Action please!

Mr George Webby, lecturer in Drama at Wellington Teacher's College, deplores the multi-purpose role the Memorial Theatre has to play. As be sees it, a theatre is not-an all-purpose hall, and the pace of drama here should be accelerated if the theatre's full potential is to be realized.

Activity in the theatre should revolve around drama alone, and on every night of the week at that, he feels; and he also thinks that too many students simply turn up For a part in a play without taking enough interest or notice in the other aspects theatre work involves.

This last comment of Mr Webby's should be taken up as advice for he is certainly in a position to offer it. He has spent the last two years in successful study for an M.A. in Drama at the Dallas Theatre Centre, Texas, U.S.A. Theatre study in the States is away out on its own, and the diploma and graduate courses are extensive and stimulating, judging by the range of Mr Webby's experience there, and enthusiastic account of it.

Mr Webby was one of a group of about 200, and when asked how the other graduates would follow up their full-time study, he said they usually sought professional work, or taught at other colleges. Television is the up-and-coming media for acting and competition is intense. A degree in Drama from such a university as San Antonio (where he studied) would he valid pretty well all over the States, and would stand a drama student in good stead whether he aimed for full-time acting or teaching.

Because of the great variety of subjects involved in this field, many students become engrossed in one particular aspect and concentrate on it. Some students who take Drama units incidental to another graduate course become enticed into what sounds a fast-moving and exciting milieu. When this happens, and they wish to change course mid-stream, there are some units which can be cross-credited towards a Drama degree.

Even subjects that sound strictly limited to class study, like the History of Drama and Theatre Literature are still tied in directly with the acting classes, as Mr Webby discovered. However, his particular pigeon was producing ('directing' in America, although a director means something else again, in N.Z.). His thesis was about the producer-actor relationship, and he set out to get the low-down on the "witchdoctor" effect some directors have on actors—i.e. the "results evident, persuasion and method mysterious" variety.

Back in Wellington after two years crowded with theatre sights and sounds it's no wonder that Mr Webby feels impatient at the restricted and often inappropriate uses this University's theatre is put to. What a shot in the arm Wellington drama would get, if it had a similar set-up of theatre students playing a semi-professional role in the community on a scholarship basis and with the opportunity of acquiring a full range of theatre skills.