THEATER CHRONICLE
547
sources which feed Broadway are sources no longer-the stale waters
back up, and the theater enters a period of boredom and normalcy.
I have only one further point to make: that no individual and no
single institution, not even perhaps a great university, can do much
about the relation between the university and the theater single-handed.
If a fully mature university theater appears it will be the outgrowth
of mysterious forces inside and outside the university. It will have to
take advantage--more wisely than its predecessors--of some shift in the
public mood and interest. Since World War II, adult education has
been booming. The narrow creeds of Marxism are no longer fashionable.
dlassical music sells on records and the radio; the drugstores stock
Lucretius and Alfred North Whitehead in cheap paper editions, along
with toothpaste and Mickey Spillane. A new generation of very talented
young artists is trying once more to establish little theaters off Broadway.
Are these signs of an important New Deal, or new chance, in the
theater?
If
so, will some institution with the requisite power-some great
university that is more than a technical school-have the vision to take
advantage of them? I do not know, but we may cautiously hope for the
best.
Francis Fergusson
GID
t::::I
KING SOLOMON and Other Stories
by ISAAC ROSENFELD
Introduction
by
ALLEN TATE
"Isaac Rosenfeld's writing is engaging, ironic,
a combination rare in modern fiction."
humorous and serious–
-WILLIAM PHILLIPS
$3.25
Publication date: October I, '54
Order from
McCOSH
&
SHERMAN
1405 S.E. 5th St.
Minneapolis 14
