CHOSEN PLAY OF DRAMATIC CLUB MAKES NOVEL INNOVATIONS IN THEATRE WORLD

Following its well established precedent of presenting only plays of a distinct modern strain, the University Dramatic Club has chosen for production this winter "Mr. Paraclete", one of the most extreme types of the modern Russian theatre, by Nikolal Nikolaievitch Evreinov.

Circus performer, law student, teacher, actor and director, Evreinov is a figure of great versatility and ability. In a career of varied interests and activities, he has attained a position among the greatest writers, directors and actors in Russia.

Produced Play at Age of Seven

Oliver M. Sayler, in his history of the "Russian theatre Under the Revolution" gives a detailed account of his life. "Nikolai is in his early prime, yet he has accomplished already a lifetime of work," states Mr. Sayler. "From his first visit to a playhouse at the age of five, at Yekaterinburg, he was lured to the stage, and he straightway established his own theatre in his home. There at the age of seven he produced his first dramatic composition, "A Dinner With the Minister of State."

"Music attracted him too, and he soon became an expert on the flute. At the gymnasium in Pskoff, he won a reputation as a humorist, and he read much, falling under the influence of Mayne and Reid and writing his first novel at the age of 13. About this time, too, he joined a circus and performed as an equilibrist near Pskoff.

Abandoned Romance for Law

"In the seventh class of the gymnasium he conceived a plan to flee to America, but when he found how many others were going there, he changes his schemed and for the sake of originality substituted Africa for the western hemisphere. But Nikolai surrendered his dreams of adventure to go to the school of Law in Petrograd, where he soon found an outlet for his instinct for the theatre in the Legal Dramatic Circle. There he appeared in "The Robbers" and 'Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man." There too he produced his first serious musical composition, the opera "The Power of Magic."

Was Inventor of Monodrama

A man of intense individuality and extreme originality Evreinov has proposed and applied a number of advanced ideas in theatrical art. Of these his most unusual invention is the monodrama, a type of play which endeavors to make the audience experience the emotions of the actor by conveying to it the inner workings of his soul.

In his play "The Theatre of the Scul," one of the few monodramas of Evreinov which has been translated into English, he conveys to his audience the emotions of a man torn between two loves, one for a dancer the other for his wife. He employs characters of a symbolic nature such as "The Reasonable Self" and "The Emotional Self". These characters engage in a sort of Jekyll-Hyde conflict, terminating in a decision to love the dancer wholeheartedly and final suicide on the part of the "actor" whose emotions are being depicted to the audience. The entire action of the play is supposed to take place in the brain of a man in half a second's time. Novel scenic effects heighten the realism and emotional effect of the play.

Actor Has High Mission

"Mr. Paraclete," the chosen production of the Dramatic Club, is the exemplification of another of Evreinov's unusual ideas. He believes that the actor's mission is not merely to amuse and instruct the populace from the stage. He has a broader conception of the actor's duties and declares that the acting profession night well mingle with the common people and bring happiness and pleasure to them by supplying friendship to the friendless, and love to those without lovers.

His "Mr. Paraclete" deals with this idea and the results that may be expected when it is carried to its logical conclusion. The play itself is written in an easy flowing style and contains nothing foreign to the average American's idea of orthodox drama except its novel fundamental idea. It is liberally sprinkled with humor which has been well preserved in translation.

In "An Introduction to Monodrama", Evreinov himself explains the fundamental purposes and aspects of his way of "thinking the theatre". "Among other things," writes the author", monodrama solves one of the most burning problems of contemporary art, namely, the problem of the chilling and paralyzing and distracting influences of the footlights. To abolish the footlights in reality, as some propose, does not mean yet to abolish them in our imagination; it must be done so that-the spectator, as if happening to find himself on the stage, that is, the place of action, will lose sight of the footlights; they will remain behind him; in other words, they will destroy themselves.

"The cornerstone of monodrama is the living experience of the acting character on the stage, resulting in the similar living experience of the spectator, who through this act of coordinate living experience becomes one with the acting character. . . . The task of monodrama is to carry the spectator to the very stage so that he will feel that he is acting himself.

Present Methods Unsatisfactory

"The dramatic methods of expression of the dramatic experiences are reduced, as we know, first of al to words. But the unsatisfactoriness of these methods is evident; we hear more with the eyes than with the ears, and this in my opinion is in the nature of the theatre. There remain gestures, artistically expressive gesticulation, mimicry in the broad sense of the word, the movements expressing our agitations and feelings. . .

"But even this powerful means of communion of the stage with the spectators is limited in its potency. . . In a whole series of dramas, classic as well as modern, the feeling of terror is sometimes suggested to the spectator, not only by word and mimicry, but by the very object of his terror, for instance, the ghost, or some other object of hallucination. The object of the dramatist here is clear; in order that the spectator may have at a given moment nearly the same experience as the acting character, it is necessary that he see the same thing.

"But why does the room or the plain or the forest, the place of the appearance of the ghost, not change at the moment of suggestion of terror in his features: why do the coloring and light remain unchanged, just as if nothing had happened. This is not yet monodrama. Monodrama must present the exterior spectacle in correspondence with the internal spectacle. This is the whole essence of it."