The bourgeoisie has been in control of the theatre for about 150 years now First of all, it controls it by the price of land, which rose so sharply in the 19th century that, as you know, the workers left the city, resulting in buildings and entire quarters belonging to the bourgeois the theatres are almost all located in the center of the city. The bourgeoisie controls the theatre by the price of tickets which rose steadily in order to make the theatre a profit making enterprise. In France it also controls it by centralization, so that in just those cities where contact with a varied audience would be possible, plays do not come or come much later on tour. Finally, it controls it through the critics. It is an error to contrast the newspaper critic with the public. The critic is the mirror of his public. If he writes nonsense, it is because the public which reads the news paper will speak nonsense too therefore, it would be futile to oppose one to the other.

A new play by Jean-Paul Sartre is always an important and controversial event. At fifty-five Sartre is for many, however prematurely, the “grand old man” of French letters. There are, however, others who see in Sartre the supreme nihilist who has failed of artistic achievement for lack of a unifying faith and there are even some who will go so far as to speak of charlatanism. Perhaps the kindest critical view is that held by many conscientious people who think of Sartre as essentially “negative,” a well-meaning but misled philosopher whose ideas have been swept away by the flux of history. They point out that the political world as it exists today is scarcely the place for the “engaged literature” of 1940-45 with its requirements of personal commitment and anonymous heroism. Young people in France are not reading Being and Nothingness.

I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
“Ah, God, take me from this place!”
A voice said, “It is no desert.”
I cried, “Well, but—
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.”
A voice said, “It is no desert.”
Stephen Crane

One of die most interesting and provocative questions facing the student of the modern theatre is, to what extent the professional philosopher is capable of creating effective drama? Can a man steeped in the technical and systematic discipline of philosophical inquiry create a drama that is more than an abstract working out of a thesis? Can he create characters or situations that have the action and vitality necessary for dramatic presentation? The contemporary French philosopher, writer and essayist, Jean-Paul Sartre, provides the most rewarding study to those interested in the role of the philosopher as dramatist.

I'm glad that the name and purpose of these conferences define my function here along lines that happen to be congenial to myself. The Factor of Acting in the Working Theatre—the subject is organic in my life to an overwhelming degree. I think I've gone beyond the point where it would be possible for anyone to ask me, as a woman put it to me bluntly years ago, “What's uppermost in you, the actor or the man?” The answer, I hope, is now, “Both.” For I've learned that if you endeavor to express your life without some form to receive it, you're apt to produce a chaotic mess—and on the other hand, if you play-act at life, well, there you'll certainly come a cropper.

When we were putting on Arthur Miller's All My Sons in New Haven and I was talking with Arthur about the function of scene design, he said, “Don't talk to me about stage form, scene design and all that. What matters in the theatre is character and situation.” I was about to say something in answer when a friend of Arthur's who was present warned me, “Arthur is tense about the show.” So of course I dropped the subject. Afterwards I went to Europe, where I spent three years doing research for the Rockefeller Foundation. When I came back I saw Miller at his home. In the meantime I had read the introduction which he wrote for Death of a Salesman, in which he stated how much he owed to Jo Mielziner, who had designed that play: if it wasn't for Jo's contribution scenically the play wouldn't have taken die form that it did, and so on, very laudatory.

The art of Theatre is an art of change. It is changing continuously. It changes in matters pertaining to substance and to form. It changes in structure. For example, take that element of theatrical art which is the work of the “director.”

Today when we hear that a new Tennessee Williams play will be staged by Elia Kazan, a Shakespearean work produced by Tyrone Guthrie, or a musical extravaganza “put on” by Joshua Logan, we are not surprised by the news at all. It seems to us to be quite natural that a dramatic enterprise should be guided by a man who is trained for its preparation. The fact is, however, that the emergence of the director as a separate and distinct craftsman in the theatre is a comparatively recent event. There have always been general administrators, of course. In the early years they were priests or lay members of the community assigned to the actors as producers.

When we consider John Webster's achievement as a dramatist we are struck by a general mediocrity, suddenly relieved in the middle of his career by two plays, written in quick succession, of a brilliance and power virtually unequalled in his age. The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi were composed in 1612 and 1613, following a period of uninspired collaboration with Dekker, Heywood and others; they were followed by some further independent work and by renewed collaboration with Middleton, Heywood and Rowley, but never again, working either alone or with others, did Webster approach the aesthetic range of his two Italian tragedies. They seem to represent the artist's concentrated attempt to express a tragic vision which he imperfectly perceived in The White Devil, but realized fully in The Duchess of Malfi, after which his career could only culminate in anti-climax. He had nothing more to say.

If Strindberg is right that much of the labor of life is devoted to sweeping its dirt under the table, then the theatre's business is to sweep it out again. In the process we may discover some of the dirt wasn't dirt at all, but stray coins, curls, and paper clips, not golddust necessarily but a usable straight pin or two and maybe a piece of string, ravelled around the past. Art is an act of salvage, more so in a universe conscious, as ours is, of running down; not muckraking but recovery, and especially the kind of recovery that comes after crisis. In the Europe of the twentieth century, crisis has obviously not been of dustpan proportions. The salvage job has been immense. But one may yet walk amidst the recovery, as I did recently, brooding on broken wall and tower, and Agamemnon dead.

Acting has been variously defined as impersonating, imitating, interpreting, creating, feeling, radiating, being, behaving, or believing. Acting has even been defined as acting. In his book, The Actor's Ways and Means, Michael Redgrave states:

Established actors, needing no definition, may accept any misty generalization if they are not sure what it is they are doing. The student actor needs a definition to guide him in understanding the process at any specific moment in the performance. The least common denominator in the actor's performance is a single unit. This unit is compounded of a stimulus and a response.