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THE RENAISSANCE OF AMERICAN DRAMA IT's TIME TO QUIT DESPAIRING about the state of drama in America. Tbe Broadway theater may have shrunk; the movies may be having leaner days than they used to. But the drama is not on the way to doom.. In fact, conditions are right at the present for the production of good drama in America, and there are signs that it is being written and produced. At present there is a tremendous resurgence of drama, one likely to produce a considerable body of good plays and an increasing interest on the part of the general public in more than mere diverting entertainment . There prevail today conditions resembling those of great periods of dramatic production in the past, and they indicate that things are ripe for a dramatic renaissance. First of all, novelty of presentation has always aroused public interest in drama. The new development likely to make the greatest difference in dramatic fare has existed for a relatively short time, but long enough to make itself strongly felt and to give impetus to a dramatic renaissance. That new development is television. Furthermore, the major developments in the drama have come at times when a large segment of the population has sought entertainment from the theater and has greedily devoured whatever playwrights offered, accepting what provided diversion and cherishing whatever gave in addition some revelation about the human race and its problems . That extensive audience exists today. One need not have the statistics on the number of TV sets in America; one can merely look at the roofs of any town and see that the potential audience for the TV play is tremendous. Furthermore, these people have aheady paid their money for their sets; and except when the occasional repair bill comes, the owners feel that since they have aheady paid for the sets they might as well have the entertainment. Though that audience must take what it gets, it is eager for something better than the run of the mill. The red eyes in the moming after the late movies testify how pitifully williog the audience is to accept even the slimmest of entertainment. The Trendex and Nielsen ratings following Peter Pan, Romeo and Juliet, and the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty indicate that most of the country made an effort to see something that promised to be out of the ordinary. So an avid and extensive audience is ready for good theater. In addition to an eager audience, however, a renaissance needs 115 116 JAMES T. NARDIN September money to stimulate production. In the fifteenth anel sixteenth centuries , that money came from wealthy individuals who became patrons of painters or of companies of players. Today that money comes from manufacturers and retailers who are ready to advance large sums of money to produce TV shows, in the hope that this large audience will be pleased enough to buy the products advertised. Thus there exists the ideal combination of money for production and the necessity of pleasing a wide audience. Boring the audience is likely to do little to aid sales; so the sponsor is eager to have the public provided with the best entertainment his money can buy. No great period of production in drama has ever occurred in which the plays did not appeal to the wide general audience as well as to the critical portion of it. • These three basic conditions-a theatrical medium readily available to almost everyone, money for production, and a wide audience wanting entertainment-are ideal for the production of large quantities of drama. They are likely to improve the quality as well. The man who has something to say to the populace at large should be exultant at the thought of reaching through TV a larger theatrical auclience than he could ever have hoped for at anyone time in the past. When he has the chance to express his ideas to vast numbers of people and to make money as well, the conditions are ideal for attracting the best of writers. That TV needs vast numbers of plays and writers is obvious. Repetitions of old movies may help develop critical taste in the audieneeand that is...

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