THEATER CHRONICLE
417
least there were some playwrights, even if there could not, aU at once,
be a profession of playwriting. There were theaters with the
idea
of
continuity in them: from this germ, if at all, must grow an acting
profession.
And now what? Circumstances continue to be against the play–
wright. Production in New York grows more and more expensive, public
abasement before the eight daily reporters more and more abject. The
government of Eisenhower is not likely to pick up a federal theater
which even a Democratic congress let fall. The American National
Theatre and Academy is interested, I am told, in decentralizing the
theater and depriving New York of its monopoly. Whether they know
how this could be done, or whether, if so, they can do it, is another
matter. However, it is probably worthwhile to support ANTA; not know–
ing what "the one thing necessary is" we must perforce try everything.
Every effort in the direction of a professional theater, a theater with
continuity, must be backed up.
Can our efforts be crowned with success? Certainly, the facts
wouldn't lead one to expect so, nor have I (or other people, apparently)
a plan for the conquest of the facts. I console myself, on the other
hand, with the reflection that drama--drama of talent, let alone drama
of genius-has not come in the past by prescription, nor was it pre–
dictable. The professions of playwriting and acting which Shakespeare
entered as a young man had not existed much more than a generation
before him. Dramatic history can be swift, especially when the prepar–
ations have been made; and the activity of 1900-1950 in America might
certainly be regarded as preparatory. What
is
more, if drama died easy,
it would already be dead. Dramatic art has a powerful hold on quite a
number of people. And if now I seem to be working up an optimistic
peroration, I would ask: what
can
I think?
If
you were a pterodactyl
of the decadence, no one could expect you to talk in the tone of retro–
spective biology. Your business would be to die; and you can die with
all the more dignity if you think you're not going to die at all.
Eric Bentlev
