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Show h ;5 MARY ;g : SUCCEEDS j 3; on Jjsj I j MAIN STREET If j: ,. J ;; $5 By LAURA MILLER J L :g , 1924. by Laura Miller COMUS IN COLUMBIA Columbia, Mo., claims Athens, not Gopher Prairie, as Its model. To live a half block from the University of Missouri Is a very different thing from living 'round the corner from Main Street, Miss Gladys Wheat assures me with healthy scorn for my Ignorance. Such students and faculty folk, "experts "ex-perts in many realms," as work with her, writing her plays and acting In them, are not to be found In quantity certainly on any happenstance Main Street. Yet It Is significant for other arts as well as that of the theater, so thoughtful artists tell me, that Miss Wheat's Theater studios should be on Missouri avenue, rather than on Broadway. To many mature women, themselves happily busy in some small town, I've put the question ; "Do you advise the average girl, Just starting to work, to go to a big city?" And over and over they reply : "No, Indeed, If she is the average girl. But, If she is entering an art or profession, she will have to go." Tet here is Miss Wheat pursuing a profession that calls on the arts of acting, dramatic writing, and costume and scenic design, a thousand miles from the center of theatrical production. produc-tion. She Is not merely copying others' successes, either. "My aim," she says, "Is to interpret and reflect the child's world In drama as the drama of grown people reflects their world. My personal contribution Is the visualization visualiza-tion of plays written by others. I direct, di-rect, design and make the costumes, the sets, and the properties. Up to the present time we have produced only plays written for children, and for production In this theater." She is frank enough to say that financial support does not as yet equal the intellectual, histrionic and literary aid she has received. Even so, her conclusion carries a message for others artistically inclined, who wonder If they must become needles In the haystacks of New Tork in order or-der to attain. Here is an enterprise, she declares, "carried on In a little community, but carried with ease and . pleasure by big people." Since I'm anything but an expert In the arts of the theater I can't decide whether such experiments as this at Columbia have, geographically speaking, speak-ing, a fair chance of success. But Miss Wheat has set me wondering. Wasn't Comus an Athenian god of drnnia? And were Comus and his followers fol-lowers worried by the population statistics sta-tistics pf Athens? Or were they, like Gladys Wheat, content to build for big people? |