“The New Manner”
(Vague Questionings)
It evidently means—this phrase—“that which is accepted as new”.... There are signs of our dangerously settling down to flat brilliant backgrounds, spots of vivid color, and much mention of “important as decoration”. It seems an unhealthy acquiescence.... “Is desire a thing of nothing, that a five-years’ quest can make a parody of it? Your whole life is not too long, and then only at the very end will some small atom of what you have desired come to you.”—Gordon Craig in his Art of the Theatre. It looks as if we are due for a period of the old, old, three-walled room with the new, new, “new” color.... I don’t believe we will find the future in Michael Carr’s butterfly proscenium and moving-picture screen shadows; but, surely, it is not The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, or Androcles and the Lion, although Barker’s Midsummer Night’s Dream costumes are the most far-reaching originalities yet seen. Nor will it be like A Pair of Silk Stockings, The Sabine Women, Overtones, The Charity that Began at Home, The Taming of the Shrew, nor Urban and his present enormous New York output of “designs” and “follies”. Our only light seems to come from Gordon Craig’s work in Florence. “In his work is the incalculable element; the element that comes of itself and cannot be coaxed into coming”. Or from Sam Hume’s enthusiasm over the “Dome”; Reinhardt, of course, has almost acquired his permanent “angle of repose”—the newness of the American stage being, in fact, the Reinhardt of yesterday. If I had my way, I’d destroy all books about the theatre excepting those of Gordon Craig, for inspiration, or those of Arthur Symons for appreciation.... Then, perhaps, we should begin to understand the Theatre.