Alberta 1917–1954

Drama of the People, for the People, by the People

Publisher
Date
25 Jan 1924
Page Range
7
Genre
Exhibit
Document Type

Drama of the People, for the People, by the People

7

Drama of People for the People, by the People

Mrs. Reeve Gives an Interesting Description of Little Theater

“The Little Theater is a drama of the people for the people and by the people,” Mrs. Reeve explained last night at a meeting in the studio of Gladys Attree.
“Its main objects are to promote the study of the drama, to produce high class plays, both foreign and Canadian, to develop and encourage the talent of a city--not merely dramatic talent, but talent of every kind and sort.”
“The Little Theater should have no pets, no special men or women to be thrust repeatedly forward. Pull and money avail nothing. Talent alone should be the touchstone. The Little Theater would aim to turn the searchlight upon the talent of the city.”
“The difference between the Little Theater and amateur clubs is that the amateur clubs confine themselves to the work of their members. They are therefore narrowed down to a limited field.”
“The difference between the Little Theater and the professional theater is in the fact that the one is a commercial proposition. Plays are put on with the main idea of making money. On the other hand the Little Theater is purely community work done for the love of that work and without pay.”
“We would have in this city not merely a dramatic company, but an organization devoted to the promotion of all the arts. It should help the city with municipal pageants or school pageants. It should produce programs for state teacher conventions and it should hold public meetings in the library or some other hall where plays may be read by the members and individuals tried out and selected.”
“It would draw under its wings all of the little dramatic clubs as community players of the city and it would open its doors wide to the talent of the city.”
Mrs. Reeve proceeded with a very interesting description of the history of the little theater in many cities in different parts of the world.

A Pleasing Exhibition

A clever and most satisfying exhibition of the work carried on was given by the pupils of the Gladys Attree studio. Many and varied were the costumes in which the little tots were dressed, a particularly bright number being the fairy dance. Miss Joyce Hirst gave an artistic number called Dagger Dance , which received the unstinted praise and applause of every one present. This young dancer is graceful, well balanced, and performs in a manner which is highly creditable to her teacher and herself.
That last number on the program, a Chinese pantomime, was well worked up and exhibited, and served to give an insight into all the branches of art to which this studio aspires.
The exhibition opened with the hard work and centopractice which all must go through. The exercises are formed to give every muscle of the body its own particular work, and the children who have been training under this method show marked improvement.
A bright number of the program was the Paper Boy by Phyllis Hirst. This little girl acted the newsy very well, and her soft shoe dancing was distinctly appreciated by the audience.
The female impersonation done by Beverly Cross was exceptionally good, many not knowing until he took off his fair curls that a young boy could be so graceful in all the different dance steps.

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People Mentioned

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is the Technical Director of The Winnifred Eaton Archive and a Developer at Simon Fraser University’s Digital Humanities Innovation Lab (DHIL). He is a graduate of the M.A. program in English at the University of British Columbia where he specialized in Indigenous and diasporic literature, science and technology studies, and the digital humanities.

Mary Chapman

Mary Chapman is the Director of The Winnifred Eaton Archive, a Professor of English, and Academic Director of the Public Humanities Hub at University of British Columbia. She is the author of the award-winning monograph Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and US Modernism (Oxford UP) and of numerous articles about American literature and women writers. She has also edited Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton (McGill-Queen’s UP) and published essays on the Eaton sisters in American Quarterly, MELUS, Legacy, Canadian Literature, and American Periodicals. Her current research project is a microhistory of the Eaton family. For more information, see http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/mchapman/.

Organizations Mentioned

Albertan

Also known as the Calgary Albertan. First established as the Calgary Tribune in 1886. Would be called variations of the Albertan from 1899 until 1980. Had a variety of names until the newspaper was sold to the Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation and renamed the Calgary Sun in 1980.
Written by Samantha Bowen, Joey Takeda, and Mary Chapman

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