OUR NATIONAL DRAMA IT has l»een somewhat j widely said of late in editorial comment that I hold pessimistic views DMKtnMf the future of the Amerii-an stage. If this be so. it will be well understood that my complaint is not a personal one The public response to my own efforts, and to those of my players, has been most generous, greater perhaps than any author or manager could reasonably ex pect The truth is that n whole Hfe has tteen given to the drama, and that its harmonious and healthy development as a social force concerns me deeply. As an American. I feel that our advanced, if not domi nant, position in invention, in finance and in all that constitutes a world power should be re flected in our drama as an art. and that our backward jiosition in this respect is due to causes which the public can help to remove. All the necessary conditions for drama of the best class are in our favor. If we have few novelists of the first class, our output of fresh, powerful and healthy fiction leaves all other countries far behind. All this means play mater ial which under proper conditions would ulti mately find its way to the stage in convincing dramatic form. We liave by far the most intelli gent and the most generous public in the world. Instead of weakly feeding our stage from foreign sources, we should to-day be producing our own drama. I have used the word " convincing " be cause any play, to succeed, must '"convince" its public: must so far satisfy them that they will speak of it with praise and thereby induce others to go and see it. From this soum*. and thi< source alone, co.ne "packed" houses. This personal indorsement of managers', authors* and actors' effort is the most rapid, the most measureless, force that sends the public to any theater. But in order that a play may be thus "convincing,** several contributory causes are necessary. In the first place, it must be a play which meets the public demand, is in accord with the public taste. Now. as to the higher class of the drama, public opinion is made by the l»est intellectual eleme.it in the com munity. With the taste of this element the manager mtfst be thoroughly familiar or he will fail. Whatever his own personal tastes and predili** tions. he must know what the better element of the community • ants, or he will lose a great deal of money in trying to please it. The personality of the manager, there fore, becomes inevitably the measure of the artistic and intellectual value of the attractions presented at his theater. So it was in the days of Wallack, Palmer and Daly, so it is to-day, and so it must always hi- \ t'tiirnr cannot lie preater than itself. Judging from results, however, our managers of il;-> < lass are few. The efforts of the majority are n<»t to build up our own drama, but to force upon us the foreign play. The national drama of England con sists of English manuscripts, by English playwrights, read, adapted to the stage and produced by English managers. So with Germany, with France, with Austria and with Italy, each country producing its own plays for its own people. Thus the structure of a national drama is builded. The national drama of th<- United States to-day consists of a hash, a rechaujjs, of all these other dramas, purchased in bulk, good. bad and indifferent, adapted well or badly, and tossed ujx.ls the stage after brief and insufficient rehearsal from a "prompt" copy received from the English, Fr-Tu b or <»erman theater of the original production. Our own playwrights fail to get a hearing, fail V- get the steady development which comes from public en ouragement. Experience makes phi y\\ rights, and they can be made in no <■' her way. Th<- manager must br aide to supplement the playwright, us in all other countries. or we can never have a drama of our own. All this national weakness on our part is due to an attempt to "commercials" the theater — idea absurd in itself, which can SUNDAY MAGAZINE for OCTOBER 30. 1904 By David Belasco only have a temporary existence — hut the danger is tliat. harked \>y large capital, it will endure long enough in crush out all the tlements of true and healthy dramatic growth and leave us many years hehind our due degree of progress. Under the commerical theory, one manager can conduit any numlier of theaters in one city. This is a new idea in theatrical history. and theatrical history makes its absurdity fully manifest. It has succeeded here for a time through an over plus of money in the country, an indulgent public and the attractive force of a numher of well-known ac tors and actresses who were ele vated to the position of "stars " and ■■ |c the central figures in foreign plays more or less well advertised in the cable columns of the press. The "star" system has distinctly failed, however. Xo actor or actress properly becomes an important figure on the !>oards until his possession of genius is so well established that a variety of roles is needed to display it. The poor foreign plays have so far weakened the drawing power of many well-known actors that they no longer draw. The foreign, plays, generally speaking, have steadily deteriorated in numl>er and in quality. Last year the foreign countries gave us little or nothing for this year. What the commercial manager, with a large number of theaters to fill, is going to do this season I cannot '.ell, and I doubt if he can. The truth is that to make a success of only one producing theater requires a thorough knowledge of the work and all a man's thought, time and energy. Sooner or later we must return to the natural and normal conditions of theatrical manage ment, because no other conditions can last. Ameri can managers must ultimately produce American manuscripts or go into some business wherein their purely financial gifts will find a more felicitous opportunity. The play must be "convincing*' as a manuscript before it goes upon the stage. This means that the story must appeal, that the construction must har moniously conform to dramatic law. and that the characterization must l>e vital. A character which is sketchy, vague or uncertain in its lines cannot be made anything else behind the foot-lights though played by the most competent actor. Now, few manuscripts, if any. are of this f the characters takes place in my productions at rehearsal. But the jx>int is that the manager must be al>le to judge a manuscript — judge it accurately in these im portant, these vital, par ticulars. All the managers wl'o to-day "are successfully pro ducing plays exemplify this law. All the managers who cannot judge a manuscript must go abroad, when they CM MC a play on the stage, in action. before they can judge it. This incompetency of managers is one reason why we have been so long feu with an imported drama which is foreign to us. which makes no home appeal, which has usurped the place on the stage of OOf home drama, which has left our home drama tists starving for practical experience of their art. if not starving in another and even less agreeable way. cut now is a manager without sympathy with the public taste, without som<- natural gift and some love for the work, without some possession of the lit-rary faculty developed by study ar<3 experience, without some of the actor's instincts, to be equal to this subtle work of judging? How without these can he possibly judge truly? It may lx- understood, therefore, that it re quires something more than dollars, be they ten thousand or ten million, to make a successful theatrical manager. Money is powerful, far too powerful, at the present time, for the high interests of art. But no amount of money and no anwillli of coml-ination can force the public to the theater to see plays that it does not want. "The people are excellent schoolmasters." said Socrates. Out of the mist of history, in the voice of the (irecian sage, comes a truth which the purely com mercial manager well may heed. And now comes a third and equally vital condition. The play must lie "convincing" as a production. There is nothing new in this statement: we have had. under the old trio of ■MUtaSHI named, many such productions. The artists were properly selected, they were properly iehcars<-d. the values of their lines and of their situations were made perfectly dear by the stage manager. If a manager cannot cast a play so well as the talent of all the available artists per mits, if he cannot himself see that each artist under stands and acts his part in the way that is "con vincing." or if he cannot, lacking the necessary time or talent, engage some competent person to insure this part of the work, he had better take up some other occupation. The power of the public to stay away from this theater is uncontrollable and un limited. The truth is that we have few managers who come under this class, though we fortunately have a respectable minority. The result is that, the heavy capital being in the hands of men who know the power of money but know practically nothing of the art of the stage, our theatrical productions as a mass are steadily lowering in tone and are drifting into the channels of lavishly produced trash, which the inartistic manager believes, from his own leanings, will "take" with the public. It does not 'take" with the public; but the supply of money for this sort of thing being inexhaustible, it continues to great financial losses, interspersed at long intervals with a great financial success. Thus the mass of entertainment becomes light, and the business becomes "a gamble." Art in all its bearings becomes an unknown, unused and forgotten word. Assuming that the manager knows his own weak ness, and desires to select the right assistance, when is he to obtain it? Where is he to get an entirely competent stage-manager"' What standards have Itiich the undeveloped talent in this form educated and developed? What have we en making in the way of stage-mana rs. actors and actresses, by the class of oductkms which have, for years past, en tossed upon the stage after a hasty lection of actors and half the necessary hearsal? And what is to be expected managers who, having the power of oney and the conceit of financial success, t the insane idea that they themselves 7