Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

A.UDIO by Max U. Bildersee rhe Bard In The Limelight It's been a great year for Shakejpeare! Not only did his Macbeth walk off Arith the honors at the recent Emmy iwards for top performances in TV (everybody won for Macbeth except the svriter!) but his plays have been produced on Broadway, on TV and on records. There is rapidly becoming available a complete library of Shakespeare, not excepting his sonnets and his songs, and the time is not far off when school, college and public libraries will be behind the times if their collection do not support special [shelves of Shakespeare records. I And these will be used for many (purposes, not the least of which is to jloan to borrowers who will take the jdiscs home and listen to them at leisure. There will be special programs of reading of plays and sonnets. There will be study groups. There will be theses comparing and contrasting Shakespearean plays as performed in [Dublin, New York, London and Stratlord. In his day this man was the most jiolific playwright known. And his Liy' is not yet over for he is still the I lost widely performed playwright I, re and abroad. There are annual rstivals in the United States and in anada-as well as in England-at .vhich his works are performed for idmiring audiences by dedicated ictors. There are touring companies (who says the road is dead?) playing Shakespeare in one night stands from oast to coast. In some cities there ire special companies playing Shake .pearian plays from school to school or the benefit of high school students uid the City of New York will again .sclcome a season of 'Shakespeare mder the stars' this summer when a lumber of well and lesser known ilays will be performed. A quick glance at the catalogs inlicates that practically every taste s amply considered by these publish•rs, publishers who seek to supply naterial to meet both the needs and he demands of an articulate body of isteners and readers seeking to hear ,uid read the works of Shakespeare. There is Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, AWs Well That Ends Well, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar-^nd the list in toto is much longer. Further, in many instances, there are several different recordings of individual plays. The companies represented? Many-including Columbia, Decca, RCA Victor, Spoken Word, Spoken Arts, Lexington and Caedmon. Crown Publishing Company, we are told, is edging back into the record field and their first offering is a volume of the sonnets of Shakespeare (all 154 of them) read by a noted actor. More Plays On Records And this abundance of play recordings has had a salubrious effect elsewhere. More plays are being recording than ever before. Spoken Arts has offered Kapp's Last Tape which excited off-Broadway audiences for many months. And there is Waiting for Godot, JB, Saint Joan, Medea, John Browns Body, Death of a Salesm(m and Feter Fan, to name but a few. And, we confidentally predict, there will be more. There will be more because we are becoming, more and more, a nation of hsteners. This is in no sense harmful to the reading habits of the nation; it may even be highly beneficial. The nation's major and minor publishers predict that some 20,000 new books will be published this year. And this, an all time high, includes hard cover books, paperbacks, text books and 'how to do it' books. But this prediction is based on the growing 'hard sell' book market in which the publisher is no longer a gentleman of learning and leisure who seeks to break even on a year's operations. Rather, the publishing companies have had to lean more and more heavily on public financing through stock issues-and the public seeks profit and income. Indeed, some publisher stocks are rapidly entering the area of 'darling of the stock market'. Listening is racing after reading, and today practically every school in the country is equipped with at least one (and usually several) tape and/or disc players to reproduce available recorded sound. It is common practice now to equip each classroom in the first three or four grades with such equipment and to have records at hand so that the sense of hearing can be employed successfully in the teaching process. As young people learn through listening, so their critical acuity of sound appreciates and so they demand more and better things to hear. Today's buying public was brought up on radio-radio programming which has fallen on sad days-and they demand fine things to hear. Today's buying public uses television (largely sound oriented) for some entertainment. But the constant reception of impression through sound has immeasurably helped publishing-and has immeasurably helped the record industry. It is not too far back to remember when the record industry, dominated by a few major companies, was relegated to the scrap heap and experienced a rebirth through the de t FREE TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS DIRECTORY OF RECORD PRODUCERS ON 3 X 5 CARDS AN AUDIO CARDALOG EXTRA already distributed free to all subscribers ORDER AUDIO CARDALOG BEFORE September 15, 1961 AND GET YOUR FREE DIRECTORY, TOO Audio CARDALOG PO Box 1771 Albany 1, New York Directory available at $5.00 to subscribers after September 15, 1961. DUCATIONAL ScREEN AND AUDIOVISUAL GUIDE— JULY, 1961 353