the barn movement.

I remember being driven one very hot night in August last summer, to a barn from which the hay and the horses had been rather too recently removed, and there stalwart and successful business men suffering in their dress collars, and women in chic evening gowns, sat on narrow boards watching as crude a puppet show as has ever been perpetrated. A young lady who had been studying in France with one of the great masters of marionettes poured out her ardor for this art to the audience of well-behaved and otherwise extremely intelligent people who listened patiently. Why?

The unexpected places from which this uncontrollable force springs out at one interest me tremendously. For instance, a year or so ago I had a letter from some place in Georgia saying “I am the president of The Colored Ladies’ Pastime Dramatic Club — and I’m writing to ask permission to produce your play He and She, because we have just given very successfully Lady Windemere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde. We’re all very busy working women so we haven’t much time — no money — no scenery and no place but the church to give our plays but I’m sure we will make a great success of yours, if you’ll only let us do it.” Needless to say, I promptly wired permission with all my heart.

And the other day a letter came from way off in some other state saying “We’re going to give one of your plays but there are only twelve parts in it and our club has fourteen members. Will you please write in two more parts for us as quickly as possible.”

That is one of the things I did not do. If I ever have a letter of thanks after the performance is all over the one thing it is almost sure to say is — “I’m sorry you didn’t see our production because I really think it was much better than when it was done in New York.”

Whatever we may think of this amateur outburst of dramatic art, anything as rapidly increasing is important and anything as universal comes from an inherent demand in human nature.

The theatre, of course, is the quickest escape from ourselves into the world of imagination and apparently that escape is more and more imperative as civilization makes life more hideous for us.

A long time ago when we were all more or less disdainful of the movies, Jennie — who spent her day rubbing fat off ladies of leisure to keep them beautiful, and whose husband apparently had no name and certainly no job, and was always referred to by Jennie as “him” — Jennie said to me, “When I go home at night I’m too tired for anything. I can’t sleep — I can’t read I can’t speak and I don’t want nobody to speak to me but for five cents I can go to the movies and set and rest and see things I never could see any other way — grand people — wild animals — foreign cities — wonderful houses and strange beautiful things and I forget about myself and go home all made over and the things I have to stand from him don’t seem half so hard.” Can anything more eloquent be said of the theatre and its place in the sun — and our deep need of it — than what Jennie has said?

The professional theatre with all its prejudice and suspicion of the outside thing — and its supreme scorn of the academic daring to presume to teach any of the elements of dramatic art — will always believe that the office boy who has grown up in the theatre is far better equipped than the young man who has gone in for dramatics in college. And so he is — but in the long run, it’s only the individual gift which counts and if that gift can come with education and breeding in its hands it brings something of much needed value through those prejudiced doors of the theatre.

And the skeptical Broadway producer is gradually beginning to realize that a machinery has been installed, through the Little Theatre and in some colleges, which is a bridge tiding the amateur over into the professional world — and that if he keeps his shrewd eye on that bridge he will occasionally find good material passing timidly over it — of a sort he isn’t likely to find anywhere else.

This machinery has its dangerous side of false encouragement — of turning out too many unfit for the market-place — but it can also be of inestimable value in helping the mistaken ones to find out the theatre is not for them before they waste long years of finding it out from the world.

But let me say to the young aspirant — don’t lean too heavily upon this bridge or expect too much of It — for it is only after it has been crossed that the real work begins.

I know a little dancer — very young and very frail. She insists upon keeping her hair — her blonde curls which add greatly to her delicate and quaint quality. She was taught academically in a good sort of school where she had gentle handling and appreciation of her sensitive gift. Then her professional chance came and she had to stand in line with many others and take the lashes of the professional whip. It lashed and cut because it recognized her genius. And the artist in her took it not only bravely but gratefully for she knew she was being recognized. The pretty amateurishness was stripped away and the strong sure bones of technique were built. Technique by which she could keep the delicate inspired individual thing which was in her heart and give it out — crystallized — so the world could see it just as she did. That’s what we must all go through after we cross the bridge.

A number of young men have come out of Professor Baker’s work shop with plays under their arms and walked quickly on to the professional stage. Ned Sheldon, Eugene O’Neill, Sydney Howard, and Philip Barry are the outstanding ones.

Barry was the latest, and his first production You and I was a success — as first productions have a way of being. Then came failures — lovely things — full of poetry and wisdom and promise and out of them out of the failures came his great success Paris Bound. He has found how to keep himself and say what he has to say skillfully and positively so it gets to others as he meant it.

I’ve said all this not only because I am keenly in sympathy with the Little Theatre and the college dramatic work shop, but because I know they are both a force to be reckoned with — and that they are having an unquestioned effect upon the professional theatre — both inside upon the art of it and outside in the audience.

There is a better listening in the theatre now than ever before as the old false devices of plot and invention in plays are discarded as the more intelligent and subtle drama has come, which can only be conveyed by talk. There is an audience to listen to that talk. A more unimaginative audience keeping pace with a more imaginative theatre.

And all these things which are stirring in us — in you — in me are the elements which are lifting the American theatre out of Vagabondia into its place of power and dignity.

I’m hoping that my fellow craftsmen have said all that can possibly be said about the matter of playmaking — and that you not only don’t need but don’t want to hear anything more about it — for I assure you it overwhelms me to even try to talk about it.

There is so much to say about this illusive, complex, comprehensive thing that I can say very little — and even if I could say much how would you know whether it is true or not? Until we have done a thing ourselves it isn’t possible to know whether what some one else is saying about it is true or not. Is it? Until we have gone through the throes of creation and brought those inner visions out — how can we understand what the process is of getting them out — and just what the stages are which make the craft?

When Dr. Quinn asked us to come on this mission he very grace fully and alluringly said ­— “We realize that playwriting can hardly be taught — but we do believe that those who are looking forward to creative work in this field may receive authority and inspiration from coming in contact with those who have achieved results that are likely to be permanent” — and he finished by saying — “The group of students interested in playwriting will be very small and I hope you will come and give them your practical advice.” Which very sound and wise way of putting it made me for one at least, not only willing but delighted to enter into this experiment. For it seems to me that this is not only the newest but the most sane of all the methods to seek practical advice from workmen of the theatre — not theory from people who have themselves only studied the theatre or have touched it very little. For I do believe and know that something definite and real can be given out of experience to the inexperienced — never by theory — never by imposing something upon the beginner and thereby stopping his own creation; but by concrete criticism and suggestion concerning a piece of work he has already done — not something he hopes to do and through that he will begin to see the basic principles of all playwriting and know how to apply them to his next work. It seems to me much more important to help one person deeply than to expound theories to a great many.

When I began writing plays there was no definite place to go for help. It so happened that my second play was produced first — The Three of Us — and as it was a straightforward story, sticking to the point, it was a success.

The second production was really my first play, The Coming of Mrs. Patrick. Nearly every manager in New York read it and almost produced it. They all knew there was something wrong with it, but not one of them seemed to know what that was. At last it fell into hands with which James Forbes, the playwright, was connected, and I remember so vividly, while they were all wrestling with it, he said, “If you’d just cut out all this other stuff and stick to the main story” — but they hushed him up and brushed him aside. And I remember how what he said startled and arrested me.

The only thing of real knowledge and understanding that was ever said about the play before it was produced came from a playwright. After it was produced the critics and the public told me what I could then see for myself — when it was too late and the play had failed.

I remember one critic said how true and simple the first act was: but that halfway through the second act the old ghosts of make-believe and plot and invention came stalking in and it was all over.

If only I had known enough to stand still and listen to Forbes! He could have made me see that the whole play should spring spontaneously out of its own roots — and can only widen and deepen and be fulfilled out of itself — never out of the extraneous thing brought in. Of course all that was driven into me forcibly and for all time by seeing my play produced — more forcibly than it could have been done any other way — but I could have been helped before it was too late and the play could have been saved. That’s why I know that the playwrights your university has brought here have given things to the young workers it would have taken them a long time to find out for themselves.

But only the gifted can be helped — only the ones with the dramatic instinct. That is the secret thing which must be there. It can’t be taught, or given, or even talked about — much less explained. It either is or it isn’t. Without it, everything else is worthless — with it everything else is worth working for.

I hope to heaven nobody is going to ask me what the dramatic instinct is, for I can’t tell. I shall have to refer you to the dictionary. I only know it when I see it.

Perhaps this will help you. A friend of mine who had been in a playwriting class for at least three weeks in one of our largest colleges, said to me:

“To be dramatic you have to have a conflict and I’ve got one. The baby is very ill and the poor woman doesn’t know whether to stay with it and let it die without the doctor, or to go out in the storm and get the doctor and let the baby die alone.”

Perhaps it would have been still more dramatic to kill the baby before she went for the doctor.

The technique of the play is as different from that of the novel as sculpture is from painting. Plays happen in action-novels are told. Very, very seldom is a real play made from a novel. In the first place a real dramatist is very seldom interested in handling someone else’s material. It is usually done by someone who thinks there is a play in the book and that he can easily bring that play out. But almost always that work turns out to be only a succession of scenes taken from the book — always with the finger of narration in them — the unmistakable work of the novelist, and not the unfolding growth of inevitability, which is drama. Whether one can write a play or not is not at all a question of intelligence or experience, but of that indefinable thing, the dramatic instinct.

A very brilliantly successful woman novelist said to me a few years ago, “I was frightfully tired and stale on my own job of books and I’ve written three plays. They’ve all been taken by managers, but none of them get produced. Will you read one and tell me honestly what you think?” I did.

It was a good story — clear characterization and dialogue far beyond the average because of her literary ability, but totally lacking in anything dramatic.

She could not see that this was so — but she was very game and said, “I’m going to get it. Other people do — why shouldn’t I?”

Three years later she came back and said, “Well, I’ve turned all my plays into novels and sold them. I simply have not got it — the thing that makes a play and I still don’t even know what it is.”

The dramatist, I believe, isn’t so often tempted to try to write novels, but of course when he is he finds it just as different and just as difficult as the novelist does to write plays.

The longer I work at playwriting, the more I see of all sorts and conditions of plays from those of the beginner to those of the master, the more I am convinced that construction is the great stumbling block for us all, and that bad construction causes more good possibilities to remain unfulfilled than any other element in the writing of plays.

Construction is obviously the framework upon which all the the other material rests — the outline by which the story is displayed. Without a good skeleton the most dramatic story is confused and weakened and sometimes lost entirely in the telling. The thing we don’t do is to think through to the end — to develop to its fullest possibilities the drama which is the germ of the idea we started with. We diverge for new force instead of digging deeper into what we already have in our hands.

Good construction builds the story act by act — always climbing, always advancing, finishing the first act at the most effective peak of just so much growth.

The next act is a development of seeds sown in the first act — finishing at a still higher peak of growth — the end of an act always pushing into the next with the impact of its own force, and the last act the accumulative, inevitable outcome of every stroke that has gone into the play.

Inevitability, I believe, is the greatest quality in playwriting, not surprise and invention. They are very fine indeed in farce and the mystery play but not in drama. Inevitability is a true and psychological result coming out of the natures of the characters as they act and react upon each other under the given conditions.

The further on in the story the play begins, the better. The more that is revealed of situation, atmosphere conditions, people and their relationships to each other — the more that is shown of this by the opening lines of the play, the better the construction. And revealed not by explanation, but by the natural impulsive speech of the characters telling each other things they do not know but want to know. Always advancing, not going back and recalling to each other things which of course they do know in order to tell the audience.

Good dialogue conveys to the audience everything by seeming to tell it nothing — by letting it catch up with the characters as it sees them actually living, and overhears their intimate talk to each other.

The more closely knit together the acts are, the better. The more that is known about the situation in the new act the moment the curtain goes up, without going back and telling what has happened in between the acts, the better the construction. It isn’t necessary that each act should go straight on in time — but it is necessary that it be the direct result of what the other act finished with. And in the acts are scenes — little acts within themselves; and in the scenes are speeches; and in the speeches are sentences; all building, climbing to a climax. And in these acts and scenes and speeches and lines is rhythm. Each can only carry so much — its own beat. A little too long and the effect of the whole is hurt.

Music — harmony. And in it all and through it all well-balanced movement — groups of characters flowing together and dissolving into smaller groups with variety and grace.

The convenient and much overworked duologues to be avoided except when they are the natural demand for a more intimate scene. Never fixed sets of characters saying all the author wants to say and coming to a complete stop in order to let the next set come on and say the next things; but always the characters coming and going because they must — because of reasons which are advancing the play in tensity and growth — not merely getting people on and off.

Grace and variety of movement are as necessary to playwriting as color is to painting. The choice of settings —how much change of scene will help the story, or how much more effective for the characters to remain in one room throughout the play — all this enters into construction. That’s why playwriting includes all the other arts.

It is also a science — chemistry. Imagine a glass of clear water into which two chemicals are dropped — two different colors. We watch them come together and change color — moving, twisting, growing, evolving, gradually becoming one new color because of their own natures and their effect upon each other until a new shape and composition, a result, is formed. That’s playwriting. The finer the construction the simpler of course — and the less aware of it the audience is. The moment complication and complexity and confusion set in the most innocent of laymen is vaguely conscious that something is wrong. The play isn’t getting him as it should.

Rain is a fine example of the simplicity of great construction and the growth of tense, deep drama coming out of the characteristics of two people and their effect upon each other, without one unnecessary stroke.

And yet with all the colossal importance of construction it is the one thing which can be learned by experience, by seeing plays, by help from other people, and by work.

As the great old German teacher of piano said: “Ve vork and ve veep and den ve veep and ve vork and den ve vork.”

Construction changes slowly in its outward style, but the new things such as expressivism, constructivism, etc., don’t really effect dramatic art. That marches steadily on, growing out of the understanding of human nature and the skill of depicting human nature.

Personally I believe that great realism — realism at its best — is the highest form of dramatic writing. I believe that the most imaginative, poetic, or mystical drama is most powerfully written in realism.

Outward Bound seems to me a most poignant example of this. The searching spiritual drama of the soul after death was made dramatic and understandable by writing the play in the medium of natural human beings.

New construction, if it is only new for the sake of being different, destroys drama. When the extreme changes in playwriting began to come a few years ago we had strange incoherent stories told with all sorts of novelties and innovations — one scene being played in a pigeon hole in one part of the stage and another in the other. We had platforms and different levels, steps leading down into the audience and characters running back and forth from the stage to the audience; but no great plays came out of these innovations.

However, out of all change the real artist gets something. Out of the revolutionary period the theatre has just gone through, the sound dramatist has come into a freer, looser, more sketchy and swiftly moving style. He knows now it is better writing to merely suggest to awaken the imagination of the audience and make them feel and see through that than to tell them all there is to be told about everything and thereby stop their imagination.

Out of the extremities and absurdities of new style and experiments, the real dramatist has taken the best and used it with the authority and skill of the man who knows the foundations of his art. Most of the experimenters in playwriting a few years ago were doing something new without knowledge of the old.

One must know the fundamental laws of any craft before he can take liberties with it. One must be able to draw a straight line before he can draw a crooked one with art in it. The painter must know the bones and anatomy of the body and be able to paint it with normal flesh before he can paint it in any other way with power and conviction. That is an old and well worn bromide, but it can’t be too strongly stressed in playwriting.

Out of all these new and experimental changes came — possibly totally unconsciously but nevertheless surely came the brilliant treatment of the play Broadway. It moves swiftly from scene to scene in the same set. The variety of entrances, the steps, the upper levels are there, but they are there because they belong to the place natural and necessary parts of it. As to the writing; one scene flows into the other with a pace and rhythm that are electrical — many threads weaving in and out on that quick shuttle, never becoming entangled or confused — while we watch the tapestry woven swiftly before our eyes.

As to the episodic treatment; after we had had spasms of elaborate use of it for the sake of novelty and not for the sake of the play Galsworthy finally used it to tell his story of Escape.

This treatment is normal — fitted to the intrinsic meaning of the play — which is the effect that the main figure and the different groups of people have upon each other as he touches them in his flight. All these episodes are held together by the underlying idea which is that he can escape from everything but his own soul. Caught by it in the end, he gives himself up when he is safe in the sanctuary of the church. The play starts with tremendous dramatic possibilities, falls in the middle and rises again at the end.

Galsworthy, of course, is one of the few novelists who is also a dramatist. If he were a great constructionist he would be a very great playwright. With his strong sense of the dramatic, both in material and in treatment, to say nothing of his actual writing — bringing literature into the theatre — he has a rich endowment.

The great James Barrie — another one of those few figures of literature who are also dramatists — manages to translate his illusive charm on to the stage because of the power of that charm. Had he, too, great construction, of his own delicate kind, his insidious quality would “get over” still more vividly than it does — he would be played oftener now and live longer.

Shaw is, to me, the greatest of the literary dramatists — the master who has it all. The Doctor’s Dilemma, now being played in New York, is as fresh as if it were just written. New treatment — old treatment — genius. The opening medical discussion between the five doctors is actual drama, delightful and suspensive, which in ordinary hands would be nothing but a conversation.

Porgy I consider the most important contribution to the theatre of this season, both in writing and production. Again the value of elimination — again the swiftly moving episode — the swiftest of elemental stories bare of one vestige of plot — only souls struggling in the darkness of ignorance. And, most remarkable of all, it is the essence of a natural problem concerning us all, without one hint of propaganda-only theatre and drama — and art. The symbolism in Porgy is an integral part of the play — not superimposed for style’s sake. Do you remember the reaching out of the long arms and fingers of fear and superstition and their shadows on the wall? The pace — the verve — the rhythm —  color; tremendous — new — vibrating.

The fitness of the style of construction and handling is an inner vital thing, and only when it comes out of the vitals of the play itself is it right. The Cherry Orchard is a marvelous example of the form of a play coming out of its own innate quality. Only that rambling disintegrated style could express so powerfully the futility of the Russia of that time. At first it seems without pattern as it unfolds slowly; and then at last we feel rather than see — the strength of a great pattern.

But with all its importance, construction is not the thing which gives a play life and magnetism. Those qualities come from the idea itself — the story, the characters, and above all from their speech through which everything must be conveyed. Speech — dramatic dialogue that magic thing which is the blooming of all the other elements in the play; speech which must come fresh and impulsively from the characters because they can’t help saying these things, and the things that only they would say, and in the way only they would say them.

Good dramatic dialogue reveals but does not explain. The fewer words the character speaks and the more he shows of himself by them, the better the writing.

Great dialogue flashes the light on characters as lightning illumines the dark earth — in flashes. Great dialogue doesn’t stand still and analyze. It conveys so much in a few words that the actor holds a great instrument in his hand, and with it can make the audience know the depths of his being. Fairly good dialogue is the commonest gift found in all playwriting, and the most misleading. It promises so much but it doesn’t make a play. Very great dialogue is the rarest gift, and is the flower, the crowning touch of drama.

The laws of playwriting are loose and fluid. They may always be broken, changing always, adaptable to the material in hand, so illusive they may seem to contradict themselves or not to be there at all; but under the pattern, whatever it may be, are always the same stern basic principles of development however individually they may be handled.

In my own case the method is this: first the idea, then the story which will concretely develop this idea, then the characters which spring instantaneously with the story because they are the story and they are the idea — out of them and their natures it all comes. Then the construction which remains always open and fluid because in the writing itself unexpected developments come as the sparks catch fire from each other; and too fixed a framework stops that growing thing which may have better stuff in it than one knew. And last, the dialogue where the characters take the whole thing into their own hands and say to me what they think.

After all the agony of doubt and responsibility of first creation is over the thrill of seeing these people stand on their own feet and march off without me is the reward of it all — the most fascinating thing in the world.

A play goes through more hands before it reaches its public, than any other form of art. That’s why I say to the young writer: know your theatre from the ground up, and the more you know of all the factors in the production of your play the more as you meant it will it come to your public.

Each hand that touches the play leaves an impression upon it. The scenic artist sees the surroundings in which the people in the play live — through his eyes. Whoever selects the clothes does the same. And the person who chooses the actors puts into the whole thing an enormous element either to help or hurt the play. Most important of all, and the factor that shapes and controls the whole production, is the director. Great directors do much for plays, but no matter how fine the director and all the other minds which are brought together in the production, they can’t see and know the play as deeply and vividly as the author does; and if the author is trained and equipped and has a gift for all that goes into the staging of a play, he gets a result which does more for the play than the outsider can do. Some subtle inner quality escapes when it goes through other minds.

It isn’t possible for me to separate the writing from the staging of my own plays because it so happens that I began to do it all at the same time. It’s therefore very much easier for me to be responsible for everything from the smallest details than it is to translate it all to someone else. Too much tribute and gratitude cannot be given by the playwright to good acting. When everything else has been done the play is in the hands of the actors. The selection of the actors — finding personalities and acting skill which can best become the characters of the play — and then the directing of these actors — finding the priceless God-given thing they have to give to the play and using it to the best advantage — never checking it, never superimposing too much upon it — but always tenderly and firmly coaxing it out and developing it — where to let the actor completely alone to do as he feels — where to help him to do something he does not feel compromising with what the actor has to give and what the character is, until out of the two the person is born — this is the most fascinating and most important part of all producing.

The other elements of the theatre have come on hand in hand with the newer, freer, more unimaginative style of writing: And this development is in all the other arts and in everything else in the world. The theatre gives it back, reflects it powerfully and quickly.

We all go through very much the same process — crossing the bridge — and it seems a very little while to me since I began on the floor playing out the lives of one set of dolls completely before I took up another set. The first long drama was produced in the back parlor when I was twelve. It was called: Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining, or The Ruined Merchant. It was in five acts and had five characters two of which I allowed one other person to play while I acted the other three myself.

You may guess that we leaned heavily upon the now much dis cussed soliloquy and aside-while one character was changing to the other.

The program read:

Dramatist Personæ —
Act 1-Scene in Mansion.
Act 2-Scene in Wood.
Act 3-Scene in Mansion.
Act 4-Scene in Wood.
Act 5-Scene in Mansion — Happiness.

The production was intensely modern, but the villain carried a wooden sword, wore a black velvet cape, riding boots and red flannel underdrawers by way of doublet and hose. I remember my hurt surprise that any comedy should be found in the line: “Alas poor father — I can see that he grows older day by day.” I still think it’s a very good line and profoundly true.

A few years later when my readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic were going rapidly to the dogs because of the Dramatic Club, I discovered a play called The Doll’s House, by a man named Ibsen, which I struggled to persuade the older members of the club would be an excellent thing for us to produce after it had been somewhat rewritten by me. And then came the school of acting in New York; going as a pupil and staying on as a teacher. It was there my first one-act plays were written. These I directed and staged for student performances, and so when the professional chance came I was trained to stage my own plays. That was a bridge of rare good fortune for me.

Again I say, with all my heart, the workshop has tremendous value, but there is one very grave menace to the theatre in New York which has come out of this mad passion for the inside of the theatre, and that is the so-called small art theatre. It is always made up of little rebellious groups who are determined to elevate the stage. They have fine intentions but very little equipment as they are never made up of either the best of the amateur or the professional theatre, but people with dreams and ideals who raise money and produce the play they think too good for the commercial manager to produce. It’s usually something with some literary value in it, not good enough for the commercial theatre.

The scenery is arty, the acting is immature, the direction weak, but each little group has a cult and a following; they raise money, they create false ideas about the art of the theatre, and all this depletes the very stream of energy and money which ought to go into one strong current for an endowed theatre. An art theatre, yes, but art supplied by the very best out of the professional theatre. Endowed not that money may be spent and wasted in experimentation, but that great plays may be greatly produced without fear of the box office, and only for the love and pride in the highest the theatre can reach. The Guild Theatre, an art theatre in New York, has accomplished fine things, but it must make money to exist. America should have one theatre into which the need of money does not enter.

When one thinks of what the theatre might be one weeps for what it is not. But with all the wrong that is always there and all the new coarseness that has recently sprung into it so violently, something finer than ever before is coming on steadily too. However good or bad the thing in the theatre is, you may know it has happened out there, in reality, before it ever got on to the stage.

The stage reflects life, it doesn’t invent it.

The change of codes — of morals and manners — which we find now shocking in the theatre, couldn’t be there and wouldn’t be tolerated if it were not already a pervading thing in the world. The theatre is made up of all of us. Everything we are and do and think and believe gets into the theatre — it is the mirror of life.

I’m very honored to have been asked to come into this experiment and I shall consider it a proud moment if because of all my hard but wonderful years of work in the theatre I can help some one else a little now. Perhaps a very great playwright is here, in the making, and perhaps some of us who came to help will, out of our experience, be able to lead him across the bridge, ready for the market place. Of course if he has the divine spark — the dramatic spark — he’ll help himself. He’ll stumble and grope and then go straight because of his stumbling. But he can be saved a lot of time and waste and heartache if someone can say to him just exactly the things he needs to open the windows and show him the wide wonderful vistas of play-making.

 

 

Source: The Art of Playwriting: Lectures Delivered at the University of Pennsylvania on the Mask and Wig Foundation, by Jesse Lynch Williams, Langdon Mitchell, Lord Dunsany, Gilbert Emery, Rachel Crothers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), pp. 115-134.