Word: dos
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...sort of radio-ragtime-phonograph-jazz. Two plays in particular illustrate this latest experimental phase. One is John Howard Lawson's "Processional" which has been the storm center of discussion in New York. The other is a still more extraordinary play by his friend, the novelist John Roderigo Dos Passos, a play that has not yet been acted or published, called "The Moon is a Gong". This is to be presented for the first time during the coming week by the Harvard Dramatic Club and may well arouse an even more heated controversy between violent detractors and equally violent defenders...
While "Processional" has as its subtitle "A, Jazz Symphony of American Life". "The Moon is a Gong" has as its sub-title. "A Parade with Shouting". "The 'Moon is a Gong" out-processionals "Processional". In his riotous imagination, Dos Passos makes confusion worse confounded. Every device has been accumulated to shock the eye and split the ear. In its revolt from realism it is frankly, blatantly theatrical, and heaps up all the artificial tricks of expressionist drama. As in the Fifth Avenue scene of "The Hairy Ape", so here in the funeral scene masks are used to intensify the impression...
...Moon is a Gong" may, if I see that production by the Dramatic Club, coincide with Mr. Morgan's prejudice, is it not a little hasty of Mr. Morgan to condemn the play in advance apparently on the sole ground that he does not approve of Mr. Dos Passes' opinions in Vanity Fair...
Must we assume that if Mr. Dos Passos is intellectually careless in Vanity Fair, he must be likewise in "The Moon is a Gong...
...Moon is a Gong", announced by the Harvard Dramatic Club for its spring production, conforms to the dramatic rules set down by its author, Mr. John Dos Passos, in a recent number of Vanity Fair, we may be sure that the play is of questionable merit. The essay to which I refer is in substance an attack upon the "literary" drama. "We may as well admit," the author begins, "that for our time there are no questions of aesthetics...