Close Up (Mar-Dec 1933)

CLOSE UP 229 in voice production and special schooling in the translation of natural gesture into the conventional gesture of the stage. Hence, obviously, the so-called " naturalistic school " which holds that the stage should be " true to life " is based fundamentally on an incorrect premise. It is the attempt to introduce into the theatre material which it does not need and which, moreover, it is unable to utilise. Realistic intonations of the voice, such as we hear in real life coming from someone sitting about half-a-yard away from us, would be inaudible to an audience in a theatre. Genuine china, richness of quality in the stuffs of which costumes are made, are as little perceptible to anybody in the audience as would be a natural good complexion in a member of the cast. To make things expressive on the stage, one has to stress essentials, reject the supererogatory, emphasize contrasts, make special clothes, use special make-up. And all these conventional alterations have to be made on the people themselves, on the things themselves. On the stage real and natural things and people are bound to be ineffective and inexpressive because they can be seen and heard only imperfectly, or rather, because they become blurred by various ordinarily invisible and inaudible details, easily perceived and segregated in real life, but infallibly entangling the stage image. Try to imagine yourself meeting a man for the first time and the two of you standing at opposite corners of the street. It is scarcely likely that you would derive from him an impression either vivid or thorough if he behaved as though he were standing next to you. Let us now turn to a different side of the question. No work of art can be conceived as existing except in conjunction with a spectator or auditor " listening-in " to it, so to speak. And in the the course of its growth, of its dialectical development, each art-form draws within its sphere of influence an ever wider circle of " listeners-in." Art strives to be mass art, a tendency that finds its personal expression in the striving of each artist towards recognition— fame. Even a cursory survey of the history of the theatre is sufficient to show in it this tendency towards displaying a work of art to as numerous an audience as possible. (This generalisation does not apply, of course, to the decadent tendencies leading to intime aestheticism ; these tendencies are essentially characteristic of degenerating social periods and never have played nor ever will play a leading part in the history of art). Impromptu dances and recitations became fixed for presentation at definite times and places to attract larger audiences. Later the places where these performances were given began to be arranged and equipped in such a way as to enable them to be seen and heard by as large a number of people as possible: the advent of the special theatre building. Next in its development theatrical art passed from improvisation to fixed forms, making it possible to repeat a given performance and consequently to present it to still more people. The Russian theatre of today with its technical resources consists of a large number of theatre units, geographically separated yet interconnected by railway, aeroplane, post, telegraph, telephone, and is consequently capable of presenting the same play almost simultaneously in different parts of the country to an almost infinite number of people. The penetration of art into mass audiences stands out as a patent phenomenon of its technical development. It becomes