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| Melbourne's Socialist Repertory Theatre recently
| attempted staging
| "The War Brides." For reasons which
| need not be given the performance was abandoned.
| Perth is the only State capital that is jogging along
| without a Repertory. Melbourne has two, both of which
| manage to scrape along in the teeth of the regular
| profession, yet this State, which only receives an
| odd visit a year from the regular shows -
| as a sort of charity - hasn't
| wakened up to the fact that such a thing as a
| Repertory Theatre exists on earth. The worst of it
| all is that good talent is available here, but is
| painfully silent, except for an occasional
| - very occasional -
| spasmodic effort, which is invariably wasted on some silly
| tripe or other conventionally supposed to be the
| correct thing for an amateur effort.
| Meanwhile, Melbourne and Sydney are treated at
| regular intervals to Shaw, Galsworthy, Ibsen,
| Tchekov, Brieux and various Australian playwrights.
| But then, that, of course, is evidence of the
| Bolshevism of the Eastern States. Western Australia
| is the intellectual State of the Commonwealth
| - ask Senator Pearce.
| The objective of the Repertory Theatre Movement is
| to secure the presentation of plays that the average
| commercial stage is shy of touching -
| plays with a social or political purpose, and plays
| which, in the estimation of the theatrical
| profession, are "above the heads" of the public. The
| experience of the Repertorys in Adelaide, Sydney, and
| Melbourne has proved conclusively that the theatrical
| profession was wrong, and the innovators right, in
| their respective estimates of public taste. As a
| matter of fact, the "profession's" notion of public
| opinion would seem to be founded upon an impression
| that the Melbourne
| "Hawklet" is the most influential
| paper in Australia. The success of the new movement
| - which, by the way, is about ten
| years old - is acknowledged in the
| most convincing manner, that is to say, by invitation
| on the part of the commercial stage.
| From a Labor point of view the great value of the
| movement lies in the fact that it attracts to itself
| the thinking democratic elements of the community,
| and the Repertory stage therefore becomes a
| propaganda platform of the greatest importance. When
| the history of the Labor Revolution in Australia
| comes to be written, not the least important of its
| chapters will be one dealing with the rise of the
| Repertory Theatres.
| The first step in the foundation of such an
| institution is the formation of a club -
| one fitted with a reading room; not a school
| for mutual inducement to extensive consumption of
| ethyl alcohol. The meetings of the club are devoted
| to play-readings - in parts, lectures
| on dramatic topics, and devising ways and means for
| the presentation of plays worth while. Even if such a
| movement never got beyond the club stage, it should
| prove a valuable nerve-centre to the democratic side
| of the community. Young men and women in this State
| have little in the way of inducement to tread the
| higher paths presented to them. Such a movement
| would, at least, be one attempt in the way of
| remedy.
| Newer Ideas About History.
| The other day at some meeting or other the
| discussion turned upon the school curriculum. One
| speaker (we won't mention names); who argued that the
| schools were being used as pliant tools of
| capitalistic imperialism, complained that, instead of
| teaching economics, the schoolmaster's efforts were
| spent in imparting useless formation about kings'
| concubines and queens' wardrobes. No doubt all that
| was very true some twenty years ago -
| or perhaps not so long ago as that -
| but, fortunately, it is no longer true. Every
| schoolboy today is, as a matter of course, primed
| with information concerning the evolution of society,
| the development of representative institutions, and
| the growth of industry that could only be obtained
| twenty years ago from books that the Education
| Departments of the day would have condemned to be
| burned by the public hangman - if they
| had dared. Incidentally, it is worth noting, in
| passing, that the History of information about kings'
| concubines volume in India today. Why, we wonder?
| Amongst the earliest volumes that were introduced
| into the Australian schools in connection with the
| growth of a new outlook upon the teaching of history
| was Mr. (now Prof.) Murdoch's
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| "Struggle for Freedom," and an
| excellent little volume it was. A recent
| "Labor Call"
| (Melbourne) review deals with a comparison, or
| rather, supplementary work from the same pen. It is
| entitled, "The
| Australian Citizen," and the
|
| "Call" reviewer concludes
| his article by quoting - with evident
| gusto - the following extract:~~
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| Amen! But, you see, every man frames his
| definition of respectability to include his own case
| ~~ except of course, the "Bohemian," who frames one
| that carefully excludes himself. But, then, that's
| only his particular brand of respectability, or cant,
| and a type very keenly exposed in Bax's
|
"Ethics of
| Socialism."
| Prices of School Books
| Apropos of school matters, when, might we ask, can
| we expect the Departments to deal with the school-book
| problem in a sensible way - the
| only sensible way - namely, by
| compiling good, sound works in Australia, and
| printing them in the Government printeries? This
| would kill two birds with one stone -
| firstly, the particularly mean sort of profiteer that
| charges youngsters about three times as much for
| their school-books as grown-ups are called on to pay
| for similar volumes by far better authors (usually
| - eg., the Home University series);
| and secondly, the English geographer that is allowed
| to inform Australian kiddies that their country
| consists entirely of desert, is the home of "Weird
| Melancholy," etc., etc., ad nauseam.