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University Daily Kansan
Costs Could Prevent Kansas Resident Professional Theater
Rv Tom Winston
(Editor's note; This article, concerning the pros and cons of professional resident theater, is the last of a four part series.)
A major question in any proposal for a professional resident theater for the Kansas City area is, will it work?
F. Cowles Strickland, visiting professor of speech and drama and a 40-year theater veteran, says yes.
A certified public accountant, Randal L. Winston of the Dallas branch of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, says no.
"THE CHIEF DRAWBACK is cost," Mr. Winston said in an interview. "When the live theater attempts to compete with television, movies and other forms of mechanical reproduction, it finds that because of the cost of live production it is necessary to collect a much higher admission charge. In many cases the public wants quantity rather than quality," he said.
"An institution in order to survive must either operate at a profit or be subsidized. Even the Metropolitan Opera company has found it necessary to seek a subsidy, and as late as the last couple of years it has found increased operating costs almost too high to be covered by admissions plus a subsidy," Mr. Winston said.
"The public's acceptance of any profession depends upon its ability to absorb new members in its ranks. The demand for engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers and many other professions continues to be strong, but can the public absorb and utilize a substantial increase in the number of professional theater people? The laws of supply and demand apply to the theater as surely as they do to other professions and to manufacturing and business.
"THE GOVERNMENT HAS attempted to remedy the problems of oversupply of such farm products as wheat and butter by buying up huge quantities and stockpiling them. It isn't likely that the government would do the same thing for theater people.
10 prepare for leisure, the State of Kansas has been agitating for more dams, more lakes and more parks on the supposition that people should go hunting and fishing—but it has made no provision for the mind in times of leisure," he said.
Pref. Strickland told a story about Oklahoma City;
THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE discovered that four or five businesses who had planned to build plants in Oklahoma City instead built them in Dallas. The reason: Dallas was more interesting. So Oklahoma City began the Mummers Theatre, a community theater with hired professional directors and designers." he said.
"They have gone out into the market to buy culture not because they want it, but because it is required to attract the kind of people they want," Professor Strickland said.
Prof. Strickland gave another example of how the arts create good business:
Years ago he started a theater in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. "After the depression, Stockbridge revived faster than the other two towns in the area, Lee and Lennox. The city fathers decided the reason was that Stockbridge had residences within easy distance of the theater," he said.
"So in Lee residents started the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the most important dance theater in this country today, and in Lennox an orchestra. Lennox is now the site of the famed Berkshire Festival in which the Boston Symphony participates. Now the area is so commercial people won't live there. What were residences are businesses.
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"The businesses are doing very well, however; the butcher is making a lot of money. So he makes a contribution to the theater which is bringing people to town so they can trade with him. The theater in consequence grows, and more people come and the Chamber of Commerce loves it." Prof. Strickland said.
REFERRING TO LAWRENCE, he said: "If the university could arrange to sponsor something of distinction, the whole town would come up. Thetheatrical activity makes much more sense than putting your money into a football team which can operate at most for only three months.
There is no reason to believe that people will not buy theater, he said.
people will not buy theater, he said. "According to President Kennedy, more people spent more money to attend concerts in 1961 than spent money to attend baseball games."
THE MUMMERS THEATRE in Oklahoma City recently got a Ford Foundation grant. "It received its money because it had showed considerable growth and support from the community.
There is a tremendous amount of money available for theaters through Ford Foundation grants, he said.
"Certainly every artist must be worth his salt. There are no ivory tower guys. Nobody builds an automobile just to build an automobile.
John Wray Young, former president of the American Educational Theatre Association, echoes Prof. Strickland's sentiments in the August 1960 "Theatre Arts":
He builds it so he can sell it."
"If we believe that good community theater deserves a place in the civic structure beside the church and the library, then the amount is limited only by the citizens' desire to make their neighborhood the best possible place to live.
"The American community theater involves a greater total number of participants than have ever worked in any art form, in any nation, in all history. Their number seems destined to increase as our American life continues toward enlarged leisure and a growing need for interesting and enjoyable avocations."
Each of the theater plans outlined earlier in this series has its "bugs" and its benefits. The ultimate search is to find the right one for the Kansas City area.
KU's science and education programs received a boost with the announcement that grants totaling $124,708 have been awarded to the departments.
KU Science Gets Boost
Prof. Huysser received a $30,400 renewal grant for his experiments with the fragmentation reactions of various ether type radicals.
Earl S. Huyser, John Landgrebe and Benjamin Chu, professors of chemistry, and Jack W. Culvahouse, professor of physics, were the recipients of research grants totaling $117,790.
PROF. CHU WAS awarded a grant of $27,600 to study light scattering and low-angle x-ray scattering spectrophenometric measurements.
A renewal grant of $50,000 went to Prof. Culvahouse to finance his research with the amplification and production of high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
In his studies of the properties of elementary atomic magnets in solid materials, Prof. Culvahouse will use a super-conducting magnet to produce magnetic fields about 160,000 times the earth's magnetic field.
The National Science Foundation is supporting the three projects.
THE DU PONT Company has
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awarded the education department renewal of grants totaling $7,708.
A postgraduate teaching assistant award of $1,200 will enable a chemistry graduate student to continue preparation for a teaching career, rather than concentrating on research.
The same program provides the chemistry department with $5,000 for unrestricted fundamental research. The department of chemical engineering will receive $1,800 to support a summer research fellowship for a junior faculty member.
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