A student who takes part in the production of a play under really competent guidance gains a training that cannot be duplicated by any other means. It is, or should be, to him an educational experience of a high order, and no less truly educaational because it is pleasurable. His preliminary study of the character that he is to impersonate, his attempt to render that character completely in voice, action, and all the other means within his power, inevitably give him a broader and more searching knowledge of human nature - a keener sense of what is admirable and what is despicable. His imagination is quickened and developed healthily and normally. His sense of the varying values of words and of their expressivearrangement into sentences of speech is also quickened. His pronunciation of words, his articulation, and his enunciation are immensely improved (in all these the American student is notably and deplorably deficient.) His voice is also improved (the average American voice is nothing less than atrocious), and the improvement of this organ of individual expression is of the utmost value to him in society, in business, and in the development of his own personality. His use of his body and the coördination of of speech and bodily action, his bodily poise, his legitimate self-possession, all are immeasurably and beneficiently developed. Nothing can so well accomplish these very desirable results as can acting. In this light, acting becomes not a frivolous pastime, not a form of self-indulgence, not an effeminate diversion for those unable to participate in sterner activities, but an essential art, - dignified, educational, invaluable.
2087
kianamaiart
prguitarman
gummygunk
