If fools did not rush in where theatrical angels fear to tread, this
Preface would never have been written. Two years back the Washington
Square Players were called, by many who had theatrical experience,
fools. Now some term us pioneers. The future may write us fools again,
or something better--the conclusion being that the difference between
the fool and the pioneer lies in the outcome; the secret, that the
motive power behind both is enthusiasm.
Without enthusiasm the Washington Square Players could never have come
into existence, nor survived. From the first, when we had barely enough
money for rent and none for the costumes and properties we borrowed and
disguised, ours was an enthusiasm strong in quantity as well as quality.
The theatre is a peculiar art. Both in production and reception it
requires numbers and an enduring faith. Many a similar attempt has
failed because its experimentation and expression have been restricted
by a single point of view. Many have not continued because the desire
has waned in the face of the hardships and sacrifices entailed. But the
Players rightly had a plural name. We were, and are, a collection of
many individuals--actors, authors, artists, and art-lovers--all fired
with the sincere desire to give to playgoers something they had not been
able previously to find on the American stage. And our desire has been
strong enough to face and fight, and to continue to face and fight,
the ever-growing, ever-changing problems of finance, art, and human
inter-relations, which are the inescapable factors of the theatre.
We believed in the democracy of the drama. But we understand democracy
to mean, not the gratification of the taste of the many to the exclusion
of that of the few, but the satisfaction of all tastes. We had no
quarrel with the stage as it was, save that there wasn't enough of it.
We felt there was a public that wanted something other than it could
get--as evidenced by the rise of such institutions as the Drama
League--and that that public was large enough to support what it wanted
once it learned where to find it. The problem was to bridge the gap of
waiting. And it was met by the sacrifices of all those who worked at
first for nothing, and then for little more, so that the Players would
not fall into debt in the process of reaching an audience. As an able
New York dramatic critic stated, the establishment of the Washington
Square Players was merely one more proof that in America, as elsewhere,
joy was a greater incentive to work than money.
This enthusiasm among the workers, both in quality and quantity, was
generously shared by the spectators. The public which looked for plays,
acting and producing different from what it could find on the regular
stage, proved us right in believing that it was sufficiently large and
interested to warrant our experiment. Critics and patrons gave us from
the first, and we hope will continue to give us, that personal interest
and sympathetic appreciation which have been among the most vital
factors contributing to our growth.
So far we have produced thirty-two plays, of one-act and greater length,
and of these twenty have been American. The emphasis of our interest has
been placed on the American playwright, because we feel that no American
theatre can be really successful unless it develops a native drama to
present and interpret those emotions, ideas, characters, and conditions
with which we, as Americans, are primarily concerned.
Of these twenty American plays the Drama League has selected four for
this volume of its series. Excluding comment on my farce--for an author
is notoriously unfit to judge his own work--I think it may be said that
these represent a fair example of the success the Players have met with
in trying to encourage the writing of American plays with "freshness and
sincerity of theme and development; skilful delineation of character;
non-didactic presentation of an idea; and dramatic and esthetic
effectiveness without theatricalism." They are the early products of a
new movement in the American theatre of which we are happy to be a
part, and if their publication meets with the sympathetic, appreciative
reception that has been accorded their production, we feel and hope that
not only these authors, not only the Washington Square Players, but all
of the workers in this new movement will be encouraged and stimulated to
a further effort, a greater mastery, and a bigger achievement.
EDWARD GOODMAN, Director of the Washington Square Players. Comedy
Theatre, New York, 1916.