Among the Best Ways to Fill Your Leisure: "The Theater"

Among the most important duties which civilized governments are bound to attend to on behalf of the people is the organizing of their leisure hours. By 'organizing' we do not mean that there should be any compulsion or coercion in it, but simply the easing of the means of enjoying leisure time, and on the widest possible scale.

The war brought many changes to British thinking in matters of art, and especially the theater. Before the war, concern with matters of art was confined to a certain class; it was little more than a trade, and the government's part in it was limited or restricted. But that attitude has now changed: the government looks upon all the branches and departments of culture as a heritage of the people which it must preserve, and to which it must encourage people to come and drink deep.

One of the results of this new concern was that the government created two theatrical companies for entertainment: one the 'ENSA' company, and the second the company known as 'CEMA,' that is, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. The government supervises the latter council completely, and its creation is therefore regarded as a clear change in government policy toward matters of art.

All attention at the present time is fixed upon the theater. For the last forty years attempts had been made to establish a national theater in Britain, and now, thanks to the 'CEMA' body, this old dream is coming true. A site has been taken for it on the bank of the River Thames, beside the site of the old 'Globe' theater, on whose boards a great number of Shakespeare's plays were performed.

This national theater, besides reviving the memory of the culture of the past age, will be a means of quickening contemporary culture. The commercial element had come to dominate all the different branches of art, especially before 1939.

The result was that the people came to loathe these commercial ventures, and the national culture was exposed to the danger of suppression and alteration — a danger not confined to the arts alone. During the war the commercial cinema drew the attention of the masses, and it also drew most of the actors away from the theater, so that rising actors found it very difficult to obtain an audience. But the establishment of a national theater will put an end to all these things, and the actors, and the audience too, will meet with fair treatment, because the government has taken upon itself the task of educating the people and the groups that concern themselves with art — and that must be done on special terms. Those who are drawing up the plans for the national theater and directing the future of the 'CEMA' body understand this perfectly. There are wide hopes for the future; the masterpieces of English literature and the old classical plays are all awaiting the chance to be staged alongside the modern plays that treat the affairs of the different classes and give them expression.

A heart formed for uprightness is not content with patchwork in morals, just as an ear of sound hearing is not content with bad music. (Cecil)