The Theatre
CloydHead—Maurice Browne: comparatively misty names, far below the golden monolith at whose base is carefully engraved the word—Granville Barker. Mr. Barker resurrects Greek tragedies and Shakespeare plays and produces them acceptably; Cloyd Head and Maurice Browne have evolved an absolutely new stage method and draped it about a poetic concept. Therefore Cloyd Head and Maurice Browne will probably be heralded and worshipped ten years from now, at the earliest. They must pay the penalty of originality and the ability of appreciating it.
InGrotesquesrecently produced at the Chicago Little Theatre, for the first time, actors posed as black and white marionettes in a series of decorations created by Fate, masquerading as a sardonic artist. The idea ofFate moving human beings together as one shuffles a pack of cards is old. But the portraying of this shuffling through conventional decorations with the actors giving the jerking semblance of puppets, and with Fate personified, directly addressing the audience, is sparklingly new. Capulchard, the artist, has made a decoration symbolizing the background of life—an utterly simple picture composed of a conventionalized black and white wave effect, a black sky, a round white moon, stiff white trees, an owl on one of their branches, and a lotus-flower. From his marionette boxes at both sides of the decoration he drags forth his puppets—man motif, woman motif, crone motif, sprite motif, girl motif, and carelessly waves them into various poses, the main incidents of their lives. But they gradually become aware of him, they begin to speak out of their lines, to burst into tiny rebellions which he controls with difficulty. They show increasing determination to mar his series of decorations. Finally in a moment of sublime defiance, headed by the man-motif, they slash their strings. The result—Death. Capulchard carelessly erases the decoration—it has served its purpose.
I shall probably fully drainGrotesquesafter slowly reading it again and again. But even now, Cloyd Head’s huge child whose face is like the pointed petals of sun-flowers, has aroused a little cluster of reactions within me. To sharply visualise the play, you need not see the actual black and white of the decoration, and the über-marionettes who move stiffly through it. The words of the play themselves are black and white: you feel them as an inextricable part of the picture: there is something in their staccato rising and falling that suggests light and darkness evenly spread upon a canvass. Something in the even placing and sounding of phrases like this:
Who am I that come,Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.
Who am I that come,Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.
Who am I that come,Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.
Who am I that come,Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.
Who am I that come,
Caressing tenderly the sign of bird?
A Girl, in white, alone, beside the pattern brook.
I wander without fear, of fear not having heard.
It is not easily explained. It is a feeling that can only come to one after repeated reading of the play.
A second reaction comes to one while loitering with the images in their jerking procession. Each image, with its absolute minimum of words, has two clear virtues—the expression of emotion half-human and half artificial, and the concentration of just enough of this emotion to produce an illusion of the whole. Consider this speech of the sprite motif:
Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite enters—oh, ho!Dance, crinkled stream!Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.(Blows) ... Begone.(Reflectively) It is night.(Bowing) Madame Owl.Hoot! To-whoo!
Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite enters—oh, ho!Dance, crinkled stream!Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.(Blows) ... Begone.(Reflectively) It is night.(Bowing) Madame Owl.Hoot! To-whoo!
Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite enters—oh, ho!Dance, crinkled stream!Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.(Blows) ... Begone.(Reflectively) It is night.(Bowing) Madame Owl.Hoot! To-whoo!
Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite enters—oh, ho!Dance, crinkled stream!Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.(Blows) ... Begone.(Reflectively) It is night.(Bowing) Madame Owl.Hoot! To-whoo!
Tiptoe a-tread—thru the wood—by the brook—the sprite enters—oh, ho!
Dance, crinkled stream!
Ha; a dragon-fly poised upon air.
(Blows) ... Begone.
(Reflectively) It is night.
(Bowing) Madame Owl.
Hoot! To-whoo!
An actual sprite-soul in life would babble, would use more extravagant phrasing. In this sprite passage, just enough of the babbling and exuberance has been given, to suggest the essence of it; just enough words have been given, to suggest the steady motion of the invisible strings. These qualities run throughout the speeches of all the über-marionettes.