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Show Play Broker Tells Of Modern Failing x it out cx soo -rr .-V S :': ; -Jf llvV RAISING rvv .; .'" V'? OsIrV?v plays acje.: ROSALIE STEWART. By MARIAN HALE. "flood morning, have you finished your play? This may become the accepted formula of social greeting If the dramatic urge continues to dominate the nation. "Never before In history have so many people, old and young, literate and Illiterate, felt such a responsibility responsi-bility to write the great ' American play," s.iys Kosalle. Stewart, play j broker, vaudeville booker and now t Broadway producer. "On every mall the '"""rlpts 'come In. and not one out of 509 has any merit, and not one out of a i thousand betrays any knowledge of J the technique of the stage." I She handed me an imposing look-i look-i Ing volume of one-act plays. "Here." she said, "is an ambitious person who has had hie plays prl-i prl-i vately printed at great expense. He has one play here of six pages that would last about two minutes. Can you Imagine any person producing a two-minute play? ALL KINDS OF "BONERS." "Hare's another where nothing happens hap-pens for the first fifteen minutes. Now In a one-act play there must be t a situation In three minutes after the curtain is up otherwise It Is i Impossible. j "We are flooded with sex plays no one would care to see. mystery plays whose only mystery Is why anyone j wonld take the trouble to write them. "Hair raising plays are the vogue Ot.ver.Jhutbvnext year they may Know Scathing TH BACK. OF THE. TAC be a drug on the market probably will be. Hy trying to copy the pre-; vailing style in drama, instead of developing some new Idea, many a good writer goes wrong. j "My advice to all budding play-I wrights Is know something of the back of the stage before you begin to write plays. "If you can t get on the stage to act. get a job as maid or carpenter, or anything that will give you a chance to see it from thu inside and enable you to learn the psychology of the crowd and enable you to see how situations are built up and developed." de-veloped." "ENTERS VAUDEVILLE AT 16. Miss Stewart career' has been most interesting one. At the age of 1 she had to leave high school because of the Illness of her father and take charne of his chain of vaudeville houses In St. Louis. 8he succeeded so well that her: work soon brought her to New York.! where she buys and sells plays as well as books vaudeville. This season she- tried to get a New York producer to produce "The Torch-bearers. Torch-bearers. which she felt was an unusual un-usual and novel play. Five told her the second act couldn't be done. "I'll Just do it myself, and show them," she decided. So she invested her own savings In settings and scenery, selected her cast and brought her production Into New York. It proved all she hoped It would be and more and it established her as one of the few women producers on Broadway besides proving that a women is jwiallv ri ghj- |