Are You Ready for the Futurist Theater?

Signs That the Old Dramatic Conventions Are Going by the Board

MILDRED CRAM

WHAT next, in the drama? Well, Marinetti, the arch-fiend of Italian intellectual anarchists, believes that the theater of the future will be absolutely opposed to the theater of today. He declares that the three and four-act play is as obsolete as the Greek masque. The play of the future will be brief. Plot will be reduced to a shoit-story basis. Action will be cinematographic—the mere flash of essential gesture—astounding, suggestive, sufficient. Feelings, sensations, ideas and symbols will be expressed in a few words with the utmost economy of action. Acts will be as long as they need be—two seconds, two minutes—anything you like.

We are satisfying the public today with trickpersonalities, kaleidoscopic costumes, astounding scenery, staccato dialogue and deferred action. But there are signs of restlessness. We are beginning to tire of Barrie's charm, when it runs into three acts and a tableau, Maeterlinck's mystery in fifty-seven scenes, Tolstoi's grim humour in nine identical spasms. The public attention wanders. It is sated with the familiar drama; it has played on all the instruments, jerked all the strings.

Might not a little thing like this drama by Bruno Corra and Emilio Settimelli please them more? It is called:

Negation

(Enter A Gentleman, very preoccupied, bustling. He takes off his overcoat, his hat, fumes across the stage, whispering angrily): Impossible! Incredible! I don't believe it! (He turns toward the public, frowns as if he couldn't endure the sight of the audience, then rushes down stage and shouts):

I have nothing to say. . . . Not a word! Ring down the curtain!

The curtain falls.

THE thing is at least unusual. There will be no technical restrictions in the drama of the future. They will not be concerned with realism but with reality. They will not explain everything they say and do. They will understand that nothing happens logically, that nothing can be wholly foreseen and that life is made up of half-finished gestures. People meet, speak of the weather, pass on. The mosaicpattern of existence is made up of fragmentary experiences, unfinished sentences.

The theater of the future must experiment. It must go far afield. It will deal with the subconscious, the abstract, the fantastic; it will occupy itself with indefinable forces, bizarre emotions, nameless heroisms. There will be no farce, no vaudeville, no stereotyped one-act plays, no comedy, no tragedy. There will be, instead, a theater of ideas. Marinetti offers, as an example of his revolutionary theories, a play called:

Anti-Neutrality

(A beautiful drawing-room. Many expensive little trifles on tables and in gilded cabinets. Portraits of ancestors, seventeenth century prints. Deep couches heaped with pillows. At first glance one would take it for a woman's boudoir. There are certain touches, however, which indicate that the room belongs to a rich and very esthetic youth. Three effeminate young men are seated at a fragile table sipping Turkish coffee. They wear whitetopped, polished boots, red silk handkerchiefs, tight-fitting clothes, white waistcoats, polished nails, perfumery, and many golden chains. There is only one door at the back, a little to the left.)

ONE (opening an oriental cigarette-case and offering it): Take one, old dear. They were sent to me all the way from Cairo. Delicately perfumed, aren't they? Most extraordinary. What?

ANOTHER (accepting a cigarette and rising to look at the old-fashioned prints on the wall): Thanks. Exquisite. (In French)

Ah, the Orient. The Orient! Do you remember the faded engraving by Bejanqon, which you gave me two years ago? It is in my little salon. Every one admires it enormously. I found a frame for it—a bijou! A jewel. You must come and see it. J'ai aussl un petit cadeau a te faire. La poudre de Bagdad. (showing the others his long, polished fingernails.) Tu vois quelle merveille! La jolie Comtesse quite envies me!

(The door opens and two heavyweight prize fighters, in tights, carrying boxing gloves, enter the drawing-room. They look about, paying no attention to the three elegant youths.)

THE THREE (with surprise and horror): Quelle horreur!

FIRST BOXER: Here?

SECOND BOXER: Yes, here. Why not?

(They knock the delicate furniture out of the way, put on their gloves and begin a violent combat. The three youths jump to their feet, terrified and, like Angora cats when face to face with ferocious bulldogs, they cower, each in a separate corner of the room, their eyes on the atrocious spectacle.)

FIRST BOXER (hitting the other with terrific force): A knockout! By the gods, a clean knockout!

(The Second Boxer lies on the floor, scarcely breathing. His nose is bleeding. He slowly recovers himself, rises, staggers to his feet, shakes his opponent's hand. 'Then with one accord they walk gravely and rhythmically around the room, stopping before each one of the effeminate youths while, three times, with deadly disdain, they spit upon the floor.) FIRST BOXER: I spit.

SECOND BOXER: I spit, too.

Curtain

IN the theater of the future plays of this sort will be written for a single performance. Sensations will be painstakingly reproduced. We shall see motives visualized. We shall have dramas in which there is nothing but silence, darkness and immobility. A score or more impressions in one evening—colour, action, sound) ugliness, light, the sumptuous, the meager and the astounding. We shall have simultaneous action, a play within a play. There will be not one, but several stages, not one, but several companies, all within the same proscenium. As, for instance, in this play by Marinetti, which is called:

Simultaneity

(A room. Many bookshelves. A little to the left a big table. At the back of the stage some modest furniture. One sees that, outside., it is snowing. There are two doors, one at the left and one which opens out on a stairway. A middle-class family is seated around the table in the thin, green light of a reading lamp. The Mother and Daughter are sewing; the Father is reading a newspaper; the sixteen-year-old Son and the ten-year-old Son are quietly studying their lessons.

To the right, a dressing-table, brilliantly illuminated, covered with boxes, silver-topped bottles, ivory brushes, pomades, perfumes and powders. A young Cocotte, blonde, beautiful, wearing an elaborate peignoir, is seated before the dressing-table, looking at herself in the mirror. She has finished dressing her hair and is intent upon giving the last touches to her cheeks, her arms, her hands. She is aided by a maid who stands behind her. The family is quite unaware of her presence, or of that of her maid.)

THE MOTHER (to the Father): Do you want to go over the accounts? It is the end of the month.

THE FATHER (yawning): I'll look at them later.

(He begins again to read. Silence. All, with perfect naturalness, go on with their sewing and studying. The Cocotte, invisible to the family, continues to rouge and powder her face. The maid, as if in response to a knock, goes to the door, opens it and admits a messenger-boy, who approaches the Cocotte and gives her a box of flowers, and a letter. The Cocotte unwraps the flowers, puts them on the dressing table and reads the letter. The messenger-boy goes out, saluting respectfully. The sixteen-year-old Boy rises and goes to the bookshelves, passing close to the Cocotte, as if she were not there. He selects a book and re-crosses the room, sitting down at the table again to continue his studies.)

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THE BOY (interrupting his work to look out cf the window): It is still snowing. . . . What silence!

THE FATHER: This house is too far out of town. Next year we'll go into the city.

{The Cocotte's maid goes again to the door. She admits a young modiste who, approaching the Cocotte, opens a box and displays a magnificent hat. The Cocbtte tries it on, looks into the mirror, frowns and shakes her head. She tips the modiste, who goes out, bowing respectfully. Suddenly the Mother, who has been looking on the table for something she cannot find, leaves the room. The Father rises, goes to the window and stares at the falling snow. One by one the children fall asleep. The Cocotte approaches the children cautiously, step by step. She takes up the accounts, the school-books and the needlework and throws them all under the table.)

THE COCOTTE {with disdain): Sleep, all of you, sleep!

{She goes back to her dressing-table, sits down and begins to polish her nails.)

Curtain

In this little drama Marinetti has attempted to show the essential similarity between the lives of a respectable middle-class family and a Cocotte. The Cocotte is a dramatic expression of all the disorderly, dissipated tendencies which exist in the family—their hidden desires, unspoken miseries, extravagances and little vanities.

THE following play, by Corra and Settimelli, is as strange as the discordant clickings of a Stravinsky score, possibly a reflection of modern life— erratic, disjointed and prismatic.

Dissonance

{A Thirteenth Century garden. Thirteenth Century costumes—velvet caps, blonde wigs, jewels and brocades. Night. A Lady seated. A Page at her feet.)

THE PAGE

Overhead the ilex arches, casting shadows on the greensward,

There beyond us in the moonlight Framed about by gleaming marble Pools of basalt brushed with silver . . . Perfumed night and blossoms falling One by one to star the greensward. Tritons blowing jets of water, Puff-cheeked cupids crowned with garlands,

Music made by lute and whistle Sounding from behind the cypress. Sweet, I whisper of my passion.

In my heart, like pomegranates, Thoughts of love are ripe for picking .. .

Lady, touch my lips with yours.

THE LADY

Love, I give with trembling spirit Gifts of tenderness and kisses. Whisper, in the languid silence,

Tell me that your love's eternal:

In your hair my wandering fingers White as butterflies will flutter. . . .

THE PAGE

Velvet shadows, twinkling fountains, Laughter down the dappled pathways, Stars entangled in the branches, Youth and love and wit and sadness— Could I keep this hour forever, Gentle lady. . . .

{At this moment a man dressed in modern clothes, overcoat, muffler, tophat, enters from the left and walks quickly across the stage. He touches the Page on the shoulder.)

THE GENTLEMAN: Excuse me—but have you got a match? {The Page turns toward the gentleman, then, with the utmost nonchalance, searches in his pockets, frowns and shakes his head.) THE PAGE: Sorry! I haven't.

THE GENTLEMAN: Are you sure? No? Thanks all the same. {He goes out, on the left, swinging his cane; very elegant, very brisk.)

THE PAGE (turning to the Lady and beginning with passion his interrupted lyric):

Love's eternal, everlasting,

Not a bauble made for breaking Not a gaudy jewel to dazzle. . . .

Curtain

THERE may be a few hints for the future theater in these four plays. Belasco, Ziegfeld and George Tyler please notice. It is easy to see that there will be an end to the "star" system. Fat parts will go by the board together with prop butlers, mothers-inlaw and cumbersome ingenues. The futurist anxiety will be, "Have you a little playwright in your home?" Any one can, and will, do it. Actors, audience, ushers and carriage-caller will work together. The evening's bill will be written during the overture. A tragedy from the gentleman in B 5. A "sensation"

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from the ice-water boy entitled "Thirst".

A silent heart-throb from the lady in the left stage box.

The orchestra improvises a symphony and the curtain rises!

AND, as a matter of fact, though there may be a little nonsense in the futurist's idea of good drama, something like it must soon overtake us, or the theatre of the day will be swallowed up and engulfed in dreariness.

How stale and flat are most of the dramas which, on every hand, confront us in our modern theatre!

The modem theatre is at a standstill; it has drifted into spiritual backwaters; intellectually it is in danger of stagnation. Plays are being written according to established, tried and supposedly unalterable formulas. The taste of the public is ascertained by gentlemen whose profession it is to keep their fingers on the public wrist, feeling the popular pulse. War plays, crook plays, Pollyanna, Tiger-Tiger—what the public thinks it wants—it gets. There are twoscore and ten obliging playwrights ready to. fill out the prescription and to administer the narcotic.

The modern theatre is so hemmed about by technical exigencies that it has no room to expand, or better still to contract. A dramatic conception cannot be presented to the public unless it runs into two, three or four acts. The husk and not the kernel is what counts. The basic idea may be miniature but the public pays to be amused for not less than two hours and a half. Unnecessary characters are dragged in by the heels; bizarre types are used as space-fillers. Each act must last a half or three-quarters of an hour—whether or not the dramatic material is worthy of that amount of time—and is prefaced by seven or eight useless pages of preamble as a concession to the public mentality, which must adjust itself to the play after the disturbing irrelevance of the entr' acte.

A modern play is nothing more or less than architecture; incident is piled upon incident as a foundation for the final, dazzling pinnacle—the dramatic climax. One-tenth of the plot material is laid in the first act; five-tenths in the second act and four-tenths in the third act—the spire tapers off and leaves us gasping.

EVERY first act is a bore. Why? So that the second act may be diverting and the third thrilling. To reverse the order is fatal. It is impossible to fill two hours and a half with essential action—there can be only so many tense situations, only so many direct human encounters. The modern playwright fills in the gaps with a hundred unessential incidents. Whenever he lacks a stone to cement into his dramatic edifice he uses a pebble and calls it preparatory action. He confuses us with purposeless conversation, useless comedy relief, meaningless explanations. He very carefully shows us the why of everything. He ties a hundred little bow-knots. If a character starts to drink a glass of water, sooner or later he drains it to the last drop. There must be no arrested action in the modern drama—no Judiths with suspended swords. The public likes to see its Holofernes well beheaded.

THERE is, too, a systematic application of the rule of superficial variety. If the first act takes place in the day-time, the second act must take place in the evening and the third at night. If the first act is pathetic, the second must be tragic and the third bathos—with a juidicious sprinkling of comedy relief. The characters are never caught in immobility— they sit down, get up again, move from left to right, up stage and down stage; they play with a paper-knife or light a cigarette. Dialogue is constantly interrupted by little happenings—a vase tips over, a clock strikes, a bell rings or a tinkling mandolin is heard off stage. . . . More than all else the' public intelligence must not be outraged. The modern playwright plants every emotion, builds up every action with such a wealth of detail and explanation that it cannot possibly be misunderstood.

This is all very well. But the-art of the theatre is sluggish. Who is going to open the sluice-gates?

Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Schnitzler, Andrejeff, Paul Claude and Bernard Shaw are at best only semi-futurists, imaginative but still limited by technical blue-prints. They dream of castles and build stables. They dare—within the limits of a given number of acts, a proper number of characters and an economical number of stage-sets. They, too, are static—prolix, analytical, pedantic and meticulous, as dull as a law-court, as upholstered as a Victorian drawing-room. Ours is a neutral theatre, strangely colourless in a world of violent contrasts, strangely passive, in a world of reconstruction and renewal strangely rococo, in a world of modernists and futurists.