Seminars in theatre; Episode 16 of 31

This is Seminars in Theater, a series of discussions with leading members of the theatrical profession who comment on the problems and pleasures of life in the theater. Here now is the host of Seminars in Theater, Richard Piot. Good evening. Our guests tonight include Ethel Barrymore Colt, Vera Allen and Mrs. Paul Ramer. Those names, at least two of those names, mean not exactly a startling recognition as because they're part of an organization and they work toward the motivation of the organization for plays for living. I imagine when I'm going to be questioning and we're going to be discussing what plays for living actually does, what it intends to do and why it's doing it. And that way I think I'll learn as much about it as all of you who are listening. First of all, Ethel Barrymore Colt is the executive producer of plays for living of the part

of that program and Vera Allen is the vice chairman of the governing committee of plays for living and one of the founders of the organization that is the plays for living project. And Mrs. Paul Ramer is the secretary of the governing committee. Mrs. Ramer has been responsible for the commissioning of the play they have on the boards now on teenage pressures called, let's get basic, let's get basic and find out about plays for living. Let's see, I suppose then, since it was founded in part by Mrs. Allen, I would start off asking you just what was the original concept of plays for living, what it is today? The concept originated during World War II. It grew out of a speaker's bureau that couldn't cope with the demand for stars and one day

Brooks Atkinson, who was on the board of the American Theatre Wing, where this all started, said, why don't you write little plays? So we wrote little plays about Red Cross and about war bonds and various other war subjects. And as the war ended, we found that we still had a job to do and we moved over into child care and various other subjects. In 19, this all started in 1942. In 1959, on January 1st, 1959, what had been known as community plays became a division of the Family Service Association of America and became plays for living. How many plays have you produced under the division of the Family Service? Thirty-seven to date, with several in preparation now. And how many problems would you say you've ranged in cover? Thirty-seven problems.

One was caught. You mean to say that each play is written about a different problem? There are those many problems. Oh yes. One of these plays, you see, are commissioned by an usually a national agency. We don't just dream up something. They wouldn't be nice to have a play for so-and-so, you know, about children or about anything. These are commissioned by usually great big national agencies who have a message, there's an old theatrical joke, you know. Our words used to say, if you want a message play, send it by Western Union. But this actually is not true. Everyone said, you know, I don't know who said it, it's the most dreadful thing. I give these brilliant quotes and can't remember who said it originally. But the theater is the great way that man communicates with man. We think of plays for living as a tool for the communication of ideas. You can get in your mail every day, five million pamphlets, you know, on various diseases and various problems, and you know where they end up in the waste basket. But if you see a play where you can relate to the people, where it is a story, where they

are real life human beings, and incidentally one of the great things is we use real life human actors, it hits you where you live. You remember. I want to talk about it in detail, but first I want to ask you something which occurred to me listening to you, describe a principle, and that is if you see something dramatized, it will make, it will have an impression on you more than you're just reading about it. If this is true, can the obverse be true, can you become idealized by watching a play that in nobles, a play that has an inobling theme, for example, let's take a play, command for all seasons. The theme here is one of principle, of a moral principle, of pursuing it to its inevitable end, as an over-centrification of it. Can a general audience receive, can this message strike home, and in the same way that the, let's take a kind of current problem, which is what plays for living, apparently, deals

with, can it have the same effect on a larger audience? Oh, I believe it absolutely, how did the theatre begin? The whole beginning of the theatre and the ancient Egypt, the ancient Greeks, was, as more or less, a religious experience. It was talking to, in those days, an illiterate audience, an audience who could not read, and acting thing of the most tremendous nobility, of religion, of myths, of every kind, of excitement and drama. And of course, the great tragedies were used as catharsis. The great comedies were used as political satire, very often. Listen, plays have brought down governments, you know. That's true. I just start to think about it. It isn't always how the romance began. It's how it ended. And I would say some time, but I want to get back to that. The theatre was always used for the communication of ideas. We haven't invented this, you know. But I would say there is a difference here. In the man of all seasons, you have a notable historical character with which not many

people in the audience identify. Our material is all written so that the majority of our audience can identify with the person who has the problem and through that person's moving through the play come out with at least an understanding. We seldom offer solutions, but we do try to aim for identification and understanding. So to that extent, I think our plays are more apt to invoke action and understanding and so forth. The other thing they invoke, which I want to make very clear, that we always mention, we don't try to solve all the problems of the world with a snappy little half-hour play. You know, we don't think we're doing that. Our plays are springboards for discussion because after every play, there is a discussion with the audience. We have a discussion leader, sometimes two discussion leaders, and resource people in the audience. And sometimes the discussions are more hot and heavy, longer. People scream at each other.

People get frightfully excited. And this is the idea behind them. We don't end up every play with the solution of unmarried mothers or juvenile linkants or whatever the problem is or mental health. We have a lot of mental health plays. We have a lot of rehabilitation plays. We want to talk about the plays and specifically how you arrive at the decision to produce a specific kind of play. First, incidentally, I don't have it here, but it comes to my mind that Ethel Barrymore Colton, Vera Allen, just recently, both of you, were on stage actively portraying, was it Shaw's letters to No, no, Ethel and Peggy Wood. Peggy Wood. Yes. We did a Shakespeare, a women of Shakespeare. A women of Shakespeare, yes. A women of Shakespeare, yes. We did that on the anti-mountain Acerist. Peggy Wood is on the committee. Yes. The plays for living. We've had Peggy Wood here. Yes. Are you going to do any future activities on stage? Are you going to do something very soon? No. We hope so. It was quite a success, and they're talking about our doing it at the Library of Congress,

which will be our next step, but that's not a place for living. That's just us. In this, that's a different hat. All right. No. Because, instead of speaking of hats, Mrs. Allen was very modest about this because she's a very distinguished actress herself. And at the time that this all began with the American Theatre Wing, she was the president of the American Theatre Wing. She really started this whole baby. It's her baby 25 years ago. In this way, I hope you want to hesitate to bring out some background information to sort of substitute for my lack of introduction. I'm usually very skimpy on introductions, unless I have a bio-written up for me. But I hope as these things occur, we can mention them and bring a background of bear on it. Mrs. Ethel Baymer called, what executive producer do you actually do for plays for living? I keep asking myself that question. Well, except sweep out the office, that I don't do. That's next. Yeah, that's next week. I worked on this project for about six or seven years as a volunteer. Actually, I began working with Mrs. Allen at the American Theatre Wing in her speakers

bureau because she was ahead of the speakers bureau there. And she trained us. We weren't allowed to go out and make speeches until we'd been through her course. And once you've made a speech to your fellow actors, believe me, you can do it anywhere. Nothing scares you. Oh, yes, indeed. And I worked as a volunteer and was chairman of the production. And just about a year ago, I took over the job of actually producing. Now this job is an editing job as well as a producing job. You work with the author and the commissioning agency. And you try to watch the two things that the commissioning agency's message gets over. We're doing one, for instance, with the American Cancer Society on the subject of smoking. You have to translate that to the author and the author back to the agency because, as Vera Allen was pointing out, the commissioning agency doesn't always know exactly what they want. I mean, they know that they want to play about something, you know, some message. In this case, they know they want to get the message across the cancer room. Yes.

And this particular one is headed for junior high school teenagers before they're too badly hooked. Now sometimes, if a play is badly written and not done, then it's just a tract. And it is our job to make it a play, to make it dramatically viable, to make it exciting, to make it amusing, to make it whatever, to work as a play, as well as telling the story. That's where you... And that is, you know, I guess, kind of my job, yes. And Vera Allen. And Vera Allen. And Vera Allen. But that's actually the author. Vera, yes, most likely, as vice chairman of the governing committee, just what would your capacity be? Well, for each play that's done, there is a member of the governing committee assigned, one from the theater and one from the lay group, who sit in on all of the discussions and help to make the decisions and suggestions as to the development of the play. And my function has chiefly been editorial. I have produced some of the plays and I have worked with the authors and the directors

and so forth from the beginning. And I guess my initial function in this was to find the people to start the project when we became plays for living, because I had the pool of talent, you know, in my file. And so that I keep trying to feed new faces and new people. When we were in trouble, we go to her. The other thing I wanted to say was that in all the years we've been doing this, and I think this is a remarkable record, we have never had a flop. We have never had a play refused by an organization. Somehow or other, this is group writing and it's very difficult for the author and sometimes it's difficult for us. But out of the group thinking, we have always been able to eventually get a play that would be accepted and used in that true author. Well, I think so.

Sometimes we've had to do some rewriting, but as a whole, we sweat it out through these also like Madison Avenue, you know, brainstorming sessions to come up with the two things, the play that works and tells the story. You see, we have on our committee and that's why I want you to talk to Mrs. Rayman out, because we are a combination of people from two worlds, the theater world, which for instance our chairman, his cast and Cornell, our vice-chairman, couldn't know the skinner. We have a lot of real, you know, big theater brass on the committee, and on the other side of the table, as it were, are our do-gooters for one of the better words. And, you know, before I went into this work, I didn't know very many do-gooters. You know, I've always wondered why that became a term of appropriium, by the way. You know, what's the opposite? Well, I wonder about it, I'm not good at it, I'm not good at it. Do better, I don't know. But in the beginning, we didn't, we had presidents of various, you know, community service and family service in the junior league and all these marvelous ladies, but they scared

us to death, and I think they thought we were some pretty queer ducks. And in the last few years, we have learned to work together in a perfectly remarkable way, and they have become terribly hapsiatically. I'm going to tell you, some of them just, you know, come on, pick up the speed, you know. Oh boy. And we- Maybe we can use them on Broadway. We consider ourselves absolutely social workers, you know, I consider myself, my son says I'm becoming an expert on absolutely everything, he could kill me. But I think Mrs. Raymer can tell us, from that point of view, what it's like to be a volunteer, a non-scientrical volunteer on this project. That's exactly what I was getting to, Mrs. Paul Raymer, Secretary of the governing committee, what is it, what do you really do? Well, everybody's basically a ham. I have been responsible for one of the plays, which is now being used in the New York City schools on teenage sex problems and education. I was on the committee that created the play. Actually, I had taken plays to some of the independent secondary schools, thinking that the young-of the advantage schools didn't know about what was happening in the rest of

the world. So these plays on a variety of problems, I took around and I talked to the young people and conducted the discussion. After one of the performances, a whole lot of the young people came up with their eager faces and said, Mrs. Raymer, do you have a play for us? And I said, what do you mean by a play for you? And they said, well, what do you do if you've got a friend who's drinking too much? What do you do about somebody who's seeing one boy too often? What do you do about cheating? What do you do about dope? And I was absolutely horrified. I thought I was doing awfully well and hadn't realized that these were burning problems at that point. But later, we realized it's become, through the forefront, then it was really not so important. So I said, well, I don't really know what to do, but I suggest you hit your wagon to the best star you've known and stick by your friends. And I told this to someone, and in the next 24 hours, I had $3,500. That's the fastest money I've ever gotten my life. So we got Nora Stirling, and the place for a living committee, came into being, and

we invited heads of independent schools, the two schools who commissioned the program, Farmington and Avon. And we also got a psychiatrist, we had parents, we interviewed the young. This play took us almost longer than any play we've ever written, because no one could quite agree which was the most important problem of the lot. So eventually, after a great deal of effort, and Nora Stirling has done a magnificent job, we settled down to the fact of sex, with the emphasis being that everybody has to make a choice, and it's whether you make a good choice or a bad choice. And so as the play was finished, we thought we were very avant-garde with sex. We thought this was, we took it around, and we had horrified parents in some places in headmasters who were a little shook up by the way that the girls reacted to the problems. But then we finally, lately we've been seeing that when we do the play, the parents and the teachers and the kids come up and say, what about dope? So we're hoping that we can have another play about dope. We have one play about dope, but just not about teenagers, it's a college age.

These plays, by the way, the problem you just discussed, is that the one called Let's Get Basement? That's right, yeah. Are these one act plays or three? 30 minute plays. 30 minute plays. Without any sets or costumes or lights, because they can be done in a room, and without any makeup or anything that has to be, nothing that cannot be carried on the subway in a shopping bag. Let's get basic, we did with the thought that in various schools, the young could do it for themselves. So it's been carefully done so that they don't even have to, they have a lectern in front of them so that they don't have to learn the lines if they don't have time as long as they're familiar with it. This is very unusual, by the way, because we have a very strict rule, except for this play, that within a 50-mile radius of New York City, we use only professional actors, union actors, we're very strict about that, however, all around the country thousands of, as a matter of several million, scripts have gone out all over the country, where we have chapters, and where they are done by community theater groups and college groups

and schools and so forth. But in New York City, because that's one of the things that I think is one of our functions, is to give work to professional actors and training to the younger actors. Well, first place for living, how do you, do you only put these on for organizations? Yes, and we never sell a ticket. We never sell a ticket. How would the general public be able to get involved in watching one or in knowing of the existence of plays for living? Just lovely, Kof, if you want to play, if you have a pro, you know, you want to play about a certain problem, and we have 37 now, you core family service, and I can give you the telephone now, but it's in the telephone book, and we send our professional cast of actors within a 50-mile radius of New York for only $85. We do it at PTA groups and at all kinds of organizations, and sometimes we play to several thousand people at a big convention, and the very next day they can be playing in a room

for about 20 kids or 20 college students, which is marvelous for actors, you know, because actors nowadays, you know, because this is the seminar you're running, never have a chance to see a live audience. This is true. How do you ever determine the effect of your cause? I mean, do you get any feedback? Do you ever feel that these plays actually have delivered the message, so to speak? Well, I think so, because we get a lot of re-commissions, for instance, the government of health education and welfare have commissioned four or five plays already. I mean, they think that they are important enough to keep doing new ones. We did our first one, wasn't it, very, on mental health, on the rehabilitation of a mental patient, and then we have it on the disabled housewife, and on, for instance, it's hard of hearing, which sounds such a trivial thing, very, very important. Ms. Colt, Ms. Allen and Mrs. Raymer, I ask you collectively a question, do you feel that this is a substitute for real hard information, that this is a kind of path delivery, to make something palatable, to make a lesson palatable for someone to listen to, or does

it really... Absolutely not, because we're the only time that you can think of, where you can answer back. You look at a television program, or you go to an ordinary play, and you sit, you're a captive audience, you sit there, if you're a television, you can go and get a beer, but you can't talk back, with our plays, people talk back, they disagree with the play, they scream at us sometimes, and... Well, is this the methodology that involves, that this discussion, this questioning, out of this, a new perspective is gained on the problem, or just how to believe it? We believe it. It isn't only that, most of the groups that book the plays, I'll say, the PTAs, they're a church group, they're a homogeneous group. You reach 100% of them. When you do something on television, maybe three people out of the hundred thousand that look at it, sit and really listen, and get involved, or identified with the problem, you see.

So that you have... Well, it's a smaller audience, it's an audience that comes because of its interest. And the impact on them, I think, is far higher than that would be that we compare ourselves to an average speaker. And the average speaker on such a subject is mental health, or one of the subjects we deal with could be pretty dreary and dull. We inject life into the subject, put it in a form that is palatable, and yet I think you would find that the information is pretty substantial. Can I tell you what some of the subjects are, the names of some of the plays, because I think this will give you an idea of the enormous spectrum that we cover. I'm going to do them backwards. We have two that I produced down in Philadelphia last year on recruitment for foster homes. I mean, these are used as a tool. Do they do any good? And I hope that I think they did recruit some foster homes. On the whole problem, we have actually three on this problem, because it's a very serious thing to get foster.

You can get adopted parents, but it's very hard to get foster parents. And we don't sugarcoat it in any way. We don't say, isn't it darling? I love the little blonde blue-eyed child who's going to arrive and be a little angel in your home. We show all the tough parts. Wonderful play that Ms. Allen just produced called Well of the World on Water Pollution, which is, you know, a very serious thing. And this has been done all around upstate New York on the subject of... What type of organization would want you to do a play like that? Commissioned by the New York State Department of Health. And they are instrumental in building the programs throughout the state. You know that that's the kind of organization. Well, for example, as you go through these, as you go through these, I just want to get an idea of what example, let's take the one on, well, here, I have one in front of me, called Lady on the Rocks, obviously. It's not a great talk. It's about alcoholism. It's not a great talk. It's about alcoholism.

It's about alcoholism. It's about alcoholism. And after that, the discussion is fascinating, because people get up in the audience and start talking about not only about alcoholics, anonymous, but alanon, which you know is the organization, which helps the families of alcoholics. Well, a lot of people in that audience didn't know this existed until they saw the play and heard the discussion. Alateen, which is another thing for the children of alcoholics. And it also shows the problem, which is a great problem now, the alcoholic housewife. You know, this didn't exist a few years ago, or this was very undercover. And this play has been done all over the country, a lot of AA meetings and things like that, but all sorts of groups ask for performance into this play, by the way, it's a marvellous play. Well, some of the dialogue, just having read it, just out of context, I just want to read a couple of lines out of it. And this is one of the characters just to get an idea of how these are written. This is a character, Deb, I guess that's a word. That's the wife, yes, that's the drunk. And they're in a bar, right? And she says, in response to Mark, he says, you can't walk out with the glasses.

And she says, why not? I'm saving them as a souvenir of our success to the bartender, Nightmare, and then. She says, that night he was so sick. If you'd seen him there, you'd have thought he'd be the perfect candidate for this. And she looks up trying to recall the name of the National Council on Alcoholism. Good. I got it right. Well, he didn't celebrate again for a long, long time. Mark's funny that way. He always remembers the hangovers. Now, that's the difference, you see, between somebody who occasionally ties one on and a real alcoholic. Then they make this very important point that a husband occasionally will tie one on. But he's... And thank you for talking about the form of the play, aren't you? Yes, a little bit. She is both the narrator and then she moves back in time into episodic scenes. Well, then what happened? Someone was watching the play and it has a denumine, it ends, and it has a conflict of climax. Is the message really obvious in this, and how does this particular one end? Where do you go for help?

Where it ends. It ends on that note. It ends up that she has finally come for help to the National Council or to any. That's not really named. You know, it's just a place. We try not to be too specific. That there are places where you can get help. And this is where the discussion starts. And then people who maybe have an alcoholic friend, it's always somebody else, you know, knows that there is a place they can go for help. A lot of the dialogue and the interaction of characters in these plays for the audience that is watching it, do they ever get it a view or some perspective on this that they ordinarily might not get? Well, we believe it. I can interrupt, Ethel. Let's get basic again. One of the performances, we did it for parents. And one of the fathers came up to me after the performance was over and said, you know, this is the most wonderful thing. These children talked, as I have never heard them talk and I realize I'll never see, hear my child speaking this way, but isn't it great to know what she's thinking? So that you do get that kind of feedback, you know? Yes.

From the parents' point of view, the father, in this case, saw the point of view that he would not... That's right. Absolutely, that he would never have had any other way. We did that play at Staten Island about a month ago. And after we had both kids and their parents there, which, you know, we thought of a dangerous thing. We broke up for the discussion into two groups. So the kids were in one room and the parents were in another and somebody kept running back and forth with methods from Garcia or something, but I mean, they actually discussed it because it would have embarrassing for our other group to discuss it in front of the other. But it was absolutely extraordinary, for instance, what each group, the parent group and the kid group got from the play quite different. Yes. Quite different. Yes. How many, you say you've never had a flop? How do you know that you don't know? Because you've never had one turn down. You know, the organization has always bought it and paid for it. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, how many plays a year would you say that you do you produce is it four or five? Four or five. Four or five, yes. So it takes a long time to produce a play. It takes six months more or less from the time that it is commissioned until the time

it actually is printed because a lot of research has to be done and a lot of drafts and a lot of committee meetings and then the plays have to be cast and they have to be tried out and sometimes be written and so forth before it's ready for printing. Right. No. The origin is about six months. You once you have a play scheduled to be produced, do you cast it as a regular broad way and off-road way? Yes, yes. And we use union actors. Yes. In New York. And we have a regular casting director, Jane Harvin, who has files, people send us pictures and they just like it. But do you rehearse these plays? Do they rehearse these plays under equity conditions? Absolutely. Yes. But we have an understanding with equity based on off-road way, one-act play scale. Oh, we're not sneaking it. How long does it take a play to be prepared and are they starting with the... Well, we use a figure two weeks of rehearsal with about three hours at a time of rehearsal. You see, we have to, because we don't pay very much, we work it around.

We do pay. It's a professional engagement. But we work them around other people's professional engagements and that's fairly informal, the director and the actors get together and work out a schedule. But we usually figure two weeks of rehearsal.