Modern Drama Players

              Modern Drama Players

Mona Limerick in CHITRA



Mona Limerick in CHITRA





Scene from Lonesome-Like



Vida Sutton


Miss Mona Limerick, who will play the part of CHITRA, was leading woman in the Horniman Company of Repertory Players at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, England.  She is an actress of unusual charm and of a strange, compelling personality.  She has come from England especially for this engagement, as no one could be found in New York who satisfied the Director's conception of this part.

Miss Mona Limerick, though born in India, is of Irish origin on both sides of her family.  She is an actress who possesses a very individual personality and great temperamental power.  Upon her first appearance in London, Mr. William Archer, the distinguished critic and translator of Ibsen, wrote: It is many a year since such an arresting personality appeared on the stage.  With her tall, willowy figure and her great dark eyes blazing in a face of extraordinary delicacy of outline, Miss Mona Limerick looks at times like an allegorical embodiment of Tragedy; whilst in The Saturday Review, in the course of his criticism, Mr. Max Beerhohm said, She has a barbaric air, and yet an air of being over-civilized.  She has an air of belonging to any age but this, and yet she is intensely modern.  She might be a Delilah, or a Madonna, or a Cassandra, and her acting is no anti-climax to her mystical flamboyance.  She is a tragedienne of great power.

She has appeared in the leading parts in plays by Bernard Shaw, John Masefield, Charles McEvoy, Edward Garnett and other modern dramatists.

For some time she toured with her own company in Shaw's Man and Superman, Ibsen's A Doll's House, Masefield's Nan and other plays.  Her principal successes in London have included a part specially written for her by Bernard Shaw in his play Misalliance, the title role in the same author's Dark Lady of the Sornets, and, perhaps most notably, in the part of Melibea, in Edward Garnett's adaptation of the Spanish classic La Celestina.  Of this performance Mr. John Palmer wrote in The Saturday Review that she was the incarnate spirit of that ancient and insupportable love-sickness of the Renaissance poets.  She was the poet's mood made visible.

She returns to America from playing the leading parts in repertory seasons in Edinburgh and Birmingham.



THE Modern Drama Players is an organization formed for the purpose of giving definite expression in this country to that development of the art of the theatre which is sweeping over the entire civilized world, and which may be described as The New Stagecraft, the animating spirit of which is a determination to establish pictorial beauty, the artistic use of design, color and light in the theatre.  This movement has two principal phases, both of which will be included in the work of the Modern Drama Players.

The first consists in a revival, under modern conditions, of the poetic drama in which the Director seeks by the proper use of design and color, to give expression to the underlying meaning and symbolism of the poet's work.  This phase may be roughly characterized as the idealistic movement in the drama, and its progress is largely associated with the name of Gordon Craig, an artist of genius, whose work has so far been the most noted, the most militant, and in its influence the most far-reaching of any individual exponent.  The first example of this type of play and production chosen by the Modern Drama Players, is to be CHITRA, by the Hindu poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore, whose influence on Western thought is so remarkable.  The second phase of the movement, is the realistic school, not of course the photographic realism which has already found successful expression in the theatre, but realism in which there is an attempt, as in the poetic drama, to bring out by means of color and design the particular meaning and purpose which animates the play presented.  Of this movement, the most notable, and certainly the most successful work, has been done by the Moscow Art Theatre, and the Modern Drama Players have selected as their example The Bear, a play by the great Russian writer, Tcheckof, on account of the success of whose play The Seagull the Moscow Art Theatre has taken that bird as its emblem.  The third in the initial programme unites something of both these schools; it is called Womenkind, and was written by W. W. Gibson, a rising poet of considerable distinction.



Miss Vida Sutton, of New York, will stand before the curtain and explain what the two most modern movements in the drama stand for, what it is they are trying to do, what effect it will have upon the drama of the future, and call attention to the meaning of The New Stagecraft.  She will also appear in the plays.

Miss Sutton is a graduate of the University of Chicago, was a member of the New Theatre Company of New York, and of the Donald Robertson Players, and was sent to Europe two years ago by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate for which she wrote semi-weekly articles.  She obtained interviews with the leading women of the countries she visited, and is one of the most interesting women before the public.  The plays will follow her explanation.  Miss Sutton's knowledge of her subject was gained from personal study of the theatres of Europe.  The entire cast has been chosen with the greatest care.  Scenery will be carried with all the apparatus required for the new lighting, which, together with the scenery, will create the illusive, imaginative settings, required by the new art of the theatre.

Livingston Platt, one of the greatest exponents of the new stagecraft in this country, is the scenic and light artist.  He spent most of his life in Europe, where, for eight years, he had charge of a theatre in Bruges, Belgium, and produced in the Municipal Theatre there.  In this country he has made himself famous through his production of Margaret Anglin's Shakespearian plays.  He has created nothing short of a furore, and anything that he lends his name to is a sufficient guarantee of its success.  Mr. Platt excels all the new generation of American artists in the theatre.  His settings tell in the actualities of the stage, yet they are full of refined artistries.  He does not altogether forsake the old ways of the theatre with scenery.  Rather he transforms and transfigures them with the spirit of the new.  The press all over the country is unanimous in its praise of Mr. Platt's work.

Mr. B. Iden Payne, of England, is the producer of the plays.  He was the producing manager at Miss Horniman's Theatre in Manchester, England, for years.  In fact, it is said to have been Mr. Payne who made the reputation of the Horniman Company.




Mr. J. W. Austin is well known through his connection with the late Lawrence Irving, Edward Compton, Granville Barker, Winthrop Ames and Miss Annie Russell.  He played the part of Tom Kemp (the part originated by Sir Chas.  Wyndham in The Mollusc, the leading part in Doormats, Milestones, What Every Woman Knows, and many other successes.



Mr. Whitford Kane, that expert comedian of the Irish stage is one of the strongest members of the cast.  Among the many noteworthy parts he has played is The Pigeon by Galsworthy.  Following is a letter from the author of that play and one from J. M. Barrie.




For the last three years he has conducted his own repertory companies playing in Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as for brief seasons in Oxford and Cambridge, and occasional productions in London.  His name is in fact one of the most distinguished in the Repertory Movement.  He has the distinction, moreover, of having given the first commercially successful productions of non-Shakespearian Elizabethan plays since the period in which they were written.

In the modern school, he may be regarded as the discoverer of Stanley Houghton, Harold Brighouse, Alan Monkhouse and Gilbert Cannon, and he has directed first productions of plays by St. John Hankin, Charles McEvoy, Edward Garnett and several other authors of the newer schools.  In Manchester alone he produced more than one hundred plays in his association with the Gaiety Theatre there.

You know how tremendously good I think your playing is and how it has quite spoilt me for the idea of anyone else in that part.

Very best wishes,
JOHN GALSWORTHY.

I have always admired your acting and was delighted particularly with your work in 'The Pigeon.'

Yours sincerely,
J. M. BARRIE.

Miss Kate Morgan, the character woman of the Company, is one of the best known character women on the stage today.

A telegram sent to Mrs. A. Starr Best from Prof. E. Charlton Black of the Boston University, and President of the Boston Drama League, after the opening of the Modern Drama Players in that city recently:

At least twelve persons on whose judgment in matters dramatic and theatrical I can rely, have assured me of the excellence of the performances and have been most enthusiastic in their praise.





Oliver Hinsdell is a rising young actor from whom the critics have predicted great things.  His excellent work as a member of the Repertory Company of the Fine Arts Theatre of Chicago and of the Little Theatre in Philadelphia has given him great prominence.





[Boston Herald, February, 9, 1915]
MODERN DRAMA PLAYERS AT TOY
New Organization Appears in Three One - Act Plays Which Please
A new dramatic organization, the Modern Drama Players, gave its first performance at the Toy Theatre last evening, before a brilliant and interested audience.
Before the performance Miss Vida Sutton, a member of the company, explained the artistic aim of the organization, to present one-act plays of varying schools of drama in the best possible manner and in accordance with the ideals of the New Stagecraft.  These demand that settings and lighting reflect the spirit of the play and emphasize the dramatic importance of design, color and light.
The plays chosen for the opening bill were sharply contrasted.  The first was from the Russian.
The widow was played with distinction and charm by Miss Sutton, who was further to be praised for her excellent diction and for her well modulated voice.  Mr. Austin was appropriately boisterous as the creditor and Mr. Hinsdell was comic in servile despair.
Lonesome-Like, which has been played in New York, is a study of life in a Lancashire village.
This little play in dialect served to reveal excellent acting on the part of four members of the company, Miss Morgan, Miss Evily, Mr. Hinsdell and Mr. Kane.  Each one was effective as old Sarah, Emma Brierly, the Rev. Alleyne and Sam.  There was unaffected simplicity and clever delineation of character.
Chitra, a play in nine scenes, taken from an episode in the Mahabharata, is a charming example of the poetic drama.  The dialogue is flowery, picturesque, rhapsodic.  Rare poetic expressions are put into the mouths of the lovers.  The sceres are idyllic, tender, passionate.
Miss Limerick was a comely princess, graceful in action and in repose.  Mr. Austin read his lines effectively and was an ardent lover.
The plays excited admiration for the art with which they were staged.  Mr. Platt's settings of the first two were admirable in every detail, and in the Indian play the illusion of the Orient was complete in color, design and lighting.  The performance also excited interest in forthcoming productions by the society.



[Boston Globe, February 9, 1915]
THREE PLAYS AT THE TOY THEATRE
Tagore's Chitra Produced With Imagination—The Bear an Ironic Farce
The Modern Drama Players began an engagement at the Toy Theatre last evening.  Three plays were presented by them for the first time in Boston.  The Bear, a farce-comedy from the Russian by Tcheckof; Lonesome-Like, by Harold Brighouse, and Chitra, by Tagore.  Miss Vida Sutton, who took a part in The Bear, appeared before the curtain and made a brief explanatory introduction.  Miss Sutton stated the purpose of the Modern Drama Players among other things to be a cultivation of all the interpretative aids to the drama, light, color, setting, in making its appeal to brain and senses an organic one.
Tcheckof's grimly satirical farce caricatures the inconstancy of woman with a rude but picturesque vigor.  A young widow bemoaning the death of a husband discovered to have been often unfaithful, but still adored, is won from her vows of isolation by the preemptory demands of a disheveled, loud-voiced person of brutal manners, an accomplished husband and lover, the confessed deserter of 13 women—or was it only 12?—and jilted by nine.
These demands were at first for a sum of money owed him by the widow's late husband, later were for a duel with the widow with pistols, and finally for the widow's hand.  The widow's character is carpentered in flexibility to suit the dramatist's purposes, which are to draw a nobleman who is a cross between Capt.  Hook in Peter Pan and the Ogre in Aubert's fleeting and forgotten opera, The Blue Forest, and to make both the sport of love.  Brangaene's potion was not swifter.  A part not easy to play without gross brutality.  The terrified servant quails appropriately at the resounding whacks of the ruffian's riding crop upon the table.  A piece needing fearless oaths and a pirate's etiquette to be carried over.
Lonesome-Like pictures a mood of homely, groping, simple-minded pathos.  The foolish boy of the Lancashire village, still doting upon the memory of the mother no less dear for her forked tongue, blunderingly asks the girl of his fancy to share his loneliness, too dull to have noticed her favor for another.  But failing of a wife he begs the poor old woman with the palsied hands, too big a burden for her church's charity, now in danger of the almshouse, to let him adopt her as his mother, and carries her away in the arms which he says are stronger than his head.  A skillfully developed theme with a quick and seizing surprise, played by a cast of uncommon powers in verisimilitude.  The consistency of the dialect was to be remarked.
The far-seeing vision, the transforming spiritual beauty, the epic daring, the triumphant humanity of Tagore's immortal play is known to those who have read it; and was known with new consciousness of truth last night through this beautiful, just and profoundly moving interpretation of it.  The philosophy, golden in its knowled ge of the heart of man and of woman, and of their eternal but rarely rewarded search for equation, is not for a paragraph.  Suffice it to pay all tribute to the art of Miss Limerick in maintaining in its purity and mystic beauty the atmosphere which makes this allegory a thing of yesterday, today and forever.
In spite of a cold, she read her lines with marvelous poetic feeling, with a sense of the melodic line psssessed by few singers.  Mr. Austin was quite as much in the picture.  The illusive incidental music deserves a word of appreciation, and finally to Mr. Livingston Platt sincere thanks for his settings that carry to the eye by their imaginative design their extraordinary blending of color, the music of Tagore's verse to the ear.



[Boston American, February 9, 1915]
Toy Theatre Bill of One-Act Plays Heartily Encored
Three gems set in one ring phone forth on the stage of the Toy Theatre last evening in the shape of one-act plays performed with the art and harmony of fine music and staged with nicety.  The Bear, by Tcheckof, a Russian; Lonesome-Like, by Harold Brighouse, and Chitra, by the Hindu poet, Tagore, were the bill.
Miss Vida Sutton explained to the audience—the most brilliant yet assembled at the Toy Theatre—the purposes of the new idealistic movement in the drama and what the Modern Drarna Players, of which she is a member, are  to accomplish.
Lonesome-Like is a vivid reminder of plays given by the Irish Players, and its touching climax, excellently performed by Kate Morgan and Whitford Kane, was followed by repeated curtain calls.
The Bear is high class fame comedy, and Chitra, in nine scenes, is a successful blending of allegory, mysticism and philosophy, set in the purple light of temples, forests and courts with graven pillars.  The motif shows love struggling to break free from false barriers.



A Letter from Prof. Hallin Gilmer of Tufts College
My Dear Mrs. —

I am still a-thrill with the beauty and melody of last night's performance and I have risen early to hasten letter to friends in different colleges.  I have urged them to give to their students and to the people of intelligence and taste in the community the chance of seeing your splendid group of artists, with their interesting diversified and worth-while plays.

I quote a few sentences to show you the tenor of my note:

I wish the students of — could have for their thirsty souls a little real drama—with beauty and idea and modernity of presentation of the best type.  Can you not make this possible and do them a real boon—to the end of their days to be remembered!

The students in my drama course have seen the company and are enthusiastic.  Your students too, I believe, would mark the day of the coming of the 'Modern Drama Players' as one of the most enjoyable of their college career.

The Tagore play with its profound truth expressed in amazing beauty of line and color and speech is alone worth the price of admission.

You would be doing this undertaking in behalf of better dramatic appreciation in America a genuine service.

I found the Chitra too beautiful to applaud and now I find it too lovely to write about.  I look upon it as I should upon a rare orchid.  Success, success, success, to your most commendable venture is the wish of a grateful and most enthusiastic spectator.



Rabbi Charles Fleischer, Leader of The Sunday Commons 280 Dartmouth St. Boston
Feb. 12, 1915.

Mrs. A. Starr Best.

Dear Madam—As a member of the Advisory Council of the Drama League of Boston, I am glad to follow the lead of our esteemed President, Professor E. Charlton Black, in commending to you the achievement of the Modern Drama Players in Boston.

The dream and enterprise of Mrs. Saunders—as represented in the program given this week—are of such idealistic worth as fairly to commend themselves to the sympathy and support of all who are concerned for the cultural development of America.  And much has been done toward giving to this idealistic vision that practical embodiment before which there can loom no such word as 'fail'.

The plays chosen—Chitra, The Bear, and Lonesome-Like—give a well-balanced program in their psychological choice of types.  The scenic setting is sympathetic with the plays and in line with the new standards of production.

And the acting—particularly that of Miss Mona Limerick—is of that high grade which fairly brings to the dramatist's aid that intellectual insight and that happy enthusiasm which results in a fairly spiritual and a really artistic success.


[Boston Evening Record, February 9, 1915]
The plays were of unusual merit and interest.  The Bear is a delicious comedy, cleverly constructed.  The plot is plausible, and in its unfolding there are many surprises.  The action is swift.  It is a form of realism that produces more realistic effect than the majority of so-called realistic plays.  Mr. Austin as the gruff intruder was convincing.  Miss Sutton's acting was excellent in every respect.



H. T. PARKER
in Boston Transcript.
Each piece was interesting and excellent in its kind; each was ably acted; each was well prepared and well set.

Throughout, the acting was good to see and hear.  In Chitra, all four players spoke a soft, stately and rhythmed speech rhythmically and remotely, yet without clouding its imagery and with colorful pointing of it in their intonations.  Miss Limerick's tones had their exotic timbre, their low, rich depth and their soft, grave colorings.  Her aspect—and the more in the warmly contrasted blues and vermilions of her Hindu dress—had its exotic quality too, and she played Chitra as in a quiet, rhythmed, meditative rapture, slowly mounting in her spirit, gradually suffusing her whole being and ending in tranquilly ecstatic illumination.  It was spiritualized acting, highly simplified, relying upon a kind of inner emanation rather than direct transmission.

Character is the virtue of Lonesome-Like and atmosphere as well.  A well-invented and well-conducted play—anecdote within anecdote—but as pungent of homely character and homely humors as it is of homely speech.  Mr. Brighouse is not merely truthful with his folk; he animates them out of themselves and he sets them in play with sense of the theatre.

Chitra, in turn, is doubly distilled poetic drama, though its English voice is rhythmed prose.  It moves through dim Hindu temples wherein god speaks to goddess in soft and stately antiphon—or else through solitary chamber and hushed jungle where the warrior, Ayuna, and Chitra, daughter of princes, learn to know a love that runs deeper than their mutual joy of the senses.  Chitra speaks to her deities of the stirrings of her heart when she has come upon Ayuna in the forest and now she would discard her dress and ways of a youth that the royal tradition of Manipur has enjoined upon her, that he may know her as woman.  She speaks also to her deities, softly and as of secrets, of her awakenings beside him, of her desire for an affection that shall seek her spirit as well as her body.  Ayuna and Chitra speak each to each—he, first of the great love that he bears her man-wise and then of another love that would possess also her spirit that flees from him.  And she in turn pours out to him the wine of his pleasure until he shall know her as no goddess to be worshipped nor yet the object of common pity to be brushed aside like a moth with indifference, but as one to be kept by his side in the path of danger and daring and to share the great duties of his life, the left arm holding the burden of the proud right arm.  They speak of all these things grave-eyed and motionless, in a soft and figured speech as though they would reach each the other's heart through the light and the shadows of their words.  The end is as grave and deep illumination.  The still and brooding beauty of the East, the voluptuous Hindu delight in intertwined word and image and sensation filled the piece and spoke out of the voices and the bearing of the players.  Yet we of the West like to fancy the spiritual substance of Chitra our own.  Rather it is as universal as womanhood—and manhood, too.




For Terms and Dates
Address
Mrs. Nellie Peck
Saunders
565 Cass Ave.
Detroit, Mich.



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