faults it should be swept away and a new creation rebuilded from the foundation by inexperienced workmen. It is over-youthful to disregard wholly even David Belasco, though his principles of art may be questionable. Mr. Walker from the age of six when he was fascinated by a toy stage, to his teens when he produced drama for the edification of the neighbors' children, to the years of service in the University of Cincinnati dramatic club, was experimenting with drama and becoming accustomed to the tools of the theater. Then he acted a bit, studied pantomime for a year under competent instructors, and arrived at last in the position of playreader, director and managing aid to the aforementioned David Belasco, a position which he held for six years. Thus his whole life has been bound up in the theater; he knows what the public wants, the worst public and the best public; he knows the detail of efficient business management; he has the education-the great deficiency of most managers,—which has opened to him the wide horizon presented by the drama of other lands and other centuries with its varying forms, techniques, and devices; and with all this he has preserved, as we know from his own plays, a fine simple poetic spirit which many a little theater enthusiast might envy. Thus it was that when he undertook the Portmanteau theater scheme, he proceeded practically and slowly, organizing its business affairs judiciously, selecting the best plays that in his judgment the better public would continue to pay to see, and finding competent though relatively unknown and therefore inexpensive players whose naturalness and sincerity and finished ensemble it is a delight to see and hear. In his stagecraft Mr. Walker has used the best results in light and color of the little theaters-and this has been the great field of success for such ventures. While his settings have not possessed the extreme beauty and fine truth of those of the Chicago Little Theatre, or of some of the Washington Square productions, they have preserved a sustained beauty of simple, significant effectiveness and have occasionally, as in the mountain background for the second act of The Lady of the Weeping Willow Tree, shown a rare feeling for color mood. Though the plays presented have always possessed primarily wide human appeal, they have, at all time, measured up to little theater standards of freshness, sincerity, and beauty. It is true that, like the producer's own plays, they have lacked intensity, have failed to "plumb the depths" and to climb the giant peaks of life. One is glad that he has neither the sex nor the horror obsession of so many art theaters; it may be that he desires to fill a practically vacant niche in the drama temple and so limits his design; the limitation, however, seems to be due to a peculiar timidity of expression or lack of growth to full understanding of fundamental life values. His menu is too largely caviar, salad, sweets and nuts, to satisfy the full blooded diner who regularly patronizes his caravansary. Never in his repertory does he, to usea stale expression, come to grips with experience, and never in his plays, except in The Lady of the Weeping Willow Tree, has he given us a greatly ennobling work of art. This play and the vision. which led him to produce The Night in Avignon, by our able but neglected poet Cale Young Rice, and the plays of Lord Dunsany, promise us, however, in Mr. Walker a great dramatist and an even greater producer who will go farther still in living up to the best standards of both little and professional theaters. VANDERVOORT SLOAN. "The status of the playhouse in society is as vital as the status of the university in society. The dignity and efficiency of the one demand the same safeguarding against inward deterioration as the dignity and efficiency of the other."-From The Playhouse and the Play, by Percy MacKaye. THE LADY OF THE WEEPING WILLOW TREE A PLAY IN THREE ACTS By Stuart Walker CHARACTERS O-SODE-SAN, an old woman. O-KATSU-SAN. OBAA-SAN. THE GAKI OF KOKORU, an eater of unrest. AOYAGI. Copyright. All dramatic rights reserved by the author. THE LADY OF THE WEEPING WILLOW TREE ACT I [Scene: At the right back is a weeping willow tree, O-SODE-SAN. Oi!... Oi!... Obaa-San! O-SODE-SAN. She is not there. O-KATSU-SAN. Poor Obaa-San. O-SODE-SAN. Why do you always pity Obaa-San? Are her clothes not whole? Has she not her full store of rice? O-SODE-SAN. Then what more can one want-a full hand, a full belly, and a warm body! O-KATSU-SAN. A full heart, perhaps. O-SODE-SAN. What does Obaa-San know of a heart, silly O-Katsu? She has had no husband to die and leave her alone. She has had no child to die and leave her arms empty. O-KATSU-SAN. Hai! Hai! She does not know. O-SODE-SAN. She has had no lover to smile upon her and then-pass on. O-KATSU-SAN. But Obaa-San is not happy. O-KATSU-SAN. She may be lonely because she has never had anyone to love or to love her. O-SODE-SAN. How could one love Obaa-San? She |