Daily hansan
EDITORIAL-FEATURE SUPPLEMENT
Monday, Dec. 3, 1962
60th Year, No.52
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
Jean Rustemeyer in "The Rope Dancers"
Contents
Hungary Today: Aftermath of Revolt
Two German-speaking KU students went behind the Iron Curtain last summer and found young Hungarians without hope of a free homeland . . . page 4
The 88th Congress—Challenge to JFK
This article points out that there are some old wrinkles in the political visage of the new 88th Congress. President Kennedy's Medicare, tax cut, and aid to education proposals also are explored . . . page 6
The Marshall Plan and the Berlin Wall
This article sweeps west from the Berlin wall, reviews the economic recovery and new prosperity of Western Europe and views the Marshall Plan in its historical retrospect . . . page 7
Experiment In Drama
A profile of KU's Experimental Theatre its operation, its facilities, its techniques and the philosophy by which it approaches modern drama.
In the middle of last century, people who wished to become actors learned lines of business; that is, they studied to be an ingenuue, or a lover, or a villain, or a clown, and played that kind of part and nothing else as long as they were able.
The sets were planned in a similar manner. There were perhaps six or seven sets in each theater: a garden scene, a living room scene, a palace scene, etc., and each scene was hauled out as the script called for it, no matter what the play was.
Since about 1875 at least a great part of the theater has been experimental, and the men of the theater have been possessed of a kind of theoretical wanderlust, searching for truths. Their wanderlust demon assumed the guises of a whole group of new "isms" — realism, naturalism, expressionism, symbolism, etc. — some couched in illusion, others in convention, but all in search of new expression in revolt against the all-too-comfortable, mannered order of traditions as exemplified in productions of Shakespeare, Moliere and Racine.
In the United States, most of the outstanding theatrical activity began in New York, since Broadway was the theater's main cultural center.
Producers and playwrights who wrote for Broadway experimented at their own peril. Since plays involved large sums of money, one was naive, foolish or just outright daring to experiment very widely or to stray far from the proven and time-honored formulas. To put it simply, Broadway just wasn't a very good place to try out new ideas.
In the early years of American theater, the hinterland—the remainder of the United States—depended upon the road touring circuit of New York productions for its theatrical entertainment. Then along came movies, radio, rising prices and World War I and effectively knocked the road system in the head. Left to its own devices to provide its own entertainment, the American populace took to the stage in community theaters and colleges.
In keeping with the spirit of change on the continent, these amateurs made do with what they had, experimenting freely, since they were unschooled in, as A. A. Milne would say, "The Way to Do It."
But the college and community theaters were not caught up in the Broadway entanglements, and blithely they went their own way. Since the community theaters depend on box office receipts to a greater extent than does the collegiate theater, it is perhaps reasonable to expect the collegiate theater to come up with the freshest ideas in production.
Kenneth Macgowan and William Melnitz, now professors of theater arts at the University of California, have said in their book "The Living Stage" that it is up to the college theater to carry the torch forward:
"If the future of the American stage is to be a bright one, (universities) must produce more new plays and far, far more of the finest drama of past and present, of the Old World as well as the New. These are our only endowed theaters, the only playhouses that receive large and dependable public and private funds."
For a report on what KU's theater department is doing in the field of experimental theater, turn to page 2.