Smith College - Smith College Yearbook (Northampton, MA)

Page 169 text:

□ m m thy Libaire gave it harmony in their confident and mature interpreta- tion of the character parts of Mudhavya, Father Kanva, and Gau- tami. In the fall of our senior year we paused and took breath. The first set of plays belonged primarily to the juniors. But we showed a continued interest in our dramatic career, even though it was draw- ing to a close. Cheryl Crawford played the title role in Sudermann ' s Teja, and Florence Melling startled and delighted us by proving her- self as capable in the part of the Bagdad merchant Ali, in Hudson ' s Pearl of Dawn, as in the delicate and sophisticated feminine parts we had come to consider primarily hers. The class has justified its long and universal interest in the drama in its most recent production, The Faithful, by John Masefield. In this, the ideal for which ShakuntalaJi served as an apprenticeship, was realized as a successful actuality. The rhythm of the play pro- gressed with an ever-accelerating intensity, unbroken by uncrafts- manlike slips in acting or stage management. Eunice Blake, Cheryl Crawford, and Grania Knott reached the height of their dramatic interpretation in the parts of Lords Kira, Kurano, and Asano, in which the excellence of their acting was so genuine that it merged in the general harmony of the whole. It is hoped that, departing from this basis of achievement as a standard, we shall show the results of our long and intensive training in a brilliant production in June. It is particularly to Cheryl Crawford, as competent and far- visioning director of the Dramatic Association, that we owe our deter- mination to accomplish something of artistic integrity in the face of occasional failure and frequent distrust, born of the fact that experi- ment of this sort is still in an early stage of development. It is to her, too, that we owe the success of ambitious performances under limited conditions. Only with her dauntless confidence and deter- mination could plays of the scope of ShakuntalaJi and The Faithful have been made convincing in the domestic and over-familiar settings of campus and the Students ' Building stage. LT n o. 168

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