I have said enough of this plan to show its originality, and I may now proceed to study it more closely.
Supposing that the capital is secured and the public ready. What conditions are necessary to a real People's Theater?
I shall not try to lay down absolute rules of procedure: we must remember that no laws are eternally applicable, the only good laws being made for an epoch that passes and a country that changes. Popular art is essentially changeable. Not only do the people feel in a manner far different from the "cultured" class, there exist different groups among the people themselves: the people of today and the people of tomorrow; those of a certain part of a certain city, and those of a part of another city. We cannot presume to do more than establish an average, more or less applicable to the people of Paris at the present time.
The first requisite of the People's Theater is that it must be a recreation. It must first of all give pleasure, a sort of physical and moral rest to the workingman weary from his day's work. It will be the task of the architects of the future People's Theater to see that cheap seats are not instruments of inquisitorial torture. It will be the task of the
to poetry readings, one to the recitation of fables, and one to Christmas stories. No play may be performed more than twelve times, and the programs change daily. The theater is used during the day for expositions and lectures. The Freie Volksbühne of Vienna began by renting productions from other theaters, and giving Sunday matinees.
