The 1968 Modern Drama Seminar

THE 1968 MODERN DRAMA SEMINAR THE MODERN DRAMA SEMINAR met in the Americana Hotel in New York, Friday morning, December 27, 1968. Although the announced topic of the seminar was contemporary British and Irish drama, the air of concern with involvement and relevance which so strongly pervaded the entire MLA meeting led to animated discussion which veered sharply at times from the question of the status of research in British and Irish drama to two other topics of serious concern to the participants: the future of the seminar and the problem of teaching drama and theater. Professor Robert Shedd (Maryland, Baltimore), presiding, reported that the MLA Study Commission has urged that small meetings such as this group be encouraged to join the established groups such as Comparative Literature and American Literature. Since, however, modern drama does not fall neatly within the limits of anyone of the already established groups, there would be a need for five to ten years of advanced planning if this seminar were to be aligned with various groups, since on one occasion it might fit better with one group than with another. For example, since the seminar topic has traditionally been the issue to which Modern Drama devotes its December issue, the announced topic for the December 1969 issue, "Classical Myth in l\1odern Drama," might suggest a seminar sponsored by Comparative Literature. Professor Shedd called attention to two new journals in which material about drama is welcomed and available: Comparative Drama (Western Michigan), ranging over drama from the Greeks to the present era, and Eire Ireland (American outlet: College of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota), devoted to almost anything Irish. The latter journal was cited later in the meeting as listing extensive Irish material on records. The two panelists initiating the discussion-Professor Ruby Cohn (San Francisco State) and Professor David Krause (Brown )-ranged over a considerable area, provoking a good deal of additional comment by the seminar participants. On the immediate announced subject of British and Irish drama, Professor Cohn indicated that British theater is more exciting than British drama today, that research on new dramatists comes too soon (often even before the plays appear in print), that true criticism demands time for meditation and preferably a published text to exam80 1969 1968 MODERN DRAMA SEMINAR 81 ine, that too little has been published on classical British modern drama (e.g., Shaw) and on the drawing room playwrights, such as Rattigan, Coward, Priestley-emphasizing in this connection, Albee's indebtedness to Noel Coward, especially in the matter of dialogue. In particular she expressed a wish for the study of dialogue, with attention to national differences in dialogue. As a corollary to this, Professor Shedd pointed out the need for a study of place names in such dramatists as these, since non-English audiences are frequently unaware of what these names (especially those of suburban districts) would suggest to the British audience and mind. Professor Krause, in talking of Irish drama, referred to Hogan's book After the Irish Renaissance and took issue with Hogan's argument that the Irish Renaissance never stopped, saying that in his view the Irish Renaissance died with The Plough and the Stars (1926). He further commented that the Irish Renaissance was fundamentally a counterrevolutionary movement, turning to the past for a revival of literary culture and "desecrating whatever was sacred in Ireland." Since that time, Professor Krause said, the Abbey Theatre has become an establishment theater, which will not "desecrate its own household gods," with the result that nothing experimental has touched the Irish theater as it has the rest of the theatrical world. In the course of the discussion, the question of Beckett's Irishness came up. Professor Cohn pronounced him Irish by birth, French by cultural affinity; his influence on other dramatists was discussed. In turn, this led to a brief treatment of absurdist. theater, with Professor Cohn suggesting that that is now a past issue, that that is not where the action is today. . . The main portion of the discussion, like so much of the discussion in the latest"MLA meeting, turned on the issue of the traditional MLA textual approach vs. treatment of what...