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yesterday imitated these and called that imitation drama. But psychology has taught us that drama is something deeper than mere imitation. It is, in fact, the interpretation of life, not the imitation of life. To find it, the dramatist must go far below the surface, down into the souls of men. He must study motive, impulse, all the springs of human action. The word "act" belongs to superficial imitation. The superficial is bound also to become artificial. So the word "act" has grown into ill repute. The criticism frequently made of an artificial performer is that he "acts all over the screen." In the taking of a picture one often hears a director, with a touch of sarcasm, impress upon his performers that he does not want the scene he is rehearsing to be "acted." What he really wants is that it shall be lived, that it shall truly interpret the emotions which have prompted it. So the screen writer must evolve photodrama which may be lived, not the kind which may be superficially acted.
SMILES AND TEARS
Drama may be either tragedy or comedy. Never make the mistake of thinking that comedy is not drama. You might as well believe that there is no comedy in life. This mistake leads to most of the forced, unnatural, artificial comedy we see on the screen. In some of our moments of intensest tragedy we do the funniest things. That play is greatest in which, as in life, there are both tears and laughter.
Formerly a tragedy was defined as a play which ended in death. Today we have learned that to have to live may be often-times far more tragic than to have to die. A young woman shoots her lover; the act of shooting is not the drama, but the woman's conflict of passionate emotion — jealousy, resentful anger, sense of personal wrong — which impelled the act is. The shooting is the action that gives expression to the inner conflict which is the drama. And the drama is now not with the dead man, but with the living woman. Her future fate is bound to be one of struggle, conflict with the law, and with her own soul. Suppose she should love again — perhaps the brother of the man whom she has slain. Then the drama would be intensified because her own soul struggle would be greatly increased.
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