the educational theatre for tomorrow, 1957

8/3/2019 The Educational Theatre for Tomorrow, 1957

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The Educational Theatre for TomorrowAuthor(s): Kenneth MacgowanSource: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May, 1957), pp. 85-95Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3203725

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THEEDUCATIONALHEATREFORTOMORROWKENNETH MACGOWAN

The educational theatre for tomorrowis the theatre that you and I are workingin and planning for today. For good orill, every thought and every effort onevery one of our campuses-mistakesand blunders as well as long-sightedachievements-are shaping the futureof a theatre that must be creative aswell as recreative. That is why it is goodto meet in such a conference as this. Andpray God we talk about our mistakesand our blunders just as much as aboutour freshly kindled hopes and what wethink are our long-sighted achievements.That is all pretty obvious. And I'mafraid I shall have to say a lot morethat will be just as obvious. I shall beas brief as I can about some of thesethings and freshen up the rest of themwith the favorite spice of the popularpedagog-the personal approach.Now, obviously, I must start withwhat is the height of the obvious-thebirth and the growth of the thing thatbrings us here today. My experience ofthe educational theatre goes back to thetime when there was none. Or perhapsI should say when it was no more thana smile on the ever-genial face of Pro-fessor George Pierce Baker. That wasKenneth Macgowan is a member of the staff ofthe Department of Theater Arts at the Univer-sity of California, Los Angeles. The presentpaper was presented as an address at the 1956AETA Convention in Chicago.

the academic year of 1907-o8at Harvard,and Baker was teaching a graduatecourse in playwriting called English 47.(Graduate, forsooth! He let EugeneO'Neill take it, though he had beenthrown out of Princeton as a freshmansix years before.) Harvard never thoughtmuch of Baker and his devotion to thetheatre. He had had to start his writingcourse at Radcliffe, Harvard's discreetand clandestine approach to coeduca-tion. In Cambridge, Baker never hadcourses in acting or production. Despitemany loose-minded historians of thetheatre, his famous 47 Workshop, whichhe started in 1912-13, was always extra-curricular, and made most of its pro-ductions in a Radcliffe auditorium.Hence Lee Simonson (Harvard 19o09and Robert Edmond Jones (1910) hadno chance to study or practice scene de-sign at college. The antipathy of my al-ma mater to the educational theatre wasso great that it turned down the offer ofa man of wealth to build a playhousefor Harvard. So, in 1924, the theatre-and Baker-went to Yale. As HeywoodBroun, another alumnus, put it: "Yale47-Harvard o."Then why, as far back as 1908, wasthere a smile on Baker's face? It camefrom more than a premonition of whatlay ahead for the educational theatre.In that year one of his graduate students,


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86Edward Sheldon-whose stricken lifeand early death were to be far moretragic than anything in his plays-sawMrs. Fiske, the best actress of thosedays, produce his Salvation Nell for ayear's run on Broadway. The rest ishistory, and you are all too familiarwith the names of the young men whoheard of Sheldon as well as Baker, andflocked to English 47.I'm afraid I've got to stress the ob-vious again. This is how Baker's workand Baker's reputation led more imag-inative universities than Harvard intothe establishment of curriculums in the-atre. Not just courses in playwriting-though there are now 60 to 7o-butstudies in every area of theatre andworkshop and public production. Weknow that Frederick Koch and Al-exander M. Drummond were at Harvardjust before my time, but others, who hadnever fallen under the personal spell ofthis great teacher, were fired by his ideasand his example, and became pioneersof the educational theatre. While Bakerwas starting his 47 Workshop, Koch waslaunching the Dakota Playmakers andDrummond was building a curriculumat Cornell. And between 1914 and 1925,when Baker went to Yale, men likeThomas Wood Stevens of CarnegieTech, and Edward C. Mabie of Iowaand Alexander Dean of Northwestern-to name only three out of so many-were building the educational theatreacross our land. It is bitterly ironical-though still a matter of satisfaction toa Harvard graduate-that the institu-tion which refused the offer of a theatreand dropped playwriting when Bakerleft has reinstated English 47 and isplanning a playhouse to serve newcourses, as well as the multitudinousamateur productions. Harvard is to erect-all too tardily-a structure upon thestone that the builders rejected.

EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNALOne more statement of the obvious-

a record of accomplishment and promiseand an assertion and a warning. Fiftyyears since Baker sowed the seed of theeducational theatre, this meeting ofAETA bears witness to the fact thatclose to 400 universities and collegesnow offer majors in theatre. More than1,800 produce and present anually 5,500to 6,500 plays, in even more perform-ances. Through teaching or technicalwork, some 15,000 men and women earna living in the educational theatre. Weall know that a goodly number of play-houses-sweeping across the countryfrom Yale past Madison and Iowa Cityto Eugene, Oregon and San Jose, Cal-ifornia-are the best equipped in Amer-ica. Not one commercial theatre hasbeen built since the depression of 1929,but the universities and colleges haveconstructed at least 50.What was the need for such an in-vasion of the universities by the theatre?Why so many teachers? Why so manycourses and so many plays? Why somany students?The answer was obvious enough be-fore 1920. You know that when the uni-versities first began introducing theatrestudies the professional stage of Americawas giving us plays that were almost al-ways obvious, unimaginative, and evenuntruthful. If we wanted to see Con-tinental plays of true merit, if we wantedto get some small glimpse of the produc-tion methods of men like Antoine andReinhardt, Appia and Craig, we had toattend university or community theatres.You know that in the 192o's-boomyears on Broadway as well as in WallStreet-things changed for the better onthe professional stage. But you also knowthat in the latter half of that decadecame a new need for activity in the uni-versity theatre. This was the competitionof two new forms of entertainment that


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THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE FOR TOMORROWbegan to threaten the stage, taking awayplayhouses, playgoers, and some ofits actors. The silent movies and thenthe early talkies leased New York the-atres to show their feature films. Soonthe radio was turning playhouses intostudios-a cheap way to broadcast be-fore an audience. Both mediums cut inon the audience for plays. Then camethe depression of 1929. That hurt themovies but not so badly as it hurt thestage, while radio went on giving freeentertainment in the homes. The resultof all this was not only the gradualshrinkage of the Broadway theatre;movies, radio, and the depression strucka devastating blow at the touring sys-tem that had brought New York suc-cesses to other cities and even to towns.You are all too familiar with the sta-tistics. The 80 more or less "legitimate"theatres of New York have shrunk toless than 30. The 5,000 theatres of theRoad are now hardly 50. The 400 stockcompanies are gone.You know all too well that the heart ofthe living stage of today is the educa-tional theatre and, to a lesser degree, thecommunity theatre. And this brings usup against something that may be ob-vious but isn't simple. This is our re-sponsibility to both the public and thestudent. What must we do to create andserve a bigger and better audience?What must we do to make our teachingsounder and of greater promise for thefuture?

Creating and serving a bigger and abetter audience isn't a matter of merelyproducing more plays and rounding upan ever larger number of subscribers.Even now we are producing a greaternumber of plays than Broadway did inthe '20's. If we aren't equalling in quan-tity the output of the traveling rep andthe stock companies, we know that ourplays are of an infinitely better quality.

And we have the satisfaction of know-ing that in many a city and town wehave gone far toward filling the theat-rical void left by the decay of the Road.

Yet how much further we must golNot alone in gathering an ever-largeraudience and in holding it by the onlyproper means-better and better per-formances. We must challenge Broadwayat its highest level. This is not the levelof its acting; we must recognize that inthis area competition is impossible, andwe must simply do our best with studenttalent. No, the challenge of Broadwayis in a field for which it never getsproper credit, a field we take so much forgranted that we seldom stress its con-tribution. I am thinking of the produc-tion of new plays. Here, too, Broadwayhas fallen off, though not in quality. Itproduces only about 45 a year, while itused to mount more than 200. But mean-while what have we ourselves done tocultivate the most essential factor in agrowing theatre-the thing that theprograms of the nineteenth century usedto call a "new and original play?"We have taught playwriting, of course.Baker set the pattern and we have fol-lowed it. In the 1920's there were adozen professional playwrights who hadlearned their craft in college. Our lead-ing dramatists today-Arthur Miller,Tennessee Williams, Robert Anderson,William Inge, John Patrick-are uni-versity men, though not all of them satunder teachers of playwriting. What hashappened to the hundreds of studentswho took the courses that followed Eng-lish 47? Why have so few of them seentheir plays on Broadway? And whyhave so few of their plays been producedby the universities?The answer to the first question liesin the competition of the talkies, theradio, and now television for youngwriting talent. As these new mediums of

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EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNALdramatic expression came along theydeveloped a voracious appetite for newstories and new writers. How manyyoung men and women were luredaway from the stage-or gave up tryingto reach it-because of the money thatthey could make by writing stories orscripts for the Hollywood camera orthe radio microphone? We can neverguess at how many stopped trying toperfect their skills in playwriting, howmany gave up after their third play-oreven their first-went unproduced. Thetalkies and the radio started this drainon talent. Now we have television withits even greater need for writers. (Oneof the few virtues of television is that,while it pays its young writers onlvenough to turn them away from the the-atre, it gives some of them a reputationthat they can capitalize on if they wantto write for the screen or the stage.)And now we come to the second ques-tion. Why did we in the universitiesproduce so few of the plays that thesestudents wrote before they succumbedto the lure of screen and radio? Whyhave we done so shabbily by the fewwho kept doggedly at the job of play-writing while they earned their breadand butter heaven-knows-how?You all know the answer. By and large-in spite of the pattern of new play pro-duction that Baker and his 47 Workshopset at Harvard and again at Yale-formany years we have shamefully neg-lected the production of new plays. Oh,yes, we gave lip service to the self-evidentfact that a young playwright may learnmore from seeing a play of his on thestage than he learned from his instructorin playwriting.While the films and radio were offer-ing jobs, what were the universitiesdoing, what were their dramatic depart-ments up to? They were growing innumbers and in size of enrollment. They

were putting on more and more plays,and mounting them handsomely. Butthey were doing almost nothing to lureplaywrights from the nourishing flesh-pots of Hollywood and Radio City. In-stead, the universities were busy takingthe place of the touring system. Theywere absorbed in reproducing Broadwayplays when they might have been pro-ducing new ones.In the last half dozen years, universitytheatres have waked up to the fact thatthey can and should do something morethan teach playwriting and reproduceBroadway hits. AETA and its Manu-script Play Project deserve much credit.So do the universities that recognized thenew play-and particularly the pro-duced play-as a proper substitute fora research thesis or dissertation. Evenmore credit should go to the few uni-versities that have risked showing newand original plays to their paying pub-lic. Finally, there have been universities-not too many, I'm sorry to say-thathave offered fellowships in playwriting.Three thousand dollars added to thebudget or obtained from some foun-dation would give the most promisingmen at least a year to concentrate onplaywriting with no need to choose be-tween undernourishment and the temp-tations of film, radio, and television.(The increasing number of early mar-riages has made the choice far harderthan it used to be.)Some laymen may ask why the edu-cational theatres have an obligation toproduce new plays or support youngplaywrights.First, because drama is the heart ofthe theatre. It is the prime element thatraises the playhouse above the peepshow. In every age, new plays must in-terpret life, or the stage becomes merelya time machine through which we maytravel back into the past. We must not

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THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE FOR TOMORROWlean entirely on the plays of New York,let alone London or Paris. There issomething to be said about places andpeople that may, at first blush, seemless significant to Broadway managersthan to directors in other parts of ourrather extensive country. Further, andthis is of the greatest importance, theyoung playwright needs so badly whatthe university theatre can give so readily-the equivalent of an out-of-town try-out.

Secondly, the university theatres havethis obligation to the growth and di-versity of drama because they are theonly endowed theatres in America.Thousands upon thousands of dollarsgo into paying their directors and tech-nicians, training their actors, and help-ing to meet the costs of production.Of course, it may be financially a bitmore risky to produce a new play than torevive a Broadway success or stage aclassic or a standard play. The audienceof the university theatre may not be solarge for a new play as for a well-knownhit or for Shakespeare or even Moliere.We should remember, however, that ourtheatres can produce a play much morecheaply than Broadway, and our run-ning costs are far, far less. Many of ourtheatres have the protection of a sub-scription audience. Furthermore, our au-dience may get a kick out of the equiv-alent of a Hollywood sneak preview-the first chance to see and appraise anew play.Thanks to John Dietrich and EdwinR. Schoell we have some evidence ofhow far the educational theatre has goneof late years in cultivating the new play.It hasn't gone far enough, but the pic-ture seems somewhat brighter than itused to be. Dietrich polled 157 theatresand found that 6% of their productionsin 1946-47-29 out of 528-were oforiginal plays. Schoell heard from about

200 departments making productionsduring the five seasons from 1950-51 to1954-55. The proportion of new playsbegan at 7%, fell off to 2.7%, then roseto 4.4%, 6.8%, and finally 10.2%. Tenpercent may or may not seem enough,but the ups and downs of these five yearsare disquieting. Are we going to do bet-ter?

INow, within the general pattern ofthe educational theatre let us examine

our present objectives. How can they bejustified? How can they be best accom-plished? How can they be wiselychanged and amplified?As the professional theatre has shrunkand the opportunities for professionalemployment have dwindled, we haveheard more and more often the chargethat the educational theatre is spendingtoo much time and energy on "teachingteachers to teach teachers." Ironicallyenough, this charge comes most oftenfrom fellow educators who attack ourdepartments as vocational schools.But let us grant that most students oftheatre arts won't find employment intheir chosen field. There remains a mostcogent argument for the value of educa-tion in theatre. It is an argument thatapplies also to the study of the fine andapplied arts, to the study of music, and-dare I say it?-to the study of English.Here I can call for support from menin other fields-indeed, from men whostudy and practice the basic arts of edu-cation.

In The Development and Scope ofHigher Education in the United States,C. DeWitt Hardy remarks on America'shealthy change from an indifferencetoward art in general to a better ap-preciation of its importance in life. "Be-cause art seemed to spring from nocause and caused no measurable result,

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90it was long considered merely a gratifi-cation of the senses, a relaxing pleasurewith which human beings could indulgetheir leisure hours. . . . The artist wasconsidered the playboy of the Westernworld, and his product was interestingbut not basically significant." Noting thenew respect for art today, Hardy goeson: "In the recent progress of learning,the arts have become central to a studyof the mind and its means of knowing."In Change and Process, Dr. MalcolmC. MacLean and Dean Edwin A. Lee,both of the School of Education atUCLA, think along much the same linesas Hardy. "Artistic intelligence," theywrite, was long thought to be, not onlyimpractical, but of a "lower order" thanacademic intelligence. "Through Puri-tanism and emphasis on pioneering . . .the arts and their development througheducation were largely stifled in theirgrowth in early America." Of the ele-ments involved in creative intelligence,MacLean and Lee say that in apprecia-tion, "reactions may be a temporary andpassing thrill, or a profound and grow-ing liking that persists through a life-time .... Psychologically and education-ally, it is clear that appreciation pro-foundly affects growth and developmentof human personality ... by temperingand enriching the emotions, releasingtensions, deepening insight into life'smeanings, adding to its joy, reducingconflict and discrimination betweenpeoples, and lending grace, prestige, andpower to individuals and nations."As to creativity, another factor in ar-tistic intelligence, they say, "It is clearfrom many studies and observationsthat the creative form of artistic intel-ligence is present to some degree in oneor more media in most if not all stu-dents." "The teachers," they continue,must "set free the creative powers ofyoungsters if life in this democracy is

EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNALto reach its full meaning of 'liberty andthe pursuit of happiness' and is to con-cern itself with things of the spirit andthe emotions, as well as with gadgets,money-making, and political power.""For the advancement of knowledge,"says Hardy, "there is more than onemethod. There is that of science, thereis that of the arts, and there are manymixtures of the two.' Where we mix sci-ence and art in our theatre crafts, weshould be cheered to recall the words ofthe distinguished philosopher, AlfredNorth Whitehead: "I lay it down as aneducational axiom that in teaching youwill come to grief as soon as you forgetthat your pupils have bodies." Beyondthe crafts, we can assert that, as a stu-dent, no man or woman uses the body asfully as upon the stage.If we are to cultivate creative intel-ligence in each of our students, we hadbest pay a great deal of attention towhat courses he takes outside our depart-ment. These should meet, of course, cer-tain basic requirements of a sound gen-eral education. These should both sup-plement and extend his interests. A re-quired minor seems to me much toorigid; it keeps him from gaining asbroad an edudcational experience as heshould. Outside his major and certainbasic requirements, I should like to seethe theatre arts student guided-care-fully and firmly guided-to a wide rangeof electives.

Diversity, on top of concentration, isa virtue-and, it seems to me, a neces-sity. The two together give us a strongdefense against the familiar charge ofdisguised vocationalism.As a matter of fact, we worry too muchabout this charge. We forget that manygraduates in the sciences have exploitedtheir training in chemistry, physics, ge-ology and engineering. They have ex-ploited it handsomely outside the field


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THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE FOR TOMORROWof teaching. What better place for voca-tional studies than in a university wherethe student is both enabled and forcedto learn more than a vocation? In thecase of theatre arts-as Samuel Seldenpointed out in the Educational TheatreJournal a year ago-the student needsand gets a better education than he canfrom an academy of acting and pro-duction. His "outside" courses can andshould enrich his otherwise specializedlearning.There are signs that the Old World isat last turning toward our pattern oftheatre in education. It has long haddistinguished academies and conserva-tories, which we lack. On the Continentnumerous state and municipal repertorytheatres have taught by example andsome have supplied training. In certainEuropean universities there were am-ateur productions-distinguished onesat Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne-but it was only of late years that the-atre seriously entered a few universitycurriculums. Now study courses, linkedwith workshop and public production,have appeared at the University of Bris-tol and the Sorbonne. The University ofLondon gives a two-year diploma inDramatic Art that may be supplementedby a third year including studies in thecrafts of production from make-up toarena staging. Doubtless other univer-sities abroad are moving toward theatrestudies in lesser degree. India, for ex-ample, sent a director to America thiswinter to learn about educational the-atre.

Now what about our teaching stand-ards? What can we do to raise the levelof instruction? Tomorrow morning, mycolleague Ralph Freud, Chairman ofthe Theater Arts Department at UCLA,will make a plea for professional pur-poses and standards in both our in-structional and research programs.

These purposes and standards are nowaccepted by departments of chemistry,physics, geology, and engineering on theundergraduate level, and by them andby schools of medicine and law in post-graduate work. I heartily endorse allthat he will say. And I should like toquote one sentence from his paper: "Letprofessional purposes and standards ruleall our activities in the secure belief thatthe arts of the theatre are old, long es-tablished, strict disciplines of humancreativity."In only one field is educational theatrethoroughly and successfully professional.This is in physical production. In thedesign and lighting of our settings wehave long met and matched the stand-ards of professional Broadway.In another field we have made a con-siderable approach to professionalism.In playwriting, our teachers set beforestudents the highest of standards. Theytry to guide them away from dilettant-ism and towards the solid skills thathave won audiences for our dramatistsfrom Shakespeare to Arthur Miller.They fail only in so far as the studentsmay not be capable of developing thoseskills-and in so far as their plays arenot produced often enough before a pay-ing public.In the acting area, however, we havetoo much neglected the professional ap-proach. Professional standards and pro-fessional accomplishment depend notonly on the ability but also on the in-sistence of our instructors and theircourage. With this could go a stimulat-ing factor that we have not supplied.This is the observance of completely pro-fessional acting. I don't mean fine per-formances in touring companies. Thesecan be seen only in the larger cities-and pretty seldom at that. If our stu-dents are to watch the professional actorat work, we must introduce on our cam-


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EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNALpuses the so-called "artist in residence."(By the way, it is a sign of our academictimidity that we don't call them "actorsin residence.") It costs money, of course,to follow the lead of Stanford and per-haps a few other universities in this mat-ter. But we should strive to add to ourbudgets salaries for a few actors and ac-tresses during at least a portion of theacademic year. A professional playerworking in the same play with studentsbecomes as much'of a teacher as the fac-ulty member who directs the play. Wemust not forget that, since the beginningof theatre, the older actor has alwaystaught the younger.And the artist in residence who is notan actor may be quite as useful in a dif-ferent way. I am thinking of the play-wright Samson Raphaelson, who came tothe University of Illinois for one term,and the creative producer, writer, andone-time actor Maurice Browne, whowas with us at UCLA some years ago.

III come now to the touchy subject ofthe higher degree for the theatre artsstudent-and for the teacher. I will not

deny that the M.A. can be useful-oreven the Ph.D. But, by and large, thehigher degree has been made into amechanical necessity. Too often it ismerely a union card that must be car-ried by all men and women who wish toteach. It is required of all, no matterwhat their individual abilities or theirinnate habits of discipline. And the the-ses and dissertations are far too often un-related to creative teaching-or evendownright silly.The Master's degree can be definitelyuseful in two lines of study. These areplaywriting and production. The play-wright can gain practice in his own field,and he can gain more insight-and averv valuable insight for a writer-into

all the factors of the living stage forwhich he works. The man who aims toteach acting and wants to acquire aknowledge of the many elements ofproduction involved in directing playscan also gain enormously from studiesat the Master's level. But, for such astudent, his work and his thesis shouldlie in the study and practice of the ele-ments of actual production.Such study and practice seem to bethe exception if we can judge by thetitles of 211 Master's theses listed byFranklin H. Knower last May in the Ed-ucational Theatre Journal. Hours andhours of research have been wasted onsuch topics as these: the history of min-strel companies, long-dead theatres, andamateur theatricals in minor cities; re-hashings of the aims and contributionsof the tributary theatre; the directingmethods of men whose productions thestudent can't possibly have seen unlesshe is a septuagenarian; analyses of cur-rent actors, from a Savoyard to a screenstar. There are-thank God!-manymore theses that indicate creative work-playwriting and the production and di-rection of actual plays.The doctorate is obviously in a farworse state. Out of 38 titles, a few dealwith problems of acting and production.A few more analyze the techniques ofvarious dramatists, dead or alive. For1954 there is not one that indicates theactual writing of a play-and this hasbeen true of other years. Even the Uni-versity of Iowa-which, under E. C.Mabie and William Reardon, has givenmany an M.A. and M.F.A. to play-wrights-has averaged only about onePh.D. thesis-play a-year.The vast bulk of doctoral disserta-tions-a word derived quite significantlyfrom the Latin "to discuss" or "to argue"-is devoted to the history of the theatreand the drama. This means that our

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THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE FOR TOMORROWwho seemed uncommonly creative. Be-ware lest television stations in the citiessmaller than Los Angeles and New Yorkcompete successfully for talents thatshould be dedicated to the educationaltheatre. We must do all we legitimatelycan to make the teaching professionattractive. We must certainly not putunfair hurdles in the way of the youngermen and women.

Again I must quote from that wiseand practical philosopher Whitehead:What sort of conditions will produce the typeof faculty which will run a successful univer-

sity? The danger is that it is quite easy toproduce a faculty entirely unfit-a faculty ofvery efficient pedants and dullards. The generalpublic will only detect the difference after theuniversity has stunted the promise of youth forscores of years.

Let us rejoice that, somehow or other,the educational theatre has so largelyescaped the danger that Whitehead sees.True, some of you have paid too muchdeference to pedagogic dogma, yet whata creative job you have done. It hasbeen a job of unusual size and vigor.Perhaps it is in the nature of the the-atre to override all obstacles. Perhapsits vitality cannot be defeated, no matterwhat the attack. But let's be aware ofthe very real danger that the full forceof the theatre may not be liberated.

IIII have only two more things to say.The first is a plea that you considerthe possibility of broadening out yourstudies from theatre-and in some casefrom radio, too-into the fields of themotion picture and television. Thesetwo new arts are offshoots of theatre.

Live television is closest, perhaps; but,more and more, television is being modi-fied and perfected by the film. There isthe present danger that schools will takeup television as a branch of theatrewithout knowing anything about the

camera and editing techniques of thescreen. Ideally, students of the theatreshould be students to some degree ofthe other dramatic forms. There theymay find the jobs that are in short sup-ply in the theatre of today.The other thing I want to say is, ina way, a contradiction of the emphasisthat I have just placed on the problemof earning a living. I want to empha-size the high-the very high-impor-tance of the theatre in education. Andtherefore the high importance of youand all your work.

Let us forget, for the moment, thecreative powers of our students, the art-ists you may help to find expression.For all the rest-the men and womenwho study theatre seriously and well,but who will never find in it their life'svocation-you will be doing somethingof immeasurable value. You will bemaking them sensitive and integratedhuman beings who can grasp and enjoyexistence in the perfectly normal courseof life. This is what theatre will havedone for them. Believe this, and youwon't be in danger of suffering from apedagogic inferiority complex when youtalk with teachers of science or foreignlanguages.It is the common dogma of thesepeople that the prime object of a uni-versity is to train a student to think.Now it is possible to ask for a definitionof thinking. How far does it reallyexist apart from prejudice and the otheremotional failings of mankind? But thatis not my answer to the dogma. My an-swer is that the student must also betaught to feel. He must learn by vicar-ious experience as much as he can ofthe full range of human emotion. Thenhe may think better, too, but the im-portant thing is that he will go throughlife with a livelier sense of all its richand satisfying values.

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