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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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A descriptive study of the most popular high school plays in the United States produced by members of the National Thespian Society, 1938-1954
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A descriptive study of the most popular high school plays in the United States produced by members of the National Thespian Society, 1938-1954
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A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE MOST POPULAR HIGH SCHOOL PLAYS IN THE UNITED STATES PRODUCED BY MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL THESPIAN SOCIETY 1938-1954 by Frank Joseph Wattron, Jr. A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Communications) June 1957 UMI Number: DP22306 All rights reserved IN FO R M A TIO N TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UM I DP22306 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6 Ph. D C .m ‘ S I W 3+7 T h is dissertation, w ritte n by Er.ank..jQaeph...Wa.ttr.on>...Jr.^...... u nde r the d ire c tio n o f h ls G u id a n c e C o m m ittee , and a p p ro v e d by a ll its members, has been p re sented to and accepted by the F a c u lty o f the G radu ate S chool, in p a r tia l fu lfillm e n t o f re quirem ents f o r the degree o f D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y Dean D a te ....June.* . . . l£5-7-... t | $7- 4 C . ce C o m m itte e i I iGe| 11 l! 3' 3 3' 7 8' 10 18 20; 20! 20: i f 22 22 23 23 28 28 28 29 TABLE OF CONTENTS THE PROBLEM ................................ Introduction .............................. The problem .............................. Objectives of the study ............... Limitations of the study ............... Definition of terms ................... Significance of the problem ........... Review of literature ..................... Preview of subsequent chapters ........... MATERIALS AND PROCEDURES ................... Sources ........ ....................... The National Thespian Society ........... Procedures ................................ Determining the most-produced plays . . Synopsis of the plays ................. A basis for analysis ................... Areas selected for analysis ........... Publishing dates and production statistics ......................... Play types, authors, publishers, and royalties .......................... Classification and sources of the plays .............................. CHAPTER : III. IV. Theme, structure, and plot situations Character requirements ............. Production effects ................. Social and moral . ............... Other general procedures ............. DATES AND PRODUCTION STATISTICS OF PLAYS SURVEYED ................................ Introduction ............................ Analysis of dates and production statistics ............................ Date of publication and first year on roll................................ Peak year and highest number of pro ductions ............................ Total productions ................... TYPES, AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS, AND ROYALTIES OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED ................. Introduction ........................... Analysis of types, authors, publishers, and royalties ....................... Types . . . ......................... Authors .............................. Publishers ............................ Royalties ................. ........ PAGE 29' ! 29 i 301 30! 30' 32* 32 35; 35 ! 35! 36 ! 38: 38 42, 42 44 44i 45 CHAPTER ' V. VI. v; PAGE' CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OF THE PLAYS 1 SURVEYED.................................. 46' Introduction .............................. 46i Analysis of classification and sources of j the plays surveyed..................... 47’ Classification ......................... 47 Standard.............................. 47' Broadway.............................. 50 Amateur..................... 50 Sources................................ 50 Original.............................. 50, Adaptations.......................... 51 THEME, STRUCTURE, AND PLOT SITUATIONS OF THE : PLAYS SURVEYED............................ 53' I Introduction .............................. 53, Theme and essential action............... 55 T h e m e .................................. 55 Essential action ....................... 56 June M a d .............................. 57 What A L i f e ......................... 57 Our Town.............................. 57 You Can't Take It With Y o u ............ 57 Don* t Take My P e n n y ................. 57 Ever Since E v e ....................... 57 Brother Goose ....................... 57, r .. ■■■ — ■ . vi CHAPTER PAGE I I ! Junior M i s s .......................... 58 1 Little Women.......................... 58; . Nine Girls............................ 58j Arsenic And Old Lace................. 5^! Night of January l6t h ............... 58s I 3 A Date With Judy..................... 58; ; January Thaw........................ . 59 Our Hearts Were Young And Gay .... 59 Dear R u t h ............................ 59 I We Shook The Family Tree............. 59° Meet Me In St. Louis................. 59- I Remember M a m a ..................... 59! One Foot In Heaven................... 60! Mother Is A Freshman................. 60: i 3 Seventeenth Summer ................... 60^ Our Miss Brooks..................... 60 Cheaper By The Dozen................. 60 Men Are Like Streetcars ....... 60 ! Green Valley......................... 6l The Little Dog Laughed............... 6l The Curious Savage................... 6l Analysis of theme and essential action . . 6l i Structure of the plays................... 63 Analysis of play structure............... 64, ! Juvenile and parental rivalries 68 CHAPTER j Analysis of juvenile and parental | ! rivalries .............................. | | Common plot situations ................... i Analysis of common plot situations (Table J VII A) .................................. Analysis of common plot situations (Table VII B) .................................. I Analysis of common plot situations (Table VII C) .................................. Attitudes toward school ................. i Analysis of attitudes toward school . . . VII. CHARACTERS IN THE PLAYS SURVEYED .......... j Introduction .............................. Character statistics ..................... Analysis of character requirements . . . . t Cast totals ............................ I Men and women ......................... Adults, and characters under 21 . . . . Old-Age characters ..................... Dialect characters . . . ............... Extra characters ....................... Family and professional status of the characters .............................. Analysis of family and professional status of the characters ..................... PAGE 69, i 72j j 8r i 82 83! 85! 88; 89! 89! 92! 93; i 93 94 99 96 96: 97 100 CHAPTER j V2.lV PAGE1 i Parents................................ 100' 1 Professional status ................... 100, i Parental types ............................ 101j Analysis of parental types ............... 104; Sympathetic parents ................... 105; Irate fathers and "feather-brained" ; mothers.............................. 105! Juvenile types ............................ 107' Analysis of juvenile types . . . ......... Ill; Juvenile l e a d ......................... 112; Confidant, and nuisance character . . . 112 | Juvenile villains ..................... 112; Brothers, sisters, and only children . . Il4‘ School types and attitudes ............... 114: Analysis of school types and attitudes . . 115 Positive and negative students ........ 115; Positive and negative teachers ........ 118 Athletes, and teachers in love........ 118 General comic types ..................... 119, Analysis of general comic types ........ 123 Comic maid.............................. 124; Other women and dominant women........ 124 Irate boss and policeman............... 125 • 1 Old-Age, irate and kindly ............. 125 Mouse, slick, and rustic types ........ 126 CHAPTER j j v i i i . PAGE1 Theatre people .......................... 126' I Ghosts, drunkards, and foreigners . . . 126' Comic accent, insane, and Negro I characters............................ 127' PRODUCTION EFFECTS REQUIRED BY THE PLAYS SURVEYED.........., ........................ 129 Introduction . . ....................... 129' Location and-settings ................... 130‘ Analysis of geographical location and I settings of the p l a y s ................. 131 ! Geographical location ................. 131, Settings................................ 136 Properties, sound, and lighting effects . 137 Analysis of the complexity of properties, sound, and lighting effects ........... 139 Comic property devices ................... 142 Analysis of comic property devices .... 146' Mechanical devices ..................... 146 F o o d s .................................. 146 Furniture.............................. 147; Letters................................ 147 Animals................................ 147 Fireworks.............................. 148 Opiates................................ 148 ! Other extravagant properties ........... 149 CHAPTER t IX. PAGE, Costumes and make-up..................... 149! I Analysis of costume and make-up ........ 152! Period.................................. 152I Comic costume......................... 153' Make-up................................ 153 1 M u s i c ................... 154 Analysis of use and types of music .... 159 Use of music.......... 159 Types of music......................... 159! Use and types of dance................... 160' Analysis of use and types of dance .... 163. Social dancing .......................... 163 I Ballet, folk, and modern dance ........ 163 SOCIAL AND MORAL VALUES POUND IN THE PLAYS SURVEYED.................................. l64 Introduction .............................. l64 Categories of social and moral values . . 168 Analysis of social and moral values . . . 173 Religious implications ................. 173 Drinking................................ 174 Dishonesty.............................. 175 Murder.................................. 176 Extra-marital relations ............... 176( Non-whites as menials ................. 177 Marriage implied ....................... 178 CHAPTER X. I PAGE; Career implied .......................... 178 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ................... 180, Introduction .............................. 180 Summary of the most-produced plays, their production statistics, types, authors, 1 publishers, royalties, classification, and sources....................... l8l' The p l a y s ......................... l8l Dates and production statistics .... 182 T y p e s ............................. 183' Authors and publishers ................. 183 i Royalties......................... 184 I Classification .......................... 184 ! Sources........................... 184 j Summary of plot and character aspects and i production effects of the 28 plays . . . 185. Plot devices....................... 185 Theme and essential action...... 185 Structure of the plays.......... 185 Juvenile and parental rivalries . . . 185 Common plot situations ............... 185 Attitudes toward school ............. 186 Characters......................... l86| Character statistics . . . .'.... 186 Family and professional status .... 187, bHAPTER ' Parental types ....................... Juvenile and school types ........... General comic types ................. Production effects ..................... Location and settings ............... I Properties, sound, and lighting effects Comic property devices ............... Costumes and make-up ................. Music ................................ Dance ................................ Summary of moral and social values .... Conclusions .............................. The most popular plays ................. i Types .................................. Authors, publishers, and royalties . . . I Classification and sources ............. Theme, structure, and common plot i situations ............................ Character .............................. Production effects ..................... Social and moral values ............... Suggestions for further research ........ BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................ APPENDICES 1 APPENDIX A: Texts of the Publishers' Letters . . f~ ' ~ ........... ...... ... '" ~ xi ii j CHAPTER PAGE I APPENDIX B: Synopses of the Plays Surveyed . . . 219 S table | i . i i j II. j i i III. | IV. | I i V. VI. j VII A. I VII B. | VII C. 1 1 VIII. IX. X. j XI. XII. XIII. ! x iv . i ! XV. LIST OP TABLES Plays Produced by at Least Ten National Thespian Affiliated Secondary Schools per Year, 1938-1954 ................... Dates and Production Statistics of the Plays Surveyed ......................... Types, Authors, Publishers, and Royalties of the Plays Surveyed ................. Classification and Sources of the Plays Surveyed ................................ Play Structure........................... Juvenile and Parental Rivalries ........ Common Plot Situations ................... Common Plot Situations ................... Common Plot Situations ................... Attitudes Toward School ................. Character Requirements ................... Family and Professional Status of the Characters .............................. Parental Types ............................ Juvenile Types ............................ School Types and Attitudes ............... General Comic Types ..................... Geographical Locations of the Plays . . . PAGE i | I j 24! 33; 40 48'' 65! i I 7°: 75 77 79 86' i 90' i 98' 102 108 116 i 120 i 132 I TABLE PAGE XVT. Settings of the P l a y s .................... 134! | XVII. Complexity of Properties, Sound, and ! | Lighting................................ l40{ XVIII. Comic Property Devices ........... . . . . 143! XIX. Costumes and Make-up ............. . . . . 150’ XX. Use of Music ..................... . . . . 155' XXI. Types of Music ................... . . • . 157 XXII. Use and Types of Dance ........... XXIII. Social and Moral Values ........ . . . . 169 -- CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM I. INTRODUCTION | ? i When drama directors get together, the conversation ! often turns to the problem of play selection. Questions are: I frequently asked about what plays are currently being pro duced, and information is exchanged about the relative mer- ^ its of this or that play. The school stage director seems i Constantly on the lookout for the new play, the play with j ;he "different angle," the play that will be the answer to t ills particular wants in his particular situation. Perhaps | i bvery director has his favorite play or plays, but, it may j 1 i I be, the play does not exist that will fit ,the individual ! s ; I ideal perfectly. Play selection, then, is one of the direc-1 lor's most crucial problems; but select he must, and does, ; season after season. I . . ' j Over the years, various standards of play selection ! s have been set up by interested groups or individuals. These Will be referred to in a later section of the present study. I • s Every director has his own criteria, whether they are rigid ly objective of determination, or purely the standards of his own taste. It is not known, however, on a national scale, just what the standards of play production are as re-, vealed by the actual plays produced and an analysis of their, bontent. I This is particularly true of play production on the high school level. Since 1948 the American Educational The atre Association has taken a yearly poll of colleges to de termine the plays produced each season. The first college survey was conducted by John Dietrich of the University of i Wisconsin, and was published in The Quarterly Journal of S p e e c h Since that time, the poll has been taken over by the American Educational Theatre Association and the results O published each year in the Educational Theatre Journal. I A survey of high school theatre production has been made in one state,^ but the national picture has not been inade the object of a close study. High schools in the tjnited States which are affiliated with the National Thespi- I dn Society report their productions each year to the nation-; al office. The figures thus compiled represent a nationwide! j i cross section of theatre activity among high schools. : | I ; ^John Dietrich, "Dramatic Activity in American Col leges, 1946-47," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, XXXIV (April, 1948), 183-190. p Theodore Hatlen, "College and University Play Pro duction, 1948-49/' Educational Theatre Journal, II (May, 1 1950), 154-158; III (May, 1951), 142; IV (May, 1952), 143- s 145; V (May, 1953), 184-185; and Edwin R. Schoell, "College ; and University Productions," Educational Theatre Journal, VI (May, 1954), 168-170; VII (May, 1955)", 147-150. I ^R. C. Gee and J. E. Dietrich, "A Survey of Dramatic i Activity in Wisconsin High Schools, 1947-48," The Quarterly , Journal of Speech, XXXVI (April, 1950), 65~70. i L. I. THE PROBLEM j Objectives of the Study The problem of this study was many sided. The over all objective was to shed light on high school play produc tion through an analysis of the most popular plays. Specif ic objectives of the study were to determine answers to the j following questions: ! i 1. What are the most popular plays produced in the j high schools of the United States? j ! 2. What are the most common types of plays produced j in high school theatre? ! 3- What play publishing houses and authors dominate j the educational theatre field, and what are the average roy-j dlty costs per play? ! 4. What are the sources of the playbook stories, and how may they best be classified as to origin? , I 5* What are the common themes, structures, and plot 1 Situations found in the most popular plays? 6. What are the character requirements of the plays? 7. What production effects are required for these I plays? 1 I 8. What are the most pronounced moral and social values found in the most-produced plays? Limitations of the Study | With the piay-producing high schools in the United States variously estimated at between 15*000 to 28,000 in 4 lumber* the task of determining exactly what plays have been produced, even in a single year, by all the high schools was considered to be a virtual impossibility. I In beginning this study, correspondence with several j play publishers was initiated in the hope of securing play I i production statistics. (The publishers' letters are found i i 1 in Appendix A of this work.) A majority of the play pub lishers, however, were unwilling to give out such informa tion. Some considered it confidential while others felt : s that the clerical work involved in compiling the material i I I I 1 would be too costly. ; 1 Fortunately, the National Thespian Society, made up j of affiliated high schools who produce plays, has kept track; of the plays produced by their member schools. Since 1938 a } , yearly poll has been compiled by the National Thespian Of- j i fice listing by title the plays that have had ten or more j t productions during that particular school year. This study : i . is limited to those high schools affiliated with the Nation-* t \ al Thespian Society who produce plays and to the production figures compiled on the Thespian roll from 1938 to 1954. The figures were obtained directly from Leon C. Miller, Ex ecutive Secretary-Treasurer of the* Society. They appear as ! ^Leon C. Miller, "As I See It," Dramatics, XXVI (No vember, 1954), 4; Rufus Jarman, "The Heck With Broadway," : The Saturday Evening Post. April 28, 1951* P- 28, et passim. Table I (pp. 24-27) of this study. The total number of pro-! ductions listed on the roll for any one play in a particular! year was taken to mean that that number of separate high ; schools produced the play that year. i j An accurate sampling of over 1,500 high schools was thus afforded by the Thespian figures. The actual Thespian 1 I c I pnrollment as of July 1, 1955 was 1,562 schools.-3 While ' 1 i this was a relatively small percentage of the total number ! j i bf play-producing high schools it was felt to be more than 1 adequate for a survey of this type. According to Gallup, i the size of the sample is far less important in achieving I 6^ reliable results than the representativeness of the sample. ; ! Schools affiliated with the National Thespian Society were I I considered to be representative of high schools most active-! ly engaged in play production in the United States in the i following ways: (l) the membership included schools in i fevery state in the nation, thus affording wide geographical : I ! Representation; and (2) the Society offers a wide variety ofi educational theatre services to its members, indicating that' ; I affiliated schools represented well organized and active Uramatic groups. It was considered a safe assumption that i i i the National Thespian Society represented the leading play- ! 1 j ^Leon C. Miller (ed.), Membership Roll (Cincinnati: The National Thespian Society, 1955)/ P- 1* I ; ^George Gallup, A Guide to Public Opinion Polls (Princeton: University Press, 1944), p. 13- producing high schools in the United States. J Another limitation was the number of plays cited in the analytical sections of this study. From 1938 to 1954 a total of 91 plays were reported by the National Thespian Of fice as having had 10 or more productions in a single year. ! Ninety-one plays was considered too large a number for thor-1 j ough analysis. Therefore, an arbitrary limitation was set; ’ 1 only those plays that had a total of at least 75 productions i from 1938 to 1954 were used in the study. This gave a total5 of 28 plays, a feasible number for thorough analysis. i A still further limitation was the possible inaccura-j cy of the Thespian production figures in reflecting the to- j ! ' i tal number of productions of any one play. As previously 1 | | mentioned, the Thespian lists included only those plays that: had at least ten productions in any one year. Obviously, I several plays appeared on the list in certain years and not ■ dther years, even though they may have had any number of ! ! productions up to nine. However, it seemed probable that these unrecorded numbers from none through nine would be i proportional to the numbers above ten. If so, these unre ported numbers would not have influenced the choice of the 1 f 28 plays. Another.minor limitation was the "fact that the mem bership of the National Thespian Society has varied from , irear to year, showing a more or less steady increase. This,, f of course, did not affect the statistics within the preceding limitations, but did give more weight to plays published in more recent years when the Ihespian membership was larger. j definition of Terms j 1 i Most of the terms and expressions used in this study | are self-explanatory and their use is common in theatre ac tivity. Certain terms, however, were used in a particular j sense and must be noted. j ! , Play refers to a three-act play, or full-length play,! j i 1 i as opposed to a one-act or short play. j I i High school indicates a secondary level school with , grades 9-12. I i j _ ; Theatre refers to the stage as opposed to motion pic-I tures, radio, or television. i i Production is used in two senses: (l) the perform- j ance of a play, and (2) as a general term indicating those aspects of theatre activity outside of acting or playwriting. 1 i i Educational theatre refers to theatre activity car ried on in high schools. Popular, in reference to the plays, means that they have been produced often enough to appear on the compiled J ! Thespian rolls. ! I Thespian Society refers to the National Thespian So ciety, an organization of affiliated high schools engaged in* ■theatre production. Social and moral values refers to standards of con duct habitually controlled by rational principles to which : value has been imputed by group consensus.^ j I N I Significance of the Problem j This study explored a relatively untouched field of i i I Research and as such was considered new to theatre scholar- ! | ; Ship. Much discussion has been carried on concerning the most popular plays and various trends in school productions, but no thesis or dissertation was found which dealt with • > these topics on a national scale. By critically examining the plays most produced over a period of years, it was felt t that the general picture of high school theatre would be ' Clarified and weaknesses and strengths of the program would ■ i ' j be revealed. i According to Good and Scates, descriptive-survey Studies are considered research when they create or ascer tain: (1) new categories that are revealing, or more useful’ than those already in use; (2) concepts that afford a more basic grasp of factors which enter into results or which ' I ; " ' 1-11l “r"™"', T T n -'-", , r 1 , ^Dagobert D. Runes (ed.), The Dictionary of Philoso phy (New York: The Philosophical Library, 19^2), p. 202; and Henry Pratt Fairchild (ed.), Dictionary of Sociology (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1944), p. 296. represent results more certainly; (3) methods of detecting and identifying a factor and perhaps measuring it, valuable \ for analysis and description; (4) certain relationships that obtain, either for practical or scientific interest or value, and (5) the structure of relationships--of the mechanism re lating them, why and how certain factors cause certain re sults.8 I I j This study reflected many of the above criteria for research. New categories were evolved in several areas, particularly those dealing with sources of plays and types ' 1 I | | of dramatic structure. In analyzing the most-produced plays, ! i new concepts of the factors involved in play selection came jbo light. By tabulating and analyzing every production area] the extent of modern theatre practice in high schools was j j | measured. Certain relationships between writers, publishing : ' i houses, and play directors were revealed by this study. 1 \ • i Status studies have further significance in determin-; i 1 ing conditions as they are developing, and in obtaining facts about current practices while the information can ttill be used as a guide in formulating policies and in forking out plans for the immediate future.^ in this light,' the educational theatre must be regarded as a dynamic and Q 1 Carter V. Good and Douglas E. Scates, Methods of Re search (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 195477 P« 1 557- ! %bid. , p. 550- | “ " " j"“ '■ ' ■ ” “ “ 101 I fexpanding activity. This was indicated by the increase in 1 j Thespian membership and the increasing number of plays pro- J duced over the years covered by this survey. In this dynam ic aspect a number of trends in high school theatre were noted; for instance, the type of play found dominant in i school theatre fare. 1 i This work was also considered a contribution to laterj theatre research. Periodic surveys on a national scale are • necessary to determine the growth and development of all phases of educational theatre. This was thought to be best ! reflected through the most significant aspect of dramatic ! activity--the" plays that are actually produced. j f III. REVIEW OP LITERATURE i i f Not a great deal of the published theatre literature ' t had a direct bearing on this study. Of most significance ! was a survey of dramatic activity in Wisconsin high schools,! Carried out by Ronald C. Gee and John E. Dietrich in 1947_48' 1 10 ' and published in The Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1950* Pertinent highlights from Gee and Dietrich were as follows: A questionnaire covering many areas of theatre ac- 1 f tivity was sent to 4l4 high schools in Wisconsin. In all, 237 schools responded, 211 reporting a dramatic program. ; i For the year in question, 367 plays were produced for an ■^Gee and Dietrich, ojc. cit. audience of approximately 217,000. A majority of the schools had an enrollment of 500 or less, and produced either one orj cwo plays per year. Twenty-five per cent of the larger ischools (over 500) gave three productions a year, with only two schools mounting four. Students numbering 12,056 par- 1 jfcicipated in dramatic activity; an average of one student inj ten enrolled. 1 Average cost of all types of plays was $80.00. The : I i high schools' profit was from one to three times the money Spent on the production. Profit seemed to have been one of [ { I the driving motives of high school theatre, according to the; i Gee and Dietrich report; 75 per cent of the plays being sponsored by the junior or senior class for the purpose of i , i making money. Only 10 per cent were sponsored by drama * i < groups. Types of productions indicated the following per- i centages: (1) comedy (farce) 78 per cent, (2) mystery (com-| I ? ; ' i edy) 12 per cent, (3) musicals 7 per cent, and (4) serious j drama 3 per cent. In larger schools the percentage of seri ous drama was 14 per cent. More than 64 per cent of the plays produced in 1947~ 48 in Wisconsin high schools were published by small mid- western publishing houses who cater to the high school trade. The major characteristics of these plays seemed to be cheap- to-produce, easy-to-play, slapstick farce and maudlin melo- drama. Of the 367 productions reported, only three were classical scripts. Fifty-three plays had their initial success on Broadway. The other 311 productions were plays which were written especially for high school production. i This group, according to Gee and Dietrich, could be divided {into two classes: (l) those which had some perceivable lit erary and theatrical value, and (2) those which did not. Ten plays seemed to belong to the first category, e.g., i i adaptations of Clarence by Booth Tarkington, and Little Wom- I fen by Louisa M. Alcott. In the second group were such ! titles as The Daffy Dills, Aunt Bessie Beats the Band, The i I Goof From Gopher Gulch, and Lay Down, You're Dead. i Eighty per cent of the plays were found to be of ex tremely doubtful merit. These results indicated a sharp contrast between the plays studied in the classroom and ;hose produced on the high school stage. Among the problems encountered in play selection, limited facilities for staging was listed first in the Wis- feonsin survey. Problems of casting were considered a sig- ! nificant barrier by many directors. Surprisingly enough, I objectionable script material did not seriously concern most high school directors. The high cost of production was con sidered an important factor by 50 per cent of the respond ents. Student and audience interest were not considered problems. The recommendations by Gee and Dietrich included a suggestion that the plethora of farce comedy be reviewed and that the profit motive in high school drama be i " I ” i curtailed. An article in The Saturday Evening; Post for April, [ i 1951 by Rufus Jarman, entitled "The Heck With Broadway,"1^ was particularly revealing on the subject of the amateur theatre audience. Also, much of Jarman's material was rele- | j vant to the problem of play selection in high schools. Jarman quoted Theodore Johnson, head of Walter H. 1 J 1 i Baker Play Company, as saying that Aaron Slick From Punkin j i ! i Crick was their most popular play as well as probably the I , most performed play in the American theatre. In 32 years ' I the play has been performed about 50,000 times by amateur i 1 groups; 35?000 of these have been high schools. Jarman t I j pointed out that while not more than 2,000,000 Americans seej professional plays of Broadway caliber regularly, in 1950 an! j ! estimated 10,000,000 Americans (counting repeaters) attended^ between 350,000 and 500,000 performances by amateur theatre I i groups. In 1950 the nation’s high schools produced about ! 75,000 full length plays viewed by between 18,000,000 and ! 25>0001000 people. Jarman quoted Charles Kennedy, an editor of Samuel French, Inc., as’follows: "Certain realities of life cannot enter a play for high schools. . . . When our children are concerned, we are all Puritans."1^ Jarman listed several interesting "rules" which are respected by writers for the ' ^ Ibid. -^Jarman, op. cit. ^ Ibid. | high school theatre: Never have dimly lighted scenes, they Repress the audience. People will laugh when someone falls cn his face or goes home in a barrel. Never use gag lines, they date a play. Never do an out-and-out love scene. Put i boy in girl’s clothes and audiences will fall into the aisle. ! Some revealing statistics in regard to play publish- I . i ing concluded the Jarman article. Publishers get 99 per ; I . i bent of their plays from regular contributors. French re- ' | ceives over 2,000 and Baker over 1,500 manuscripts of the I estimated 30,000 plays that would-be-playwrights turn out ' ! ' feach year. French will average three excellent one-acts and, 1 possibly one good long play out of 2,000. Jarman maintained | that because of the lack of skilled teachers not more than 20 to 25 per cent of the high school plays are well cast, coached, and performed. i From time to time literature relating to criteria for play selection is brought out by the American Educational ! Theatre Association. In 195^ James H. Butler summarized the1 A.E.T.A. standards for high school plays: ! 1. The high school play should have a worth-while 1 theme, be sincere and true in its interpretation of lifei and accurate in its reflection of customs and manners. 2. It should have literary value. That is, it should be written in acceptable language and in accord- ! ance with the accepted standards of playwriting, and as such, it should be emotionally and intellectually j 14 Ibid. j stimulating. | 3- It should be within the capacities of the high ! school pupil to understand and appreciate, taking into | consideration the influence of vicarious experience and the pupil’s natural self interests. 4. It should challenge the highest creative and ar tistic abilities of all who are associated with the pro duction, thereby affording opportunities for study, analysis, and experimentation. 1 i 5- It should be good theatre, affording opportuni- ' ties for sincere acting, and be satisfying as entertain-; ment. It should lead rather than follow the community ! standards of entertainment and appreciation. 6. It should be free of highly sophisticated or ad- I vanced roles, vulgarity or profanity, objectionable sub-; I ject matter, and sordid, unwholesome presentation of « characters and scenes.^5 1 An editorial appearing in Dramatics took a broad view; of the matter of play selection. J i | j The National Thespian Society recommends no one play.j ! Play selection is the prerogative of each Thespian spon-j sor whose final decision must be determined by talent, physical stage requirements, pressures by administration; and community. Our society does recommend the presenta-; i tion of good plays. Yet what one sponsor thinks is a 1 good play, another would not touch his selection with | the proverbial "ten foot pole." The National Thespian Society does recommend variety in play selection. For any one school to do year after year just teen-age plays, that school is not presenting a complete picture of theatre. Teachers and directors of high school plays are ■^From a lecture by Dr. James H. Butler in a Seminar , in Play Production at the University of Southern California,' July, 1954. ■^Miller, "As I See It," ojc. cit♦ perhaps the most important single factor in educational the-! atre. Miss Marion Underwood, drama director of Glendale Uigh School, California, and former president of the South ern California Section of A.E.T.A., served as chairman of a committee to revise A.E.T.A. standards of play selection. Her committee’s report was published in the California Jour i lal of Secondary Education in November, 1953 under the title, !'Standards of Play Selection at the Secondary Level." The ; 1 i briteria were listed as follows: ! i 1. Must have plenty of action, since at this level ! students are full of the need for action; but, at the J same time, a worth-while theme within their understand- ! ing and ability to interpret, and a justifiable plot. 2. Must have the final emphasis of the play person- j ally and socially constructive, not destructive: ; I a. Drunkenness which is not looked down upon. ! b. Bad social behavior, which is not discreditedi c. Neurotic and psychotic sexual relations which are harmful to the home, family relations, | and society, and which are not evaluated as such. - d. Parent-children relationships which do not , leave the impression of unity, dignity, and ' harmony between parents should all be avoided, at the high school level. : 3. Should have a well balanced and fairly large cast, but these characters should not seem to be drawn in just, for number’s sake. They must be real and varied to fit logically into plot development. I 4. Should give the actors something worthwhile to work for so that they do not tire before the rehearsal ; period is over; and it must make them feel that, when they have finished, they have really accomplished some thing worthwhile, and learned something in that accom plishment. (Even farce-comedy need not be cheap and ! trite.) Many of the teen-age plays "milled" for high , school purposes are not worth the energy and money spent' on them and if they are good are better suited for the junior high level ..„ „ _ .... j 5. Should in the case of very many small schools, have only one set if possible. j 6. With all these requirements, must have entertain-l | ment value for both students and adults, since we play j i before a mixed audience, and the whole purpose of thea- j I tre is entertainment.1' I These views of teachers, directors, and others con- j cerned with educational theatre were revealing. They showed; an earnest desire and intent to maintain high standards of ; play production. But the theories and principles expounded : ! in this review of literature were primarily in regard to criteria for play selection. The Wisconsin study gave an | bverview of dramatic activity in that state and suggested j : areas where improvements could be made. The Jarman article was journalistic in its approach rather than scholarly. ! This literature served to emphasize the need for a detailed study of the plays actually being produced by high ! i school groups over the nation. The literature pertaining to I briteria for play selection would then be more meaningful j When studied in the light of current educational theatre practices. Between the one-state survey of Wisconsin and the "scatter-gun" techniques of the Jarman article there seemed to be a demand for a nation-wide survey, intensively carried out, and based on reliable and representative sources. • I ■ ^Marion L. Underwood, "Standards of Play Selection at the Secondary Level," California Journal of Secondary Education. XXVIII (November, 1953), 404-406. j IV. PREVIEW OF SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS Chapter II is on materials and procedures. The i isources of material are described, including a short history of the National Thespian Society, from which production fig ures were obtained. The procedures used in conducting the ~r study are explained in detail. j Chapter III lists the dates and production statistics^ ; 1 of the plays surveyed. A table is set up showing the plays ^ in chronological order of appearance on the Thespian roll j I and their total number of productions over the years. j Chapter IV is devoted to the types of plays, the au thors, publishers, and royalties required for the plays. Anj i analysis of each area is made after the data have been tabu- i lated. j ^ Chapter V classifies the plays surveyed as to the ! sources of the original play material. I ; Chapter VI contains an analysis of the apparent themes in the plays surveyed, together with tabulation and analysis of the structures of the plays and the most common plot sit uations. j Chapter VII is on character requirements of the plays. j ‘ The number and various types of characters for each play are tabulated and analyzed. I Chapter VIII deals with production effects required I i in the plays covered in this survey. Geographical locations, | settings, lights, properties, sound, music, and dance ! requirements for each play are explored. i i Chapter IX takes up social and moral values. Common social problems and attitudes found in the plays surveyed j | ' I are subjected to comparison and analysis. j i 1 i Chapter X sums up the study. Conclusions are drawn | | : bn the basis of the data compiled, and suggestions made for I i | * further research in this area. ! I I CHAPTER II MATERIALS AND PROCEDURES I. SOURCES Through the co-operation of Leon C. Miller, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the National Thespian Society, the yearly Thespian rolls of the most produced plays were com piled from 1938 through 1954. These 91 play titles and the record of their productions appear in tabular form on pages £4-27, and served as the primary sources of information for this survey. j Another source of material was, of course, the play- tooks themselves. The play catalogues that were published each year by the play houses served as a source for other facts about the plays and authors. i II. THE NATIONAL THESPIAN SOCIETY Since this study was limited to the plays produced by member schools of the National Thespian Society, a brief statement of the aims and purposes of that organization, to gether with a short history was secured. The following in formation is quoted from a 1955 booklet: I The National Thespian Society is an educational honor j and service organization of teachers and students, es tablished for the advancement of the dramatic arts in j the secondary schools. The aims of the society are two- i fold: (l) to establish and advance standards of excel- ; ___len.ce._in..all phases of dramatic arts, and (2) to create an active and intelligent interest in dramatic arts j among boys and girls in the high schools. I I History. The National Thespian Society was estab- I lished early in the spring of 1929 at Fairmont State ' College, W. Va. Following the exchange of correspond ence between Dr. Paul F. Opp, a faculty member of the Dramatics Department, and Dr. Earl ¥. Blank, then direc tor of dramatics at the Natrona County High School, Cas per, Wyoming, a meeting of interested teachers was held j to discuss the advisability of establishing a society i for the improvement of dramatic arts in the secondary ! schools. In view of the interest shown at this meeting, a constitution was drawn and other necessary forms were j prepared under Dr. Opp's direction. By June 1, 1929., 71 high schools were affiliated with' the Society. The first issue of The High School Thespi-j an, official organ of the Society was published in the ; fall of 1929 under the editorship of Harry T. Deeper. i In 1935 the national office was moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and The National Thespian became a bi-monthly mag azine under the editorship of Ernest Bavely. This pub lication was changed to Dramatics Magazine in 1944. The first National High School Drama Conference was spon- , sored by the Society in 1941 at Indiana University. j The twentieth anniversary of the Society was cele- i brated in 1949* at which time 980 schools were affili- ! ated. At the death of Mr. Ernest Bavely in 1950, Leon ! C. Miller was appointed to succeed him as Executive Sec-. retary-Treasurer. As of June 1, 1955* membership schools totaled 1561. Active and alumni memberships exceeded j 242,000. Circulation of Dramatics averaged 30,000 ! monthly. Government. The supreme legislative body of the So ciety is a National Convention which meets every five years for the purpose of formulating policies for the progress and welfare of the organization and to elect the national officers specified by the constitutions. Each sponsor from an active Thespian troupe has a vote < at the National convention. Executive, administrative, and judicial powers are vested in a National Council which consists of a National Director, Assistant Nation al Director, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, and two Senior Councilors. j 1Leon C. Miller (ed.), The National Thespian Society: Information (Cincinnati: The National Thespian Society, 1955)* p. 15•............. . . _ Services. The National Thespian Society is, in the truest sense, a service organization. Its major serv ices are as follows: 1. Provides expert advisory services, without charge to its members on all phases of play production. 2. Provides expert advisory services and materials on all phases of dramatic arts work at the sec ondary school level. j i 3. Provides services designed to effect savings in j the production budget such as free royalty ad- I justment plan, free library loan service, dis- t counts on stage equipment and supplies, compli- 1 mentary publications, and complimentary subscrip-! tions. 1 j 4. Provides certain professional benefits for Thes- ; pian troupe sponsors such as newsletter and j placement service. i i 5. Provides various materials and services to stu dent members. 6. Provides strong, wholesome incentives for the j maintenance of high standards in all phases of I the dramatic arts program.2 III. PROCEDURES ! In fulfilling the purposes of this study, that is, to! determine the most-produced plays by member schools of The j National Thespian Society and to analyze them from various production standpoints, the following procedures were used: Determining the Most-Produced Plays Through correspondence with the National Thespian So ciety offices in Cincinnati, Ohio, a compilation of the 2Ibid., pp. 3~5* most-produced plays by member schools from 1938 to 195^ was secured. This list contained a total of 91 plays and showed \ 4 i the total number of productions, beyond ten, for each play for each year. These data are presented as Table I. Ninety-one plays was considered to be too large a j sample for two reasons: (l) it would prevent sufficiently I detailed analysis of the individual plays, and (2) it would ; ! i involve needless repetition. A decision was made, therefore, t to narrow down the number of plays on the basis of their to-' ] i bal number of productions. An arbitrary figure of 75 pro- ! I ductions from 1938 to 195^ was tried. Twenty-eight of the : 91 plays were found to have reached this total, and there ; Was no apparent reason why 28 plays would not be a large ! ! * enough sample for the-purposes of this study. They showed a' I ■ I i variety comparable with the larger group, containing both earlier and lately established plays. This group of 28 com-; prised, naturally, the most popular plays. The 28 dramas I selected are marked with asterisks in Table I. iSvnopsls of the Plays After the 28 plays were selected a copy of each was Secured from its publisher and carefully read for the story ; content. A synopsis of each play was then made. These syn opses are to be found in Appendix B. ! k Basis for Analysis ! On re-examining the plays for detailed study, a 24 TABLE I PLAYS PRODUCED BY AT LEAST TEN NATIONAL THESPIAN AFFILIATED SECONDARY SCHOOLS PER YEAR 1938-1954 Play 1935 -39 -40 -41 -42 -43 -44 New Fires 17 14 Big Hearted Herbert 15 Growing Pains 14 20 12 10 SDring Fever 13 13 13 13 Fly Away Home 10 SDrine Dance 10 Headed For Eden 10 •June Mad 26 38 25 20 •What A Life 26 41 20 14 •Our Town 13 11 Foot Loose 12 13 10 •You Can't Take It With You 12 10 14 12 10 Youne ADril 19 14 Stage Door 11 •Don't Take My Penny 12 18 22 American PassDort 10 13 •Ever Since Eve 65 40 22 Letters to Lucerne 18 12 Everv Family Has One 12 13 •Brother Goose 24 Best Foot Forward 21 •Junior Miss 17 Fighting Littles. The 15 Thumbs Ud 11 Eve of St. Mark. The 10 •Little Women •Nine Girls •Arsenic And Old £§£e -45 -46 -47 -48 -49 -50 -51 -52 -53 -54 Totals 31 15 56 10 62 10 10 10 11 120 13 14 12 l4o 12 20 14 23 17 17 32 33 192 35 14 17 19 20 30 32 14 25 23 31 283 / 33 10 I13 13 47 18 16 15 11 112 23 10 13 150 11 41 12 37 26 19 11 11 10 10 ill 17 14 10 10 72 31 20 12 12 13 10 115 15 20 11 10 71 10 21 10 12 10 10 15 28 15 11 17 19 137 17 14 13 11 10 14 79 10 15 20 16 15 22 16 21 29 164 25 TABLE I (continued) Play 1938 -39 -40 -41 -42 -43 -44 -46 ^ T -1*7 -4B -49 -50 -51 -52 -53 -54 Totals Soring Green 34 15 12 61 Come Rain or Shine 15 15 10 40 A Little Honey 12 12 10 34 Ghost Wanted 12 12 Tomorrow the World 11 11 Janie 11 10 21 Man Who Came to Dinner, The 11 10 18 12 11 62 Snafu 20 12 32 Lost Horizon I 12 12 24 Doctor Has A Daughter. The 10 10 ♦Night of January 16th 14 12 19 , 11 16 16 16 28 132 ♦Date With Judy. A 62 51 44 21 13 11 202 ♦January Thaw 22 34 16 23 11 11 16 133 ♦Our Hearts Were Youne And Gav 22 43 64 38 19 25 29 29 269 Pride and Preiu- dlce 12 10 10 32 Ramshackle Inn 12 13 10 14 49 Out of This World 11 10 21 Come Over to Our House 10 10 Life of The Party 10 10 ♦Dear Ruth 40 28 12 11 10 101 ♦We Shook The Family Tree 37 47 28 33 25 170 Home Sweet Homi cide 15 10 18 10 53 Divine Flora. The 14 20 12 46 Barretts of Wim- pole Street. The 10 10 Seven Sisters 11 11 ♦Meet Me In St. Louis 31 39 19 11 12 16 128 26 TABLE I (continued) Play 193^' -39 -40 -41 -42 -43 -44 -45 -4& -47 -4B -49 -50 -51 -52 'Total" *1 Remember Mama 23 21 17 10 21 27 119 Life With Father 16 19 12 47 George Washington Slept Here 12 13 10 ,11 13 13 72 •One Foot In Heaven 11 17 21 20 13 21 103 •Mother Is A Freshman 58 44 30 20 23 175 •Seventeenth Summer 44 28 23 27 21 143 •Our Miss Brooks 62 51 52 34 199 •Cheaper Bv The Dozen 59 39 22 23 143 •Men Are Like Streetcars 25 34 38 21 118 Inner Willv. The 13 16 29 Jane Evre 11 11 Heaven Can Wait 10 10 Charley's Aunt 10 12 22 •Green Valley 31 28 17 76 Father of The Bride 28 29 16 73 •Little Dos Laughed. The 27 31 27 85 Meet Corliss Archer 25 12 11 47 •Curlou s Savage. Hie 15 21 49 85 Take Care of My Little Girl 14 l6 14 44 Annie Get Your Gun 35 19 54 Room For One More 23 23 46 Mr. Barry's Etchings 12 12 24 Belles On Their Toes 12 10 22 Great Big Door- step. Hie 10 10 Curtain Going Up 10 12 22 27 TABLE I (continued) Plate 193(3 -39 -k> -41 -42 -43 -44 -46 -4b -47 -48 -49 -SO -51 -52 -53 -5^ Total a The Robe 10 12 22 Years Ako 10 10 Down to Earth 21 21 Harvev 19 19 You Can't Kiss. Caroline 19 19 I Love Lucy 17 17 State Fair 17 17 No More Homework 14 14 StaK Line 14 14 Drums of Death 13 13 Double Door 10 10 My Little Margie 10 10 *A play having 75 or more total productions. I j logical basis for analysis suggested itself. General divi- i j gions for critical study seemed to spring easily from Aris- j • I totle's six concepts of drama: Plot, Character, Diction, fhought, Spectacle, and Song. In a modern study these con cepts could not be followed exactly, but they served their I i purpose in this study as a time-honored basis for play ! Analysis. Many sub-headings under these six main topics i * i l i Were given lengthy treatment. j Areas Selected for Analysis Publishing Dates and Production Statistics. This area was considered important in relationship to the most | popular plays. The 28 plays of the survey were set up in j Chronological order of their appearance on the Thespian rolli jrhis made for an easy comparison of the publishing dates of j the plays in relation to their year of first appearance on , the roll and their years of peak popularity. ' i i i i I Play Types. Authors, Publishers, and Royalties. To f gain insight into the working of high school drama, it was necessary 'to determine the most commonly used types of plays;! whether they were comedy, drama, farce, mystery, or some Other type. The authors and publishers most dominant in this field were also judged to be significant to the problemj l as well as the royalty costs of the most popular plays. , I | 3g_ fj. Butcher, Aristotle1s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1951 )> p. 25. 1 “ flhis information was secured from the playbooks of the 28 plays, and the total area was set up in tabular form. | j i i Classification and Sources of the Plays. Very often j I I plays reach the educational theatre audience after a history! ! I of previous appearances on the professional Broadway stage, I from use by motion pictures, radio, and television, or as > Adaptations of popular novels. Some original plays find ‘ pheir first audience through amateur production. Therefore,j each play was traced to the source of its material and j through this process certain influences on high school thea-j tre were indicated. i Theme, Structure, and Plot Situations. The"Aristo- I telian" area of Plot offers many sub-categories for tabula- ■ ; tion and analysis. The dominant theme, or themes, in each play could be isolated, and so could the plot structure. 1 ’ i Plot situations common to the plays were tabulated for re- t ’ yealing comparisons. By analysis in this area it was possi-! ! pie to determine how the most-produced plays lived up to the; i criteria for play selection advocated by educators in the field of theatre. Character Requirements of high school plays is natur ally a very important area. The observation and participa- , tion in the human emotions and drives which play characters ! i represent is a significant part of the student's theatre ex- j ! perience. This area was tabulated and afforded interesting., statistics, revealing the high school theatre play-selection^ patterns. I | I I i Production Effects including settings, properties, j i i lighting, sound, music, and dance are an area for investiga tion. This information was secured from the 28 playbooks of, | I this study. It was hypothesized that the most popular plays! might reveal the technical progress of educational theatre, j Social and Moral problems dealt with in the most pop ular plays were considered important for over-all evaluation 0f the worthiness of the school theatre program. It was ( possible to isolate certain of these problems that occurred most frequently in the plays. Other General Procedures j The general pattern followed in the analytical sec tions was first to state the principles involved in the area! being analyzed. Then a table was set up showing how each of; the 28 plays in question reflected that area. This was fol lowed by an explanation of the showings of the table, trendsj were shown, and dominant characteristics were pointed out ^ ! and evaluated. ! Throughout the. study an effort was made to. analyze ' only those aspects that could be approached objectively. Where subjective elements entered into consideration, au- I thorities were consulted, where possible, to afford a basis | : i for decision. ! The investigator soon discovered that every play had j 1 ! an individuality of its own. If all the plot situations had! i S | been set down for each of the 28 plays, the tables would s | 1 have been endless. An effort was made to select only those ! I points found to be in most common use among the most-pro- | duced plays. ; CHAPTER III DATES AND PRODUCTION STATISTICS OF PLAYS SURVEYED I. INTRODUCTION 1 Certain significant dates and figures for the 28 plays were set up in Table II. The title of the play was I listed together with its date of publication from the play- book. The year that the play first appeared on the Thespian roll was taken from Table I along with the year showing its i peak popularity. This was aligned with the highest number i I of productions for the play in any one year and its total number of productions on the roll. Setting up this particular table brought into focus j for the first time the 28 most-produced plays. Keeping in mind the fact that the number of Thespian affiliated schools had been growing year by year, thus allowing for more pro ductions to appear on the roll in recent seasons, it was j perhaps of some significance to note in relationship to its publishing date the year a play first appeared on the roll and the year of its peak popularity. i j Following Table II will be found an interpretation of some of the outstanding points revealed and certain compari sons of the records of individual plays. TABLE II ; 5 DATES AND PRODUCTION STATISTICS OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED Play Date Publ. First Yr. on Roll Peak Year. Highest No. Prods. Total Prods. June Mad 1939 1940 1941 38 120 What A Life 1939 1940 1941 41 140 Our Town 1939 1940 1954 33 192 You Can't Take It With You 1940 1940 1954 31 283 Don't Take My Penny 1940 1942 1944 22 112 Ever Since Eve 1941 1942 1942 65 150 Brother Goose 1942 1944 1945 26 111 Junior Miss 1941 1944 1945 31 115 Little Women 1941 1945 1950 28 137 Nine Girls 1943 1945 1945 17 79 !Arsenic And Old Lace 1942 1945 1954 29 164 Nig;ht of January 16th 1936 1947 1954 28 132 A Date With Judy 1946 1947 1947 62 202 !January Thaw 1945 1947 1948 34 133 1 Our Hearts Were Youne: !And Gay 1946 1947 1949 64 269 jDear Ruth 1945 1948 1949 40 101 ! i We Shook The Family ! Tree 1944 1948 1949 47 170 jMeet Me In St. Louis 1948 1949 1950 39 128 I Remember Mama 1945 1949 1954 27 119 TABLE II (continued) | Play Date Publ. First Yr. on Roll Peak Year Highest No. Prods. Total Prods. One Foot In Heaven 1948 1949 1951 21 103 Mother Is A Freshman 1949 1950 1950 58 103 I Seventeenth Summer 1949 1950 1950 44 175 Our Miss Brooks 1950 1951 1951 62 199 Cheaper By The Dozen 1950 1951 1951 59 143 Men Are Like Streetcars 1951 1951 1953 38 118 j 1 Green Valley 1951 1952 1952 31 76 ' The Little Dog | Laughed 1951 1952 1953 31 85 1 The Curious Savage 1951 1952 1954 49 85 1 II. ANALYSIS OF DATES AND PRODUCTION STATISTICS j I Date of Publication and First Year on Roll 1 ; Keeping in mind that the years covered by this study < I were 1938 to 1954, the appearance on Table II of only one i i play published before 1938 was quite revealing. The play in; t question, Night of January 16th, was published in 1938. j With this one exception, the other plays on the list showed : a more or less steady progress of publication dates from 3-939 through 1951- This indicated a demand for the current j or new plays in high school theatre. j Night of January l6th did not appear on the Thespian [ roll until 1947. All of the other plays made their appear- ; ance on the roll within from one to four years after publi- ; cation; in fact, 19 plays of the group first appeared the same year or the year immediately following their publica- ! tion. With this one exception, then, the most popular plays' i ) achieved their status very soon after they were available j for high school production. | Peak Year and Highest Number of Productions One of the major points of interest to be gleaned i from Table II was that certain plays appearing early on the roll and leading in total productions hit their peak in 1954. \ \ This was true of two of the leaders, You Can* t Take It With : You and Our Town. The former was never off the Thespian J roll after its first appearance, in 1940. The biggest "sleeper" on the list was undoubtedly Night of January l6th. previously mentioned as not appearing! 1 { on the roll until 1947 although published in 1936, and ; reaching a peak in 1954. I Pour plays on the list achieved the distinction of j having over 60 performances in any one year. The plays were: Ever Since Eve (65), Our Hearts Were Young And Gay (64), A s Pate With Judy (62), and Our Miss Brooks (62). Ironically, jbhe play with the highest number of productions in a single year, Ever Since Eve, fell to ninth place in total produc- : i 1 tions. . I ' ; I Total Productions j 1 The five most popular plays on the list by total num-f ber of productions were: You Can1t Take It With You (283), I Our Hearts Were Young And Gay (269), A Date With Judy (202),I Our Miss Brooks (199)> and Our Town (193)* ! Allowing for its later publishing date, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, with only 14 fewer productions than the leader, You Can’t Take It With You, rivaled the older play significantly. The same was true of Our Miss Brooks. A Date With Judy, after a large number of productions in its first 1 year (62), dropped behind the other leaders in recent years.. Our Town suffered an eclipse during the war years (1942 through 1946) underscoring the preference for comedy in those years, but came back very strongly. L ' rwo 44ems stood out above the others in this general j analysis of production dates and statistics: (1) current ; plays were very popular among high school producing groups, 1 plays of lasting popularity which1 i after year. J | I I s i i f i , x and (2) there were certain showed up on the roll year i CHAPTER IV i S TYPES, AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS, AND ROYALTIES OP THE PLAYS SURVEYED I. INTRODUCTION Writing and publishing plays for the amateur market is a large and bustling activity. Thousands of play scripts are submitted to the publishers each year. According to a recent article In Theatre Arts, an average of 1,500 to 2,000 Unsolicited scripts come into the offices of Samuel French, Inc., yearly. However, of those submitted In 195^, French published only 23-^ It would be logical to assume that other publishers also receive a large volume of play manu- iscripts and publish relatively few of them. For this study it was important to determine the play j publishers that catered to the high schools in their produc- p tion of an estimated 75*000 plays per year. Even more rel evant was the determination of what authors and publishers seemed to exert the most influence on educational theatre by Having their plays most often produced. Because of the varied nature of the offerings of the 1Leota Diesel, "Samuel French, The House That Plays Built," Theatre Arts, XXXIX (August, 1955), 93- j 2Rufus Jarman, "The Heck With Broadway," The Saturday Evening Post, April 28, 1951, p. 28. many publishers, the total number of play-publishing houses in the United States was difficult to determine. There were, i I 1 ; however, at least 15 houses dealing primarily with play ma- [ t jterial, according to the number of annual catalogues sent to the schools.3 a perusal of these play catalogues revealed 1 that the 91 plays listed in Table I (pp. 24-27) were pub- i j lished by only six companies. Thus the play publishing ' i field was revealed as being dominated by relatively few ; houses. 1 Table III was set up to show the authors and pub- ^ fishers of the 28 plays used in this study. The type of ■ play as stated in the playbook was also listed. In several , instances the publisher did not indicate the type of play on, ■;he playbook. In those cases a type was arbitrarily as- ' . j signed on the basis of authoritative terminology.^ ; ! I One other discrepancy presented itself in giving ! ; s credit for the publication of the plays. Little Women ap- j peared on the market in several versions by two different play houses. It was assigned to the one on the table on ! 3^0 average number of play catalogues sent to this investigator as Director of Drama at Bakersfield College. 4F. B. Millet and G. £. Bentley, The Art of the Drama (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1935)* PP* 7^~122. ^Marion De Forest, "Little Women" (Comedy-Drama, 1914); John Ravold, "Little Women" (Musical Play, 1934); John Ravoldi "Little Women" fDrama, 1934), The Samuel French Basic Cata logue of Plays (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1953); and Kristin Laurence, "Little Women" (1941), 1955 Catalogue of Plavs (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1955)• TABLE III TYPES, AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS, AND ROYALTIES OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED Play ' T y . P . e Author Publisher Royalty June Mad Comedy F. Ryerson C. Clements What A Life Comedy Clifford Goldsmith Our Town Dramaa Thornton Wilder You Can't Take It With You Comedy G. Kaufman M . Hart Don' t Take My Penny Comedy Anne C. Martens Ever Since Eve Comedy F. Ryerson C. Clements Brother Goose Comedy William Davidson Junior Miss Comedy J. Chodorov J. Fields Little Women Comedy Drama®- Kristin Laurenc e Nine Girls Mystery Drama®- Wilfred H. Pettitt Arsenic And Old Lace Comedy®- Joseph Kesselring Night of January l6th Comedy Drama Ayn Rand A Date With Judy Comedy Aleen Leslie January Thaw Comedy®- William Roos Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Comedy Jean Kerr Samuel French Inc. Dramatists Play Service Samuel French Inc. Dramatists Play Service The Dramatic Publishing Co. Samuel French Inc. The Dramatic Publishing Co. Dramatists Play Service The Dramatic Publishing Co. The Dramatic Publishing Co. Dramatists Play Service Longmans Green Co. The Dramatic Publishing Co. The Dramatic Publishing Co. The Dramatic Publishing Co. $25 i I $25 * $25 | $25 ; $io ! $25b ! I $25 i $25 i $25 I • t f None | $25 , $35". $25 $25 ’ $25 $35 $25 TABLE III (continued) Play Type Author Publisher Royalty! Dear Ruth Comedy Norman Krasna Dramatists Play Service We Shook The Family Tree Comedy Christopher Sergei The Dramatic Publishing Co. Meet Me In St. Louis Comedy Christopher Sergei The Dramatic Publishing Co. I Remember Mama Comedy Drama John Van Druten Dramatists Play Service One Foot In Heaven Comedy3- Anne C. Martens The Dramatic Publishing Co. Mother Is A Freshman Comedy Christopher Sergei The Dramatic Publishing Co. Seventeenth Summer Comedy3- Anne C. Martens The Dramatic Publishing Co. Our Miss Brooks Comedy Christopher Sergei The Dramatic Publishing Co. Cheaper By The Dozen Comedy Christopher Sergei The Dramatic Publishing Co. Men Are Like Streetcars Comedy Christopher Sergei The Dramatic Publishing Co. Green Valley Comedy- Fantasy Frank Wattron Row-Peterson and Co. The Little Dog Laughed Comedy Vera and Ken Tarpley Row-Peterson and Co. The Curious Savage Comedy John Patrick Dramatists Play Service $25 j $25 $25 ! $25 j $25 i $25 $25 ; $35 ; $25 ! $25 { $25 ! $25 $50 ! $25 aType not listed in Playbook. ^Budget plan. bhe basis of its publication date and the time it first ap peared on the Thespian roll. I The royalty listed for each play was the fee charged i by the publisher for one performance of that particular play Deviations from the normal royalty were indicated by super script letters in the table and explained in the analysis notes. ; II. ANALYSIS OF TYPES, AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS, AND ROYALTIES Types An interesting problem arose in termining the types of drama represented by these 28 plays. Seven of them had no type-listing in their playbooks, and it was necessary to assign a type to each. In addition, several of the plays were difficult to classify as to type. For example, the so- called comedy-drama, Night of January 16th. might more prop erly be called a melodrama because of its emphasis on thrillsLikewise, Little Women had elements of serious | drama and was therefore given the same "bastard" appellation of "comedy-drama," although as a type this term does not seem to be recognized by theorists. I Remember Mama was given the same type classification. Nine Girls t not labeled by its publisher, was called a "mystery-drama" though it 6 j Millet and Bentley, op. cit. also contained melodramatic elements. ! Evidently play publishers often shy away from label ing a play as a certain type when there is a question as to t j I i its category. Perhaps this confusion merely underscores the! chaotic nature of the problem of labeling modern plays. The i terms used are simply not precise. 1 I The preference of high school play producers for com-i i t edy was obvious. The only serious play on the list was Our ; i Town: all the rest, with the exception of a "mystery-drama," were some form of comedy. Our Town might even be consideredJ i a tragedy if the heroine's demise is taken into account. However, it was listed in the playbook merely as "a play in | -;hree acts." J i Perhaps the non-labeling of some of the plays was ; | calculated to cater to the general preference for comedy. ! ■ i ! I Apparently other attitudes were heeded as well. For example^ 1 ; in the case of One Foot In Heaven, a play with many humorous, elements, there was no type-listing in the playbook. Label-: ing as a comedy a play with such religious overtones might t have been considered risky by the publishers and capable of arousing puritanical wrath. A similar example was Arsenic ! And Old Lace which pokes fun at murder. This play, defi nitely a farce, also remained unlabeled by its publisher. ■ Green Valley was the only, comedy among the group that} ! was also listed as a fantasy. Fantasy elements, however, } were a major emphasis in Our Town, and were used to a minor hegree in The Curious Savage. Authors i Fourteen of the playwrights or teams of playwrights appearing in Table III (pp. 40-41) have had plays on Broad way- -either the play listed here or others of record. It j | j kould appear, then, that as a group the Broadway playwrights] ! i | j dominated the educational theatre field. i J The top individual writer, with six titles to his | I credit, was Christopher Sergei. Anne C. Martens followed j i with three. Sergei, editor and publisher of The Dramatic j Publishing Company, and Anne C. Martens, had over 40 titles ! i i in the catalogue of that company. As writers in the high i ' ! school field their influence is unquestionably a large one. j I I Publishers j j Five publishing houses were represented by the 28 ' jplays of this study. The dominant house was The Dramatic , \ 1 1 I Publishing Company of Chicago, Illinois, with 15 titles. | I Dramatists Play Service of New York, with 6 plays, was next |.n order; followed by Samuel French, Inc., of New York; Row- Peterson and Company of Evanston, Illinois; and Longmans- Green Company of New York. These houses were represented by three, two, and one plays, respectively. ; i ! * j The grouping of the play publishers in Table III (pp.! ! 40-4l) followed roughly the chronological order of the pub- , Ideation of their plays. (Actual dates of publication were i ; i given on Table II [pp. 33~34].) These tables show some in- i = i ! I teresting comparisons and decided trends. All of the Samuel i French plays occurred early on the roll, while those of the , Dramatists Play Service were scattered over the years. The ! i . ; Dramatic Publishing Company, with spotty representation ear-j ty in the survey, dominated the later years to the point of ' ; ! virtual monopoly. Row-Peterson came into the picture with its two plays at the last publishing date recorded on the \ roll. Longmans-Green, although appearing in the middle of i ' i the list with its sole title, Night of January Doth, showed I i j the special case of an older play gaining in popularity in 1 j ! ■;he high school field as the years went by. j f i Royalties j All but one of the 28 were royalty plays, most of than in the $25 bracket. The single non-royalty play, Little j Women. allowed one performance on purchase of the playbooks,! | j and charged $2.50 for subsequent productions. The plays re-| duiring over $25 royalty, with the exception of Our Miss ( Brooks, all had a Broadway history. The budget plan indi- dated for certain plays allowed the producing organization to pay a percentage royalty fee based on the number of paid : Admissions per performance. I CHAPTER V j i f i CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED j I | I. INTRODUCTION j j In 1947 a survey of dramatic activity in American colleges was conducted by John Dietrich of the University of; 1 1 i Wisconsin. In that survey certain categories were set up ■ for the purpose of classifying plays as to their source and,, i :o a certain extent, their worth a'B drama. Three of those j ; ! ! f classifications came into more or less common acceptance , j : through their use in the yearly college drama survey con- j ! i ] f ducted by the American Educational Theatre Association. The) I classifications were: (1) Standard, signifying a drama dig-j nified by the passage of time and loftiness of theme, (2) | Droadway, signifying a play dependent for its reputation on I i 1 a Broadway run, and (3) Original, a new play being premiered) | I by a college theatre group. ) In setting up Table IV (pp. 48-49), the classifica tion and source data for the 28 plays covered in this study, Dietrich's categories were used with certain modifications. I The term "Original” did not seem broad enough, so for this 1 ' Study the term "Amateur" was substituted to indicate a play ' i ! ■^John Dietrich, "Dramatic Activity in American Col leges, 1946-47," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, XXXIV (April, 1948), 183-190. j without a Broadway history. "Original" was reserved for i 1 plays written originally for the theatre and not adaptations! ! j of stories from other media. The sources of story material i i for the plays were listed in Table IV as Original, Novel, Radio, Motion Pictures, and Television. An "x" was placed i after each play in the table under its particular source. This terminology was set up to avoid ambiguity in the use of. the term "Original" in regard to the playscripts under con- ! sideration. ' i ; In common theatre parlance there is no consistent i i x ! •;erm for the non-Broadway play produced in educational thea-' are. The term "Original," often applied to plays of this • i i3ort, carries a certain stigma of unworthiness. While this ! is frequently warranted, it sometimes belittles a worthy * . i j play. "Original" will probably always be used to signify an: i untried play. If the work has a further history in educa- I tional theatre it should be classified as "Amateur." ; j I The term "Adaptation" refers, in this study, to a play which owed its source plot material to another medium such as a novel or a short story, motion pictures or televi-, i Sion. i I II. ANALYSIS OP CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OP THE PLAYS SURVEYED i Classification Standard, or classical, plays were completely lacking) L ' TABLE IV CLASSIFICATION AND SOURCES OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED Play Classification Sources Std. B 'way Amat. Orig. Nov. Rad. M.P. TV June Mad X X What A Life X X : Our Town X X You Can't Take It With You X X : Don't Take My Penny X X Ever Since Eve X X Brother Goose X X Junior Miss X X Little Women X X Nine Girls X X i Arsenic And Old Lace X X Night of Janu ary l6th X X ; A Date With Judy X X ;January Thaw X X i Our Hearts Were | Young And Gay X X Dear Ruth X X : We Shook The :Family Tree X X :Meet Me In St. iLouis X X X TABLE IV (continued) Play Classification Sources Std. B 'way Amat. . . . Prig. Nov. Rad. M.P. TV I Remember Mama X X One Foot In Heaven X X X , Mother Is A Fresh- j man X X ; Seventeenth Summer X X Our Miss Brooks X X X Cheaper By The Dozen X X X Men Are Like Streetcars X X Green Valley X X The Little Dog Laughed X X The Curious Savage X X Totals O 11 17 13 13 2 3 1 in this group of most popular dramas. This did not mean, of; i course, that the classics were not performed in our high i schools. It did mean that no classical play had ten produc tions in any one year by affiliated high schools of the Na tional Thespian Society. Broadway. The influence of Broadway is quite appar- j ent from the foregoing table. Eleven of the 28 plays had a j ^roadway background. Keeping the rough chronological pub- j lishing order of the plays in mind (see Table II, pp. 33~3^)i : ■ i i , ' it can be seen that the Broadway plays occurred early in the! | t survey beginning with What A Life in 1939 and continued more] or less steadily to I Remember Mama in 19^-5 • Then there was| | | a hiatus of Broadway plays on the roll until 1951 when The j Curious Savage entered the picture. The above dates refer to year published rather than year first appearing on the j roll, and indicate that Broadway plays dominated the high ! school theatre field during the first half of the survey. j j Amateur. A total of IT Amateur plays appeared on the; fist, most of them during the last half of the period cov ered by the survey. Comparing these with the Broadway group; i t which had only a scattered showing on the table during the ! last half, it was seen that a decided impetus had been given; to the Amateur play. ; i Sources j _ _ Original plays (as the term was used in this study) 8id not show up very strongly in the Amateur classification.; From a total of 5 Original Amateur plays in the survey, 3 ! I | were published in the early 19401 s. These plays were Don11 , lake My Penny, Brother Goose, and Ever Since Eve. The next appearance of Amateur Original plays was in 1951 when Green j Valley and The Little Dog Laughed were published. I In the Broadway classification Original plays showed j up more heavily. Eight of the 11 plays in this group were 1 I Originals. This indicated that the professional stage, i.e.> * Broadway, was a greater market for Original plays than was j the amateur theatre. ; Adaptations. Lumping together the four remaining | pources from Table IV (pp. 48-49)--Novel, Radio, Motion Pic-j | i fcures, and Television--a natural grouping of adaptations was! formed. Fifteen of the 28 plays on the above table were j Adaptations. A further refinement showed that of the total i i ! pf 15 Adaptations, 13 had their sources in Novels and 2 in | Radio. Four of the total had a Motion Picture and/or Tele- j vision background as well, e.g., Cheaper By The Dozen and Our Miss Brooks. The cause for the higher incidence of Amateur plays ! during the last half of the period covered by the survey now seemed apparent: The play publishers, becoming aware of the: high school audience^ taste in other entertainment media, : made play adaptations of various popular novel, radio, tele- I I vision, and motion picture stories. Table HI_J pp. .40-41)J Revealed that the largest publisher of Adaptations was the j ! I pramatic Publishing Company with 11, most of these during , [the final years of the survey. \ There were only 3 Adaptations with a Broadway historyj Ihis underscored the Broadway preference for Originals men tioned earlier, and showed the high schools, by comparison, to be heavy users of Adaptations. ^ CHAPTER VI THEME, STRUCTURE, AND PLOT SITUATIONS OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED I. INTRODUCTION j Aristotle listed action, or plot, as the most impor tant of the six elements of drama. Plot, he said, is the imitation of the action, and by plot he meant the arrange ment of the incidents.1 Realizing that plot Is still the most basic element of drama, a fruitful field was presented ) tor analysis in the 28 plots of the plays considered. A general term, "plot devices," is used frequently in ;his study to include theme, structure, and common plot sit uations. This chapter will discuss these plot devices. In prder to isolate and analyze the plot devices, a number of sub-categories were set up. To discover the theme most gen erally used, the essential action of each play was reduced to one or two sentences, usually expressed in terms of the central character. The types of play structure were listed in Table V. This is followed by Table VI which shows the most common rivalries apparent in the plays. A number of situations or scenes appeared again and again in the 28 plays. Some of these most frequently used | n S. H. Butcher, Aristotle1s Theory of Poetry and Fine, Art. (New York: Dover Publications, . Inc ., .1951.) > P* 25-. - irere set up in Table VII: A, B, and C. Table VIII shows Lhe prevailing attitude toward school that the plays mani- Test. By these various tables and their analyses, the most common plot devices used in the plays were revealed. Gener ally speaking, the setting up of the plot devices on the cables was controlled by a twofold purpose: (l) to show on-: i ly those devices which appeared most frequently in the plays I (obviously each play had several unique plot devices of its i | i own), and (2) to set up comparative tables in such a way j ! 1 that they reflected the nature of educational theatre in our! j i high schools. This last point bears some emphasis and is best un derstood by a consideration of the criteria for play selec- O tion posted in the Review of Literature. If our schools ; j were living up to the ideals of play selection as presented j by interested parties, it would have been reflected in the j ; ! play analyses. j | I The general purposes stated above guided the selec tion and arrangement of material for most of the remainder : of this study. An effort was made to include only those i i points which could be compared on an objective basis. Where! objectivity was questionable, reasons were stated for the choice. I 2Cf. ante, pp. 14-17. I II. THEME AND ESSENTIAL ACTION Theme The theme of a drama is often difficult to put into words. Authorities are in general agreement that theme is kn abstract or philosophical idea which permeates a drama. Millet and Bentley put it thus: 1 . . . The theme is the idea that gives the drama uni-| ty, that furnishes the dramatist’s controlling purpose, I that determines~for him what is relevant or irrelevant . [ to his purpose.^ | Charles W. Cooper says: "The theme may be said to be the I I dver-all meaning, the significance of the plot, and there | E tiay be more than one."^ Hubert C. Heffner refers to theme j | i as the "unifying idea" of the play.^ j The above definitions of theme seemed simple, yet the statement of the theme for a particular play was found to bes : j an elusive thing at best. One could very well say that the i I theme of You Can1t Take It With You was implicit in the j title; still, the theme of faith and trust in one's own I ’ 1 i • family was also very important to that play. A blanket statement of theme for all of the family situation comedies I ^F. B. Millet and G. E. Bentley, The Art of the Drama (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1935), P* 175* : 4 , Charles W. Cooper, Preface to Drama (New York: The , Ronald Press Company, 1955)* P* 25* j ^Hubert C. Heffner, S. Selden, and H. D. Sellman, Modern Theatre Practice (New York: F. S. Crofts and Company,' 193877 P* 29. in this study was considered to this effect: that young | I people, while they have their foibles, are basically good j and that given the right circumstances will show up "true- blue." But this did not get at the unique message of each of these plays, nor did it do more than suggest vaguely the general sameness of the theme of the bulk of the popular j plays. ■ i Essential Action | Since the theme regulates the working out of the plot,| and the plot details the action, a statement of the essen- j tial action of each play was thought to serve better the < comparative purposes of this study in revealing the themes | employed in the plays. For each play there is, or should bej I I a central action. This action can best be stated in terms ' of the leading character, and often shows his need or driv ing force that causes the play to evolve as it does. [ I In order to differentiate clearly between theme and essential action, it was decided to consider theme as being ! abstract and action as concrete. Thus the abstract theme or idea of a play guided and shaped the concrete essential ac tion of the play. The essential action, or "gimmick," of j each of the dramas which follows was suggestive of the theme of the play and crystallized the basic idea behind the i I i i ! g I Concept of action expressed by Professor Martin Ross in lectures on playwriting at the University of Southern ( California, October, 1954* . _ ......._ ! playwright's concept. i June Mad: A teen-aged girl falls in love with a boy j :nuch older than herself. She throws herself at him, is dis illusioned, and is wiser for the experience. ♦ I What A Life: A wayward student with essentially good1 qualities is in constant trouble at school. He is mistaken-, i ly accused of theft, is exonerated, and his real capabili ties are fostered. ■ I ! i j Our Town: The growing-up, living, and dying of small! town people in 1900 is enacted on a bare stage with a narra-j s tor as the chief character. 1 I \ i 1 j You Can1t Take It With You: A scatter-brained family; each member doing exactly what he most wants to do, justi fies its way of life to the daughter and her boy friend, thus exemplifying the title of the play. i i I I ! I Don1t Take My Penny: A teen-aged girl decides to be-' come an actress. Her boy friend, in disguise, persuades her to lead a normal life. i * ! Ever Since Eve: A teen-aged boy learns to work co- ! i pperatively with girls in a student newspaper office set up ■ j I in his home. I r ; Brother Goose: A young architect is forced to care ! for histeen-aged brothers and sisters who find him a wife J (to be a mother to them. i I j Junior Miss: A teen-aged girl trying to "save" her family from breaking up causes her father to be fired, then hired again. In the process she achieves status as a "jun ior miss." I Little Women : Four teen-aged daughters learn to un- j I ierstand each other through various family crises during the! Civil War period. i ! ! Nine Girls: Murder is committed in a sorority moun- j jtain cabin. After a suspenseful time, the murderess, a so- | rority sister from an underprivileged family, is unmasked by| jier best friend. j ! Arsenic And Old Lace: Two gently insane old ladies bury the bodies of their poisoned victims reverently in the ! i | 6ellar and manage to stay at large. j Night of January 16th: The former secretary of a 1 murdered man is on trial for her life. Witnesses appear j With as much evidence to convict her as to acquit her. The j outcome is left to a jury picked from the audience. I * i A Date With Judy: In order to win prizes for charity — — ■ ' 'ij ■ — —— —— } ! i and be crowned queen of the ball, a teen-aged girl involves j ! j her family in ludicrous magazine contests. Her perseverance ; I is rewarded. I January Thaw: A city family learns the value of homely country virtues when they are forced to share their ! ! newly purchased country home with the native owners who re- i burn unexpectedly. Our Hearts Were Young; and Gay: Teen-aged girls on a j first trip to Europe encounter strange people and customs onj the ship and in Paris. Disappointed in her try for a stage j career, one of the girls resolves to continue as a monolo- j gist. j i ; Dear Ruth: A teen-aged girl writes love letters to a| i service man and signs her older sister’s name. He returns and persuades the older sister to marry him although she is engaged to another. ! We Shook The Family Tree: A teen-aged girl, having j difficulty in making herself popular, reveals family secrets) After family embarrassment is assuaged, she is forgiven. j Meet Me In St. Louis: Four teen-aged girls stage I various antics to deter their father from moving the family ; to New York. They go too far and the father is discharged. ; j ) , I Valiant efforts of the eldest daughter,get him reinstated with a better job. 5 I - i I Remember Mama: A Norwegian immigrant mother is ! shown as the pillar of home life in San Francisco around 1 I I9IQ..„ The daughter appears as_ the. play.. narrator.. in the _ present time and in flashbacks acts the role of an adoles- I cent girl who finally gets a break with her stories. i j One Foot In Heaven: A courageous minister triumphs over small town prejudices in the 1920's. His son acts as a narrator in the present time. * Mother Is A Freshman: An adult woman goes to college! I | as a freshman while her daughter is there as a sophomore. j (they fall in love with the same teacher. Mother gets him, ! I ! and daughter learns to understand. i j Seventeenth Summer: A teen-aged girl falls in love j for the first time. During the course of the summer she J quarrels with her boy friend, but makes up just as she is | i i leaving for college. They promise to write. j i Our Miss Brooks: A high school English teacher is : I I forced against her will to direct the senior play. After j ! i ! much confusion it goes on with last minute help from the i athletic coach. Cheaper By The Dozen: The inventor of time-study ap plies efficiency methods to his family of 12 children. He 1 wants the eldest daughter to graduate from high school early &o that she will be self sufficient in case he is no longer ! able to work. j Men Are Like Streetcars: A teen-aged girl is a self-l styled expert with popularity "lines.” She uses these de vices with devastating effect on her family and herself. I I Out of this she learns the value of truth. Green Valley: A young farmer learns to stand on his own feet after the spirits of his ancestors "rise" and foil j the attempts of a land-grabber who tries to get the family | ■ . i homestead. j j The Little Dog Laughed: A college girl tries out | psychological theories on her family, causing much conster:- ; i nation. But she is also helpful in closing a business deal ; for her father, and learns to keep her theories in check. The Curious Savage: An old woman judged insane is j ;3ent to an institution peopled by gentle "guests." She proves to be more than a match for her greedy relatives who | sent her there. She outwits them, saves her money, and goes! free. j III. ANALYSIS OF THEME AND ESSENTIAL ACTION It was stated earlier that theme is a controlling kgent over the action of the play.^ It follows, then, that 1 a delineation of essential action should reveal theme. What; ban be said of the themes of the 28 plays thus exposed in the paragraphs above? ! ! 7 l_ . _ f Millet and Bentley, loc. cit. ___ ___ The aspect most common to the plays was the accent ' * upon youth. In 18 of the plays the principal need was ex- j pressed through youthful characters. In only 4 of the plays were the characters all adults. (Chapter VII deals with character in detail, but here its relationship to theme is important.) Carrying this a bit further, it was noted that the themes of the plays generally involved youth in the ; I struggle to grow up. ; j The plays, with the exception of Our Town and possi- ’ bly Nine Girls, were all comedies. As such they all had j I ’happy" endings. Therefore, this struggle to "grow up" ) i seemed inevitably to meet with success. Growing up is an inevitable process.in itself, biologically speaking; but it is a moot point whether all humans grow up emotionally, J spiritually, morally, and in other aspects of this compli cated process of life. Moreover, this growing up does not j | take place all at once, but in a series of interrelated and ; i subtle actions punctuated by crises of greater or less in- | 1 tensity. | | It was, of course, these crises that were exploited ’ in the plays. The question naturally followed as to whether these crises, selected as they were to fit the requirements of comedy, plumbed significant depths of human nature and : • 1 thus lived up to the criteria of play selection for educa- j tional theatre; or whether they were shallow, fortuitous, and contrived merely for surface effect. L_ I The main theme of these plays, selected from many evident sub-themes, was youth solving the crises of growing up. This was considered to be an important and worth-while theme. But although theme dictates the action of the plot, it does not guarantee the worth of the play as drama. In the opinion of this investigator, too many of these plays I avoided coming to grips with their themes and were content j to skip more or less adroitly among the sure-laugh situations of their surface aspects, leaving the worth-while and educa-| j tional depths relatively untouched. ! i IV. STRUCTURE OF THE PLAYS | A study of the play structure employed in the 28 Dlays revealed the need for strict terminology in this area.! i | In his chapter on structural types, Bernard Hewitt, in The j i Art and Craft of Play Production, lists the "plot" principle1 i I , i And the "episodic" principle as the two general structural j ! | ' 8 1 types used in playwriting. The former style follows the closely knit, compact structure typified by Ibsen, and gen- ; erally goes with the three-act form. The episodic type of play structure is characterized by a loosely knit arrange- 1 ment of scenes.9 O 1 Bernard Hewitt, The Art and Craft of Play Production. (Chicago: J. B. Lippincott Company, ' 1940), p. 72. Q j j -Mohn Dietrich, Play Production (New York: Prentice-1 Hall, Inc., 1953), p. 459- For this study the term "Integrated” was evolved to I designate plays of the "plot" principle in order to avoid confusion when other plot devices were discussed. The type of play structure used for each of the plays was thus set up in Table V as Integrated and Episodic. The Two-Act and Three-Act forms were also listed. i j i The other two divisions of Table V indicate whether i j i the playwright used a narrator or a prologue device in his play structure. The narrator technique appeared to be a i I modern extension of the old prologue device in playwriting, i or might possibly have been borrowed from the Chinese thea- j tre.10 ! i j V. ANALYSIS OF PLAY STRUCTURE i As might be expected, most of these plays followed 1 the three-act Integrated structure. Of those which differed; having either two acts or being of Episodic construction, 5 « I used the Narrator device. This was a fairly large percent- I I age (nearly 25 per cent) for such a small number of plays. This probably indicated the impact of the two Broadway plays, Our Town and I Remember Mama, both of which used the Narra tor technique. Another point noted was that Our Town was the only original on the list with a Narrator device; the others were! ! I i i : j 10Cooper, ojd. cit. , p. 110. j TABLE V PLAY STRUCTURE Play 3 "Act 2-Act Inte grated Epi sodic Nar rator Pro logue June Mad X X What A Life X X Our Town X X You Can't Take It With You X X Don1t Take My Penny X X Ever Since Eve X X Brother Goose X X i Junior Miss X X jLittle Women X X jNine Girls X X X !Arsenic And Old Lace X X Night of January 16th X X A Date With Judy X X January Thaw X X i Our Hearts Were Young ;And Gay X X 1 Dear Ruth X X i We Shook The Family 1 Tree X X ! Meet Me In St. Louis X X I I Remember Mama X X X iOne Foot In Heaven X X X I Mother Is A Freshman X X X * —........~ - - - , ........ ---- . . . . . . . . . . . . _ . - _ . ---_ TABLE V (continued) Play 3 “Act 2-Act Inte grated Epi sodic Nar- Pro- rator logue Seventeenth Summer X X X Our Miss Brooks X X Cheaper By The Dozen X X * Men Are Like Street cars X X Green Valley X X ! The Little Dog Laughed X X 1 The Curious Savage X X i Totals 25 3 22 6 5 2 adaptations of novels. This indicated that the narrator was f I a handy tool in making adaptations for the stage. Again, I i all but Our Town among the plays listed as Episodic were adaptations, showing perhaps the difficulty of making an In- i begrated stage play from a novel. The terms Integrated and Episodic were applied arbi trarily in this study. But the problems observed in adapt- ■ I ■ I ing a novel to the stage threw these terms into sharper fo- I i cus. The form of playwriting is very rigid as compared to . the novel and is inherently more integrated. A novel tends } j i po be episodic by the nature of its form. In making an j adaptation for the stage rigid selection of incidents and close adherence to story line are necessary if the play is i | i to be integrated. This explanation does not imply that one j I | Structure is any more effective on the stage than another, • but justifies the placement of the plays on Table V as ' ; I dither Integrated or Episodic in structure. . The two plays listed as having a Prologue were dis- ( tinct examples. Each play was in need of certain exposition j before the main action began, and the Prologue was employed , i I for that purpose. The prologue of Mother Is A Freshman was i pot listed as such in the playbook, but occurred as Act I, Scene I. However, it was distinct from the rest of the ac- ! tion and filled the expository function. ■ “ ' 68 VI. JUVENILE AND PARENTAL RIVALRIES There are many theories in regard to conflict in drama. William Archer pointed out many of the variations within these theories themselves, but conflict is still re garded as basic to drama.11 Isolating all of the conflicts t in the plays of this study would hardly be worth-while, but ! in relationship to the theme of youth It was important to j Recognize some of the conflicts most commonly shown. j The term "rivalry" as it is used here is synonymous > with "conflict" but was employed to show the gentler nature j of the conflicts within most of these plays. Brunetiere j i said of drama that in it we see a human will striving towardj i i p a goal. Characters in opposition to that will, set up . j certain patterns of conflict. Applying that precept to i these 28 plays was considered rather extreme in most cases, | and more fitting to an analysis of tragedy. The milder term "rivalry" was therefore used, and since the plays which best’ tear out the dominant theme were family-situation comedies, : the rivalries were narrowed down to those involving the ju- | venile characters and their parents. , The action of a play usually evolves around the needs, or drives of its central character. When this need meets -^William Archer, Plavmaking (Boston: Small, Maynard! and Company, 1912), p. 36. IP N ! Xbid., quoting Ferdinand Brunetiere. with opposition, conflict (or rivalry) results. The endeav- 1 or in Table VI was to point out whether main rivalries in these plays were between people of the same or opposite sex, or between children and parents. Often there were several J rivalries in one play. In the table the principal rivalry I was indicated by a large "X," the lesser with a small "x." I For a further understanding of the rivalries inherent in the- i olays a reading of the synopses may be helpful. A full de- ' i i lineation of the rivalries defied tabulation and was not the' purpose here. In relationship to the criteria for play selection, i the conflict patterns of these plays were felt to be impor tant. The depiction of family life in educational theatre j j i jls a part of Its general function. One purpose of Table VI j was to help determine whether that depiction was consistent with the criteria of play selection. 1 i < ! VII. ANALYSIS OF JUVENILE AND PARENTAL RIVALRIES ; i j I Six of the above plays showed no rivalries in Table . I VI. This does not mean that there were no conflicts in those plays, but merely that they did not fit into these I limited categories of rivalry. Classifying a rivalry as major (with a large "x") or minor (with a small "x") was admittedly a matter of subjec- : tivity. An effort was made to give only the most basic ri- j valries a major classification. One example will serve to , TO1 I TABLE VI | JUVENILE AND PARENTAL RIVALRIES Play Boy- Girl Boy- Boy Girl- Girl Child- Parent June Mad X X X What A Life X X Our Town You Can't Take It With You x Ever Since Eve X X X Don1t Take My Penny X X X Junior Miss X Brother Goose X Little Women X Nine Girls X Arsenic And Old Lace Night of January 16th A Date With Judy X X January Thaw Our Hearts Were Young And Gay X i Dear Ruth x b X We Shook The Family Tree X X X X Meet Me In St. Louis X X X I Remember Mama : One Foot In Heaven X Mother Is A Freshman X Seventeenth Summer X TABLE VI (continued) Play Boy- Girl Boy- Boy Girl- Girl Child- Parent Our Miss Brooks X Cheaper By The Dozen X 1 Men Are Like‘Streetcars X X X Green Valley X X X xc The Little Dog Laughed X 1 The Curious Savage a X ! Totals ! 5 8 12 17 aAdult-parent rivalry bAdults 1 cParental spirits I Indicate how the choice was made. In the play Don* t Take Myl Penny. it would seem that the major conflict is between j Penny and Kerry; she wants to go to Hollywood, he wants her to stay home. But underlying this action is the parental force represented by Penny's mother and father. Both these people are completely unaware of the real problems of their ! children and seem to be entirely wrapped up in themselves. This constitutes a more serious or basic conflict and was given the major classification in the table. The same cri- ! f v Iberia were applied to all of the plays. There were a total of 25 purely juvenile rivalries as compared to 17 rivalries involving juveniles and adults. This was expected since the plays were predominantly about youth. The two individual categories which showed up most I Heavily on the table were the Girl-Girl and the Child-Parent Rivalries. The first of these was easily explained by the i fact that girls dominated the plays as leading characters. j Child-Parent Rivalry is probably basic to the problem of i growing up, and the authors simply made use of a naturally I dominant behavior pattern. Whether or not the authors Showed this conflict in a wholesome light consistent with educational theatre objectives would be a problem for the individual director to decide in making his play selection. . i VIII. COMMON PLOT SITUATIONS I i Again and again in these plays certain situations J occurred that sprang from basically the same dramatic ingre- 1 dients. Each play, of course, exploited the situation in its own particular manner, but they were still similar in 5 essentials. Twelve of these common situations, or scenes, were set up in the three tables which follow, Tables VII A, i fe, and C. Table VII A shows the relative frequency of ma ture and immature love scenes, the play-within-a-play, and j I i mistaken identity. The criteria for a love scene’s being j i I mature or immature were predicated on the ages of the people1 | f Involved. If the participants were under 21 the scene was ! : ! i arbitrarily called immature. This type of scene was simple ! I to distinguish, being characterized in the playbook by con versation about love bearing on the participants, or actual bodily contact. The play-within-a-play was distinguished by characters staging a play or reciting connected speeches , from another play. Mistaken identity is self-explanatory. ! i Table VII B delineates the use of scenes showing , | ! bickness or death, tables turned, use of disguises, and i drunken scenes. When the scenes of sickness or death were hot used for comedy purposes they were indicated with a j superscript letter in the table. The term ".tables turned" indicated the theatrical irony of having the action of a scene turn against the perpetrator. It was found to be a common device. The frequency pattern of the use of dis- l I guises did not live up to its emphasis in the Jarman article.rp^ <irUnken scenes of these plays were carefully; appraised. Superscript letters were used to indicate those J scenes which deviated from the conventional in various waysJ j 5 Table VII C showed the last of the twelve commonly ) i used situations. A play was given a family situation clas- j j j sification when one or both parents appeared in the action, I there was the head of a household, and the action revolved ! ! ! around home life. A dance or party of some sort, generally | i at a climactic point, was a frequently used device. When ■ the leading character of the play had a change of social j | status so that he or she could be said to have "grown up" ' | significantly in the course of the play, it was listed in ' | j ;his table. The last situation was the most common of all-- eating. When food was eaten on the stage or materials for | eating were prominent in the action it was recorded. | The listing of common situations and scenes was ' ! deemed proper in an analysis of this sort. While each play i I • I had many scenes uniquely its own, and the individual treat- I ; ment of these common scenes could not be suggested in the tables, still the more or less regular use of these similar ! situations tended to help characterize the body of plays ■ t most frequently produced in educational theatre. 13Cf. ante, p. 14. _ " ___ _ .....“ ...... " ............ “ ~ ...' 751 TABLE VII A COMMON PLOT SITUATIONS Immature p l a y Love Mature Love Play Within a Play Mistaken Identity June Mad x What A Life X X t Our Town x You Can't Take It With You X X Don ' t Take My Penny X X X Ever Since Eve Brother Goose x i — . . . — X i Junior Miss X X Little Women X Nine Girls X Arsenic And Old Lace X X Night of January l6th X A Date With Judy x X January Thaw Our Hearts Were Young And Gay x X Dear Ruth X X 1 We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis I Remember Mama X i One Foot In Heaven 1 Mother Is A Freshman | X L _ . . . . ....... __ _ _ 7 . . . . . . . _ .. ....... TABLE VII A (continued) j _ immature Mature Play Within Mistaken! ^______________Love Love a Play Identity- Seventeenth Summer x Our Miss Brooks x x x Cheaper By The Dozen ! Men Are Like Streetcars j i Green Valley x x | The Little Dor Laughed x The Curious Savage 1 Totals 9 11 6 7 TABLE VII B | COMMON PLOT SITUATIONS j Play Sickness or Death Tables Turned Dis guises Drunken Scene June Mad X I What A Life X Our Town X xa You Can't Take It With You X X Don1t Take My Penny X X 1 ! Ever Since Eve X X 1 Brother Goose X X i i Junior Miss X Little Women xa X Nine Girls xa X i Arsenic And Old Lace X X X X Night of January l6th xa X xb ! A Date With Judy X X ! January Thaw X X Our Hearts Were Young And Gay X X X i Dear Ruth X X X We Shook The Family Tree X c X I Meet Me In St. Louis X ■ I Remember Mama xa X X X One Foot In Heaven xa X j Mother Is A Freshman X Seventeenth Summer X TABLE VII B (continued) Play Sickness or Death Tables Turned Dis guises Drunken Scene Our Miss Brooks xa X Cheaper By The Dozen xa X i Men Are Like Streetcars X Green Valley X X The Little Dog Laughed X The Curious Savage X X Totals 15 28 4 7 aNot for comic effect. ^No actual drinking on stage. cDrinking only suggested. r i 1 TABLE VII C ! ! I ! COMMON i 1 PLOT SITUATIONS 1 ! P 1 Family y Situation Dance or Party Leading Char "Grows Up" * Eating June Mad X X X X What A Life X X X X ! | Our Town X xa X ! You Can’t Take It With You X X j Don't Take My Penny X X X ! Ever Since Eve X X X X Brother Goose X X X Junior Miss X X X X Little Women X X X X Nine Girls X Arsenic And Old Lace X : Night of January l6th ! A Date With Judy i X X X X January Thaw i X X Our Hearts Were Young ' And Gay X X X Dear Ruth X X i We Shook The Family Tree X X X X i Meet Me In St. Louis X X X I Remember Mama X xa X ; One Foot In Heaven S X X | j TABLE VII C (continued) Play Family Situation Dance or Party Leading "Grows Char.„ ^ Upn Eating Mother Is A Freshman X X X X Seventeenth Summer X X X X Our Miss Brooks X Cheaper By The Dozen X X X X Men Are Like Street cars X X X X Green Valiev X x The Little Dog Laughed X X X i ! The Curious Savage X Totals 22 13 17 27 aGirl grows up in the conventional sense. i ; IX. ANALYSIS OF COMMON PLOT SITUATIONS j (TABLE VII A) | i Love scenes of both the Immature and Mature variety bccurred in 17 of the plays. Mature Love scened outweighed the Immature ones slightly, 11 to 9- This probably indi- j bated that authors and directors felt that love scenes were ! s I easier to stage when further removed from the adolescent j mind. The relatively infrequent showing of Immature love j : scenes perhaps bears out the author:'s "rule" suggested by j i h- ’ larman. However, the fact that many of the plays were j written for a Broadway audience is probably the best clue to! bhe larger number of Mature love scenes. The Play-WIthin-A-Play occurred in 6 of the 28 playsj not often as the staging of a play within the regular action, but frequently as a bit of satirical acting obviously in tended for comedy effect. It may be of mild interest to I hot'e that Macbeth was used for this purpose In 2 of the 6 | plays with this device. In passing, it was observed that the publishers of Our Miss Brooks used another of their pop ular school publications for the play-within-a-play in that 1 vehicle. It was well used, however, being an integral part ! of the whole play's action. ; As a device, Mistaken Identity seemed to follow a : particular pattern in these plays. Six of the 7 instances 1 1 j t ' 1 u , ...... Cf. ante, p. 14. _.... I of its occurrence were in Broadway plays. This was probably! only coincidence, but it indicated that writers for the pro fessional stage often find the oldest devices to be the most effective. There was, however, a relative lack of Mistaken Identity in the more recently published plays on this list. j X. ANALYSIS OP COMMON PLOT SITUATIONS j (TABLE VII B) i I I Lest it be thought that these plays had a predilec tion toward the gruesome, with 15 being listed in the Sick- j i ness or Death column, it must be said that the broadest in- I I i zerpretation was given these terms. Situations ranging from! a broken bone, through actual dying, to spirits of the dead j poming back to earth were put in this category. Remembering: ! ! that all but one of these plays were essentially comedies, ; the ones which did not use Sickness or Death for comic pur- j poses were set apart by superscript letters. This still | left 8 plays that used some kind of physical discomfiture I ! for laughs. Arsenic And Old Lace made particular game of death in its own fashion. Every play used the device of the Tables Turned. In- I ! deed, it is difficult to visualize a play without at least tome variation of the recognition or "peripety” device first i mentioned by Aristotle.^ i •^Butcher, op. cit♦ , p. 2j8. The use of Disguises was relatively light, even when ! 1 given the broadest latitude, such as when the mother pre- ! i tended to be the scrub woman in I Remember Mama in order to get into the hospital room of her sick daughter. Perhaps this age-old device, unlike Mistaken Identity, is falling i out of favor. ! The Drunken Scenes need a word of special explanation! As the superscript letters indicate, it was possible to have! I a humorous effect from a scene implying drunkenness just as well as when the inebriate was present. This was exploited ! ; j in*one play, We Shook The Family Tree. In Our Town the | drunken choir master was certainly not a comedy character, * and in Night of January l6th the drinking was merely de- j hcribed. In the other four plays, all from Broadway, the : drinking was actual and often resulted in extreme comedy. j The drinking of Uncle Chris in I Remember Mama was explained on a psychological basis, and was considered a special case.! XI. ANALYSIS OF COMMON PLOT SITUATIONS j ! (TABLE VII C) j Only 6 of these plays were not listed as portraying a 1 i Family Situation. Two of these 6 could be said to have such i ' i a situation if the term were broadened somewhat. In both ' Arsenic And Old Lace and The Curious Savage there was a dom- 1-1 1 r ' r i inant family element. However, as used here, Family Situa- j tion referred to action revolving around home life, with one; pr more parents or their equivalent taking a major role. j What A Life, with the action taking place in the school j l i principal1s office, was still given a Family Situation label; i because of the dominant part played by Henry Aldrich's moth-1 er. Naturally, the play was a School Situation comedy be- ; i fore it was a Family Situation comedy; it was actually a 1 i combination of both. School Situations were taken up in the! next section of plot devices. The Dance or Party situation was found in 13 of the ! plays. Usually this device occurred as a climactic point, i ! Often near the close of the play, but it had many variations; i Seldom was the dance staged within the play, although it was frequently suggested as being near at hand. More often the Dance or Party was the springboard for the action seen on I the stage. i All but 10 of the plays were listed as having a Lead- ; j ing Character who "grows up" during or because of the inci- ; I ! dents of the play. This phenomenon was treated at some r length in the section on theme. It was suggested, in fact, : ! that the most common theme of these plays was youth in the process of growing up. This tabulation (Table VII C) ap peared to bear out that observation. The one play on the list that did not feature Eating • i Was Night of January l6th. Since the setting of that play . I • ; is a courtroom, naturally food would not be served during the course of the action. In all the other 27 plays Eating , .... " ” ' ... " .. " 85 was found. Next to the Tables Turned it was the most common of the scenes or situations frequently occurring on the j stage. j XII. ATTITUDES TOWARD SCHOOL There were two reasons why a table showing the common* i attitudes toward school expressed in these plays was pre- j i sented: (l) many of the plays concerned juveniles of school: 1 / \ ' age in learning situations, and (2) since these were popular1 jolays in educational theatre it was interesting to note how j | the institution of education was treated in the plays. | < 1 i i j Here again, each play had its unique way of expres- • I king an attitude and the categories and classifications had to be rather broad. Four categories were established and dppear in Table VIII as follows: Positive, Negative, Satir-J ical, and Neutral. A play was given a "Positive" elassifi- ; i ! bation if it showed students enthusiastic (even mildly) j i [ about learning and presented teachers as common sense people’ i i Striving to do a good job. A "Negative" classification was given when such characters were shown in an opposite light, piese, of course, were subjective evaluations; all the tabu lations in this area were necessarily so. Some of the plays > l fiad their fun at the expense of school without being actual ly "Negative"; these were given the "Satirical" label. | Those plays evincing no dominant feeling one way or another about school were said to have a "Neutral" attitude, and " ~“86| i TABLE VIII ATTITUDES TOWARD SCHOOL Play Posi tive Nega tive Satir ical Neu tral June Mad x j What A Life X X ! j l Our Town X You Can't Take It With You X X . Don't Take My Penny X Ever Since Eve X X iBrother Goose X Junior Miss X Little Women X Nine Girls X Arsenic And Old Lace , Night of January 16th ! A Date With Judy X 1 January Thaw ; Our Hearts Were Young And Gay X Dear Ruth X We Shook The Family Tree X 1 Meet Me In St. Louis X ; I Remember Mama X 1 One Foot In Heaven X jMother Is A Freshman X X : Seventeenth Summer X TABLE VIII (continued) Play Posi tive Nega tive Satir ical Neu tral Our Miss Brooks X X Cheaper By The Dozen X Men Are Like Streetcars X I Green Valley The Little Dos Laughed X The Curious Savage ! Totals 4 6 5 13 those not mentioning school at all were left blank. Some plays were found to express more than one attitude. j XIII. ANALYSIS OF ATTITUDES TOWARD SCHOOL j s A preponderance of the plays (17) were listed as be- I t } ing either Neutral about school or having no discernible atJ j ; titude at all about education. s I ; Six of the plays were listed as being Negative with 3' i bf these showing a Satirical attitude at the same time. The^ i question might be asked: Is not a satirical attitude a kindj bf negation? Not necessarily; it was felt to be a way of i | t leavening the negative attitude toward the humorous side. A good example was You Can* t Take It With You in which Martin Tanderhof made negative remarks concerning Columbia Univer- : s t | jsity and education in general, but did not seem to do it 1 viciously. 1 Those plays given a Negative classification showed | ! teachers or talked about teachers in such a way as to give dn undesirable connotation. Plays showing a distinctly Pos~ itive attitude toward school were rare. What A Life pre sented both Positive and Negative students and teachers, but i I the emphasis was on the Positive side and it was so class!- s i I fied. Ever Since Eve also managed to be both Positive and ; I Satirical. Two Broadway plays, Our Town and I Remember Mama, 'seemed to be wholeheartedly Positive about book-learning. , j CHAPTER VII I | j CHARACTERS IN THE PLAYS SURVEYED j I. INTRODUCTION Character may be ranked next to plot In order of im- ’ 1 portance as an element in drama. In a sense it can be j ranked first, because it is unthinkable to conceive of a drama without characters. How the characters of a particu- j i iar play are chosen is the problem of the individual drama- ; tist, but It is certain that in every play there are charac-' j j cers essential to the theme and action.1 With this in mind,: she character requirements of the most-produced plays proved so be a revealing area when tabulated for comparison. Anal- i I ysis of the character statistics afforded one of the best ! Insights into the actual workings of high school theatre. ; \ \ Character requirements fell into several categories and were grouped for study into the six tables found In this: chapter. The statistics revealed by the playbooks were set i \ Up in Table IX. This included the total number of characters t ; i required for each play and the breakdown into Men, Women, ' i Adults, and Characters Under 21 years of age. A further tabulation showed the number of Old-Age Characters, both Men, i | and Women, Dialect Characters, and the plays that required j "^William Archer, Playmaking (Boston: Small, Maynard ; and ..Company, 1912), p. jIH .... ..... .. .. _.j f '...... ' ....... . ......TABLE"IX .. ”..' ..~ ...... “1 : i j CHARACTER REQUIREMENTS \ i I j — ■ - -- - - - ■■■=::=— — ^ ;— ■ ■ 'SBSBSSSSS " ' ~~ ^ i Plav Cast mam Women Adult — Al . P4A .Ago,. Dialect Extras 1 I ____________ y____________ Totals uen women aquil Boys Glrls Men Women maiect Extras , !. . , i iJune Mad What A Life ‘ Our Town 13 19 24 7 9 17 6 10 7 5 11 15 4 4 7 4 4 2 1 1 1 Italian Negro * X X You Can't Take It With You 19 12 7 19 1 2 2 Negro Russian Don't Take My Penny IT 8 9 7 4 6 1 1 French Ever Since Eve 11 6 5 5 3 3 * X ^Brother Goose 11 3 .8 7 1 3 1 Negro Junior Miss 19 13 6 6 10 3 X ! Little Women 9 9 4 5 2 1 Irish Nine Girls 10 10 10 * 1 Arsenic And Old Lace 14 11 3 14 2 1 German Night of January 16th 21 11 10 21 1 2 Negro Swedish X A Date With Judy 14 5 s 9 6 3 5 ; January Thaw 13 7 6 11 2 1 * f ... ~...... TABLE.IX.(continued) .“ .. ~.... ] } Play Cast Men Women Adult Under 21 Old Age t Extras j Totals Boys Girls Men Women Our Hearts Were Young And Gay 17 8 9 14 3 5 French 2 British i Dear Ruth 10 5 5 9 1 1 Negro i We Shook The Family Tree 12 5 7 4 3 5 t Meet Me In St. Louis 16 7 9 7 3 6 1 1 Irish i X i I Remember Mama 22 9 13 13 4 5 1 8 Norwegian 1 x ! One Foot In Heaven 18 8 10 10 3 5 1 1 1 Mexican i ! Mother Is A Freshman 15 6 9 4 4 7 Seventeenth Summer 13 6 7 3 4 6 Our Miss Brooks 17 5 12 6 3 8 i 1 Cheaper By The Dozen 16 9 7 5 7 4 ! Men Are Like Streetcars 16 5 11 8 2 6 j ! I Green Valley 18 11 7 16 1 1 1 1 * X The Little Dog Laughed 15 5 10 12 1 2 X 1 The Curious Savage 11 5 6 11 1 \ S Totals 430 203 227 253 Tl 106 7 8 ..3.1__ ___a_.j * ) £ j Regional or affected speech indicated in playbook. vg pr allowed for Extra Characters to be used. j Table X made clear the Family and Professional statusj of the characters of the plays. In line with the theme of youth in the crises of growing up, parental characters were obviously important. Likewise, the economic status of the i family was a dominant consideration, and the profession or I I j lack of profession of the breadwinner of the family had a jiirect bearing on this theme. The various Parental Types most commonly shown in the plays were tabulated for analysis! :Ln Table XI. Juvenile types, School types, and Other Comic | types were listed in Tables XII, XIII, and XIV, respectively. II. CHARACTER STATISTICS j The character requirements of a particular drama are ; pn important factor in play selection. No doubt many plays ; I are selected or rejected for educational theatre production | <bn this basis alone. The dramatic potential of the average | i < high school theatre group will vary from season to season, but over the years certain dominant characteristics stand out. Some of these were noted in the analysis of the tables, which follow. 1 [ l The play casts were listed prominently in the pub lisher's playbook. The sex of the character was indicated, and very frequently the age and a short description were ap-j pended. The setting up of the tables of character statis- ; kies could therefore be done rather objectively. In the pase of some of the Old-Age characters it was necessary to make an arbitrary judgment. In the tables only people of the third generation back were placed in this category. The- j terms "juvenile" and "character" are often used in theatre j parlance to indicate age, but were felt to be too broad for ! I accurate analysis. Therefore, the categories of Adult and ; | Under 21 were used instead, an arbitrary decision being made; when necessary. | III. ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER REQUIREMENTS i i j Cast Totals : I An outstanding feature of these plays was that they j required relatively large casts. The average requirement was 15 people. Three of the plays called for over 20, while I t Only one had as few as 9 members. As a group the Broadway ; 1 t>lays had the largest casts; all of those requiring 20 or ! 1 more were Broadway plays, with the average for the group be- ; i ing 16. The Amateur plays had an average cast of 14; only 2 i pf them required as high as 18 people. This indicated that ^ ; I plays written for the amateur market tended to limit their past requirements as far as numbers are concerned. i Men and Women More men than women were listed in 10 of the 28 plays; 17 required more Women than Men; one play had a balanced [ cast. Of the 430 total characters needed for these plays, 1 227 .were Women and 203 Men, a more even balance than was : ............ “ '..... ' .... ..-...... 9’ 4 ] expected from the fact that over 60 per cent of the plays ! i i palled for more Women than Men. Here the division of Broad way and Amateur groups was again revealing. There were 11 i • I i plays with a Broadway background, 1J were Amateur. The I Broadway plays required a total of 99 Men and 82 Women, or i an average cast of 9 Men and 7 Women. The Amateur plays as ■ | i d group required 104 Men and 144 Women, an average of 6 Men , knd 8 Women per cast. In other words, the preponderance of | i female characters was in the Amateur plays; less than half 1 6f the Broadway plays required more Women than Men, while 13! Of the 17 Amateur plays listed more female characters. This| ! ; indicated that girls generally outnumbered boys in the high i school play-producing groups. Adults, and Characters Under 21 j The division of characters into Adults and those Un- I der 21 was arbitrary because the exact ages of the charac- ! ters was not always given in the playbook. Where the ages J Were not given the tables were made up by consulting inter- j nal evidence in the plays. Even with this limitation some clear distinctions were made from these categories in Table IX. All of the Broadway plays except two had a preponder ance of Adult characters. The exceptions were Junior Miss I and Nine Girls. The former had only 6 Adults to 13 Charac- i ters Under 21 years. Nine Girls could actually be classi- | fied either way. The cast consisted of 10 women college I students . Their exact .ages were not given.in the playbook klthough some were indicated as teen-aged. The whole cast was arbitrarily placed in the Under 21 group. ! In the 17 Amateur plays, 12 had a larger number of characters Under 21 than Adults, while 5 had predominantly Adult casts. It was expected that Broadway plays would gen erally call for adult casts. The fact that several of these plays were among the most-produced by high schools indicated that adult characterization was not beyond the attempts of pnbitious high school groups. This was also indicated by some of the more recently published plays of the Amateur group. Old-Age Characters Eleven of the 28 plays called for Old-Age characters, for a total of 15 oldsters of the third generation back. Eour plays had two such characters in their casts. The old people were nearly evenly divided: 7 men and 8 women. Nat urally, many of the adult characters in the plays presented the same problems of acting and make-up as did the Old-Age characters. This category was mainly interesting from the playwriting point of view. How these characters were treated thematically, whether they were presented as kindly br irate, was determined under another heading. It was con sidered at this point, however, that 15 Old-Age characters out of a total of 430 in the various plays was hardly a 1 realistic balance for our present day society. Dialect Characters I Characters requiring a dialect in these 28 plays were! common. Thirty-one such characters appeared in a to-! i tal of 12 of the plays. I Remember Mama led the list with | its 8 Norwegian cast members. Next was Our Hearts Were 1 i Young And Gay with 5 French and 2 British characters. Five j plays had Negro roles, for a total of 6 Negro characters. i Other dialects called for were Russian, Irish, Swedish, i I Italian, German, and Mexican; 10 different dialects being | I used all together. j \ In 5 of the plays a noticeable regional dialect or j 9xtremely affected speech was required. This included the New England twang of Our Town and January Thaw, the Western- oum-hill-billy drawl of Green Valley, and the Southern and pseudo-theatric accent requirement of Ever Since Eve and , Nine Girls. These regional accents raised the total of ^ ; i plays calling for dialect to 16 out of the 28, showing this : i i Character trait was a marked one in the plays of high school1 i i theatre. i fextra Characters I Plays which called for the use of Extra Characters t haturally allowed for more participation by students in i school groups. Nine of the plays on this list showed the I use of Extra Characters. This was hardly a requirement of 1 the plays in the sense that the Extra Characters were neces-1 j lary.tothe plot; rather it was.frequently_an added r i Attraction and the use of extras was left to the discretion ^ Of the play director. < ! IV. FAMILY AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS ! OF THE CHARACTERS Many of these plays concerned juvenile problems of i family living. The family background was often presented | through character, especially those characters representing 1 the heads of families. Table X was set up to show the plays which had both parents of the family living, those with one ; i Or no parents, the profession of the chief wage-earner or j j family head, and whether this character was retired or non- ; productive in the sense of earning a living. Some of the plays which did not revolve around a fam- I ily situation (see Table VII C, pp. 79~80) naturally had no ' Showing on Table X. The effort was made to get at the broad, i ! Economic circumstances generally shown in plays about family| I i life. Rather than indicate the families as rich or poor or ■ , s : I average, which would have involved a subjective judgment, i ! | the profession or occupation of the head of the family was listed. In this way it became apparent whether the plays i were written about people on one general economic level or whether a more realistic balance of professional status pre~ yailed. j | In a few plays the normal head of the family did not | f figure in the action presented on the stage. As long as he ........ 98 TABLE X FAMILY AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS OF THE CHARACTERS Play Parents Living One or No Parents Profession of Family Head Re tired June Mad X Doctor What A Life x Our Town x You Can’t Take It With You x ! Business3 , Doctor, Editor X j Don’t Take My Penny Ever Since Eve X X Business3 , Book store Owner Brother Goose X Architect Junior Miss X Lawyer Little Women X Minister Nine Girls 1 Arsenic And Old Lace 1 Night of January l6th I A Date With Judy i X Business3 ! January Thaw X Writer i i Our Hearts Were Young And Gay X Actor ' Dear Ruth X Judge We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis X X Bank Employee Business3 ; I Remember Mama X Laborer 1 j One Foot In Heaven X Minister I ; Mother Is A Freshman X Student L _ _ ............... ........................ .. i TABLE X (continued) Play • « T Profession „ Parents One or No Re- , Living Parents • ^ tiredi 0 Head | Seventeenth Summer X Business3- ! I Our Miss Brooks iCheaper By The Dozen X Time Study Expert i Men Are Like Streetcars X Real Estate !Green Valley ! The Little Dog Laughed X Auto Dealer i The Curious Savage » Totals 22 Exact business not indicated in playbook, [ ' '■ ~ ■ ■ ■ ■ “ I001 was mentioned, however, and his professional status was ap- ^ 1 parent it was so listed in the table. In certain plays the j actual profession was not stated in the playbook but was in dicated rather vaguely as "business" of some sort. Such cases were noted with a superscript letter. : V. ANALYSIS OF FAMILY AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS j OF THE CHARACTERS Parents In the 22 plays which had a family situation, only Brother Goose and Mother Is A Freshman did not have the full; bomplement of parents. In the former the eldest brother was, ! j the wage earner and head of the house. The widowed mother i in the latter play was after a college education in order to^ support herself and daughter. No homes broken by divorce were shown in these plays. Professional Status A variety of professions were exhibited in these most-produced plays. In Our Town, which involved two close ly knit families, the professions of both fathers were listed. The general "Business" category led with 5 entries. The professions of Medicine, Law, and the Ministry each had 2 representatives. Newspaper Editors, Architects, Writers, Actors, Bank employees, Laborers, Students, Time Study Ex perts, Real Estate, and Automobile Dealers each had one ex ponent,.. f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 i I ! The broad selection of occupations for the heads of : ! families was democratic in the varied picture that it pre- i i sented. There was, however, a distinct executive tinge to | | ]bhe group as a whole, and the feeling on reading the plays I was that most of these families were in better than average • ! 1 economic circumstances. But some of the plays did evince a kind of struggle to "get by" financially. This was found in Brother Goose, Little Women, I Remember Mama, One Foot In Heaven, Mother Is A Freshman, and The Little Dog Laughed. ! 1 i i Even in these cases, however, a satisfactory solution to these financial problems seemed assured by the final curtain; All in all, it seemed that these plays presented a 'too-rosy" picture of family and economic circumstances in ! ! i American life. i VI. PARENTAL TYPES Another way of studying the family characteristics of: (these plays was to type the parents according to their gen eral temperament as evidenced by their actions. Most of these plays were comedies and comedy is frequently derived from character. Allowing for that, however, the presenta tion of parental characters in relationship to their chil dren was a kind of commentary on the writers' attitudes to ward the family situation. Table XI was set up to show those plays in which the ; parents exhibited understanding and sympathy for their TABLE XX PARENTAL TYPES Play Sympa thetic Father Sympa thetic Mother Irate Father "Feather-: Brained"; Mother ! June Mada X X X i What A Life x jOur Towna X X You Can’t Take It With You a X X X x j Don't Take My Penny X i X !Ever Since Eve X X Brother Goose Junior Missa X X X Little Women X ! Nine Girls i Arsenic And Old Lace Night of January 16th ; A Date With Judy X X X 1 January Thaw X X X Our Hearts Were Young And Gay x X Dear Ruth X X X : We Shook The Family Treea X X X Meet Me In St. Louis X X X I Remember Mama X X One Foot In Heavena X X X X Mother Is A Freshman X X TABLE XI (continued) Play Sympa thetic Father Sympa thetic Mother Irate Father ! t Feather- Brained” Mother Seventeenth Summer X X i ( 1 Our Miss Brooks1 3 x i i Cheaper By The Dozen X X i i Men Are Like Streetcars X X X X 1 Green Valley The Little Dos Laughed X X The Curious Savage1 3 X \ Totals 16 19 12 8 aMore than one family involved. bNot basically a family situation play. r~~...■..... — .■■ “... io4 l children's problems and those which showed parents in another light. If the mother was presented'as a flighty, "feather- ; ! i brained" individual, whether or not for comedy purposes, she was so listed. Likewise, those fathers who generally had an irate attitude toward their children's problems were indi- I cated in the table. Unlike Table X (pp. 9&~99) in which (with the exception of Our Town) only one family--that of I 1 1 1 1 S the leading character— was listed, Table XI was broadened to include all of the parental types shown in the plays with their children. Some of the plays in Table XI therefore showed both understanding parents and other types, as well, when more than one family situation was presented in a single play. Such plays were marked with a superscript let- I j ter. Those plays which were not basically family situation ! t plays and yet exhibited parental types were marked in a sim- I liar manner. VII. ANALYSIS OP PARENTAL TYPES Table XI presented some complications beyond the fact that more than one family group was treated in some of the plays. ^Further complication arose from the fact that paren- i 'tal characters were shown often as basically sympathetic and yet exhibited irate or "Feather-Brained" symptoms. This is, of course, only human and served the comedy purposes of the plays. With all this, the broad picture presented by Table XI was impressive in showing how parental types were r ~ " ' “ ....— _ ~ ■ i ' 05' ! 1 depicted in the most-produced plays. Sympathetic Parents I Discounting the plays which were basically non-family plays and Brother Goose where there were no parents, only • i two of the plays failed to show parents with understanding { | 1 dnd sympathy for their children's problems. These two plays were What A Life and Don1t Take My Penny. In the former, j penry Aldrich's mother appeared bent on having her son up- j hold the family scholastic tradition and seemed to have no j insight at all into Henry's personal dilemma. In Don't Take My Penny both parents were presented as caricatures devoid to an amazing degree of understanding and contact with their j Children. ' In 19 of the plays, at least one parent was shown as ; having a close bond of sympathy and understanding for the children. Both father and mother were shown in this light in 16 of the plays, indicating that parents as a group were given a felicitous treatment in most high school plays. Irate Fathers and "Feather-Brained" Mothers For comedy purposes and plot complications fathers and mothers were given temperamental quirks and various ab errations which made them less than sympathetic with their children. These phenomena were charted in the last two cat-, egories of Table XI. Men seemed to come off rather worse i than women in this area with 12 fathers being listed as r~ ............■" ■...■ ■ 106 ; i Irate to 8 mothers in the "Feather-Brained" category. ; i | I In 7 of the plays fathers were given to irate hursts of temper while being basically understanding of their off- I i spring. These characteristics were usually brought out by | plot development. In June Mad, You Can11 Take It With You, ^ ; \ Junior Miss, and We Shook The Family Tree the fathers of the1 i secondary family involved in the plots were shown as almost iinrelievedly Irate. Only in Don* t Take My Penny and Cheaper 1 i By The Dozen were the fathers of the principal family clas- , sified as basically unsympathetic. Of the 8 mothers classified as having "Feather- Brained" tendencies, 3 were at the same time basically sym- pathetic with their children. Mothers appearing in What A ' Life. Don* t Take My Penny, One Foot In Heaven, Our Miss i Brooks, and The Curious Savage were unrelievedly of the j ' ’Feather-Brained" type. In the case of One Foot In Heaven i I the mother in this category was not a member of the primary , i i family involved in the play. Our Miss Brooks and The Curi ous Savage were not family situation comedies. Since What A Life was a school situation as well as a family situation, this left the mother in Don1t Take My Penny as the only to tally unsympathetic mother of the purely family situation comedies. i On the whole, parents were presented as a rather un complicated lot in these plays. Fathers and mothers tended to fall easily into the categories shown in Table XI. Of r ■ ... ioT i course, each individual parent had his particular set of pircumstances in which he was shown, but highly individual- ■ ; i I zed character traits were rare among the parents of family ! ! situation plays. The fathers were used more often than not | as the "goat" of their children's plotting, and the mothers j bften appeared inadequate to cope with some of the simplest problems of child management. Over all there was the patina of parental love and understanding which was seldom violated. j VIII. JUVENILE TYPES | Young people made up a fairly large percentage of the total characters in these plays (177 out of the total of 430 i were listed as under 21). A classification of these juve- i piles, according to various types, presented an interesting i picture. Table XII which follows identified the leading ju- i yenile characters of the plays as boy or girl and presented other common juvenile types such as the Confidant, the Nui- ! i Pance character, and the Juvenile Villain. The Confidant is k time honored theatrical character, close to the lead, in whom she or he confides. The typical Nuisance Character is the one who capitalizes on the well known juvenile trait of "nosiness" to the extent of being used in the play dominant ly for that purpose. The Juvenile Villains in Table XII were selected carefully. Only those young people who were actually law-breakers or who were dishonest with apparent malice aforethought were classified as Juvenile Villains. , TABLE XII ~ JUVENILE TYPES Play -P g 0 G 0 0 0 iH c d O -P H G G G G G •H XS G o •H *H 0 0 0 0 G G G •H a 5 c d G c d bOg G g b O 0 G 0 •3 0 T 3 m u 0 H G-P 0 -P G-P 0 -P H > 0 G •H c d > H 3 0 T S O 3 K 1 •3 ( Q H -H 3 0 o 3 g 3 ’H O G i —! O *H rH -H G g • " D g O i z ; o h> > J h P Q off) > H C Q o m O O June Mad What A Life ' Our Town I You Can* t Take It With You i Don11 Take My Penny iEver Since Eve j Brother Goose ! 'junior Miss i !Little Women ;Nine Girls ;Arsenic And Old Lace 'Night of January l6th Girl Boy Girl1 Girl Boy Girl5 Girl Girl1 Girl Girl Girl Boy Girl Girl Boy x x x x x X X X X X X Girl o CO TABLE XII (continued) Play Juvenile Lead Confidant Nui sane e Character Juvenile Villain Younger Brother Older Brother Younger Sister Older Sister Only Child A Date With Judy Girl Girl Boy X January Thaw Girla X Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Girl Girl X Dear Ruth Girla X We Shook The Family Tree Girl Girl Girl X X X Meet Me In St. Louis Girl^ Girl X X I Remember Mama Girla X X One Foot In Heaven Boya Boy X Mother Is A Freshman Girla X Seventeenth Summer Girl Girl Girl X X Our Miss Brooks Girla Girl X Cheaper By The Dozen Girla X X Men Are Like Streetcars Girl X H o ■o' o o I p ■p p M H* ct O' P 3 O ct O' p p C _ J . p C P P H- I —1 P P P P P a p c - l 0 < p p H- I —1 P t - » P P a P o ct ct a p m ‘ p p a H* P 03 o O' p p p o Ct p P o p> ct O' P * C J M P «{ £ tp o p ct P p p p p M O f P C Q P H- P ct <1 H- ct p O M t - > P P t —' to tJ p ■ < J CO O p < p to 33 p p p 3 3 O' P a ro - f c r 03 U1 V J 1 •P" VO .011 o H* P td o « < ! X •n M P *< Juvenile Lead Confidant Nuisance Character Juvenile Villain Younger Brother Older Brother Younger Sister Older Sister Only Child TABLEXII (continued) The most prominent juvenile character in each play was shown in Table XII, but the Juvenile Lead did not neces sarily mean the leading character in the play. A super script letter indicated that the Juvenile Lead was not the play's leading character. In a few of the plays more than one juvenile seemed to dominate as a leading character. tahese co-equal leads were also marked with a superscript l letter. A case in point is Our Town, where Emily and George were both clearly leading characters. Emily was listed in i the table because of her prominence in the third act of the play. s I Table XII also showed other juvenile characters in i the family situation. Younger and Older Brothers and. Sis ters of the leading juvenile were listed. Also in this table was a category for the Only Child. Leading juvenile characters depicted without brothers or sisters were listed here. IX. ANALYSIS OF JUVENILE TYPES The outstanding feature of the juvenile characters of these plays was that they were predominantly female. A basic fact to be remembered was that girls outnumbered boys in the Under 21 category of Table IX (pp. 90-91) by 106 to i 71. This, combined with the fact that most of the roles as shown in Table XII were for girls, gave the most-produced plays by high school Thespians a dominant feminine touch. juvenile Lead | There were 20 juvenile female leads In the group. With 4 of the plays (all Broadway shows) having no juvenile ! Characters, only the remaining 4 of the 28 plays had a male I I ■ ; juvenile leading character. Only in Our Town and Our Miss Brooks was the male Juvenile Lead on a par with the female i as a leading character. j Confidant, and Nuisance Character Here again women dominated. Of the 6 Confidant char acters, only one was a boy. Without this lone exception the' category could properly be spelled "Confidante.1 1 It could also have been made larger if sisters of the leading char acters were considered confidantes when they fulfilled that function. As it was, the Confidantes of Table XII arbitrar ily excluded those in the family circle such as were found 4n Little Women and Meet Me In St. Louis. \ The Nuisance Character, the child who always gets himself and everyone else in trouble and seems to have dra matic purpose for that alone, appeared plainly in 6 of the plays. In 5 of the 6 incidents the Nuisance Character was a girl. juvenile Villains ? Surprisingly enough, the Juvenile Villain was a rare character in these most-produced plays. As he was defined in this study, the Juvenile Villain was a law-breaker or one who committed a dishonest act with apparent malice afore thought. Only 5 such characters were found in the 28 plays.! I Here the boys almost came up to the girls in quantity, the i ratio being 2 boys and 3 girls. I i The rarity of these characters made it imperative to \ determine what "crimes" they had committed. Only two were : I actually serious: the murder in Nine Girls (this murderess, however, was only arbitrarily classed as a juvenile), and the theft of band instruments and forging by George Bigelow I in What A Life. The other villainous acts were far less of fensive. Next in order was the girl’s malicious lying about I her rival in Our Miss Brooks, and her milder counterpart in ! — _ _ _ _ 1 | ■Seventeenth Summer. The only other male Juvenile Villain " i " was a minor character in One Foot In Heaven who tore down a fence and foisted the blame on the minister’s son. This lack of villainous characters threw the burden f of dramatic conflict elsewhere in the play construction, and. i was considered a principal reason why plays with leading ju venile characters were often weak dramatically. Only when there was an adequate substitute (such as an adult villain), extremely well drawn characters, clever situation, or noble delineation of theme, as in Our Town, was there strong drama. The little girl who signed her older sister’s name to love letters in Dear Ruth was an example of an excellent dramatic situation. The little sister was not considered a Juvenile ( Villain, however. , Brothers, Sisters, and Only Children ! In relationship to the leading juvenile characters it; i i was observed how the family situations in these plays were delineated through other juvenile members. In seven plays ! the leading juvenile was an only child. However, in two of ! these instances, Mother Is A Freshman and Our Miss Brooks, i this character was not the lead in the play. Three of the t only children were boys; thus 3 out of 4 male leading juve- : niles were only children. On the female side the picture was decidedly differ- ; ent. Only 2 of the 20 girl leads did not have brothers and/, I , ! • ! dr sisters. Sisters outnumbered brothers, 13 of the plays ; i to 9, and younger sisters and brothers outnumbered their | 1 elder counterparts 12 plays to 9- Table XII was not broken : down into exact numbers of children in these categories for , 1 each play. j X. SCHOOL TYPES AND ATTITUDES i As was pointed out earlier in the section on plot de vices, many of the plays produced In educational theatre Concerned young people in school situations.^ Certain gen eral attitudes toward school were shown in Table VIII. It also seemed advisable to determine how education fared in the area of character, with which this chapter is concerned. i 2Cf. ante. p. 85. ; The school situation naturally gave rise to many dif ferent types of individual characters. It was not feasible !to classify all of them. Table XIII shows only those gener- | al types that seemed to be most commonly presented in the | most-produced plays. The young people in these casts were pot given a "Student” classification unless their school work was actually involved in the action or prominently men tioned in the course of the play. Students were classified as either "Positive” or i ''Negative,” the criteria being whether they showed interest i dnd a more or less enthusiastic acceptance of their school i i Situation or were actually opposed to it. Teachers were i classified In the same fashion. Those who were apparently striving to do a good job and were reasonably sympathetic in their student relationships were given a "Positive” rating. Those who were portrayed as unhappy in their work and given to unjust punishment of their charges were classed as "Nega tive.” Some plays showed both types of students and in structors as well. The school athlete occurred as a type character in several of the plays. Another common school type was the teacher In love, usually with another teacher. XI. ANALYSIS OF SCHOOL TYPES AND ATTITUDES Positive and Negative Students The overwhelming majority of young people shown in these plays were Positive students, according to the r ■ ~ ~ ■... 116. | TABLE XIII ! I SCHOOL TYPES AND ATTITUDES Play Students Pos Neg Teachers Pos Neg Ath- Teachers: letes in Loves June Mad i ! 1 What A Life X X X X X Our Town X X : You Can't Take It With You Don1t Take My Penny X ! Ever Since Eve X X X X 1 Brother Goose !Junior Miss X Little Women X x a Nine Girls X X Arsenic And Old Lace Night of January 16th ' A Date With Judy X 1 1 January Thaw ' Our Hearts Were Young : And Gay X Dear Ruth X 1 We Shook The Family Tree X ! Meet Me In St. Louis X i I Remember Mama X One Foot In Heaven X xa 1 Mother Is A Freshman X X X X X t ...........117 TABLE XIII (continued) ' | Play Students Pos Neg Teachers Pos Neg Ath- Teachers letes in Love' I Seventeenth Summer X 1 X j t Our Miss Brooks X X X X x x ! Cheaper By The Dozen X X 1 ! Men Are Like Streetcars i Green Valley ! The Little Dos Laughed X ! The Curious Savage ! Totals 18 3 4 6 6 4 aDoes not appear on stage. f 1 1 8 criteria noted earlier; only 3 plays had Negative students. Interestingly enough, these plays--What A Life, Nine Girls, ! . "_ r " and Our Miss Brooks--were ones closely involved with a school situation. It seemed natural, therefore, that they | should show both types of students. ! 1 Positive and Negative Teachers ! Teachers as a group did not figure very prominently. Only 5 plays had teachers as characters, with an even number listed as Positive and Negative. On the Negative side, how-; ever, 2 plays--Little Women and One Foot In Heaven--involved! unsympathetic teachers in action occurring off stage, thus giving weight to the Negative character of teachers in thesei plays. Three plays involving a school situation showed both; i Positive and Negative teachers. Athletes, and Teachers in Love Sports receive a great emphasis in our present day I American schools. A reflection of this might be expected to appear in the plays produced in our educational theatre. Athletes were shown in 6 of these plays, sometimes as indi vidual characters, more often in groups. None of the plays centered on the problems of Athletes in school; rather, the Athletes appeared frequently in other activities with their sports background merely mentioned as a characterizing de- I vice. In Our Town, Ever Since Eve, and Our Miss Brooks a group of Athletes appeared on stage (in uniform in the r ~ ~ ' " * ~ " ij9i ; i latter two plays) representing baseball, football, and bas- f \ ketball, respectively. ! Love affairs involving Teachers seemed to have a cer- i ■ tain comic appeal in educational theatre. Teachers in love Appeared in 4 of these plays. In all but one, the Teachers ! were in love with other Teachers. In Mother Is A Freshman | the teacher "falls" for a mature student. The classic love | Story of a teacher and student in the novel Little Women was ! omitted in the play adaptation used in this study. The Neg- I ! ative Teacher of that play (listed in Table XIII) remained off stage. i XII. GENERAL COMIC TYPES An analysis of the characters found in the plays of educational theatre would not be complete without mentioning the many general comic types that appeared again and again as the various plots unfolded. Sixteen of these comedy type i i Characters were set up in Table XIV: Comic Maid, Other Worn- i an, Irate Boss, Policeman, Irate and Kindly Old-Age charac ters, Mouse, Slicker, Rustic, Theatre People, Ghost, Drunk ard, Foreigner, Comic Accent, Insane, and Negro. There was no accurate and accepted standard by which to categorize these various comic characters. What the characters did and said governed their classification. Sim ilar circumstances in various plots seemed to give rise to similar characters. Common occupations tended to be handled, ^ I TABLE'XIV GENERAL COMIC TOPES Play G c d G O 'd c d £ 0 2 •H S 0 2 G c r i o P o c r i S £ G m e t d 0 o u G o o •H 0 •H p •H S £ g c d H O P O U O o O ft H ft Old-Age IraTe'lCInd' 0 rH ft P 0 O G 0 0 ft 0 0 ft ft ft o If B EH 0 G o . < o U bO 0 0 X «H P P X •H o G 0 2 o P c d 0 2 G 0 •H c d G •H 0 2 0 O G G s 0 2 o rH G £ £ U O O G S m ft E h O ft ft o H ° u ! &o; 0 June Mad What A Life Our Town You Can’ t Take It With You Don1t Take My Penny Ever Since Eve Brother Goose Junior Miss Little Women x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X X X X X a a x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Nine Girls x i —1 ro o TABLE XIV (continue^)' £ I o 0 iH Play $ 3 I B S C Q •H 6 C Q £ cd o -P O cd S is £ a S cd 0 o u £ 0 o • H 0 • r l -p •H S Xi e cd r H o -p o £ o 9 9 a • Old-Age 0 0 a a 0 x CQ o £ - h O H S w 0 a & 0 +5 CQ 1 a ■p o £ 0 0 a O o 0 £ C £ bQ 0 - p -P •H o £ o cd CQ £ 0 •H cd £ 0 O £ £ s CQ bO fl X £ 0 o £ 0 H • 9 Q 9 5 X X X X Arsenic And Old Lace x Night of January l6th x x x A Date With Judy x x January Thaw x Our Hearts Were Young And Gay x x Dear Ruth We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis I Remember Mama One Foot In Heaven Mother Is A Freshman x x° x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X X X X X X X X a x TABLEXIV(continued) £ < D e r f i —1 s a -P X3 c o 0 o £ e r f is t o C D < L > ft ( D C D *H (T i S o ■p M o £ 1 Old-Age P. B ft B & ft O O < s :s a CQ Irate Kind < D £ e r f < D C ) U U) < u o £ £ < u O 0 ) a •H ■P -P •H o £ O •H < u •r H -p •H CQ o -P c r f CQ £ 0 ) •H e r f £ t s ,£ f c i C r f rH £ •H W C D O £ £ S CQ hO 0 -p o £ O o rH £ .£ £ O o £ 0 O o ft H ft s C Q ft f r i c5 ft ft o H S Seventeenth Summer X i : Our Miss Brooks X X X X : Cheaper By The Dozen X X Men Are Like Streetcars X X Green Valley X X X X X X X X X X j i ' The Little Dog Laughed X X 1 The Curious Savage X X X X j ; Totals 13 11 12 5 8 5 9 4 4 6 10 2 4 8 6 2 5' r\ t ) Not comedy characters. Other Man. H ro ro iin a more or less stock manner on the stage. | Stock characters are an ancient theatrical convention. Perhaps the Comic Maid, of today is the distant cousin of f | Plautus1 array of comic slaves, and the Policeman may he the; "watered-down" version of the Braggart Captain. On the pro-! fessional stage it is easy to see that comics such as Bert Lahr and Bobby Clark are the direct descendants of Harlequin 1 and Brighella of the Commedia dell’ Arte. On the other hand, a new set of stock characters for educational theatre may be taking shape. Some parental and juvenile types, al ready listed in the tables, may indicate such a trend. XIII. ANALYSIS OF GENERAL COMIC TYPES ! i j As indicated in the analysis of plot devices in Chap- i ter VI, every play had its unique features which defied tab ulation.^ This was also true with regard to general comic types. Many plays had individual comedy characters which ; did not fit into the categories of the preceding table. Neither could the categories be all inclusive or mutually exclusive; for instance, the category of the Comic Maid in cluded characters that also appeared under the heading of \ the Foreigner or Negro. On the other hand, to make the use pf the Comic Accent character more apparent as a separate type, those characters such as the Foreigner or Negro who ■^Cf. ante, p. 5^* r ............................................................... — 124 i t might logically use a comedy accent were excluded from the i i Comic Accent category. Other limitations of Table XIV are t considered as the various comedy types are analyzed individ-l ually. I Comic Maid ! The most frequently used character among these gener-1 kl comic types was the Comic Maid, who appeared in 13 of the, plays. The predominance of the family-situation play In ; this group probably explained the frequent use of this char- i . i acter, and the generally above-average economic status of i i the average play family was thus underscored. Traditionally; the maid and butler of the well-made-play era were used as j an expository device; it appeared that the maid now carried j on alone and had developed into a stock character of the family-situation comedy. Other Women and Dominant Women The large number of characters in these categories emphasized the overbalance of feminine roles.in these plays. The Other Woman suggested a jealousy theme and was found in 11 plays of this group. (In Dear Ruth the theme was so strong that the "other" character was included in the table even though It was a man in this case.) The Dominant Woman can be described as a female, other than the lead, who runs rough-shod over the feelings and sensibilities of the rest of the characters and generally gets her way. Although sometimes shown as a kindly person, she was often the antag"! ' | pnist. This character appeared in 12 of the plays. ■ Irate Boss and Policeman j j The employer who seemed to be perpetually upset and | ! annoyed appeared often enough to emerge as a type characters tThis Irate Boss was used in 5 of the plays. Policemen, 1 either in uniform or plain clothes, showed up in 8 plays. Frequently they were made to appear ludicrous for comedy ; purposes. The befuddlement of the Irate Boss and the Po liceman probably gratifies a certain human instinct in both j playwright and audience. This vicarious flouting of author-! ity flourishes in the American theatre as it has, indeed, in! every period of theatre history. j Old-Age, Irate and Kindly As indicated earlier in the interpretation of the 4 character statistics, only 15 Old-Age characters were shown I I in the total of 430. The degree of comic purpose of the oldsters varied from almost nil in the case of the constable in Our Town to the comedy lead, Martin Vanderhof, in You Can1t Take It With You: however, it was possible to deter mine whether they were generally treated as kindly and sym pathetic or irate and ill-tempered. Old-Age characters were. most often shown as kindly in these plays. Many of those 4Cf. ante, p. 95- I ..- ........ — .- -...— ....- .....-...".."..... 1 2 6 , ; ? (listed as Irate often showed kindly aspects as well. Gener ally speaking, Old-Age characters were treated sympathetical- i i ly • j f Mouse, Slick, and Rustic Types i These three stock characters are delineated complete ly enough by their titles and need no further explanation Were. The Mouse and Slick types appeared In 4 plays; the Rustic in 6. Theatre People I ’ j i People connected with show business appeared in 10 of the 28 plays. This may have been an indication of several jihings: the theatre itself as an institution is a vital force in our society and familiar to everyone; the glamor of. theatre people makes them highly usable as comedy characters; playwrights, being close to the theatre, easily persuade I ! themselves to use members of that profession in their works.^ i 1 Whatever the reason, Theatre People ranked high in incidence in the plays. Ghosts, Drunkards, and Foreigners Only two of the plays featured Ghosts as characters, And in neither case were they ghosts in the haunting, Hal loween sense. The graveyard characters of Our Town were certainly not comedy characters. The "risen" relatives In Green Valley spoke and acted quite normally once the fantasy elementwas.established. > ’ The 4 plays with Drunkard, characters were all from f Broadway. The alcoholic choir master in Our Town could hardly be considered a comic character, and Uncle Chris in I Remember Mama had many redeeming characteristics. Only in You Can* t Take It With You and Arsenic And Old Lace were al-^ ooholics featured strictly for comedy purposes. : I Foreigners were used as characters rather frequently : in these plays. The degree of comedy resulting from their national extraction varied a great deal. The Mexican girl in One Foot In Heaven was not a comedy character, and the whole family in I Remember Mama were close to their Norwe- 1 i { gian background. Within these extremes, however, foreign j ; national characteristics were commonly used to create a com-; edy type in educational theatre plays. i Comic Accent, Insane, and Negro Characters i | The Comic Accent is a characterizing device used a ! great deal in American plays. Table XIV (pp. 120-122) shows the plays having a character with a Comic Accent other than those characters shown elsewhere in the table who might be expected to speak with an accent, such as the Foreigner or Negro. Characters using a Comic Accent appeared in 6 of the plays. When combined with the Foreign and Negro categories, 16 plays were found to have characters using a comedy accent. The use of some type of off-standard speech turned out to be ! the characterizing device most frequently used In the plays j of thisgroup. The varied racial heritage of America, the "melting pot," was thus amply revealed in these plays. I Insanity was used as a major comedy theme in Arsenic knd Old Lace and The Curious Savage. both Broadway plays. In general, the Insane characters of these plays were drawn most sympathetically. (The exception, of course, was the criminally insane nephew in Arsenic And Old Lace.) The hu- j mor was derived from the discomfiture imposed by these char acters upon the "normal" people in the play. Through a kind of inherently superior simplicity, the Insane characters j managed to appear more sane than the average individual. insanity is an intriguing character device that seemed to be ! bsed sparingly, but effectively, in these plays, j Negro characters appeared in 5 of the plays under Consideration. A discussion of their treatment as a social manifestation was reserved for a later section. While not 9-lways shown as comedy characters themselves, Negroes were invariably used in a comedy situation in these plays. ; CHAPTER VIII i ! PRODUCTION EFFECTS REQUIRED BY THE PLAYS SURVEYED i I. INTRODUCTION ( ! When terms were defined earlier in this study, pro duction was said to be used in two senses: (1) the perform- i ance of a play, and (2) the aspects of theatre activity out side of acting or playwriting.1 This chapter deals with i j production in the latter sense. Production effects are often related to the spectacle or display element of theatre. According to Aristotle, ! O i spectacle is the least artistic of the six elements. The opinions of "the Stagirite" notwithstanding, visual elements! of drama have always been a vital part of its total contri- , bution. People come to the theatre to see, perhaps even | . . i more than they come to hear. I j 1 Modern theatre has a wealth of technical apparatus at: its command. It would be strange, indeed, if the drama of today did not take advantage of its new opportunities for display. The advanced technology of the physical stage is not limited to Broadway. Many of the university and college theatres of the United States are equipped with the latest icf. ante, pp. 7~8. ! 2S. H. Butcher, Aristotle1s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1951)> P* 29- electronic staging devices. These advantages are to be found even on the high school level of educational theatre i i production. The substance of the present chapter, then, consists | of a tabulation and analysis of those elements of the 28 I i ? plays having to do with production effects: settings, prop erties, costumes, make-up, lighting, sound, music, and dance. The purpose of this tabulation was to determine to what ex- i tent these most popular high school plays made use of modern ! I theatre devices; whether the settings and other production ! Effects were generally simple or complex; whether education-1 al theatre productions were varied, imaginative and dynamic, I i i or drab and uninspired. ■ I j Specifically, the following areas of technical thea tre production were tabulated for each of the plays: Tables; XV and XVI listed the location and the settings required for each play. Table XVII rated Properties, Lighting, and Sound. I according to their complexity of production. Table XVIII made a detailed listing of the most Common Property Devices found in the plays. Costume and Make-up requirements for each play were tabulated in Table XIX and the Music and Dance features were set down in Tables XX, XXI, and XXII. II. LOCATION AND SETTINGS The National Thespian Society reflected every state in the Union through its membership. Of the 5 play- publishing houses that served the high schools (as repre- I sented by the plays of this study) 3 were located in New i York and 2 in Illinois. The authors of the plays were no ioubt widely scattered across the land. i The geographical locale of each play was generally I bet down in the playbook. These locations were listed in P?able XV. The number of settings required for each of the i plays was placed in Table XVI, together with a brief de- ! scription as to whether they were interior or exterior sets dr of a unit or multiple variety. ; III. ANALYSIS OF GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION | AND SETTINGS OF THE PLAYS Geographical Location i From the specific and known locations in Table XV (pp. 132-133) it was possible to determine the dominant areas j that served as locales for the plays. The New York area s headed the list with 6 plays; the Midwestern area was the location for 5; and New England and California were each listed 3 times. One play was set in New Jersey, and one was set aboard ship en route to Europe and later in Paris. 1 The most obvious feature of the geographical loca tions, however, was their indefinite nature. Three plays had no location listed at all. Others, even among those with specific locations, were fictitious, such as the mythi cal Green Valley in the play of that name. This hesitance 132 TABLE XV GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS OF THE PLAYS Play ; __________Where The Action Takes Placea June Mad What A Life j Our Town 1 You Can't Take It With You Don1t Take My Penny iEver Since Eve I Brother Goose iJunior Miss 1 .... 1 Little Women i Nine Girls Arsenic And Old Lace 'Night of January 16th !A Date With Judy January Thaw 1Oup Hearts Were Young And :Dear Ruth We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis I I Remember Mama iOne Foot In Heaven : Mother Is A Freshman Seventeenth Summer A small town in the Midwest Central High School I Grover's Corners, New Hampshire New York City A small city Preston, a small suburban town Ashton, a Midwestern town New York City Not indicated Southern California mountains i Brooklyn, New York New York City A town in the Midwest Connecticut ! Gay Aboard ship; Paris, France Long Island, New York Not indicated St. Louis, Missouri San Francisco, California Laketon, Iowa Pointer, New York A Midwestern town r ............... 133 I TABLE XV i (continued) l 1 Play Where The Action Takes Place ! Our Miss Brooks f Not indicated , Cheaper By The Dozen Montclair, New Jersey Men Are Like Streetcars Not indicated j : Green Valley * Green Valley, California ! The Little Dog Laughed One of America's smaller cities i The Curious Savage A town in Massachusetts aAs described in the playbook. \ i r ....... ......".. ......." 134 j TABLE XVI ! SETTINGS i 1 OF THE PLAYS i Play Number Int. Ext. Description June Mad 1 X Living room What A Life 1 X School office ;Our Town f No set X X Multiple areas jYou Can't Take It With You 1 X Living room i Don11 Take My Penny 1 X Living room i Ever Since Eve 1 X Home office :Brother Goose 1 X Living room !Junior Miss 1 X Living room Little Women 1 X Living room Nine Girls 1 X Mountain lodge j Arsenic And Old Lace 1 X Living room ! Night of January 16th 1 X Courtroom ; A Date With Judy 1 X Living room i January Thaw 1 X County living room Our Hearts Were Young And Gay 2 X Stateroom; Hotel room : Dear Ruth 1 X Living room i We Shook The Family Tree 1 X Living room (Meet Me In St. Louis 1 X Living room i I Remember Mama Unit X X Multiple areas i One Foot In Heaven 1 X Living room i Mother Is A Freshman » ; Seventeenth Summer 2 1 X X Living room; Dorm, lobby ! Breakfast room 1 TABLE XVI (continued) J. Play Number Int. Ext. Description i : Our Miss Brooks 1 X School class room Cheaper By The Dozen 1 X Living room Men Are Like Streetcars 1 X Living room iGreen Valley 1 X Cabin and yard i The Little Dos Laughed Unit X X Front steps; Living room i The Curious Savage 1 X Totals 27 4 pn the part of some playwrights to he specific about geo- 1 I graphical location was perhaps designed to give a feeling of' I universality to their work. Settings \ j j Table XVI (pp. 134-135) revealed a lack of modern theatre production devices required to stage these plays. Most of the plays could be classified as extremely simple to, Stage. Only 2 of the plays called for a change of setting. ; Three plays used a unit setting for multiple areas, and one of these, Our Town, required no constructed set at all. Of the 4 plays which showed exterior scenes, only one, Green : Valley, was set completely in the exterior. j There could be no doubt that simplicity of setting { was one of the principal reasons for the popularity of these; plays. Much of the selling publicity by the publishers j stressed this point. For instance, a typical testimonial letter appearing on the back cover of the playbook for Meet j Me In St. Louis read, in part, "... here is a play that can be simply produced if one’s facilities are meager."3 An advertisement on the back cover of the playbook of Our Miss Brooks read: ". . . Lost Horizon is an easy play to put on. The production problems have been skillfully solved, and it requires only one simple set."^ I ..I ■ M 'lW W .O W B I mu • i n I "U -- .... j ■ -^Christopher Sergei, Meet Me In St. Louis (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 194B7", back cover. ; i_ ^Christopher Sergei, Our Miss Brooks (Chicago: The : ; These remarks about simplicity of setting were not (intended to decry the one-set play as such. However, the set descriptions of Table XVI (pp. 134—135) served to con firm the much publicized idea that the one-set show had a great selling point. Eighteen of the plays called for one interior setting j H-a living room. While this type of room is an important area for human activity, and each living room may have a striking individuality, it is an inescapable fact that these i most popular Thespian plays showed an overwhelming monotony pf setting. j It may be of some significance that the two plays on phis list representing Row-Peterson and Company (and lately ! published) required unusual settings. These plays may have Indicated the beginning of a more imaginative trend. The fact that they appeared at all among the most popular Thes pian plays indicated that high school theatre groups could produce plays that called for unusual sets. IV. PROPERTIES, SOUND, AND LIGHTING EFFECTS Properties, sound, and lighting effects are usually described according to their degree of difficulty or com plexity; the terms most often used in theatre parlance are "simple" or "heavy" to denote the ease or difficulty in Dramatic Publishing Company, 1950), back cover. r ~ " "".... ■' 138 'execution. In this study these areas of production were } graded according to the number of cues for sound effects and lighting, and the number and unusual character of the prop erties required. The degree of complexity was categorized as Simple, Moderate, and Exceptional. I } Admittedly, there could be no criteria for these areas that would allow for absolute accuracy of description.: i I i An example of how the-degree of complexity was determined (Table XVII, pp. 140-141) can be indicated by describing briefly the property, sound, and lighting effects for three representative plays. ' June Mad was listed as requiring only simple effects i i in all three areas. The properties, while fairly numerous, ! ! were all conventional. Sound effects were limited to tele- : ^ i i phone, auto horns, and popular music off stage. The only change in lighting was from afternoon to evening effect to i \ i be accomplished between acts. j Nine Girls was somewhat more complex in its produc tion effects. The stage properties of the mountain lodge were unusual, and several unconventional hand properties Were brought on stage. Sound effects required automobile noises and thunder off-stage and a radio announcer's voice bn-stage. Lighting called for off-stage effects' of light- ! ning and eerie night effects on-stage. This play was listed as moderately difficult in all three areas of production ef fects . You Can1t Take It With You was listed as exceptional jin all areas. The stage properties Included a printing jpress, xylophone, animals, and reptiles. Sound effects and i I {Lighting in connection with the fireworks that occurred fre-j i^uently throughout the play were considered exceptionally • ! complex. ' I Other plays showed more or less complexity than those i listed above; but the effort was made to evaluate each play with these three as models of Simple, Moderate, and Excep- I : ; i jtional types. j V. ANALYSIS OF THE COMPLEXITY OF PROPERTIES, | SOUND, AND LIGHTING EFFECTS i i Table XVII revealed that, for a majority of the plays, i the properties were of moderate complexity while the sound i and lighting effects were nearly always simple. Only three i plays had exceptional sound effects, and 4 of the 28 were listed as exceptionally complex in lighting. Two plays were exceptionally complex in all three categories. The picture revealed by Table XVII closely paralleled 1 5 the tabulation of settings in the previous section.-' The emphasis was upon simplicity. Properties was the only area allowed to become even moderately complex. This was perhaps because properties were generally tangible, conventional 5Cf. Table XVI, pp. 134-135- TABLE XVII COMPLEXITY OF PROPERTIES, SOUND, AND LIGHTING | Play Properties Sound FX Lighting , S M Ea S M E S M E Tune Mad X X 1 x ! What A Life X X i X i Our Town X X X You Can't Take It With You X X X Don11 Take My Penny i X X X Ever Since Eve X X X brother Goose X X X Junior Miss X X X 1 Little Women X X i x 1 Wine Girls i X X X Arsenic And Old Lace X X 1 X 1 Night of January l6th X X X A Date With Judy X X X January Thaw X X X bur Hearts Were Young And Gay X X X Dear Ruth X X X We Shook The Family Tree X X X Meet Me In St. Louis X X X I Remember Mama X X X One Foot In Heaven X X X Mother Is A .Freshman X X X r . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . . . ■. .. . . . . . . . . . 1 4 1 \ TABLE XVII (continued) Play Properties S M E s Sound M FX E Lighting S M E Seventeenth Summer X X X Our Miss Brooks X X X Cheaper By The Dozen X X X Men Are Like Streetcars X X X Green Valley X X X i The Little Dog Laughed X X X the Curious Savage i X X X Totals 8 1 7 3 1 7 9 2 18 6 4 aS = Simple; M = Moderate; E = Exceptional. [ i H " ' " ' ......................... ..“ ............“ 142' items that could easily be secured for use on the stage, while complicated sound and lighting went beyond the skill a,nd training of the average high school director. ■ j I ; The individuals and agencies most concerned with play! i 1 production in general are authors, publishers, and directors;. jlhey can also be considered the limiting factors to the i progress of educational theatre on the production level. I ! 5 Where the circle of monotony and simplicity begins, which of- the three factors have the most influence, is a moot point. I ; •The end result, however, seemed clear--a limiting of the f production potential of high school theatre. VI. COMIC PROPERTY DEVICES i ! A detailed tabulation of comic property devices was ; ! made because: (l) properties were found to be the one pro duction area that consistently attained some degree of com- : jplexity, and (2) much of the comedy of these plays came from1 i i the use of certain stock comedy props which could be tabu lated and compared. Seven of these comic property devices were listed, together with a general category designed to indicate which plays relied heavily on properties for comedy effect. The seven categories were: Mechanical Devices, Poods, Furniture, I Letters, Animals, Fireworks, Opiates, and Other Extravagant Props (Table XVIII). This stock property list included, of course, only a TABLE XVIII "......~...~.'..... ~ ...”1 i COMIC PROPERTY DEVICES : Play Mech. Devices Foods Furni ture Let ters Ani mals Fire works Opi ates Extrav. Props June Mad i 1 What A Life x Our Towna ; You Can't Take It With You X X X X X X X Don11 Take My Penny Ever Since Eve X X X Brother Goose X X X X Junior Miss j ! Little Women X X Nine Girls X X X Arsenic And Old Lace X X X X Night of January l6th X A Date With Judy X X January Thaw X X X X K ---------------- f = r TABLE XVIII' (continued) Mech. Furni- Let- Ani- Fire- Opi- Extrav. _______________ y____________ Devices l°ocl3 ture ters mals works ates Props Our Hearts Were Young; And Gay x x x x Dear Ruth x x We Shook The Family Tree x x x Meet Me In St. Louis x x x x x I Remember Mama x x One Foot In Heaven x x Mother Is A Freshman Seventeenth Summer x Our Miss Brooks x x Cheaper By The Dozen x Men Are Like Streetcars x Green Valley x x x x x x The Little Dor Laughed x x x The Curious Savage x Totals 9 10 7 10 5 4 3 16 r TABLE XVIII (continued) p, Mech. Furni- Let- Ani- Fire- Opi- Extrav. ______________________ Devices g0Qds ture ters mals works ates Props Properties are imagined except for basic set pieces. bOptional use of this property is indicated in the playbook. f~ .....~~................. " ' ~ ’ . 146 small fraction of the total properties used in the 28 plays. Only those were selected that seemed to be used particularly tor comedy effect and had for the most part a relatively frequent use in the plays studied. In classifying proper ties according to the above categories it was necessary to j make some rather arbitrary judgments; for instance, what constituted a mechanical device, and when did food on the i Stage become a comic property? An explanation of how the Various selections were made is included in the analysis of Table XVIII. i VII. ANALYSIS OP COMIC PROPERTY DEVICES Mechanical Devices I j A reading of the various plays of this study showed that most of the Mechanical Devices involved in the action were suggested by off-stage sources, dialogue descriptions, and physical reactions. Hie table listed only the plays in i which Mechanical Devices were actually brought on or used on the stage. These ranged in complexity from the ancient automobile in I Remember Mama to bicycles which appeared on stage in 2 of the plays. Nine plays featured such mechani cal properties. Poods This category showed up less heavily than might have been expected from the use of foods on-stage. Table VII C l • P" "..■'..~ " ' .......... ‘ .. 147: Showed that eating took place in every play but one.^ Table ; i XVIII was limited to Pood which was used for a distinct com- iedy effect, such as when the girl stuffed herself with cake i Jin Our Hearts Were Young: And Gay in order to avoid having to* j f (talk. Food was used as a comic property in 10 plays of this : / 1 group. i Furniture i Comedy effects were sometimes obtained from the use of certain pieces of Furniture on the stage. Seven of the plays used this device. The comedy effect from such a prop-: erty can take on the aspects of a "running gag." The step- 1 i Ladder in Ever Since Eve and the window seat in which dead i bodies were stuffed in Arsenic And Old Lace were examples ofj this device. Letters This is a stock property that has been in use since ; i the ancient days of theatre. The Letter perhaps supplanted- the messenger in Greek tragedy who was used to describe ac tion taking place off-stage. Letters have considerable val ue as a comic property device and were used in a variety of ways in 10 of these plays. Animals The listing of plays which used Animals was limited u . . — ^ C f ante, pp. 79~BO. strictly to those that actually had Animals appearing on- f stage. Certain plays suggested the use of Animals by sound i i I effects, but 6 of these plays called for actual Animals in the property list. Cats were in the lead with 3 examples; I dogs were used in 2 plays; and suckling pigs were required in January Thaw. Fireworks i Of the 4 plays showing the use of Fireworks, only 2 ; i actually had them working on the stage. These plays were You Can't Take It With You and Green Valley. (The latter {play was also the only one of this group in which firearms ! ; t Were used on stage.) The use of Fireworks, like Animals, I ; Was often in the category of sound effects as well as prop- ; erties. Opiates i j The use of Opiates other than liquor was found in 3 > | t of these plays. (The use of liquor is discussed under an other heading.)^ In each case it was very important to the action. The plot of Arsenic And Old Lace revolved around the use of poisoned wine. The murderess in Nine Girls ac- pomplished one of the killings with the aid of sleeping {pills. The awakening of characters to the fantastic sights pf nature in Green Valley came from drinking a certain 7Cf. Table VII B, pp. 77-J&. potent milk. (In another of these plays, The Curious Savage' , ‘ the chief character was threatened with the use of ’ ’truth ! f serum” to make her reveal a secret. This threatened use was not listed in the table.) j Other Extravagant Properties This category was designed to include the use of com-i lie properties beyond the few types listed above. Sixteen , plays came under this heading. All but one of the plays had already appeared under one or more of the individual comic property headings. This indicated that playwrights, knowing the value of this device, tended to use not merely one but often several Extravagant Comic Properties. j I VIII. COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP ! i The areas of Costume and Make-up offered few problems' i in tabulation. Costumes are usually referred to in the the atre as "period" or "modern." It seemed desirable for this study to be somewhat more specific as to costume require ments of the 28 plays. Table XIX (pp. 150-151) was set up In three general categories which are explained below. If the play was a period piece, the approximate year of the action was listed. This date was usually shown In the playbook. Where the date was not given, the plays were j listed as modern unless there was Internal evidence to the contrary. The modern period was considered for this study to be from the mid-1930’s to the present. __ J ! TABLE XIX \ COSTUMES AND MAKE-UP - ... — ——■ , ......- j Play Period Comic Costume Comic Make-Up. June Mad Modern X What A Life Modern 1 I Our Town 1900 i You Can’t Take It With You Modern X Don11 Take My Penny Modern X X i Ever Since Eve Modern Brother Goose Modern X x i ! Junior Miss Modern X I Little Women i860 X 1 1 Nine Girls Modern X ! I ? Arsenic And Old Lace Modern X | Night of January l6th Modern i A Date With Judy Modern 1 January Thaw Modern Our Hearts Were Young And Gay 1920 X X Dear Ruth Modern We Shook The Family Tree Modern X X Meet Me In St. Louis 1904 I Remember Mama 1910 One Foot In Heaven 1910 Mother Is A Freshman Modern Seventeenth Summer Modern r ~ 1 5 1 1 TABLE XIX (continued) , Play Period Comic Costume Comic Make-Up Our Miss Brooks Modern X X Cheaper By The Dozen 1920 Men Are Like Streetcars Modern i Green Valley Modern- 1849 X X The Little Dos Laughed Modern X X The Curious Savage i Modern Totals 12 8 i Some of the plays required special Individual cos tumes. These were listed under the heading of Comic Cos- i ; tumes, since most of the plays were comedies. I Make-up is a special production area In itself, but a{ detailed tabulation was not considered necessary to this 1 1 i purvey. Those plays which required special make-up on indi-8 Vidual characters for comedy effect were listed under the category of Comic Make-up. j IX. ANALYSIS OF COSTUME AND MAKE-UP i i Period The dominant note in the costuming of these plays waSj modernity. Twenty plays were tabulated as modern, 7 were i i found to be period, and one was a combination of modern and ! period. The dates of the period costumes could be grouped into four eras: two plays called for mid-nineteenth century Costumes, 2 were around 1900, 2 were 1910, and 2 were 1920. jit was of interest to note that a group of recently pub lished plays fell into the 1900-1920 bracket. All of these plays were adaptations of biographical or autobiographical novels. One of them, I Remember Mama, was a Broadway play. % The recent trend toward, or fad for, this type of story thus showed its influence on educational theatre. Our Town, an earlier period play of wide popularity, might also have influenced this group of plays. Signifi cantly, Little Women was the only one of these most-produced !""""... '...... ■"..............." .. 153’ Thespian plays to approach the classical stature in relation- i ship to period costuming. i Comic Costume f ! I j t | Even though the costuming was modern for most of , I I these plays, certain costume problems did assert themselves.. in 12 plays individual characters required extreme forms of costuming. These were invariably for comic effect. Ex amples were the garish party dress in June Mad, the ballet costume in You Can11 Take It With You, and the disguise cos tume for the boy in Don* t Take My Penny. Generally speaking, however, the costume requirements of these plays could be described as light or simple of exe-; I cution. t Make-up ; i As indicated earlier, make-up problems for these Thespian plays were not treated exhaustively here. The ap- , j ! plication of regular straight or character make-up for the total cast members of each play no doubt varied a great deal according to each director's taste and experience. Only those plays in which extreme make-up was indicated for cer tain individuals were listed in Table XIX (pp. 150-151). Twelve plays were found to use make-up as a comedy device. i For example, the application of a mud pack sparked a comic scene in We. Shook The Family Tree. Shaving cream was used . ks paint for a similar effect in The Little Dog Laughed. X. MUSIC i j Production effects sometimes overlap in theatre prac-; jtice. For instance, a garish-colored juke box in a cafe bcene could conceivably be called a property, a lighting ef-j ! j jfect, or a sound or music effect. According to its use in j ! S the play, it could be all four. The classification of ef- , ifects must be based upon how they fit into the action. ! The area of music offered particular problems in tab-* ulation. Basically, music is a sound effect; but that area is so general that no attempt was made to tabulate sound ef-i fects beyond that shown in Table XVII (pp. 140-141). The iise of music and types of music could, however, be deter mined fairly accurately for the plays of this study. It was! kept in mind that individual directors often add or delete ! music from their performances according to their conception of the particular play. : Table XX determined the use of music in accordance ; with the playbook description by classifying it as Part of the Action, Background, Live or Recorded, and whether Vocal or Instrumental. Types of music were set up in Table XXI as’ popular, Classical, Religious, Folk, or Other types. Often the playbooks gave only meager descriptions of the music re quired. In such cases the music was placed in the "Other" category and marked with superscript letters. ' ■■■" .... ""........ 155 TABLE XX USE OP MUSIC Part of I Play Action Back Vocal Instrumental ground Live Rec Live Rec 1 June Mad x X X , What A Life X X Our Town x X X X You Can’t Take It With You x f X j Don11 Take My Penny Ever Since Eve X X Brother Goose j Junior Miss ; Little Women x X X 1 Nine Girls X X Arsenic And Old Lace { Night of January 16th A Date With Judy x X X January Thaw x X Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Dear Ruth We Shook The Pamily Tree Meet Me In St. Louis I Remember Mama One Foot In Heaven x X X X Mother Is A Freshman X X TABLE XX (continued) I I p 1 a _r Part of 1 ay Action Back ground Vocal Instrumental Live Rec Live Rec Seventeenth Summer X x 1 Our Miss Brooks X X i Cheaper By The Dozen X X ! Men Are Like Streetcars X X X Green Valley X X X X X The Little Dog Laughed X X i The Curious Savage X X Totals 11 11 5 1 9 10 ' 157} TABLE XXI TYPES OF MUSIC Play Pop ular Clas sical Reli- „ gious Folk Other; June Mad X ; ! What A Life Choralai Our Town X X You Can't Take It With You X Don't Take My Penny : Ever Since Eve X i Brother Goose Junior Miss Little Women xa j Nine Girls X i Arsenic And Old Lace ; Night of January l6th i A Date With Judy X i January Thaw X Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Dear Ruth We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis I Remember Mama One Foot In Heaven X X Mother Is A Freshman X .TABLE XXI (continued) i f j Play Pop ular Clas sical Reli gious Folk Other Seventeenth Summer X Banda Our Miss Brooks Banda !Cheaper By The Dozen X Men Are Like Streetcars X Green Valley X ! The Little Dos Laughed X ’The Curious Savage X ; Totals 8 4 3 2 4 aType not listed in playbook. r _ ' ~ _.......... 15 9( | XI. ANALYSIS OF USE AND TYPES OF MUSIC I ; Use of Music Music was frequently used In these 28 plays; 18 of 1 i them either required music as Part of the Action or sug- j gested it for Background effect. Four plays had music both Within the action and as Background; 7 required it just in bhe action; and 7 as Background only. j Instrumental music was used much more frequently than Vocal music. Five plays called for both Vocal and Instru- | mental music. In 3 of these cases the Vocal was accompanied by a piano or organ. The other examples of Vocal music were p.n off-stage school chorus in What A Life and a group on- j i ptage singing folk songs in Green Valley. In all, 17 plays ; j featured Instrumental music. In 7 instances the music was Live, in 8 it was Recorded, and in 2 plays both Live and Re-i corded Instrumental music was used. i Types of Music Of the various types of music employed in these plays, Popular music led the way with 8 examples. Classical music Was used in 4 plays, Religious music in 3, Folk music in 2. ' In the category of Other types, band music was listed twice. This might be considered as a type of popular music, but the numbers to be played were not specified in the playbook. Also, the playbook did not specify the type of choral music to be used in What A Life. The music played and sung in ............ " I60j Little Women would probably be of a Folk variety but could j ! easily be of a religious nature in the home of a minister. ! I ' Generally, the plays did not mix types of music. ; However, Religious and Popular music were heard in One Foot .EH Heaven, and the music of Our Town was both Classical and Religious in type. 1 l ; I XII. USE AND 1YPES OF DANCE 1 j . I I ( As an adjunct to the music employed in these Thespian j i blays, the use and types of dance were considered and tabu- ■ i i dated. Dancing is a popular social, recreational, and aes- , jthetic activity in America. Its reflection in the plays of 1 . I Educational theatre was partially indicated earlier in Table; 8 yil C of this study, in which it was found that a dance or party was a common plot situation. Table XXII, which follows, classified the use and types of dance that were actually presented as part of the ; j action of these plays. They were divided into four cate gories: Social Dancing, Ballet, Folk, and Modern. Social Dancing was subdivided into actual dancing of couples on stage and the suggested dancing of people off-stage. Ballet was considered in its classical connotation; Folk and Modern f dancing in their common usage sense. Q Cf. ante, pp. 79“80. TABLE XXII USE AND TYPES OF DANCE PT g-y y On Stg Off0Stg Ballet Folk Modern: June Mad i X 1 What A Life Our Town You Can't Take It With You xa 1 ! Don't Take My Penny ! Ever Since Eve X ; Brother Goose Junior Miss Little Women : Nine Girls Arsenic And Old Lace Night of January l6th ! A Date With Judy ! January Thaw Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Dear Ruth We Shook The Family Tree ‘ Meet Me In St. Louis I Remember Mama One Foot In Heaven x Mother Is A Freshman X Seventeenth Summer f ....... “ ........- ........ — .................. - ................ -...................... - ........1621 I TABLE XXII (continued) ____________Mfy OnCStg OffStf Ballet Folk Modern; Our Miss Brooks ----------------------- I I Cheaper By The Dozen \ Men Are Like Streetcars x | Green Valley x x The Little Dog Laughed xa i The Curious Savage I Totals 1 4 2 1 1 aSatirical. r ' “ ■ ~ ...... .." _ --------- i63 i XIII. ANALYSIS OP USE AND TYPES OP DANCE j Social Dancing The lack of dancing in these plays, as revealed by Table XXII, deserved some comment. Social Dancing occurred during the action of 5 plays, but as on-stage action in only pne. In this play, One Foot In Heaven, there was a short dancing scene involving brother and sister which was quickly broken up by the irate father who was a minister. J The dance or party idea as a plot device was observed in 12 plays (Table VII C, pp. J9~Q0). Therefore, it would peem that, insofar as the action was concerned, dancing was ijnerely an idea, an excuse for certain attitudes. The culmi nation, the dance itself, was apparently never shown on the stage. Ballet. Folk. and Modern Dance Ballet dancing was roundly satirized in two of the plays: You Can1t Take It With You and The Little Dog Laughed. Folk and Modern dancing were used in one play-- Green Valley. In each of these cases the dancing came out pf a basic plot or character need and was not brought In for the sake of the dance itself. While this was to be expected in the straight dramatic plays of our time, It pointed up the lack of use In the plays of educational theatre of the basic dance element from which drama is said to have sprung. CHAPTER IX SOCIAL AND MORAL VALUES FOUND I IN THE PLAYS SURVEYED j I. INTRODUCTION ! . . . the dramatist, more than any other artist, must i express himself in terms of the tempo and outlook in his. I era. His role is not that of the thinker, the innovator j the discoverer, but at his best, that of a catalytic j agent, who fuses and vivifies what is already deeply be- j lieved or unconsciously felt by his audience. His work projects only what is already discernible; he is the mirror of his times. ■ Elmer Rice, a noted American playwright, thus ex pressed himself in an article devoted to an analysis of hu- ; man values as revealed by the drama of our present day. If ; the dramatist is a mirror of his times one can look to his plays for a reflection of the moral and social standards that he sees about him. Rice made a penetrating analysis of the offerings of the professional stage from the artist’s point of view. A note of caution was required here, however. Modern researchers In content analysis would probably not agree wholeheartedly with Elmer Rice's argument. In his book on content analysis, Bernard Berelson stated that on the as sumption that communication content "expresses" or "reflects") ; ^Elmer Rice, "American Theatre and the Human Spirit," ■The Saturday Review, XXXVIII (December 17, 1955), 9* ( r ™ ” “........... ■ ...-.165; pome sort of Zeitgeist, some students have used It as an In-, j hex to attitudes, Interests, values, and mores of a popula- i p ^ tion. He goes on to warn that such procedures may not al ways be valid. . . . there is the basic problem of cause and effect. Do popular attitudes determine communication content or does content determine popular attitudes? Presumably ; they exercise mutual influence, one upon the other, and hence any one sided assumption is bound to be faulty.-^ This precaution notwithstanding, it was felt that an expression of social and moral values, however determined, Were to be found in American theatre offerings. The purpose1 i of this chapter was to seek out and tabulate the most common of these attitudes found in the popular Thespian plays. 1 j Techniques of scientific content analysis were not strictly : followed. For instance, the major headings did not refer ' progressively to the characteristics of communication con tent, the causes of content, and the consequences of con- h . tent. The point of view was taken that educational theatre, I by virtue of its name and position in our schools, goes a * i step beyond the professional theatre in its responsibility in this particular area. Not only are plays produced in schools for their entertainment value, they are an 2 Bernard Berelson, Content Analysis in Communication Research (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952), pT 90. 3Ibid.. p. 97. 4Ibid., p. 26. instructional device as well. Since the time of Horace in j the first century A.D., critics have realized that the func-j j 5 tion of theatre is to "profit and delight."- This is not to say that the plays of educational the atre are used, pedagogically speaking, in the manner of a I : textbook. The total educational experience of a young per- ! son playing a major role in a three-act high school play is ; Certainly complex. It is, however, a directed experience. ! This is in contrast to the other contacts that today's stu- ! I dents may have with drama. For instance, as television puts increasing emphasis on dramatic shows, audiences are being ; i subjected more and more to learning experiences of one sort or another through a wide variety of dramatic offerings. I ! 1 i {Che nature of these experiences is largely fortuitous. The j director in educational theatre does have a choice of plays.' By whatever criteria he may be guided, the director, in choosing his play, is selecting a commentary on the social : i I i and moral values of human life which will be a part of the educational experience of the members of his cast and his audience. The various published criteria for the selection of i s plays for educational theatre, listed earlier in this study,' laid heavy emphasis upon social and moral values.^ One of ^Barrett Clark (ed.), European Theories of Drama (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.") 1947) > P* 35* 6 (the purposes of this survey was to shed some light on the actual standards of play selection current in high school * i theatre. The plays of this study, being the most popular j with high school Thespian groups in the United States, could! be expected to reflect a kind of "working criterion" for ' Inoral and social values in play selection. ■ i i To take each play and determine whether or not it Satisfied any one set of criteria would, of course, involve wholly subjective evaluations, and was not the purpose of 1 {this work. It was possible, however, to isolate various situations or points of social commentary which were common , | i in the plays which did reflect moral and social values. I i When these were set up in tabular form, certain interesting . comparisons could be made. ‘ i Social and moral evaluations can be deduced from many' ! pf the areas previously tabulated and analyzed in this study. (The whole treatment of theme would be an example of this. \ klso, each play naturally treated numerous social and moral : values peculiar to its plot and characters. This section of the study, however, was not directed at getting at a total !'spirit of the age" as it might be reflected in these plays. It was designed to gain an overview of the broad social and moral values most apparent in the popular Thespian dramas. The categories listed below were chosen because they occurred frequently in the plays and are common and important in life; f situations. , i II. CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL AND MORAL VALUES I I Eight important social and moral areas were set up in. Table XXIII. These areas were: Religious Implications, Drinking, Dishonesty, Murder, Extra-Marital Relations, Non- Whites as Menials, Marriage, and Career. Under certain of these areas various subheadings were listed to make the tab-! illations meaningful. Also, certain standards were employed ; bo justify the inclusion of the plays listed under any one ( i heading. Religious Implications formed the first category of i Table XXIII. This area was divided into Strong, Some, None/ and Satirical. The general standard used to determine the j religious implications of a play was whether or not it con- : jtained overt acts of a religious nature, such as going to church, praying, funerals, or similar acts, or had charac ters associated with the church. The attitude displayed to ward these acts determined which of the four headings the play came under. Table XXIII next treated Drinking, Dishonesty, and Murder. Drinking referred, of course, to intoxicating liq uor. The use of drunken scenes as plot devices had already been recorded in Table VII B (pp. 77“78)• Here, drinking was listed as to whether or not the inebriate was actually shown on the stage or the drinking merely implied in the di alogue . L Dishonesty was a very elusive area to classify. Two 1 TABLE XXIII SOCIAL AND MORAL VALUES Implications Dl’ lnklng Dishonesty a ft Play f a O £ O 0 0 £ S £ -P O O C O C O fe rH d c d 0 0 d o hO d • H 0 • H c d 0 ft fe £ £ - P • H • H 0 1 0 • H C O iH -P • H d -P ft 0 1 £ £ c d £ e £ 3 £ C O O H fe ft fe •H £ o i c d £ 01 01 0 H f t c d 0 1 f s o •H * H hOd d ! 1 tH £ £ c d 0 £ 0 c d ft fe < 1 > •H * H 0 -H \ £ c d 1 s £ H 0 r H f t r— 1 £ £ f t £ f t ' « 0 O 01 < d g c d g | ft ft fe < fe H O H j • • • • June Mad What A LIfe Our Town You Can1t Take It With You Don1t Take My Penny Ever Since Eve Brother Goose Junior Miss Little Women Nine Girls Arsenic And Old Lace x x x x x x x x x x x x X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X [— 1 O ' * VO TABLE XXIII "'(continued) Implications Drinking Dishonesty Play rH ■d c d CD CD 'd o bD •H CD hO •H c d <D a X! u £ £ ■p •H 0 1 C D 0 CD CD •H (0 rH -P •H 'd £ S £ -P a 02 £ £ -P o o c d £ s £ p 3 9 c o • £ CO • 9 H • & • % c d in £ 01 ^ £ s o i *H c d -P In c d -P rH K C D W « 0 1 0 1 C D H -P c d C D •H 'H tkO 'd 'd .£ £ c d c d £ C D ^ C D C D H i S £ H C D H £ £ a £ a O C Q c d g c d S s.<c S H • O H • Night of January l6th A Date With Judy January Thaw Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Dear Ruth We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis I Remember Mama i One Foot In Heaven Mother Is A Freshman Seventeenth Summer Our Miss Brooks x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x X X X X X X X H o p M 3 Td M H* CD & £ ct P M 03 t - 3 Q g O tr 4 CD pr CD CD CD CD 0 CD P O tn £ > o £ N* h s CD ct CD 4 H - ct P O £ M CD M M P R to CD o ' < CD h i W O tr P J Q 03 CD •< ct P f* n 02 CD o CD £ CD N n ct CD J T 1 O £ C D P t s 0 3 ro - F = - 1 —1 V O VJ1 U3 oo OV U) U1 - P r h-1 U 3 oo X X p X X X X X X X X X X III M p Strong M 3 £) „ *0 CD Some m t - > p. p. o oq p H * None ct o H* £ O 03 3 Satirical cq On Stage Implied Justified Punished Murder h S H* S K* H* CS os » H* 03 U O CD 03 c t ~ *< Extra-Marital Relations Non-Whites As Menials Marriage Implied Career Implied (panuTiuoQ) IIIXX aiavi sub-categories were made which seemed to fit the problems most often treated in the plays. Frequently a character did; i Or said a patently dishonest thing in order to bring about a i ' ! jjustifiably moral result. Such instances were recorded un- ! der Justified Dishonesty. When outright dishonesty (either : I . I justified or otherwise) was punished it was recorded under t that heading. The only criterion for the Murder category was that I the act took place within the time span of the whole story i Of the play and engaged the concern of the characters on ptage. Extra-Marital Relations, Non-Whites as Menials, Mar- I riage, and Career concluded Table XXIII. Extra-marital re- ' i lations were either acknowledged on the part of characters ■ in these plays or strongly suggested by implications in the dialogue. The idea behind this criterion was that the ef fect in the minds of the audience was basically the same in either case. Implied cases were marked with a superscript letter in the table. The category of Non-Whites as Menials was set up to show those plays that exhibited Negroes or other dark- skinned people in the traditional stage role allotted to the non-white. The Marriage category was listed as Marriage Implied. i This can be taken literally: that male and female charac ters, leading or otherwise, gave every indication that marriage was imminent when the final curtain descended. In certain cases the marriage took place within the action of I (the play. The marital status of families shown in these ! plays was discussed in the chapter on Characters.^ j J The choosing of a career is an important social obli-j i Ration. Under the category of Career Implied, the plays 1 were listed in which young characters were shown as achiev ing a significant start toward a life’s work. I III. ANALYSIS OP SOCIAL AND MORAL VALUES Religious Implications S The outstanding feature of the plays in this area was: j their lack of overt religious acts. Nineteen plays come un-l der the None heading. Two plays showed strong religious iianifestations--Our Town and One Foot In Heaven. Both obvi- j pusly exhibited Protestant church affairs but were not sec- ! i Parian in their approach. One Foot In Heaven concerned the , ! i problems of a small town minister's family and as such was ? bound to reflect many religious aspects. Our Town was placed in the Strong religious category because it showed phe many ways in which the church activity of a small New Hampshire town in the early 1900’s was entwined with the lives of the people. Some religious implications were found in four of the, 7Cf. ante, pp. 100-101. L * r ~ ~ " ........... ....■ — ”• ■ ■ ■ 174' plays. You Can’1 Take It With You had the head of the fami- 1 i ’ ly offering a simple man-to-man1 ’ talk with the Deity as a : grace before meals. This occurred twice In the play. Lit tle Women concerned the family of a minister. Without de- j pic ting the father, there was nevertheless some religious ! i implication in the family’s references to him. The court room drama of Night of January l6th was found to have cer- ! I tain religious implications because of the oath taken by each witness. In January Thaw a funeral was set up in the home and several hymns were played by a devoutly religious character. i i | i j This last play, however, was satirical in its handl- ! 1 ( ing of religious activities. Three other plays were also listed under the Satirical heading. Arsenic And Old Lace I 1 phowed two pious old ladies who poisoned lonely men and ■ buried them in the cellar with full religious ceremony. Green Valley had a Mennonite character and the habits of ; that sect were somewhat satirized. The Curious Savage made several satirical references to the act of prayer. All told, these 28 plays seemed to have only a scat tering of religious implications, with the majority having none discernible. Drinking Inebriated characters were shown on the stage in five1 plays. The handling of these characters ranged from the al most^.tragic choir master in Our Town to the befuddled comic > f . . . . " ....'... 175, actress in You Can*t Take It With You. A child was shown as; slightly stupified from liquor in Dear Ruth. Uncle Chris's 1 1 drinking in I Remember Mama was excused because of his inju ry. The drunken doctor in Arsenic And Old Lace was a broad ! . | ! comedy character. I Drinking was implied in Junior Miss, Night of January' i l6th, and We Shook The Family Tree. In the first of this | ; group, characters were shown with a "hangover." In the sec ond, a description of drinking was given by a character on ! i the witness stand. In the third, comedy effects were gained by Innuendo when actually no drinking had taken place. i The problem of drinking did not enter into 20 of ! 1 these plays. The five that showed drunkenness on the stage i^ere all of Broadway origin. ! Dishonesty Dishonesty, Justified and/or Punished, was prominent : in ten plays. In eight cases this dishonesty was for a mor-j al purpose, and in four of these instances the character performing the act was punished. An example of this was Henry Aldrich's cheating on the history exam. He was forced Into an impossible position by the attitude of his mother and realized that it was the only thing he could do to sat isfy her and get his date to the dance. He cheated (justi fiably) and was punished. In the other four examples the justified dishonesty went unpunished, and through this a kind of poetic justice was served, ____ __ !~‘ ........ ■' .""..." .-.' ..."■ 176 I Straight dishonesty, unjustified, occurred singly in i I two plays and in each case was punished. What A Life had eases of both justified and straight dishonesty, both of which were punished. Murder The three cases in which murder occurred might be listed as advanced cases of dishonesty, not listed in the preceding category. Each of the three treated murder in a particularly individual way. Arsenic And Old Lace was frankly a farce with the whole series of murders having an klr of unreality about them. Night of January 16th was a melodrama where the known murders seemed almost incidental and it was never decided whether the leading victim was a murder or a suicide. Nine Girls was more straight forward and brutal. After the first act, one actually followed the murderess in her activity and there was a vivid feeling of reality about the action. Again, all three of the plays dealing with murder were from Broadway. Extra-Marital Relations | Five of the 28 plays showed instances of infidelity or of people living together without benefit of the marriage ceremony. In all cases Broadway plays were involved. You Can1t Take It With You mentioned the Negro couple in the play as being unwed. Night of January 16th showed instances of infidelity, and I Remember Mama brought in the mistress of Uncle Chris as a sympathetic character. In Junior Miss and The Curious Savage the instances of extra-marital rela tions were implied for comedy effect and character revela tion . Non-Whites as Menials | Negro servants, handy-men, or janitors appeared on $tage in four plays; a Negro student appeared in one. They Were used for comedy effect in all cases. A total of five ijegroes were used as menials; four women and one man. The other Negro character was a girl student in What A Life. The Negro handy-man in You Can11 Take It With You was dis- 1 played as a low-comedy, shiftless character. Three of the women were servants and one was a janitress. Negroes were the only non-whites to appear in these plays with the excep tion of a Mexican girl. Pour of the five plays using Negro characters were from Broadway. Brother Goose was the single Amateur play in this area. The Negro on the American stage is a whole story in itself. In recent years there seems to have been an im provement in the type of role assigned to the Negro actor O And the kind of story situation involving Negro characters. Apparently this had yet to be reflected in the most popular Q | Edith J. R. Isaacs, The Negro in the American Thea tre (New York: Theatre Arts, Inc., 19W)* PP~ 13-l6• jplays of the educational theatre. i Marriage Implied The important social contract of marriage was invoked or implied in 13 of these plays. In 3 plays the ceremony sook place within the action. Our Town had its impressively simple wedding scene; a few words were hastily shouted at phe departing lovers in Dear Ruth; and two minor characters were united off-stage in I Remember Mama. In the other 10 jplays, young men and women seemed bound toward the altar as the play ended. Pour of these latter plays were of Broadway origin and 6 were Amateur. ! Career implied i | Remembering that the basic theme involved in most of these plays was expressed earlier as "youth solving the problems of growing up," it was logical to expect many in stances where the choice of a career was made. Actually, | there were 9 plays in which a youthful character seemed to have a career ahead of him as a result of the action of the play. Only 5 of these 9 were leading characters; the others were secondary. The 5 leading characters who seemed to have a career ahead were represented in the following plays: What A Life, in which Henry Aldrich was allowed to follow his bent and study to be a commercial artist; Our Town, where George be came a farmer during the course of the play; Little Women, 'showing Jo meeting her first success as a journalist; Our ! i Hearts Were Young And Gay, in which Cornelia decided to be- j ! come a monologist; and I Remember Mama, with Katrin as an other budding journalist. i All but one of the above five were Broadway plays. | Careers were, of course, mentioned frequently in the other plays but seldom left the impression that they would be fol- lowed. An example was Hie Little Dog Laughed in which | Laurie was determined to be a psychologist. The whole ac tion of the comedy turned on this, but in the end she de- j Sided not to be one. Perhaps the answer to the search for decided careers among the Amateur plays of this study is | ; chat solving the career problem was not a chief dramatic ob-< v t jective of the playwrights; this, despite the nature of the ■ general theme most often employed.9 From the above analyses it was determined that plays i i written especially for the amateur theatre tended to avoid , many of the moral and social situations handled by the Broadway plays. This was, of course, to be expected, but it i also pointed up a basic weakness in the Amateur plays: they seldom came to grips with real and vital problems. 9Cf. ante, pp. 62-63. CHAPTER X SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS I. INTRODUCTION i The over-all objective of this study, as stated in Chapter I (p. 3) was to shed as much light as possible on 1 the high-school play production situation through an analy sis of the most popular plays. Specific objectives of the i study were to determine answers to the following questions: j 1. What are the most popular plays produced in the high schools of the United States? i j 2. What are the most common types of plays produced I in high school theatre? 3. What play publishing houses and authors dominate the educational theatre field, and what are the average roy- i alty costs per play? 4. What are the sources of the playbook stories, and how may they best be classified as to origin? 5. What are the common themes, structures, and plot situations found in the most popular plays? 6. What are the character requirements of the plays? 7* What production effects are required for these plays? 8. What are the most pronounced moral and social values found in the most-produced plays? r "............... ■ ._ ...............■ ....■ 181 j Severe limitations were placed upon the first objec- ' tive in order to make the study feasible. The rest of the dbjectives were carried out in a series of tabulations and I analyses of areas relevant to the questions posed by the j i problem. A summary of the findings of th4.s study follows. 1 | II. SUMMARY OP THE MOST-PRODUCED PLAYS, | THEIR PRODUCTION STATISTICS, TYPES, AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS, ROYALTIES, CLASSIFICATION, AND SOURCES The Plays ; ! In order to obtain accurate production figures and to harrow down the large number of plays available for high : f school theatre to a group that would be manageable and at ! the same time revealing of the entire picture, this study was limited to plays having had at least 75 productions on i the compiled rolls of the National Thespian Society from ! i 1938 to 1954. A total of 91 plays appeared on the Thespian i rolls as having had at least 10 productions in any one year.' Of these, 28 plays had 75 01? more productions during the years they appeared on the roll. These 28 "most-produced" plays were used to satisfy the first objective of this study. They are listed below, grouped for convenience according to their classification as either Broadway or Amateur plays. 182 Broadway What A Life I Our Town I You Can't Take It With You Amateur Junior Miss Nine Girls i i Arsenic And Old Lace Night of January l6th January Thaw Dear Ruth 1 Remember Mama The Curious Savage June Mad Don11 Take My Penny Ever Since Eve Brother Goose Little Women A Date With Judy Our Hearts Were Young And Gay We Shook The Family Tree Meet Me In St. Louis One Foot In Heaven Mother Is A Freshman Seventeenth Summer Our Miss Brooks Cheaper By The Dozen Men Are Like Streetcars Green Valley The Little Dog Laughed Dates and Production Statistics The two plays that had the largest number of produc tions were You Can1t Take It With You (283), and Our Hearts » Were Young And Gay (269)- The former was one of the oldest plays in the group, published in 1940; the latter play was published in 1946. The only other play to exceed the 200 mark was A Date With Judy which had 202 productions; it was also published In 1946. Two other leaders were Our Town. i which had 192 productions since publication in 1939* and Our' i ! Miss Brooks, with 199 productions since it appeared in 1950. i The oldest play in the group was Night of January l6th. Published in 1936, it first appeared on the Thespian roll in 1947 and reached its peak in 1954. With the excep- i ‘ tion of this play all the other dramas appeared on the Thes- I plan roll within from one to four years of their publication. Two general groups were apparent among the most popular plays: (1) current plays just published, and (2) certain old favorites of long standing. .Emes j Comedy dominated the play types. The one serious j play was Our Town. Within the general comedy type, one mys-j tery, one fantasy, and three comedy-dramas were found. Authors and Publishers i As a group, playwrights with Broadway experience were found to dominate the high school theatre field. Fourteen writers or teams of writers who have had plays on Broadway had publications among the 28 plays of this study. ‘ The top individual author, with six titles on the list, was Christopher Sergei, editor and publisher 'of the Dramatic Publishing Company. Next was Anne C. Martens, with three plays published by the same company. Five publishing houses were represented by the 28 H _ ...~.......... ■. ~ 184' most popular Thespian plays. The dominant house proved to he the Dramatic Publishing Company of Chicago, Illinois, with 15 titles, followed by the Dramatists Play Service of New York with 6 plays on the list. Other publishers repre- I I 3ented were: Samuel French, Inc. (3)> Row-Peterson and Com pany (2), and Longmans, Green and Company (l). Royalties All but one of the 28 plays called for initial royal ty payment. One required $50.00, three called for $35-00, the others cost $25-00 for initial performance fee. Three plays were listed under a budget plan. 1 I Classification ! j Using the classification of Standard, Broadway, and I Amateur, there were no Standard plays in the group, eleven i Broadway, and seventeen Amateur plays. The only play that ( might have been considered as a Standard play was Little Women which was placed in the Amateur category because of its late publication as an all-women show. Sources Sources for the stories of the plays were designated as Original, Novel, Radio, Motion Pictures, and Television. Thirteen of the plays were found to be Originals written for the stage, 13 were adapted from novels, and 2 came from ra dio sources. Three plays had also been made into motion pictures,., and one had been a television program as well. I ; III. SUMMARY OP PLOT AND CHARACTER ASPECTS j AND PRODUCTION EFFECTS OF THE 28 PLAYS | Plot Devices Theme and essential action. In the majority of the plays the principal need was expressed through youthful bharacters. Of the many evident themes employed, the domi nant one was found to be youth solving the crises of growing up . j 1 Struc ture of the plays♦ Using the terms Integrated dnd Episodic to denote type of structure, 20 plays were of I the three-act Integrated form, and 2 plays were Integrated but in two acts. Six plays were of an Episodic structure. Of these, 5 were three-act, and one was In two acts. Five I plays used the Narrator device and 2 plays used the Prologue technique. i Juvenile and parental rivalries. The various con flicts of the plays were tabulated according to the most ob vious group rivalries. The Child-Parent rivalry was most apparent, occuring in 15 major instances. The Girl-Girl ri valry was found in 4 major and 8 minor instances. Common plot situations. The 12 most frequently oc curring plot situations were tabulated. In order of their frequency they were found to occur in the following order: Tables Turned, Eating, Family Situation, Leading Character "Grows Up," Sickness or Death, Dance or Party, Mature Love, Mistaken Identity and Drunken scenes (same number of in- Stances), PIay-within-a-Play, and Disguises. I Attitudes toward school. Seventeen of the plays were) I found to have either a neutral attitude toward school or to evince no attitude at all. Six plays showed a positive at titude, with three of these being satirical at the same time.; A positive attitude toward school was found in four plays. j Characters Character statistics. The total number of cast mem bers for each play was determined and broken down into the ! ! requirements for Men, Women, Adults, Boys and Girls, Old-Age, Dialect, and Extras. The plays were found to require an ' average of 15 people per cast, with the Broadway plays call ing for more characters on the average than the Amateur plays. 1 More women than men were required for the casts. Of the total of 430 characters in the plays, 227 were women and 203 were men. The use of preponderantly female casts was noted principally in the Amateur plays; this group also called for more juvenile characters. According to the cri teria set up, only 15 old-age characters were found in the total list. Of the 28 plays, 12 required a total of 31 dia lect characters. Nine plays required or allowed the use of extras. I ......... " ‘ 187; i Family and professional status. All but two of the plays were found to show both parents living. There were no! I .lomes broken by divorce. A broad variety of professions ' were listed for the wage-earners, with the general "Busi- j ness" category having 5 instances. Medicine, Law, and the | Ministry each had 2 representatives. Most of the heads of s families appeared to be in executive positions. Parental types. In relationship to their children, , parents were found to be generally sympathetic. When unsym pathetic parents appeared, more fathers than mothers were shown in that light. j | Juvenile and school types. Girls dominated the field I ; pf juvenile character types. Twenty of the leading juvenile1 characters in the plays were girls as opposed to 4 boys. A dyed-in-the-wool villain was seldom found among the juvenile i ! characters; only 5 such types occurred in the 28 plays. In : i - | 7 plays the leading juvenile was an only child; 3 of the 4 boy leads were only children. Students were shown overwhelmingly as positive; that is, reacting favorably to the school situation. Athletes appeared in 6 of the plays, and teachers in love were char acters in 4 plays. General comic types. Sixteen comedy type characters < ' that appeared again and again in the plays were isolated and their_. incidence recorded. The most frequently used ; character was found to be the Comic Maid, followed by the i ■Dominant Woman, the Other Woman, Theatre People, Foreign characters, and Policemen. Comedy accent or off-standard ? s speech such as might be used by a foreign, Negro, or rustic character appeared to be the most commonly used character izing device. i Production Effects Location and settings. The most obvious feature of the geographical locations of these plays was their indefi nite nature as revealed by the playbooks. Of the definite locations, the New York area led the list followed by the Midwest in popularity. | Most of the plays were simple in their setting re quirements. Only 2 plays called for a change of set. Four of the 28 required exterior scenes, but only one of the group was set completely in the exterior. | The most popular type of interior setting was found to be a living room. Eighteen plays had such a requirement. Properties, sound, and lighting effects. The three areas of properties, sound, and lighting effects were tabu lated according to their degree of complexity of production in each play and were classified as being simple, moderate, or exceptional in execution. Sound and lighting effects were found to be nearly always simple, while properties were moderately complex in a majority of the plays. Only two jplays .were found to be exceptionally complex in all three 1 1 areas. Comic property devices. The one moderately complex | production area, Properties, was further analyzed to deter- j I mine what property devices were most often used for comedy effect. Food and Letters led the list, followed by Mechani cal devices, Furniture, Animals, Fireworks, and Opiates, jsixteen plays were found to use other extravagant properties for comic effect besides those most commonly employed. i | Costumes and make-up. Eight of the 28 plays were found to have period costume requirements, the oldest being ' ' ! 2 in mid-nineteenth century. The bulk of the plays were ! modern, with 12 that required individual characters with special costume requirements for comic effect. Make-up problems were not exhaustively analyzed, but ' iL2 plays were found to require special make-up for comedy j bffeet. ! ’ Music. Music was found to be a requirement in 18 plays. Instrumental music outweighed vocal music, 17 in stances to 5- Use of live and recorded music was equal when vocal and instrumental music were considered together. Popular music was the type most often used, followed in order by Classical, Religious, and Folk music. Dance. Comparatively little use was made of Dance. P'~.... ' ...... 190 Although much of the action of the plays revolved around parties and dances, only one instance of social dancing on istage was found. Ballet was shown twice, both cases being satirical. Polk and Modern dancing were found in only one play. IV. SUMMARY OP MORAL AND SOCIAL VALUES Certain manifestations in the plays which reflected j important moral and social values were tabulated. These in- 1 eluded Religious Implications, Drinking, Dishonesty, Murder, 1 Extra-Marital Relations, Non-whites as Menials, Marriage, I and Career. Of these areas the most frequently dealt with in the plays were Marriage, Career, and Dishonesty. 1 A breakdown was made comparing the Broadway and Ama teur plays in their handling of these values. Of the 9 plays that showed religious implications, 6 were Broadway And 3 Amateur. All actual instances of drinking on stage were from Broadway plays; the same was true for murder and extra-marital relations. One Amateur play to 4 Broadway plays showed non-whites as menials. Dishonesty was shown in equal instances by Broadway and Amateur plays, but the lat ter had more examples of dishonesty punished. More Amateur plays implied marriage, but only Broadway plays showed it taking place. Careers for leading characters were implied in 5 Broadway plays, but in only one Amateur play. i V. CONCLUSIONS j ! I Ik* The Most Popular Plays I j This study was limited to those plays produced by j member schools of the National Thespian Society, a select ■ group which represented at the time of this survey over 1,500 high schools in the United States. This limitation i ijnust be kept in mind in drawing conclusions regarding the I most popular plays. Production figures were not available for all the high schools of the land; therefore, one cannot ! say that the 28 plays, selected for analysis as having had j at least 75 productions since appearing on the Thespian rolls, were the most popular plays among all the high Schools of the country. However, it can be said that the 28' j \ plays of this study were unquestionably the most-produced ; Thespian plays and as such represented a cross-section of ( national high school theatre production. More than that, it Was considered a safe assumption that, because of the highly; organized services of the National Thespian Society, affili ated schools were farther ahead in dramatic activity than were those outside the organization. The National Thespian Society very probably represents the top play-producing high schools in the United States. The five most popular plays, as revealed by this study, were: You Can11 Take It With You, Our Hearts Were Young And Gay, A Date With Judy, Our Miss Brooks, and Our 1 Town These, plays, in the order named, were produced most t often by Thespian affiliated high schools over the years 1938 through 195^* i I Allowing for the later publishing date of Our Hearts Were Young And Gay, and the still later date of Our Miss Brooks, these plays seriously rivaled if not surpassed You Can* t Take It With You in popularity. At the same time it must be kept in mind that membership in the National Thespi an Society was growing year by year. Also, it is undoubted ly true that, as in most polls, not all members responded bach year with their annual report listing the plays most produced. With all of these vagaries and limitations, the ! conclusion of this study, with regard to the most-produced plays, is that the one most popular play among schools of i the National Thespian Society will probably never be deter- I mined. 2- Sffies I The list of 28 plays revealed only one serious drama, Our Town. This meant that the preference for comedy over serious drama among Thespian Society members was in the ra tio of 27 to 1, and exposed a decided lack of balance in high school theatre productions. Even considering the sub- types within the comedy field, such as mystery, fantasy, farce, "comedy-drama," and other variations, this exceeding dearth of serious drama among Thespian productions showed great neglect on the part of directors of a huge segment of available-dramatic literature. __ Causes for the surfeit of comedy in educational thea-! i jfcre may be deduced with some certainty from conclusions ^ which follow. ) l . 2 . * Authors, Publishers, and Royalties I j i j Broadway authors were lumped together as a group be- i cause the influence of Broadway on high school theatre per- fneated this entire study. There was no doubt in this inves-' tigator's mind that these authors composed the best plays {from the point of view of craftsmanship. The well-known competition for Broadway showings was enough to bear this put. These authors should be induced to write more plays that would have special educational theatre appeal. As it j I appeared, the Broadway fare "trickles down" to the high school level, and only by happenstance does one find Broad way plays suitable for high school use. ! Among writers of Amateur plays, one man had 6 of the * 17 title credits. His skill should be acknowledged, but at J the same time it seemed discouraging, indeed, for the other ; writers of Amateur plays to learn that this individual was also editor of the leading publishing house of the survey. This smacked of a kind of artistic and commercial monopoly. s The plays of the author in question were all comedies and dll adaptations. This influence of the publishing field was1 one factor in the extreme imbalance of Thespian productions noted above. I L Although five publishing houses were represented by f .. “ ..“ 194; ,^he 28 plays, two houses were clearly dominant. The Dramat- ! Ic Publishing Company of Chicago, Illinois, overshadowed the' Field with 13 of the 17 Amateur plays. This company also i published two of the Broadway group, but that area was domi-| mated by the Dramatists Play Service of New York, which pub-’ 1 i 11shed 7 of the 11 Broadway plays. Samuel French, Inc.; | j Row-Peterson and Company; and Longmans, Green and Company : 1 together published 6 of the 28 plays. | The need was clearly shown here for more vigorous bompetition among the publishing houses serving the Amateur ! | market. The fact that all but one of the plays called for j royalty payment indicated that high schools collectively paid out considerable sums yearly to the publishers for play I productions. One can conclude from this study that this ! tiarket was controlled by relatively few publishers. All of this is not to suggest that the publishing houses offered nothing but comedies for high school produc- j tion. On the contrary, the catalogues of each company listed many plays of a serious nature. Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service, who handled most of the Broadway plays, had a full compliment of serious drama. The imbal ance of comedy in the most-produced plays cannot be laid en tirely at the door of the publishing houses. After all, the play director makes the choice of, plays, and the commercial publishing houses are not to be overly criticized for an swering a demand. r ■....................■ ■ “ .........■ ■ ...................■ ........................................................“ .......■ ............. i " 9 5 ! A re-evaluation of the aims and objectives of educa tional theatre seemed in order for authors, publishers, and directors combined. A playbook is something of a textbook i in its influence on the student’s mind. Within a desirable variety of play offerings the need is clear for more well- i written serious drama and the production of such drama. Perhaps the fundamental difficulty in the theatre j picture today is that the writer is not widely recognized as the first artist of the theatre and given status as such. Playwriting is a fine art in its best expression. What the i Writer has to say and how he says it should be the starting | £>oint of modern theatre practice. Until this is recognized I dnd followed the playwright for educational theatre will continue to show up as a mere craftsman, and often a shaky i one at that, hemmed in by artificial restrictions. Among the writers, publishers, and play directors a j kind of vicious cycle seems to have grown up. To sell his I f material the writer must satisfy the publishing taboos. The publisher in turn discovers what will sell best to the high school market. The play director (probably the real villain in the sequence) is pressured by publisher publicity to do the easy-to-produce play. And so the cycle continues. One way to accomplish a break in this circle can be observed from the conclusions below in regard to play classification and sources. 4. Classification and Sources I The fact that there were no Standard, or Classical, plays in the group of 28 outlined more sharply certain points made earlier in relationship to play types. Standard] » plays, such as Little Women, seem to have a way of being i watered down to become more palatable for high school pro duction. This particular play appeared in an all-woman ver- ; 3ion that has proved highly popular. This point was further' emphasized by the fact that not only were there no Standard jplays in the select 28, but outside of Pride and Prejudice, 1 i Jane Eyre, and The Barretts of Wimpole Street, which could ! bonceivably be called Standard, not one classical play has . ever appeared on the Thespian rolls as having had at least 10 productions in one year.-*- Considering the heavy influence of Broadway plays al- ! ready noted, it was nevertheless a fact that 17 of the 28 plays were of the Amateur classification, that is, without | i Broadway history and written especially for the school mar ket. Writers of original plays for the Amateur field must observe, however, that less than half (13) of the 28 were Originals. For that matter, only 5 of the 13 Originals were plays without a Broadway background. The bulk of the plays were adaptations of popular novels, radio, and television plays. 1Cf. Table I, pp. 24-27. I This shows that publishers and directors were very hesitant to experiment with the original play, a serious count against the welfare of educational theatre. The rea- ' son for the large number of adaptations (generally comedies) was apparent: a ready-made audience. The publisher's com- i mercial viewpoint in this regard was easily understood; that' of the director was a little more difficult to fathom. Why ; Should the high school play director (or college, for that j ! matter) fear the new play? The director has very little to i * lose in case his original play should fail. Only small i amounts of money are ever involved. Compared to the zest, ) 1 / adventure, and completely healthful theatre experience in- ' volved in producing an original play the risk is small, inX^ ! i deed. -The answer from this investigator's point of view is | twofold: (1) many original plays are very poorly written, and (2) fear on the part of the director, fear of his own , possible shortcomings, and fear because of the lack of as- j , j : durance afforded by the prestige and authority of the printed playbook. This does not excuse the publishers for not printing more of the worthy originals that come their way. They can give the needed authority to the manuscript. Happily, the publishers do so in a few cases each year; their fear of the original is understandably economic. The end result of this lack of status of original plays and the high incidence of adaptations is discouragement on the part of the writer and a distinct detriment to educational theatre. ! i ' I i p . ' Theme. Structure, and Common Plot Situations ( Statements under this heading must again be colored ! by the fact that all but one of the 28 plays were comedies, j Generally* it was concluded that insofar as plot devices j Were concerned there were many fine and well-written plays in the group. The handling of individual devices themselves* however* gave rise to certain more specific conclusions, i Basically* the themes employed for all of the plays : j ! were theatrically worth while. The dominant theme was de termined to be youth solving the problems of growing up. While it was not considered the prerogative of this study toj indicate that any individual play was a poor play* this in- J vestigator concluded that the handling of theme in many of the Amateur plays was shallow and calculated for surface ef fect, falling to show deep understanding and penetrating de-1 lineation. One need only contrast Our Town with any of the 1 Amateur plays to grasp this fact. The play structure* being of the three-act integrated form in 20 of the 28 plays, indicated that conformity to a Standard pattern was the rule in most playwriting. Our Town was the play considered to have had the most influence structure-wise on the later plays In the group. Its narra tor technique showed up in four of the later published plays* and the episodic form* while perhaps not so direct an influ ence, . . was used in 5 later plays. r ~ ■ ~................... — ........... ............................ 1991 ■ The fact that the major rivalry found in the plays j I i was between child and parent was to be expected, since 22 of; i 1 the 28 were plays with a family situation. Within various nome groups there was, naturally, considerable variety, but as a basic plot device the family situation has most cer tainly been overworked. | The most-produced plays of the Thespian Society showed a relatively "safe" attitude toward school as an in stitution. A few of the plays were mildly satirical on this' point. Those which showed a negative attitude harked back ; I to an outdated point of view toward education for minor com edy effect. 6. Character 1 The character statistics and various other tabula tions found in this area brought into focus a major fault j inherent in the plays of educational theatre--the lack of a | realistic approach to their interpretation of life. ' The play casts were predominantly female; 20 of the leading juvenile characters were girls, only 4 were boys. This indicated that drama activity in high school attracted jnany more girls than boys, and that educational theatre had . the difficult task of competing with athletics and other school activities for the students' time. This rather obvi ous environmental factor apparently had a far reaching ef fect on writers and publishers for the school market. i _ Thepresentation of family through.character was !found to be unrealistic in many ways. It was sugar-coated. 1 jlhe professional status of parents was nearly always execu- < ! i | i fcive. Problems of broken homes were never treated. Parents' were shown as nearly always sympathetic to their children's I needs, and fathers were the perennial "goats" of the family. I A major unrealistic treatment of character was found in the handling of the juvenile villain. The lack of forth- | fight dealing with this important dramatic character added up to a general thematic and structural weakness in many of the plays. The use of type characters such as the Comic Maid, ! the Dominant Woman, the Other Woman, and sundry characters I i | ( indicated that educational theatre had its own set of stock comedy characters. > Z' Production Effects ; The average Thespian play was placed either in the New York or Midwest area, and had one set--a living room, ihis was the picture repeated again and again in the 28 most-produced plays. Granted the variety that could be ob tained within these limitations, the settings for the plays of this study revealed an overwhelming monotony. The empha sis was upon simplicity. Imaginative uses of staging de- i vices were not often called for. A hopeful note for educational theatre in this realm was demonstrated by two recently published plays that at- talned the most-produced list. These, called for an [ “ ~ "■ 2 0 1 ’ exterior-interior set and a complete exterior, respectively.1 Jn other words, given good plays that call for such imagina-' i five sets, high school theatre groups responded by producing; j them. Properties, sound, and lighting effects carried out the emphasis on production simplicity. Properties seemed to! be the one area which consistently attained a moderate de- i f gree of complexity. Prom this it may be concluded that high School students were able to borrow or build fairly complex 1 j ' properties, but lacked training, equipment, or direction for ! . devising complicated lighting or sound effects. t i ! The costume play was not a rare thing on the educa tional theatre stage. Plays of a period older than mid nineteenth century, however, did not appear among the most | i , broduced. Costumes of the 1920’s and early 1900's had a de gree of popularity; in fact, 2 of the 5 most popular plays, Our Town and Our Hearts Were Young And Gay. had this re- quirement. Music was used extensively in Thespian plays. Pri marily instrumental music of the popular variety was re quired. Student actors were not often required to sing or jplay instruments on stage, but this activity occurred in the most-produced plays as often as instances of recorded music. Dancing was talked about more than it was performed in high school plays. One of the ironic features of this study was the finding that so much of the action revolved around dances or parties, yet these affairs never material- i ized on the stage. Little use was made of ballet or modern lancing. The former came in only for satirical purposes. ,3. Social and Moral Values Educational theatre was largely dependent upon Broad way for the mature handling of social and moral values, fcrhis highlighted another basic weakness of Amateur plays: they seldom came to grips with real and vital problems. Again, the accent on comedy was at least partially responsi ble for this condition. The one area where the Amateur plays seemed to be most effective was in their handling of problems of dishon esty. There were more instances of punishment for dishon esty in the Amateur plays than in the Broadway offerings. But considering that actually villainous characters were jseldom used in Amateur plays, the effectiveness of this pun ishment was somewhat lessened. The social and moral values presented by the Broadway plays in high school theatre must come into question. Plays bn Broadway run the gamut of human values. It is their function to do so. Whether a play is too mature or down- iright unhealthy for educational theatre is a matter for the individual high school director to decide. There will be little agreement on this score. Arsenic And Old Lace and Night of January l6th would hardly measure up to Marion Un derwood1 s criteria listed in the Review of Literature of r ..................... ..""" 203: i p this study; yet these two dramas were high on the list of i i most-produced plays. i Putting the matter of social and moral values into a . I larger context, theatre itself is a moral and social process] jVlaxwell Anderson says that the theatre is a temple where 1 morality is constantly on trial.^ This is a lofty concept, i Put what could be more fitting for educational theatre? i With this in mind, it becomes apparent that the whole proc- ' ess of choosing a play for high school theatre becomes a i moral one--whether the choice is a right one or a wrong one j i for the needs of the students involved. This makes the in dividual areas tabulated in this study assume a proper and f perhaps less significant proportion, but it does point up ! I ! the need for a greater variety of plays to give students the1 opportunity of participating vicariously in wholesome and Challenging moral and social situations in preparation for the realities they will face in later life. f VI. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH This study was somewhat unique in that it was one of the first efforts to gain an insight into high school thea tre production on a national scale. Rather severe limita tions were placed upon this survey, and because of that, 2Cf. ante, pp. 16-17. ^Maxwell Anderson, et al., The Bases of Artistic Cre ation ...(Rutgers: University Press, 1942), PP- 8-10. several suggestions for further research present themselves: i , 1. A similar study of the most produced plays by i ! members of the National Thespian Society should be repeated ■ ! in ten years and compared with the findings of this study. I 2. The same type of research should be carried out for the most-produced plays on the college theatre level. 3. A study of play production in non-Thespian high i i Schools of the United States needs to be conducted with the : same objectives as this research. I 4. The influence of play publishers on educational . theatre should be explored thoroughly. An analysis of their catalogues and their fostering of educational theatre needs to be made. ! t I I 5* A national survey is warranted to determine the | ; i directing personnel of high school theatres; the extent of their training and their knowledge of educational theatre objectives. 6. A study of the total playbill of selected high Schools of the nation over a period of years would provide a means of determining the aspect of variety in high school play production. r B I B L I O G R A P H Y BIBLIOGRAPHY f i A. BOOKS : Anderson, Maxwell, et al. The Bases of Artistic Creation. I Rutgers: University Press,1942. i i Archer, William. Playmaking. Boston: Small, Maynard and ! Company, 1912. ; Berelson, Bernard. Content Analysis in Communication Re- ! search. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952. Butcher, S. H. Aristotle * s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art♦ I New York: Dover Publications, 1951* Clark, Barrett (ed.). European Theories of Drama♦ New York: Crown Publishers, Inc~ 1947. Cooper, Charles W. Preface to Drama. New York: The Ronald- 1 Press Company, 1955- Dietrich, John. Play Direction. New York: Prentice-Hall, j Inc., 1953. Fairchild, Henry Pratt (ed.). Dictionary of Sociology. New: York: The Philosophical Library, 1944. i Gallup, George. A Guide to Public Opinion Polls. Prince- ! ton: University Press, 1944. j ! Good, Carter V., and Douglas E. Scates. Methods of Research. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 19547 Heffner, H. C., et al. Modern Theatre Practice. New York: F. S. Crofts and Company, 1938. Hewitt, Bernard. The Art and Craft of Play Production. Chicago: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1940. Isaacs, Edith J. R. The Negro in the American Theatre♦ New York: Theatre Arts, Inc., 1947- Millet, F. B., and G. E. Bentley. The Art of the Drama. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1935- Runes, Dagobert (ed.). The Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: The Philosophical Library, 1942. ‘ ... '... '207, B. PERIODICALS Diesel, Leota. "Samuel French, The House That Plays Built,"’ I Theatre Arts, XXXIX (August, 1955)* 93* Dietrich, John. "Dramatic Activity in American Colleges, 1946-47," The Quarterly Journal of Speech. XXXIV (April, 1948), 183-190. Gee, R. C., and J. E. Dietrich. "A Survey of Dramatic Ac- ! tivity in Wisconsin High Schools, 1947“48," The Quarter- ly Journal of Speech t XXXVI (April, 1950), 65-70. 1 ; Hatlen, Theodore. "College and University Productions, 1949-1950," Educational Theatre Journal, III (May, 1951)* 142. ! J _______ . "College and University Productions, 1950-1951 *" Educational Theatre Journal, IV (May, 1952), 143-145. j _______ . "College and University Productions, 1951-1952," ! Educational Theatre Journal. V (May, 1953)* 184-185. j . I j _______ . "A Survey of College and University Play Produc- ! tions, 1948-49," Educational Theatre Journal, II (May, } 1950), 154-158. Jarman, Rufus. "The Heck With Broadway," The Saturday Even ing Post, April 28, 1951 * p. 28. 1 Miller, Leon C. "As I See It," Dramatics, XXVI (November, ! 1954), 4. ; j I j _______ (ed.). Membership Roll. Cincinnati: The National 1 Thespian Society, 1955* _______ . The National Thespian Society: Information. Cin cinnati: The National Thespian Society, 1955- Rice, Elmer. "American Theatre and the Human Spirit," The ! Saturday Review. XXXVIII (December 17, 1955)> 9* Schoell, Edwin. "College and University Productions, 1952- 1953," Educational Theatre Journal, VI (May, 1954), 168- 170. j _______ . "College and University Productions, 1953-1954," Educational Theatre Journal., VII (May, 1955)> 147-150. Underwood, Marion L. "Standards of Play Selection at the Secondary Level," California Journal of Secondary " ‘ " 208’ i Education, XXVIII (November, 1953), 404-406. C. PLAYB00KS Ohodorov, J., and J. Fields. Junior Miss. New York: Dra- j matists Play Service, 1941. i j Complete Catalogue of Plays, 1954-55. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1954. 1 Davidson, William. Brother Goose. Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1942. De Forest, Marion. Little Women. New York: Samuel French,- Inc., 1914. : goldsmith, Clifford. What A Life. New York: Dramatists 1 j Play Service, 1939. Kaufman, G., and M. Hart. You Can* t Take It With You. New : j York: Dramatists Play Service, 1940. Kerr, Jean. Our Hearts Were Young And Gay. Chicago: The j Dramatic Publishing Company, 1946. i ' kesselring, Joseph. Arsenic And Old Lace. New York: Dra- ; matists Play Service, 1942. Krasna, Norman. Dear Ruth. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1945* Laurence, Kristin. Little Women. Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1941. Leslie, Aleen. A Date With Judy. Chicago: The Dramatic ' Publishing Company, 1946. Longmans1 Plays. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1954. Martens, Anne C. Don* t Take My Penny. Chicago: The Dra matic Publishing Company, 194oV _______ . One Foot In Heaven. Chicago: The Dramatic Pub lishing Company, 1948. . _______ . Seventeenth Summer. Chicago: The Dramatic Pub lishing Company, 1949. 1954-55 Catalogue of Plays. Chicago: The Dramatic Publish-' 1 ing Company, 1954. I j 1 Patrick, John. The Curious Savage. New York: Dramatists | j Play Service, 1951- j Pettitt, Wilfred H. Nine Girls. Chicago: The Dramatic | Publishing Company, 1943. i Rand, Ayn. Night of January l6th. New York: Longmans, i Green and Company- ^ 19367 Ravold, John. Little Women. New York: Samuel French, j Inc., 1934. j _______. Little Women (musical). New York: Samuel French,- Inc., 1934. j ! Roos, William. January Thaw. Chicago: The Dramatic Pub- | lishing Company, 1945- i Row-Peterson Plays. Chicago: Row-Peterson and Company, 1954. I Ryerson, F., and C. Clements. Ever Since Eve. New York: . Samuel French, Inc., 1941. _______ . June Mad. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1939. ! The Samuel French Basic Catalogue of Plays. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1953. Sergei, Christopher. Cheaper By The Dozen. Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1950. _______. Meet Me In St. Louis,. Chicago: The Dramatic Pub lishing Company, 1948. j _______. Men Are Like Streetcars. Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1951* j _______. Mother Is A Freshman. Chicago: The Dramatic Pub-' lishing Company, 1949. I ; _______. Our Miss Brooks. Chicago: The Dramatic Publish ing Company, 1950. , _______. We Shook The Family Tree. Chicago: The Dramatic 1 ; Publishing Company, 1944. Tarpley, Ken and Vera. The Little Dog Laughed. Evanston: i_ . Row-Peterson and. Company, 195! • Van Druten, John. I Remember Mama. New York: Dramatists | Play Service, 194-5* kattron, Prank. Green Valley. Evanston: Row-Peterson and Company, 1951* Wilder, Thornton. Our Town. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1939* D. UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL McMahon, Fred R., Jr. "A Descriptive Survey of the Status of Dramatic Education and Production in the Junior Col- ! leges of California, 1949-1950." Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, February, 1954-. A PP E ND I C E S APPENDIX A TEXTS OP THE PUBLISHERS' LETTERS ! APPENDIX A ! i l I. INTRODUCTION j While planning the areas for research in this study, i the play publishing companies seemed a likely group from Which to obtain information. A group of nine companies, in-* pluding the largest and oldest as well as the smallest and newest, were selected to be contacted. The object in mind Was to secure authentic figures as to what plays had sold the most number of copies over the years and thus proved themselves to be most popular. j In order to give authority and dignity to the requestj j for information, the letters were sent out over the signa- I f i jfcure of Dr. James H. Butler, Chairman of the Drama Depart ment of the University of Southern California. Eight pub- ! lishers responded to the original request. Their replies ■ are reproduced below as an interesting side-light to the preliminary work of this study. II. TEXTS OF THE PUBLISHERS' LETTERS THE DRAMA SHOP March l6, 1955 Dear Mr. Butler: ^ Your letter of February 23rd was placed on my desk for a personal answer while I was away because of illness. In going over your plan I am afraid we will be of very lit tle help to you in your request. Last June we purchased the Ivan Bloom Hardin Co. from! the original owner in Des Moines and moved it to Mason City j where it was combined with The Drama Shop which we have ! bwned and operated for some time. We do not have records j for the Ivan Bloom Hardin Co. regarding names or productions- bf individual plays prior to that time. Our Drama shop, While we dealt in a certain amount of high school materials, bold primarily to grade and Junior High teachers. j Therefore the information which we could give you would be over too short a span to be of much help to you in jyour survey. I am definitely interested in your approach and would be only too happy to help you in any way possible. The period of selling plays ran from October 1st through the, middle of November and has only started for the Senior plays,! Of course a moderate amount of plays were sold throughout the entire season but from the middle of November until the : present date the greatest emphasis has been on declamatory readings. \ f If we can be of any further help to you feel free to ; call upon us at any time. Very truly yours, | IVAN BLOOM HARDIN CO. I & THE DRAMA SHOP i /s/ Helene Amling : LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC. j i March 15, 1955 Dear Prof. Butler: Thank you for your letter of February 22nd. We shall: be glad to cooperate with you to the best of our ability on your proposed survey of the various sources of plays for the: educational theatre, particularly at the high school level. We can probably give you an approximate figure on the number Of our plays produced by high schools over a certain period and also a list of perhaps the top ten one-acts and three- acts, but we would not be in a position to supply actual numbers of performances. Sincerely, Play Department LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. r ."..._ ■■■■■ 215; 1 i j DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE ! i I I March 18, 1955* 1 Dear Mr. Butler: j 1 I have your letter of February 18, and very much wishj it were in my power to help you. The information you ask | for would take a good deal of time to collect, and we simply: cannot spare anyone on the staff to devote the necessary ; firne to it. If it would be of any help to you to know sim ply what some of our most popular high school plays are, I'll be glad to send you that information; but anything more: specific would require an amount of research we are not set up to do. i It's not that this is confidential information which must be withheld from the public--only that we don't have time. I'm very sorry, as I think such a study could be of great value, but we cannot do anything which would inter- j fere with the service we must give our customers. I hope you will understand our position. Sincerely yours, ! /s/ Margaret Sherman Director BAKER'S PLAYS j March 3, 1955! bear Mr. Butler: j We would, of course, like very much to cooperate with you in getting a survey of high school play producing into completed form. However, some of the questions which you include in your letter such as "How many plays were produced over a certain period of years?" "What have been the most popular productions over a certain period?", etc. aren't easy to an swer . First of all, we keep no record of sales unless a production royalty is involved. Our only way of appraising number of productions would be to take our combined sales and average them, striking some figures as the usual number of persons in a cast. Without a doubt there are certain titles that stand 216. way out ahead of others as popular items and we could tabu late them very easily. But to give actual sales figures-- | well, we doubt any publisher would go along with a request as definite as that. 1 If your request for information is of a general type,! and we can answer it, we certainly will, and we hope what- I ever information we supply will be helpful. | i Cordially, i i /s/ Edna Cahill WALTER H. BAKER COMPANY BANNER PLAY BUREAU, INC. ! March 4, 1955, i i Dear Mr. Butler: ■ We will be very happy to cooperate with you In any I way on your survey of high school plays or any other part of the drama. I I The greatest mistake being made today is the use of 1 the New York play by high schools. Only a few such plays 1 are suited to that age; still our directors are taught from ; the University level that they must produce New York latest Shows. I Very truly yours, /s/ Leslie H. Carter, Pres. Banner Play Bureau, Inc. WETMORE DECLAMATION BUREAU March 8, 1955' Dear Mr. Butler: In reply to your letter of February 24 should say that Miss Wetmore Is away from the office on a two month tour of South America. I cannot say, of course, whether Miss Wetmore would care to participate in the survey you mention but if it is not too late and you would care to write again about the first of May, she will be here at that time to answer you. Sincerely, 4 i WETMORE DECLAMATION BUREAU /s/ Hazel M. Thompson, Secretary ROW-PETERSON AND COMPANY I i February 28, 1955’ Dear Prof. Butler: 1 1 Over the past several years we have conscientiously endeavored to cooperate with various schools and persons who have been doing research on various topics pertaining to the theatre. Naturally, we have been willing to cooperate when-; bver we could, but the demands on our time and staff have become so great that we have had to curtail such "participa-j tion." I Many of these projects, like yours, require our sup- ; plying what we consider confidential material. Unfortunate ly, the persons and schools have been unwilling to consider the material in that light; and we have decided, therefore, not to supply information of a confidential nature in the future. ■ To the extent that your survey will require informa- i tion outside the confidential category, we are willing to be of what assistance we can. We definitely will not supply I specific information as to "numbers of productions, most popular titles," etc. We trust this answers the inquiry you have raised in your letter of February 18th. Sincerely yours, Drama Editors ROW-PETERSON & COMPANY THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY March 1, 1955 f Dear Mr. Butler: I A study of the source of plays for the educational theatre, particularly at the high school level, sounds like a very useful project. Unfortunately, our records are not set.up.in a way that would enable us to determine, without bxcessive clerical work in our files, how many of our plays Were produced in any given year. We could probably give you! some idea as to the relative popularity of our most popular ■ titles for any given year during the past ten. t If there is any other way that we can assist, I hope s you will let us know, and we will do what we can. I believe! some information of use to such a study might be procured from the National Thespians Society, College Hill Station, < Cincinnati 24, Ohio. * ! We would certainly be extremely interested in seeing • a copy of the finished study if it is made. [ Cordially yours, THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY /s/ Clark E. Sergei, Vice President APPENDIX B SYNOPSES OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED 1 APPENDIX B i i SYNOPSES OF THE PLAYS SURVEYED ) 1 ! June Mad j I Penny Wood, a fifteen-year-old girl, is shown with ; ner understanding mother and father, and happily bickering ! With Chuck, the boy next door, with whom she has grown up. jier young uncle brings a rich friend home from college for the week-end. Penny has a disillusioning first-love affair ; with this boy, who is obviously merely playing with her. I The action builds to a party for which Penny endeavors to get a very flashy dress in order to impress the college boy.j Her parents object to her plans. She gets the dress but ! suffers humiliating consequences, and through this comes to ! a larger understanding of herself. Greater values are shown| to Penny through the heroic actions of Chuck, who perpe trates a successful glider flight in spite of the objections of his father and emerges as the true ideal for Penny. What A Life2 Henry Aldrich, a teen-aged boy, finds it difficult to absorb book learning and is in constant trouble at school. ■^Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, June Mad (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1939)* 1 2Clifford Goldsmith, What A Life (New York: Drama tists Play Service, 1939)* He frequently resorts to subterfuge in order to get by. His! i main problem revolves around getting enough money to take j i jBarbara Pearson to the coming dance. Since Henry’s father i was a Phi Beta Kappa, Henry's poor scholastic showing is a | blow to the family pride. His mother will allow Henry to go I ! to the dance only if he receives the highest grade in the ! 1 class for the history test. Forced by this alternative, Henry cribs from the paper of his arch-rival, George Bigelow, and is found out. George, however, is discovered to have t istolen and pawned the band instruments in Henry's name. I George is rightfully punished and Henry is vindicated. A ! heal talent for drawing caricatures is recognized in Henry., and his future is planned accordingly. , * 3 Our TownJ ! This play might be described as a kind of documentary) 1 ■ showing the way people livpd in Grovers Corners, New Hamp- : shire, during the early years of this century. Incidents in, the lives of two families make up the story. Emily Webb , lives next door to George Gibbs. His father is a doctor and Mr. Webb is editor of the town newspaper. They grow up to gether in simple surroundings and get married just after graduating from high school. George has decided not to go ! I on to college but to take over his uncle's farm. After nine \ j -^Thornton Wilder, Our Town (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1939). “ ‘ _ ' 222: years of married life, Emily dies in childbirth. In a scene' of fantasy, she relives the events of her twelfth birthday, j jand is then content to leave the land of the living. The j play calls for the absence of conventional scenery and ex- j i j t tensive pantomime is employed. The leading character of the; ’ s play is the Stage Manager who acts as Narrator and plays i several parts in the action. ' j i You Can't Take It With You ! The slightly scatter-brained but eminently happy fam-j ily of the Sycamores live in an old house in New York. Everyone does just about what he pleases under the benevo lent guidance of the old grandfather, Martin Vanderhoff. ! j ! fchis old gentleman suddenly decided, years before, that j ! \ jbhere was no point in spending his life making money, so he , gave up business and devotes his life to living and letting , live. The U. S. Treasury has caught up with his non-payment of income tax and sends a man to get it. Vanderhof refuses, saying that the government only spends the money foolishly. 1 Alice Sycamore, Martin's granddaughter, is in love with Tony Kirby, son of a Wall Street tycoon, but hesitates ; to marry him because she feels the aberrations of her family- wili not be favorable to the wealthy Kirbys. The two fami lies come to know each other in literally explosive i i i George Kaufman and Moss Hart, You Can't Take It With1 You (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 19'4o'). circumstances, however, as the fireworks manufactured by father Sycamore go off in the basement during their meetingJ 1 3ut the easy-going way of life exemplified by Grandfather Vanderhof wins out over the stuffed shirt attitude. He wins! j nis battle over the income tax when it is discovered that j his name was given to an indigent who died while living with 1 i • j the family years ago, and as far as the government is con- | ! [ ! 1 berned he is dead. Alice realizes that she has nothing to fear because of her scatterbrained family, and the Kirbys 1 See the foolishness of a life devoted solely to making money* | 1 Don1t Take My Pennv^ j Penny Pringle, sixteen, gets the idea that she may bej chosen to play the lead in a forthcoming Hollywood picture, trhe author of the book to be dramatized is coming to town in a nation-wide search for prospects to fill the role. In the^ Pringle household is a maid named Sally, a former child ac- j tress, who is actually slated to play the part. When Pen- ! ny's boy friend, Kerry, hears of her intention, he resolves hot to lose Penny to Hollywood. With the help of a friend, Kerry impersonates the author and persuades Penny that she Is not suitable movie material. Meanwhile, Sally has fallen In love with Penny's brother and really doesn't want the movie role. Mr. and Mrs. Pringle, while all this is going : ; ________________ i : ^ A n n e c. Martens, Don't Take My Penny (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 194b). on, are so absorbed in their own lives that they are unaware; Of the problems of their children. When the author shows up> | i he does not choose Penny for the role, but rather her sister* ! I I ! Mavis, who has been working at a minor radio job. The fam- j lly is finally straightened out by the grandmother who lives! with them and who aids and abets in the juvenile conniving. ' l Ever Since Eve^ - j Johnny Clover has been made editor of his high school' fiewspaper, and together with his pal, Spud, sets up an of- ; fice in the Clover house just across the street from the jschool. The boy's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Clover, try to help but their efforts are not appreciated. The boys find to i their disgust that Susan, the girl next door, has been as- I I signed as their assistant editor. Lucybelle, a girl from , the South, fascinates both the boys and they co-operate in ! dating her and in the process neglect Susan. Susan's ef- s forts to help the boys edit the paper results in their both coming down with measles from contact with an infected type writer. Later, Susan succeeds in creating minor havoc by misprinting the Christmas edition of the paper and causing a faculty scandal which results in the Principal's marrying the Journalism instructor. As it turns out, Susan's activi ty has been in a good cause. The boys come to realize her I ; ' | ! ___________________ I i Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements, Ever Since Eve i -(New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1941). i yalue to the paper, and Susan learns something of the prob- 1 I ; lems of handling men. Mr. and Mrs. Clover serve as gentle j guiding forces for the adolescents. ' 1 • 7 1 Brother Goose1 j ' Jeff Adams, about 25 and an architect by profession, is forced by circumstances into the sole care of his younger; sisters and brother. They live in an old-fashioned house, j badly in need of a thorough housecleaning. Because of the carefree nature of the children, Jeff cannot get a house keeper to stay with them until Peggy, a hosiery saleswoman, i volunteers for the job. Another young woman, Lenore, who < has just inherited a fortune, has designs on Jeff. She is pordially hated by everyone but Jeff. Each of the Adams j children has his particular ambitions. Wes is madly in love; with a southern girl who lives next door; Carol writes jingles for a breakfast food contest; and Hyacinth, a ten- ■ \ s year-old tom boy, plays football. It is principally through' the plotting of the children that Lenore’s plans for Jeff i are foiled and Peggy gets him. Lenore is shown to be mean and selfish in that she plots to force Jeff to accept her by> discouraging his clients. Peggy shows up at the last mo- ! ment with a much needed architectural deal for Jeff, enabl- , Ing him to keep his business going. ^William Davidson, Brother Goose (Chicago: The Dra matic Publishing Company, 19^2}. o Junior Miss i I Judy Graves, thirteen, and daughter of a New York at- I torney is going through the pangs of early adolescence. She Lives in an apartment with her mother and father, an older sister, and a maid. Showing the influence of movies on her thinking, Judy fancies that her father is having an affair \ ) with the daughter of his employer. Together with Puffy, a rowdy adolescent girl friend, Judy plots to "save" her fami ly. When her uncle comes to visit she mistakenly thinks that he is an ex-convict, and proceeds to rehabilitate him I by making a match between him and the boss’s daughter. When j these machinations come to a head, Mr. Graves is discharged knd it looks as though the family is really in a bad way. Judy is blamed for the whole debacle. However, her newly Required boy friend turns out to be the son of a very influ ential lawyer and this connection forces Mr. Graves’ employ er to take him back as a junior partner. The match between i the uncle and the boss’s daughter turns out well. During and through all this process, Judy acquires a more mature point of view. Little Women^ In this version of the well known Luisa M. Alcott O | Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields, Junior Miss (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 19^1)* i ^Kristin Laurence, Little Women (Chicago: The Dra matic..Publishing Company, 19J1). “ ' 227 story, no men appear on the stage. The action is set in the1 , i Civil War period. Mr. March, a minister, is away serving asl i a Chaplain in the Army. His four daughters, ranging in age . Prom 16 to 12, live with their mother in strained wartime ! circumstances. Their life revolves around their home and i 1 1 their plans for the future. Meg, the eldest, has ideas about t getting married. Jo, the tomboy, wants to be a writer. ■ Beth, the third daughter, is timid and plays the piano, while Amy, the youngest, is skilled at drawing and has difficulty * [ ; t pronouncing large words. ; The girls are happy together and act out the plays ! that Jo writes. Beth is given a piano by a kindly neighbor ^ jfor whom she knitted a pair of slippers. Unwittingly, Jo burns off some of Meg's hair while curling it for a party, j j Jo also refuses to allow Amy to accompany the older girls to; i this party, and in retaliation Amy burns Jo's story manu- 1 jscript. This causes a violent quarrel. Later, while skat- : ing on the lake, Amy falls through the ice because of Jo's negligence. Through this crisis, the girls are reconciled. A greater crisis occurs when news comes that Mr. March is ill and Marmee (Mrs. March) has to go to Washington to care for him. The girls are left under the supervision of crotchety old Aunt March. Jo sells her hair to help fi nance her mother's trip. The girls find housekeeping diffi cult without their mother. Beth contracts scarlet fever and almost dies before Mrs. March returns to nurse her back to L * r ""..... “ .... ■■.... " 228: nealth. About a year later the girls find that their sisterly i i relationships are changing. Meg is about to be married, 1 jn.uch to Jo's horror. But one of Jo's stories is published, : i and it seems that a career is opening for her. Facing an i exciting future, the girls are made even more happy by the i heturn of their father at the final curtain. j Nine Girls10 I While at their sorority clubhouse in the mountains, ) nine college girls learn of the murder of one of their mem- , hers the evening before. Most affected by the news is Alice who has just received a letter from Paula, the murdered girl} S written the day before her demise. While the other girls go| down to the Ranger Station to call their parents, Mary, a sorority sister and daughter of an underprivileged family, I : i stays with Alice to comfort her. By having Alice write a | letter to her parents explaining that she no longer wants to! live now that her best friend Paula is dead, Mary reveals 1 herself to be the killer of the dead girl. Her motive was 1 that Paula had stolen away her boy friend. Having persuaded Alice to write this note without arousing her suspicions, ; kary causes Alice to take an overdose of sleeping pills and i puts her body in a closet. The other girls return and the ; ! ________________ I 10Wilfred H. Pettit, Nine Girls (Chicago: The Dra matic Publishing Company, 1943). n ~ 229, group stays in the cabin over night, not realizing that i I jAlice is missing. I 1 ^ The next morning Alice’s body is found and all except I one of the girls think that she committed suicide. The let”) i ter written by Alice the night before does not convince Eve,! a psychology major, and best friend of Mary. She begins to [ question the whole situation. Mary becomes alarmed and ; jplots the death of Eve by tampering with the steering mech- ; i ] } hnism of her car. Foiled in this attempt to do away with ? feve, Mary finally arranges to be alone with her after the j bther girls have departed. She confronts Eve, explaining I * her motives for the other killings, and is about to murder 1 i her when the other girls return to thwart her intention. ! ! Mary is exposed as the murderess and is waiting to be taken * I into custody at the final curtain. 1 Arsenic And Old Lace11 j Two elderly ladies from a family tinged with insanity make a practice of gently poisoning lonely old men. With the help of nephew Teddy, who thinks he is Theodore Roose velt, they bury the bodies in the cellar of their home. This has been going on for some time. Another nephew, ap- ; parently sane, is a drama critic and in love with a girl who lives nearby. He discovers the old ladies' secret and is 11Joseph Kesselring, Arsenic And Old Lace (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 19^2)• about to turn them over to the police when a third nephew enters the picture. This fellow is criminally insane and 1 has had his face lifted to look like Boris Karloff. He and his accomplice have a dead body to hide. There is much con-; fusion as bodies are exchanged and people match wits to gain' farcical objectives. In the end the critic nephew finds out that he is not a member of the family after all, and is free* to marry the girl without fear of insanity in the family. The various insane characters are taken care of with the ex- t I ception of the two charming old ladies who are about to : I eiaim another victim as the curtain falls. Night of January l6th12 \ In this play a trial supposedly is enacted in its en-; tirety with the audience as spectators. The jury is chosen I from the audience and is free to render a verdict of guilty j or not guilty as they see fit. The trial is between the , State of New York versus Karen Andre who is accused of mur- j dering her former employer and lover, Bjorn Faulkner. Vari ous witnesses are called as the trial proceeds. It soon be comes obvious that there is a very involved story behind the death of Faulkner. He was a ruthless financial wizard and many people had motives for killing him. By the time the trial goes to the jury there is seemingly as much reason for! 12Ayn Rand, Night of January 16th (New York: Long mans, Green and Company, 1936). f ' . . . . . . . . . " " " " . . " ■ . . . . . . . ■ 2 3 1 ; acquitting the defendant as there is for finding her guilty., i • Pew of the characters are drawn for sympathy. ; 1 I ' k Date With Judy1^ Judy Foster is 16 and wants to raise money for the Community Relief Fund so that she can win the prize and be . Crowned queen of the ball. In order to get the most money she enters a great many newspaper and magazine contests, kost of her prizes turn out to be merchandise and items which cause embarrassment to her family. Her boy friend, j Qogie, wants to take Judy to the coming dance, but Judy j keeps putting him off, even after he writes a song about her. When Judy’s "true confession" which she wrote for publica- ! tion is read as her mother’s PTA paper, as much confusion is: caused as when her father wins the "kissable lips" prize at j her instigation. This happens at the same time that Judy ! and her girl friend are emoting in order to impress a visit-' ing stage producer. To redeem herself Judy works hard sell-j ing subscriptions to the Relief Fund, but is outsold by her rival. On the night of the grand ball Judy gets involved in a friend’s elopement and is thought for a time to be married. News comes that the rival queen of the ball has hives and Judy, the runner-up, leaves with her bdy friend to be Crowned. ■^Aleen Leslie, A Date With Judy (Chicago: The Dra- ! matic Publishing Company, 19 n .......................... ~.....~ ... 232^ s 14 January Thaw i Herbert Gage, a writer, has moved from New York with ; his family into an old Connecticut farm house. As they are ! getting settled down, he to his writing and Mrs. Gage to re-1 modeling antiques, the original owners who were thought to be dead turn up. The Rockwoods, an elderly, dour New Eng- \ land couple, had left for an extended trip years before and | had presumably abandoned their farm. Now they move in with jthe Gages and resume their old habits of living. The two ! families, equally stubborn, live in this odd arrangement for> six months, each refusing to move out in favor of the other., The climax is reached when the city bred Gages are shown to . i I be unable to cope with the hazards of country living in the ' Winter time. The Rockwoods, being natives, are quite com- ' ifortable in their part of the house while the Gages are Starving. The thaw comes when Herbert Gage realizes that in brder to survive he must not only tolerate the Rockwoods but' learn some of their homely wisdom. A compromise is reached when one of the families agrees to move into the remodeled barn. 15 Our Hearts Were Young And Gay Cornelia Otis Skinner and her chum, Emily Kimbraugh, , 1 2 i 1 William Roos, January Thaw (Chicago: The Dramatic 1 Publishing Company, 19^5)• ■^Jean Kerr, Our Hearts Were Young And Gay (Chicago: , The-Dramatic Publishing Company, 19^6) . _ . _ . . . 1 I ...' .....' " “ ...' " ' ... 233 i i both 19, are to spend a summer In Europe for the first time., ! ! In their stateroom on the boat there are many complications ; i I because of the girls' youth and inexperience. Cornelia is i i to study acting with a noted French actor. They meet two young American college men on the way over and a pair of ec-( centric English girls. Cornelia's attack of measles makes 1 i It difficult for them to disembark in France. At the French ! hotel there are more complications with language and odd I r customs. The boys show up again in Paris as do Mr. and Mrs.' t Skinner, Cornelia's parents. Cornelia finds that the French actor Is Interested in her only because of her father's the-, i atrical reputation. When told that she has no talent for j acting Cornelia is in despair but decides anyway to try for ; ' j k career as a monologist. ' ! i ! Dear Ruth1^ Sixteen-year-old Miriam Wilkins writes letters to an airman overseas in order to boost his morale. She signs her1 older sister's name to the letters and also sends along Ruth's picture. The flyer comes home on leave expecting to see Ruth and determined to marry her at once. Not wishing to destroy the beautiful illusion that her little sister has built up and hurt the Lieutenant's feelings, Ruth decides to go along with the gag for a short time until the leave is i 16 Norman Krasna, Dear Ruth (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1945). ever. However, Ruth is already engaged to Albert who in sists on being included on all the dates. Ruth discovers at! i j the last minute that Bill, the flyer, is really the man she : should marry, and her father who is a judge performs a hasty ceremony. I We Shook The Family Tree^ Hildegarde Dolson's date for the prom has to be Fred-1 lie Shermer whose parents make him wear short pants even j though he is graduating from high school. Freddie’s father j employs Mr. Dolson at his bank, so her mother arranges the , date. Hildegarde has caused her father to be suspected of krunkenness when she took the affirmative in the school de- 1 date on Prohibition. Further shame comes to the Dolson’s when their old love letters are distributed about the neigh-f borhood by a mischievous little girl. When the Shermers t visit the Dolson's they are disturbed to find the yard crawling with worms unearthed by the younger brother’s new electrical gadget. Hildegarde urges Freddie to stand up to his parents on the pants issue while she beautifies herself for the prom with a magic mud pack. Freddie's parents enter in time to see her face smeared with the mud as she dashes downstairs frightened by a large fish her brothers have put in the bath tub. The Shermer's house is burglarized and old ^Christopher Sergei, We Shook The Family Tree (Chi cago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1944). letters and a valuable watch are taken. Hildegarde Is sus pected. The culprit turns out to be Freddie who finally as-' perted himself by trading graduation gifts for a pair of ' Long pants and is now ready to take Hildegarde to the prom, j Meet Me In St. Louis1^ ! Mr. Smith has been offered a better paying job in Newi i i York, but his family is very much opposed to moving from their comfortable home in St. Louis. His four spirited i daughters, led by Rose, the eldest, plot to make their fath- i er seem unworthy of the New York position and to give a false impression of their family life to Mr. Dodge, his em- 1 ployer. Thus they hope to remain in St. Louis. They go tooj j ’ ar in their antics, however, and Mr. Smith is fired. The j girls have won their point but now face a much worse situa- j tion. Rose sees through a sneaky attempt by a jealous em ployee to make it impossible for Mr. Smith to return to work. t She resolutely stands up for her father. Mr. Dodge shows up, very contrite, and asks Mr. Smith to return to work. All of this happens with the opening of the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904 as the background for the action. I Remember M a m a19 This play relates incidents in the life of a ^Christopher Sergei, Meet Me In St. Louis (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 19^877 ^ ___1^John Van Druten, I Remember Mama (New York: Norwegian family living in San Francisco about 1910. Katrin, ! | the eldest daughter, is the narrator and the story unfolds i ! £n a series of flashbacks. We see how Mama manages the ; household and guides the family through every crisis. In [ s the background to sustain the group in dire emergency is | Mama’s bank account. Mama’s three sisters and Uncle Chris, nominally head of the family, have important parts in the ! i action. In the course of the play Mama helps her youngest | bister to be married, sees a daughter through an illness, Arranges the estate of Uncle Chris, and manages to have i katrin's stories read by a prominent author. When Katrin's j first story is sold, Mama reveals that she has never really i been inside a bank. Her fiction of the bank account was , Maintained to keep her family reassured. ) 20 One Foot In Heaven I A righteous minister named Will Spence comes to the I pastorate at Laketon. He and his family are greeted with a [ run-down parsonage and a congregation riddled with intoler- i ance and selfishness. The Spences live through a series of , crises typical of those that beset a small town minister's family. The youngsters have an especially difficult time ? because of the usual taboos placed upon the social activities Dramatists Play Service, 1945). 20 Anne C. Martens, One Foot In Heaven (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1948). P " ........... ” '.......".. 237 of a preacher’s children. Reverend Spence, however, is a t determined worker for the Lord. He gets a new church i 1 Started, replaces the elderly choir with a children's group,, fights a charge of heresy, and brings feuding and recalci- i trant members of his flock back to the fold. In all of this' i he has the help and inspiration of his devoted wife. The s i ^cenes are introduced by a narrator, Frazier Spence, osten- ! Sibly now occupying the pulpit his father once filled. The ' action of the play takes place about 1910. 21 Mother Is A Freshman Abigail Fortitude Abbot, a widow with a daughter of i college age, has lost all her money. She decides to take j advantage of a scholarship offered at Pointer College for j 1 any woman whose name is Abigail Fortitude. Accordingly, shei enrolls at Pointer as a Freshman. Her daughter is a Sopho- | more. Having an older woman on the campus is quite a prob- ! lem. The Dean seeks every excuse to expel Abigail. The handsome zoology professor, loved by Abigail's daughter, falls in love with Abigail herself. In a mix-up over a gift of a book of poems, Abigail slaps the professor and is ex pelled from Pointer. The professor clears up the misunder standing, Abigail is reinstated, her daughter gets a new perspective on love, and all turns out well. ; 21Christopher Sergei, Mother Is A Freshman (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 19^97- r ..................... *..... 238. 1 22 Seventeenth Summer i ■ i I Angie Morrow, together with her three sisters, face I the coming summer. Angie is 17, thoughtful, quiet, and a good looking girl, but she has never dated. Of her two older sisters, one is about to be married and the other has had only disappointment in love. The youngest sister, Kitty] I fs only 10. Angie meets Jack, a very upstanding young man from Oklahoma and son of the local baker. He begins to date \ Angie, much to the chagrin of Jane, another girl who wants Jack for herself. But Jack and Angie have a wonderful sum- : ’ \ itner of young love until a quarrel occurs. Angie has to go t 1 I jto college in the fall and Jack asks her to marry him in stead. She refuses and Jack turns to Jane on the rebound. 1 i ft looks as though the summer has ended in disaster for ! , Angie, but all is saved when Jack turns up contrite just at the moment Angie is leaving for college. They promise to write. i Our Miss Brooks2- ^ Miss Brooks is a high school teacher who would like very much to be married. She is congratulating herself on having gotten out of directing the senior play this year. How she will not have to battle with Hugo, the athletic Op , Anne C. Martens, Seventeenth Summer (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1949). 2^Christopher Sergei, Our Miss Brooks (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1950T^ __ . _ coach, over the use of the gym. She is interesting Hugo in ; j her knowledge of sailing in the hope that he will ask her to. ; i i f go along with him on a summer cruise when Mr. Wadsworth, the. i I Principal, tells her that she must take over the direction | | i of the senior play after all. Miss Audohon is unable to I carry on with it. Thus Miss Brooks is again stuck with a 1 thankless job and has to combat all of the traditional dif- ; Ticulties of putting on a high school theatre production. Everything is complicated by the fact that the selfish daughter of a school board member is in her cast. Miss ferooks manages with the help of loyal students to bring off : i | k successful production, with Hugo stepping in at the last | tiinute to take over the role of one of the students who is i Stricken with appendicitis. i Cheaper By The Dozen2^ * i Mr. Gilbreath, a time study expert, has a family of ! twelve children. He runs the home life with the same effi- : ciency as a factory, forcing the children to spend all of their wasted time in useful and educational pursuits. It is revealed that Mr. Gilbreath knows that he has heart trouble and wants the family to be able to manage as well as possi ble if he should die. To that end he is anxious that the eldest daughter, Anne, graduate from school ahead of ^Christopher Sergei, Cheaper By The Dozen (Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1950)7 schedule. Anne is beginning to attract boy friends and this! I i enrages her father who feels that it will detract from the i | i progress of her education. Anne manages to keep her boy 1 friend and pass the graduating exams as well. Dad Gilbreath! i Leaves for a management conference from which we know he will not return, fully satisfied that his family is prepared to j operate efficiently without him. Men Are Like Streetcars2^ Maudie Mason, a precocious girl in her early teens, has developed a provocative "line" that enables her to be : Very popular with the boys. Girls of her own age are fasci nated and want to learn her technique. Maudie’s older sis- ! ter, Sylvia, is more subdued and can't seem to attract datesl Because of this their mother arranges for Sylvia to have dates with Maudie's boy friends. This alarms Maudie who de-! termines to get Sylvia married off. She uses her technique ^rith devastating effect, managing to alienate her girl friends, spoil a big business deal for her father, and ere- ■ ate a misunderstanding between Sylvia and the young man she : really cares for. The upheaval has good results, however. Mr. Mason's business deal is seen in a new light because of , i Maudie's activities and culminates successfully. Because of: this the various couples are brought together and Maudie 2^Christopher Sergei, Men Are Like Streetcars (Chi cago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1951)• Realizes that the best line, after all, is the truth. Green Valley2^ Eldon Berry, a young farmer, lives in a fabulously fertile place in California called Green Valley. An unscru-' t i pulous land grabber named Everheel tries to get the valley from him, claiming that the old mining lease is outlawed. ISverheel has already obtained most of the land nearby and j built a dam across Echo creek, forcing the settlers there to pove to higher ground. Daughter of one of these families is: jprim Stokes, in love with the shy Eldon. , | In leveling the land with his tractor, Everheel has uncovered some bones which could be those of Eldon’s ances- ; i tors, early California settlers. Fantastic things happen in, Green Valley. Everything grows to monstrous proportions. The milk from Eldon's cow contains mystic properties which enable one to see strange sights. In order to help Eldon put of his predicament, the ancestral Berrys rise and play havoc with the modern inhabitants. Led by Grampaw Berry, a peppery old 49er, they succeed in frightening and outwitting, Everheel. Liking their stay on earth so well, the spirits refuse to go back to the shades. They capture old Arthur, the gargantuan rooster whose crowing allows the sun to come , up in Green Valley every morning, and decide to hunt for 2^Frank Wattron, Green Valley (Evanston: Row-Peter- son and Company, 1951)• r ” ■ ............... ■ 242 gold once more. j i I It is only after Eldon subdues Lonesome Berry in a 1 i f frontier style fight, and Everheel’s dam is blown up by the gold seekers that normality is returned to Green Valley. Everheel is discouraged permanently and Eldon is finally I ! united with Prim, his valley his own, and his principles in-1 tact. The Little Dog Laughed^ ! Laurie Huntington, a college sophomore, returns home for the summer vacation full of psychological theories. Her1 family, expecting to have a pleasant visit with her, are im-j mediately subjected to penetrating analyses by their daugh- j I ter, somewhat to their consternation. Laurie’s father is in the midst of a business deal and her mother is trying to ; help out the cause by entertaining the wives of the men in- I volved. ! I At a tea held by her mother, Laurie gives the ink blot test to several ladies who leave in anger when the psy chological truth about them is revealed. Among the ladies is the wife of the bank president from whom Laurie's father expected a loan in order to buy a building in which to ex- 1 pand his automobile business. Laurie has meanwhile met a charming young man through the efforts of her younger | 2^Vera and Ken Tarpley, The Little Dog Laughed (Evanston: Row-Peterson and Company, 1951). r ..... — .~ 243 brother who is himself in love with the daughter of Mr. Huntington's business competitor. In order to turn the tables on Laurie and give her a i {taste of her own psychological medicine, her family stages a i tcene before her and her boy friend in which they demon strate the application of her psychological principles upon themselves. Laurie is humiliated and leaves home. Through the efforts of the younger brother, who in vites his girl friend's family over to settle their differ- i fences with the Huntington's, a business partnership is Worked out between the two fathers. This is in part due to i Laurie's ink blot test on the owner of the needed building. i i Laurie returns, a chastened girl, resolved to suspend her psychological experiments. She is reconciled to her boy j i friend as well as to her family. pft The Curious Savage^ - Ethel Savage, an elderly and very wealthy lady, is committed to "The Cloisters" by her designing step children who feel that she is disgracing the family name and spending too much money on impractical humanitarian schemes. "The Cloisters" is a very pleasant place, inhabited by certain people who are too sensitive and gentle to face the harsh realities of the world and are considered by outsiders to be pQ i John Patrick, The Curious Savage (New York: Drama tists Play Service, 1951')'• insane. These guests tell themselves they choose to stay at I ! "The Cloisters" away from the madding world. | Mrs. Savage was able, before her commitment, to Change all of her ten million dollar fortune into negotiable' I ' t bonds. She has brought these with her, unknown to her fami-; ly. As soon as her step children find this out, they storm ! back to "The Cloisters" and demand to know where the bonds ! are hidden. Mrs. Savage tells each of them a different story and the greedy people go looking for the bonds, making1 ifools of themselves in the process. They return, however, hnd threaten to have a truth drug administered to their i foster mother. Faced with this, Mrs. Savage reveals that j the bonds are hidden in her large teddy bear which she car ries everywhere she goes. The bonds are brought out, but one of the inmates turns off the lights at a strategic moments and the bonds disappear. After questioning everyone, the greedy Savages dre chagrined to learn that the bonds have been burned by a recalcitrant guest, and leave "The Cloisters" in complete frustration. Mrs. Savage now learns that she has demon strated that she need not be committed, and further learns that the bonds were not burned but were saved by an under standing nurse, the wife of one of the guests. None of these gentle and understanding people want Mrs. Savage to leave "The Cloisters," but she decides that she must do so. University of Southern California Library
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Wattron, Joseph Frank
(author)
Core Title
A descriptive study of the most popular high school plays in the United States produced by members of the National Thespian Society, 1938-1954
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Communication
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
education, performing arts,OAI-PMH Harvest,theater
Language
English
Contributor
Digitized by ProQuest
(provenance)
Advisor
Stahl, M. (
committee chair
), [illegible] (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-687385
Unique identifier
UC11343535
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DP22306.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-687385 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
DP22306.pdf
Dmrecord
687385
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Wattron, Joseph Frank
Type
texts
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University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
Tags
education, performing arts
theater