Religious Drama/I ed. by Marvin Halverson, and: Religious Drama/II ed. by E. Martin Browne (review)

204 MODERN DRAMA December SEVEN STEPS Tv CREATIVE CHILDREN'S DRAMATICS, by Pamela Prince Walker, New York, Hill and Wang, 1957, 150 pp. Price $3.00. "Creative dramatics" and "children's theatre" are theatrical terms commonly misused, or rather, they are often used as if they meant the same thing. It seems to me as if the author of Seven Steps makes this mistake. From the subject matter one must assume that the author is speaking to directors of children's theatres and not to leaders of creative dramatics. The author advocates, for the most part, a Stanislavskyan approach. She assumes correctly that emotions and acts must be clearly motivated if the child is to do his part well. The earlier chapters emphasize exercises and concentration. These are followed by chapters on the physical control of movement. Emotional states are discussed next and are translated into terms of color and objectives. Discussions of transitions and counter objects in relation to character and plot follow. There is one chapter on play production, followed by three plays written by the author, with running times of from thirty to ninety minutes. The plays are written so that older children may produce them for a young audience. Plays and discussion are condensed into 150 pages. The result is that the book must seem cryptic at times. The director of a children's theatre or a creative dramatics leader can profit from a reading of the book. SALLY Sm RELIGIOUS DRAMA/I, edited by Marvin Halverson, New York, Meridian Books, Inc., 1957, 410 pp. Price $1.45. RELIGIOUS DRAMA/II, edited by E. Martin Browne, New York, Meridian Books, Inc., 1958, 317 pp. Price $1.45. The twentieth century's renewed interest in theology has reunited church and drama. John Masefield's The Coming of Christ launched this movement thirty years ago, and late this season Elia Kazan will bring to Broadway Archibald Macleish 's J.B., a symbolic recasting of the Job myth. Between these two landmarks such literary figures as T. S. Eliot, Charles Williams, W. H. Auden, Christopher Fry, and D. H. Lawrence, among others, have contributed significantly to the revival of religious drama. Many churches and seminaries also have furthered the cause by offering not only financial assistance but physical facilities and ecclesiastical prestige. Another example of religious drama's renascence is the Meridian Books publication of the first two paperback volumes in a "series designed to represent the history and forms of expression of religious themes in drama." Volume I presents five well-chosen plays produced during the last quarter-century in the Englishspeaking countries. And if all religious drama is united by the "fatal flaw" of pride, as Marvin Halverson insists in his brief but cogent introduction, each author here manages to probe different fundamental elements of the human comedy. Both Fry and Lawrence, for instance, adhere closely to Old Testament scripture and tradition. Fry's The Firstborn explores poetically-and with relentless impartiality-the God-motivated clash between two former boyhood friends, ?-.Ioses and Pharaoh Seti the Second, and the resultant suffering of both Hebrews and Egyptians. Individual guilt is secondary also in Lawrence's David, a vivid prose account of the power struggle between the tragically erratic Saul and his young ambitious successor, both mere pawns in God's cosmic plan. The New Testament is represented by W. H. Auden's Christmas oratorio, "For the Time Being." Complex and occasionally exciting, this nativity verse play, designed as 1958 205 closet drama, has been acted with surprising success. Dorothy Sayer's The Zeal of Thy House intex:mingles angels and men, saints and sinners in an earthy narrative of the medieval rebuilding of the Canterbury Cathedral Choir. A serious accident teaches laymen and priests to forego sell for the promise of salvation. And finally, James Schevill analyzes several facets of the clerical ego in The Bloody Tenet, a verse restaging of Roger Williams' defense before the Puritan magistracy. That human pride is varied and infinite is exemplliied also throughout the twenty mystery verse plays comprising Volume II. Selected. and edited by E. Martin Browne, from the well-known Cornish, Chester, York, Wakefield, Coventry, and Hegge medieval English dramatic...