Seven of the
Provincetown Players are in the army or working for it in France, and more
are going. Not light-heartedly now, when civilization itself is threatened
with destruction, we who remain have determined to go on next season with
the work of our little theatre. It is often said that theatrical entertainment
in general is socially justified in this dark time as a means of relaxing
the strain of reality, and thus helping to keep us sane. This may be true,
but if more were not true--if we felt no deeper value in dramatic art than
entertainment--we would hardly have the heart for it now. One faculty,
we know, is going to be of vast importance to the half-destroyed world--indispensable
for its rebuilding--the faculty of creative imagination. That spark of
it which has given this group of ours such life and meaning as we have
is not so insignificant that we should now let it die. The social justification
which we feel to be valid now for makers and players of plays is that they
shall help keep alive in the world the light of imagination. Without it
the wreck of the world that was cannot be cleared away and the new world
shaped.
by George Cram Cook
for subscribers to
the 1918-19 season of the
Provincetown Players