Now, therefore, when the poets are awaking to a new power and control of expression, here especially in our own country, if they will both learn and teach in this larger school, there rises before us the promise of an art more sensuous, sane, and communal than the theatre has ever known.
So, in the pioneering adventure of this Masque, which seeks by experiment to relate the spoken word to its larger coöperation with the visual arts, I have devised a structure in which the English language, spoken by actors, is an essential dramatic value.
Why, then, take pains [as I have done] to make it relatively non-essential in case it should not be heard?
For this reason: that now—at the present temporary and still groping stage of development of community Masque organization and production—there can be, in the nature of the case, no complete assurance beforehand of adequate acoustics in setting, or of voices trained to large-scale outdoor speech.
But, if this be so, would it not be the wiser part of creative valor to adapt my structure wholly to these elementary conditions, risk nothing, and devise simply pantomime?
No, for by that principle no forward step for the spoken word could ever be taken. If we are to progress in this new art, we must seek to make producing conditions conform to the spoken play, even more than the play to those conditions.
And this can be done; it has been done.
At Saint Louis the vast amphitheatre for my Masque was at first considered, by nearly all who saw it, to be utterly unsuited to the spoken word; yet, after careful study, experiment and technical provision for its use, the speech of actors was heard each night by at least two-thirds of the hundred and fifty thousand listeners. Of the seven thousand actors only about fifteen spoke, but these conveyed the spoken symbolism and drama of the action.
In the present Masque I have focussed the spoken word on the raised constructed stage of wood [A. and B. in the Chart], confined it to the speech of eight principal acting parts, and about twenty other subordinate parts, whose speaking lines [from Shakespeare’s plays] are still further focussed at the narrower inner stage [A. in the Chart], provided with special sounding boards.
On the other hand, for the ground-circle of the “Yellow Sands” [C. in the Chart], where the thousands of participants in the Interludes take part under an open sky, I have provided no spoken words, but only pantomime, mass movements, dances and choruses.