Word: sweetness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...course that begins with the arm waving ("It gets the blood circulating; there's no point in my talking to a lot of dead brains") is called Drama 106. But Paul Baker's object is to spade up whatever creative ability a student has. By sweet reasonableness or sour harangue, he prods course-takers to write stories, paint pictures and compose music. False notes and failed paintings are unimportant in this basic course, which is required for Baylor undergraduates; all Baker wants students to do is "get acquainted with their own minds-which, incidentally, very few people...
Revenge is sweet, or so the adage goes, and the varsity tennis team got plenty of it yesterday. Coach Jack Barnaby's squad made up for last year's 5-4 loss to Amherst by shellacking the Lord Jeffs, 8 to 1, on the Soldiers Field courts...
...instances J.B. by Archibald MacLeish and Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams, "in both of which a great many drums are beaten, but you're not sure what the drums are summoning you for... If the play has a big enough theme, and is well enough directed--excitingly enough directed--I think there is a tendency to equate that with a masterpiece...
...seems to prefer plays concerned with extremes of pain, extremes of guilt, extremes of hysteria. Now there are a lot of awfully good plays on that subject"; here he instances Oedipus Rex. But "Oedipus expiates for the sake of his entirectiy," while the heroes of J.B. and Sweet Bird of Youth (the two plays most recently directed by Kazan) are concerned in their expiation only with themselves. "Somehow the connection between strong emotion and human responsibility seems to have been cut off in his mind--and other people...
...There's no reason why realism shouldn't be poetic in its effect... But now that Kazan is beginning to impose on realistic plays like Sweet Bird and Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof] an operatic style, I think it's dangerous and forced." The mainstream of American drama ("I hate to use phrases like 'mainstream,'" says Tynan) has to do with "observable reality. I think--let's be frank--that Kazan has moved too far away from that without the moral or social realities that are necessary to sustain it. Even in a play like Our Town ... the performances...