546
PARTISAN REVIEW
it
is, is unsatisfactory, is that the university theater is still thought of as
a technical school, a feeder for the entertainment industry, and not as
a theater
in
its own right, with its own quite different aims and stand–
ards. That is why the universities have not yet ventured to set up
pennanent theater companies. The actors, technicians, young directors
and playwrights, are all students who must get out as soon as they attain
a little skill. And for that reason the university theater does not really
offer a career in the theater in the same way in which the university
laboratories offer careers in Biology or Physics. The laboratories are
built on a system of apprenticeship, with workers at every level of de–
velopment, from rank beginners up to the masters and creative leaders
of science. The university theater consists of a very small paid staff
responsible mainly for teaching elementary techniques, and a vast num–
ber of beginners who must leave as soon as they cease to be beginners.
I see no theoretical reason why a theater should not be related to the
strictly pedagogical job of a university according to the apprentice
system, just as science is-with research, or creative work at the top
o£ the hierarchy, and elementary technical training at the bottom.
There is no a priori theoretical reason why this should not work,
but there are lots of practical reasons; and that brings me to the realistic
part of my discussion. I have been talking about the ideal university
and the ideal theater, each fully conscious of its aims and of the
analogies between them. But we all know how, in fact, both the uni–
versity and the university theater get demoralized, and lose the sense
of what they are trying to do. The universities are under the tremendous
pressure of applied science, which supplies both industry and war with
their power, and offers the younger generation immediate money and
status. Under this pressure the whole notion of liberal education looks
empty and deluded-including that important part which we call "pure"
as distinguished from applied science. Disinterested researchers in Biology
or Physics make the same complaints as philosophers or men of letters:
the universities tend to turn into technical schools. In our bad mo–
ments we think Spengler may have been right: nothing can flourish
in our time but engineering. The university theater is, besides, under
the pressure of the market and its all-pervasive influence.
It
is
very dif–
ficult for a university theater to disregard this pressure, and venture
upon something of its own. It is far easier for it to wann over last
year's Broadway hits-to resell the nationally advertised, packaged
product. When a university theater loses its vitality it is because some
hard-pressed director has shrugged his shoulders, and decided to ex–
change the terrible labor and risk of original work for the easy cachet
of Broadway's reflected prestige. And of course when this happens the
