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University Daily Kansan Supplement
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The University of Kansas
and have an angry mob, as in "The Trial of Captain John Brown" in the 1960-61 season. In addition, the jury for the trial was chosen at random from the audience at the beginning of each performance.
A variation of this technique was employed last season in "Between Two Thieves." In the second act, "members" of the audience rose to their feet periodically and challenged statements of the actors on the stage. Eventually "members" of the audience in different parts of the hall began railing at each other and the "symposium" on the stage ended in pandemonium.
More Conventional Treatment
The other two shows presented in Swarthout, the dramatization of Sean O'Casey's autobiographical "Pictures in the Hallway" and Felicien Marceau's play "The Egg," have been treated more conventionally. However, both productions have long stretches of lecture quality, addressed directly to the audience rather than to the other characters, rendering the plays much more "personal" than those which merely invite the patron to watch.
The term "Experimental Theatre" refers to both the physical plant and to the organization which produces the plays. The plant itself also is used for classes and actors' workshop scenes.
Four persons, including Mr. Kuhlike, comprise a relatively permanent nucleus of the organization. Llewelyn Rabbey, assistant instructor of speech and drama, is the program's assistant director. Perry Schwartz, Lawrence graduate student, is technical director, and Dan Kocher, Topeka senior, is costumier. This cadre supervises the production of the graduate student-directed shows in the Experimental Theatre, which count as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the M.A. degree.
"The Experimental Theatre shows are selected in consultation with me each spring," Mr. Kuhkle said. "We try to make a compromise between the desires of the directors (for thesis and otherwise) and what we recognize to be a balanced season.
"Our purpose is not at all to follow slavishly the avant garde, and therefore to follow," he added. "We make no pretense at performing experiments that may have worldwide repercussions. We are concerned with our students and our community and with developing in our students and student audience a more catholic taste by trying to enlarge our capacity to produce successfully a greater and greater variety of plays. We are, after all, a theater organization in a theatrical institution which is a part of a college of liberal arts."
"Often there is much misunderstanding in the minds of audiences and theater workers alike as to the aims and purposes of an 'experimental' theatre," he said. "Frequently it is understood that for a theater production to qualify as an experiment it must be a new play which gives promise of not being understood or appreciated by the audience, or an old play which is produced in some manner never dreamed of by the author or ever tried before. In such a theatre, novelty and gadgetry are valued more than artistry and skill, and the final proof of the experiment is the failure to please an audience.
Experimental Theatre Purpose
F. Cowles Strickland, visiting professor of speech and drama, formerly of Stanford University and of the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., further clarified the purpose of an experimental theater in his program notes to "The Egg." Though they partly refer specifically to "The Egg," the statements may be applied generally to most modern drama.
Tom Winston is a senior in the William Alten White School of Journalism. He has had parts in several plays presented at KU and has reported the activities of the Fine Arts school for the Daily Kansas.
"Obviously, the function of a 'university experimental theater' is something else. In such a theater, the purpose must be to provide the student (and the audience) with an opportunity to experiment, not with a new type of play or a new type of staging, but with a type of play and staging which is new to them. The experiment is to find out if they can master the required skills (and if the audience will appreciate it.)"
Mordecai Gorelik also ponders the purpose of theater in his book "New Theatres for Old." He says:
"There are those who say that the purpose of the theater is to teach. Others say . . . that the purpose of the theater is to amuse, or at most, to interest. The burden of proof is upon those who make this arbitrary division in the nature of the theater. The purpose of living theater, as we know through our experience with it, is to teach apparently without effort, so that to learn by way of theater is like playing an exhilarating game. Good theater, like good art of any sort, is not pedantry; neither is it mere titillation."
The KU Experimental Theatre, in its six seasons, has presented a wide variety of plays. It has presented small musicals like "The Boy Friend," presented last December, which will tour the Far East under the sponsorship of USO next summer, and "The Fantasticks," which will be presented in January.
Language Plays Presented
"In order to broaden our tastes, we instituted a language play program last year," Mr. Kuhlke said. "This consisted of three one-act plays: Tankred Dorst's 'The Wall' in German, Cervantes' 'The Magic Theater' in Spanish, and Anouilh's 'Humulus the Mute' in French.
The KU theatre presented a "Thurber Carnival" long before Broadway decided to present one. In the show, several actors presented concert readings of Thurber stories such as "A Box to Hide In," "The Unicorn in the Garden" and "The Night the Bed Fell on My Father," along with a dance drama adaptation of Thurber's fable of a gloomy old miser, "Thirteen Clocks."
The drama symposium will be presented for the fourth time next May. KU sponsors a contest in which playwrights are invited to submit unpublished scripts. KU selects the three it considers best and presents two performances of them as a staged reading. The Centron Film Corporation presents awards of $100, $50 and $25 for first, second and third place, respectively.
Finally, there is the Imagination conference, which KU will host for the third time this year as "Imagination '63." It is a national conference in which college theater students and faculty members talk over problems and developments in their field.
"We encourage our students interested in theater to become proficient in at least one foreign language and to take part in the language clubs and promote theatrical activity in them," he said. "Each year the Experimental Theatre will devote its energies to one language, doing readings of a play in that language and in English too, if there is enough interest and talent available."
The purpose of the competition is to encourage new playwrights and to provide an opportunity for the winners to see how their work "plays" on a stage.
Playwrights Encouraged
Last year the Imagination 62 conference had as guests Norris Houghton, director of the Phoenix Theatre; Jules Irving of the San Francisco Actor's Workshop; Paul Baker of the Dallas Theatre Center, the Frank Lloyd Wright theater, and William Glover, drama critic of the Associated Press.
In short, the KU Experimental Theatre program and its companion programs at KU "are not shirking their duties of leadership." Mr. Kuhlke said. "Our work is gaining a reputation for inquisitiveness, seriousness, and sincerity of purpose."
Experimental Theatre players in "Dark of the Moon."