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PARTISAN REVIEW
qualify parts written by the many authors, not in TV alone, who do
not know what a role is).
In the matter of acting, America has much to learn from some
other countries, notably France, Germany, and Russia. (I don't know
enough about the Orient to justify any Eastern representation.) In the
matter of playwriting, I know of but one country where things are,
perhaps, in a healthier state than here, and that is France. Only in
Paris, it seems to me, have we today the impression that playwriting
is a profession. A literate play stands the same chance of professional
performance that, with us, a novel stands of publication. There is
consequently a large band of playwrights who in Paris are regular and
commercial and over here are (or would be) avant-garde; for example,
Achard, Anouilh, Obey, Salacrou. There is also an overlap with poetry
and the novel, as the names of Cocteau, Mauriac, Montherlant, and
Sartre testify. Even the most "unplayable" poet is played:. I saw
Le
Soulier de Satin
and
Partage de Midi
lavishly staged in two of the
largest Paris theaters.
In England an "unpopular" poet like M. Claudel might well be
broadcast on the Third Programme; he'd never reach the West End
stage unless he were willing, like Mr. Eliot in
The Cocktail Party,
to
reach it on its own terms. Shakespeare continues to use up the best
energies of English theater. London produces him and ignores Mr.
O'Casey today, exactly as it produced him and ignored Shaw in the
'90s. Italy, ever as poor in drama as she is rich in theatricality, is
finding that a profession of playwrights cannot be legislated into exist–
ence even with the help of subsidies. Germany is the living proof that
a well-organized and decentralized repertory system does not neces–
sarily--or at any rate immediately-produce its own dramatists. It is
amazing to think for how little time the German theaters were not
playing. Goebbels closed them when he proclaimed total mobilization
in 1944. By 1945 most of them were destroyed by bombs anyway. But
the actors were at work again as soon as the war ended. Since then,
the old buildings have been repaired or new ones built. That there
are no new playwrights only proves that there is a deeper damage
than that of air raids. Somewhere a nerve had been cut.
Soviet Russia I do not know at first hand. Russian movies suggest
directly, reports of reliable witnesses suggest indirectly, that the Russians
still have the greatest profession of actors in the world. What one
knows
of
their playwrights is less pleasant.
If
the degree of organization
were the criterion, I imagine the Russian playwrights are the most
"professional" in the world. But
if
the criterion is organization at all,
it is organization to a certain end, namely, enabling playwrights to grow
