Alfred G. Arvold

              The Town in Which You Live
An analysis of the needs of a community with special regard to development of recreational activities.



The Theater in the Country
A thrilling and dramatic story of The Little Country Theater Movement.



The Theater of the Midnight Sun
The theater of Ibsen, Strindberg, etc. (Illustrated.)



The Theater Around the World
A fascinating account of many kinds of theater in many lands.


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ALFRED G. ARVOLD
Widely Known Founder of The Little Country Theater Movement in
America, Who Has Taught More People How to Act Than Any
Producer on Broadway.

REDPATH BUREAU




ALFRED G. ARVOLD
A Minister of Fine Arts in the Country Communities of America —G. Bernard Shaw

ALFRED G. ARVOLD is an outstanding addition to the Redpath list.  He is the noted founder of The Little Country Theater in America and is internationally known for his activities in improving the social side of rural communities of the United States.  Mr. Arvold has traveled extensively, studying the theater in various parts of the world.  He is an excellent speaker and has made a number of appearances, upon invitation, before important dramatic societies and at leading American and European universities.  In addition, he has addressed many popular audiences and is in constant demand by American communities to come and tell them what they can do to develop their recreational activities.  Mr. Arvold and his work have been written up by some of America's best magazines and newspapers.  Mr. Arvold's home is in Fargo, N. D., where he is a professor at North Dakota Agricultural College.



From The Milwaukee Journal, March 12, 1935—Wisconsin Man, Father of Country Theater Movement, Praised by Great Leaders.  (A three-column feature story by Alma E. Riggle.)
Alfred Arvold, now head of the public discussions and social service department of the North Dakota Agricultural College and founder of The Country Theater Movement in America, has taught a whole state how to play.  His Little Country Theater, located on the campus, is the original one of its kind and demonstrates his hope for an enriched life for rural and small town people.  Its activities are examples of what any community anywhere can do.
The Charles Coburns wrote that the influence of Mr. Arvold's project is felt all over the world, saying: It is a real enduring masterpiece.  As long as such artistic integrity is devoted to the drama, it cannot fail in this country.  Other tributes came from Daniel Frohman, Ernest Poole, Edgar Lee Masters, Walker Whiteside, Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt and hundreds of others.
This former Wisconsin man turns his back on most flattering offers to take his talents to the great centers, but prefers to continue with his self-appointed task of improving the social aspect of rural life, giving farm folk a spiritual vision of their intimacy with the soil, planting culture in the hinterlands and nourishing its growth.





From The Readers Digest, January, 1935—“The Magic Twist” (North American Review), by Francis Rufus Bellamy.
Most of us are interested in the theater.  Some of us collect theater programs, volumes of plays, pictures of Thespians.  Up in North Dakota there is an instructor in English whose enthusiasm is the theater, too.  But in the last 25 years he has made it possible for a whole state to participate in theatricals.
His name is Alfred Arvold.  At his command at this moment he has a circulating library of thousands of plays, pageants and rodeos, with photographs of the costumes and settings and everything that an amateur producer needs to know.  His college lends them freely to individuals, community clubs and teachers.  He has taught his whole state to play.  Thirty-five counties observe Play Day once a year.  Scarcely a school house lacks a stage.  Dozens of community clubs have built new halls or remodeled old ones.  One pageant recently boasted of 1500 actors; 400 students throng his classes; 100,000 Dakotans have taken part in pageants he has encouraged or written or produced.  The Fargo Bowl is his final achievement.
Needless to state, he has done all this without any personal fortune.  His hobby—if you can call if that—has made him thousands of friends and enriched a whole state.  He has that magical twist which consists in looking outward, not inward, in the expression of a personal interest.





From The American Magazine, July, 1933—“Why Don't You Go on the Stage?” by Neil M. Clark.
Not many theaters can boast of such houses as Alfred G. Arvold plays year in The Little Country Theater, which he founded at Fargo, N. D., twenty-five years ago.  He has a half million customers, and a large percentage of them are occasional actors themselves.  Arvold is the college professor who taught a whole state how to play.  It is a marvelous example of what a man of vision can do with almost nothing—not even hope, at first.
Arvold came to Fargo at twenty-five years of age, a trustful bearer of the torch of learning.  He had been hired, sight unseen, to teach speech in the North Dakota Agricultural College.  Nobody had a plan of work for him.  He had none for himself.  His preparation consisted of several courses in speech at the University of Wisconsin, a couple years as a high school teacher, and a craze for the theater.
Arvold is an artist.  One of his college teachers made a remark that he treasures as if it were the inspiration of his career—The greatest thing in life is to take the insignificant and make it significant, the common and make it uncommon.  Simplicity is greatness.