Mr. George Jean Nathan presents
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Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917. Excerpt: ... MISTS OF DELUSION I THE chancellors of the miniature Punch and Judy Theatre wrought wisely when they temporarily gave over the thirsty pulpit of their masque mosque to melodrama. For, contr...
MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917. Excerpt: ... MISTS OF DELUSION I THE chancellors of the miniature Punch and Judy Theatre wrought wisely when they temporarily gave over the thirsty pulpit of their masque mosque to melodrama. For, contrary to the so prevalent hocus-pocus, melodrama may achieve its best effect not in large playhouses like the Drury Lane or the Manhattan Opera House, but in very small ones like the Bandbox, the Little Theatre and this very Punch and Judy. Properly and with conviction to exercise its power over a theatre audience, melodrama should be so produced that it at no time impresses its spectators as anything other than a hollow compound of noise and pasteboard. That is, melodrama in the generally accepted meaning of the word. Any suspicion of realism forthwith deletes that particular portion of the melodrama of persuasion and credibility. Max Maurey, director of the Grand Guignol, is doubtless the most consistently proficient and successful producer of melodrama in the world and he produces his melodramas (even such as "S. O. S.," "Toward the Light," "The Submarine" and others which require comparatively elaborate scenic devices and trickeries) in a theatre not so large as even the Punch and JW . The explanation of the theory is simple, producer who presents his melodrama in a big t atre does so under the impression that the furth an audience is removed from the stage trappings ar traffic the less flawful and more real these trappingand traffic will seem to it. And the producer is, this, correct; but, being correct, he yet bamboozle himself. For his audience is thus placed in the, ii. this instance, theatrically less desirable mood of imagining and believing in the realism of the proceedings than in the more prosperous mood of detecting, from a closer look, the holes in the ocea...
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