Anton Wagner
The current critical perception of Herman Voaden's theatre work has been blurred to a great degree by a failure to distinguish between the form and content of his dramas. This article analyses the religious/philosophic content of Voaden's works, what he himself referred to as 'my new religion', which is not merely expressed by, but directly shaped, the complex symphonic expressionist form of his playwriting and production style.
La réception critique actuelle de la dramaturgie et scénographie de Herman Voaden ne distingue pas suffisamment entre la forme théâtrale et le contenu thématique de ses oeuvres. Cet article analyse le contenu religieux et philosophique de ses drames, ce que Voaden appelait lui même 'ma nouvelle religion'. Ce contenu thématique n'est pas seulement exprimé par, mais aussi façonne directement, la forme théâtrale complexe de son expressionisme symphonique.
In an April 1983 survey of Canadian plays in Books in Canada, Richard Plant referred to Herman Voaden's symphonic expressionism as only a 'small voice lost in the wilderness'. 1 His comment curiously echoes Rose Macdonald's review of Ascend As the Sun in the Toronto Telegram in April of 1942 in which she called Voaden 'the most interesting Canadian writer of plays of current time' but also declared that 'for some years, [Voaden] has been more or less a voice crying in the wilderness'. 2
This prophetic, religious element of Voaden's work - what he himself referred to as 'my new religion' - has not been sufficiently understood by critics from the 1930s to the present. His religious/philosophic views are not merely illustrated by, but directly shaped the symphonic expressionist form of his playwriting and production style into an artistic whole made up of realistic, poetic and choral speech, music, lighting, dance and non-realistic movement and set design.3 The current critical perception of Voaden's work has been blurred to a great degree by the failure to distinguish between the form and content of his dramas. Because the majority of his plays remain unpublished and his work in the theatre is just beginning to be analyzed in detail, there has been a tendency simply to identify symphonic expressionism with the Expressionist movement in the arts.4
The development of symphonic expressionism, a distinct 'Canadian Drama and Art of the Theatre' called for in his 1930 introduction to Six Canadian Plays,5 is much more complex than a simple imitation of European theatrical models. It was the result of Voaden's own search for meaning, had a strongly subjective, autobiographical basis, and developed in a specific Canadian artistic context whose cultural nationalism, philosophic idealism and abstract and symbolist aesthetic were shared by other leading cultural figures. Indeed, one can speculate whether Voaden would have developed his symphonic expressionist aesthetic at all without the artistic and philosophic inspiration of the Group of Seven, their artist friends such as Roy Mitchell and Bertram Brooker, as well as critical supporters such as Augustus Bridle and F.B. Housser. Voaden's playwriting and non-realist theatre work, beginning in 1928 and 1929, was directly influenced by Housser's 1926 A Canadian Art Movement: The Story of the Group of Seven which Voaden studied in detail in 1929 and by Mitchell's Creative Theatre and Brooker's Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1928-1929, published the same year.6
The common set of beliefs publicly and privately expressed by individuals who influenced Voaden, such as Brooker, Arthur Lismer, and Housser, Roy Mitchell and Lawren Harris (the last three prominent figures in the Canadian theosophist movement), can be summarized as follows: an idealist neo-platonic philosophical world view finding ultimate reality in a metaphysical, rather than material existence; the perception of the artist as a priest-like, visionary 'seer' rather than simply as a craftsman; and a conviction in the paramount influence of the natural environment, particularly the spiritual austerity of the Canadian North, as a stimulus to religious belief and artistic creativity leading to a national consciousness which would not be narrowly parochial but which would be based on, and embody, universal experiences.
An examination of the cultural, autobiographical, philosophic and aesthetic background to Herman Voaden's playwriting and non-realist theatre productions beginning in 1929 is essential for an understanding of his symphonic expressionist aesthetic. Rather than being an imitation of European or American expressionist models, his 1930s symphonic expressionism was a dramatic form whose multi-media elements and religious/philosophic content were shaped in Canada by the early 1920s. Though never a theosophist himself, Voaden's religious philosophy derived from the same reaction against the destruction of orthodox Christian belief through scientific materialism and Darwinist thought which gave rise to the theosophist movement at the end of the 19th century. In 1917, at the age of 14, Voaden experienced a profound crisis of religious belief in which, as he indicated in a 1976 oral history inverview 'I rejected the miracles and had difficulty accepting the Creation, Communion and the Resurrection even in a non-literal sense'. 7
As dramatized in Ascend As the Sun, this fundamental crisis of belief nearly drove Voaden to suicide. His subsequent search for religious/philosophic meaning and resultant neo-platonic world view and cultural nationalism came to parallel closely that of critics and artists such as Mitchell, Harris, Lismer, Housser and Brooker, all of whom were theosophists. Like these artists and critics, Voaden by the late 1920s had developed an essentially religious, communal conception of art as a substitute for conventional Christian dogma and as an attempt to develop a consciousness of national and universal unity which Brooker (in his 1928/1929 Yearbook) generally found lacking in Canadians.8 A 1927 diary entry outlining a speech to a play production group, for example, indicates that Voaden spoke of
The old intimacy and oneness between church and theatre - in Greece and early England - the puritanic break between them - and the necessity of the church once more placing its strength and direction behind the disintegrating theatre - to make it once more ritual and worship - and a great social agency and a potent factor once more in the common cause of loveliness and idealism and beauty in life.9
However, Voaden's call for a return to 'the old intimacy and oneness between church and theatre' in order to make theatre 'once more ritual and worship' was not a call for conventional Christianity. Theatre, as he stated to another play production group in 1931, was rather 'a new religion', 'a place of immortal visions and enthusiasms' in which imagination and the beauty of art lead man to divinity. 'The theatre is ancient and strange. Touch her, and you thrill to immemorial ritual and worship. Ancient and strange she is ... fit to be the temple of a new people', Voaden declared.
For I sense a new religion trembling near the hearts of men ... a religion in which imagination is, as it was with Blake, 'the body of God', in which, as with Blake, poetry, music and art are the powerful instruments of God, the mounting steps to the white radiance of his throne. Of this new religion I envision the theatre the heart, the church, the celebrant. To create in beauty and strength will be to worship.10
If theatre was 'our Gateway to the Divine' as Roy Mitchell had maintained in his Creative Theatre, 11 how exactly was 'the white radiance of [God's] throne' to be reached? Voaden's 1931 Blake reference cites 'the mounting steps' of poetry, music and art, the essential multi-media ingredients of his symphonic expressionist aesthetic he had referred to in his 1930 praise of Toller's Masses and Men. 12In his Introduction to Six Canadian Plays, Voaden referred to 'symbolism, formalism, stylization, constructivism, and expressionism' as possible non-realist styles in modernist theatre production, delcaring, 'we should be aware of these tendencies'. But he also maintained that 'we must learn to depend resolutely on our own creative spirit ... neither the culture nor the art of another people can be finally a substitute for our own. We must feel the thing that is here, and search till we find the style that will best express it'.13
Members of the Group of Seven had already discovered the artistic inspiration of the Canadian natural environment and the 'spiritual clarity' of the Canadian North. In the introduction to his 1930 Six Canadian Plays, Voaden specificially referred to the canvases of Lawren Harris and Arthur Lismer and the sculptures of Elizabeth Wood, praising their individuality, 'their artistic achievements in form, rhythm, design, and colour, and their spiritual contributions in austerity, symbolism, and idealism'. 'If these', he declared,
can be brought into our theatre and developed in conjunction with the creation of a new drama that will call for treatment in their spirit and manner and be closely allied to them in content and style, we shall have a new theatre art and drama here that will be an effective revelation of our own vision and character as a people.14
The influence of the abstract painting style of the Group of Seven on Voaden's theatre aesthetic is evident as early as the April 1930 premières of Dora Smith Conover's Winds of Life and J.E. Middleton's Lake Doré, two of the prize-winning dramas published in Six Canadian Plays. In a photo caption from Lake Doré in Six Canadian Plays, Voaden indicated that 'the hill and mountain forms seen were three-dimensional, stylized pieces painted a silver grey, with cold blue and green lights thrown on them' and that this exterior scene used at the end of the play aimed 'to create the bleak and austere feeling of the wilderness into which Stella Kirkman went to her death'. 15
Within two years after Voaden called for the creation of a distinct 'Canadian "Art of the Theatre" ... a tradition in the staging of plays that will be an expression of the atmosphere and character of our land as definite as our native-born painting and sculpture,' 16 Bertram Brooker informed the Toronto Women's Press Club prior to Voaden's second symphonic expressionist production, Earth Song (December 1932) that Voaden was 'doing in drama what the Group of Seven are doing in painting'. 17
Describing the stylistic inspiration for Voaden's drama Rocks in his April 1932 Toronto Star review, Augustus Bridle had cited Voaden's statement that he 'got the idea from studying pictures of the Group of Seven' and declared of the production itself that 'nothing quite like it has ever been done in Canada'. 'The set - just a few low bare rocks - looks like some modern paintings'. 18
In Six Canadian Plays, Voaden included four illustrations of canvases by members of the Group of Seven: Tom Thomson's 1916 The West Wind, Arthur Lismer's 1921 September Gale, J.E.H. MacDonald's 1921 Solemn Land and Lawren Harris' 1922 Above Lake Superior. In a winter-1934 speech to his Play Workshop in which be explained his aesthetic and religious/philosophic beliefs, Voaden referred to the influence of Whitman, his own discovery of the Canadian North, and acknowledged his 'great debt' to the Group of Seven. His notes for the speech refer to 'stand before "Solemn Land"', a reference to MacDonald's painting which reappears in a 1939 address on art and the symphonic theatre presented to the Women's Art Association in Toronto. In his 1939 speech, Voaden praised Harris' Above Lake Superior for creating 'a mood remote, ecstatic, mystical' and declared that MacDonald's Solemn Land invoked in him 'austere and lonely music richly coloured - the vastness of a cathedral design - I see this state in terms of dance - against such a background - I can hear a chanting of voices - singing - or verse speaking' and that it was on such a 'plane of the sublime - the exalted - the lyrical - that all the arts reach the condition of music - melt and fuse into each other!'. 19
Besides the recognizable influences of Whitman and the Group of Seven, how are Voaden's religious/philosophic beliefs and aesthetic theories directly reflected in his playwriting and theatre practice? The philosophic basis for Voaden's symphonic expressionist aesthetic of the 1930s is indicated as early as one of his 1922 Queen's University diaries commenting on H.G. Wells' study God, the Invisible King (1917). The diary reveals the influence of Voaden's own Christian background and reading of Carlyle, his religious/philosophic idealism and its expression in art, and a strong neo-platonic metaphysical orientation which finds greater reality in an eternal 'vision of the good' than in the temporal, ever changing 'world of fact'. He noted that
Religion maintains that the world of fact is really harmoneous with the world of ideals. Thus man creates God, all-powerful and all-Good, the mystic unity of what is and what should be ... .
Let us learn then that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good; and let us descend in action into the world of fact, with that vision always before us.20
Symphonic expressionism was that 'Gateway to the Divine' with which Voaden sought to transcend the 'world of fact' to capture and embody the eternal 'vision of the good' of a greater metaphysical reality. Voaden's most concise description of his symphonic expressionist aesthetic can be found in the manifesto 'The Symphonic Theatre' printed in programs for the December 1934 production of Hill-land and published in the Toronto Globe under the title 'Toward a New Theatre'. Voaden began his 'Symphonic Theatre' manifesto with a citation from Santayana: 'That man is unhappy, indeed, who in all his life has had no glimpse of perfection, who in the ecstasy of love, or in the delight of contemplation, has never been able to say: It is attained'. Voaden declared that
The symphonic theatre should seek to recreate these moments in which perfection is glimpsed - these moments of intuitive illumination. This it can do by intense, slow and lovely picturization - by translating ordinary stage movements into those of ritual and rhythm, by introducing music, dance and choral comment to sustain and lift the moment to complete significance.21
He asserted that his multi-media symphonic art form would result in 'elevated thought and feeling', 'supremely exalted statement', 'lyrical intensity', 'spiritual release', 'uplifting vision' and 'flashing revelation' and that his symphonic theatre would 'open wide the doors of beauty and imagination' to enable poetry and ecstasy to live on stage.22
Voaden had already attempted to achieve such moments of illumination and poetic ecstasy through the symphonic fusion of his multi-media elements in his first symphonic expressionist drama Rocks. Writing to Lawrence Mason in April 1932, Voaden referred to Mary's speech near the conclusion of the play in which she comes to accept her dead lover's mystic vision of the North, and declared,
Here the piercing and irradiating pulses of white light, (endowing the actor with the plasticity of sculpture, sculpture at last vital and vibrant), the glorious interplay of orchestral color, (painting likewise living and glowing), the exultation of the dancers, the lyric lift and cry of the violin, and the singing of voice and face in a great moment of illumination, all these were one - one in the sweep and flow of an emotional idea.23
The most consistent criticism of Voaden's symphonic expressionist playwriting and production style in the 1930s was its lack of realistic acting and characterization and its lack of strong dramatic conflict. Malcolm Morley's criticism of Hill-land, for example, which he called 'a highly static representation, an elaborated tone poem', 24actually points to Voaden's concept of stasis in which an aesthetic sculptural grouping (frequently illuminated by white lighting) symbolizes the perfect beauty and permanence of the neo-platonic metaphysical universe.
What attracted Voaden to the unchanging, ideal forms of Plato's metaphysics was a preoccupation with death which permeates the great majority of his dramatic works. This preoccupation derived largely from the spiritual crisis in his youth when he rejected the conventional Christian belief in an afterlife. Confronted by an irrational universe and 'the tyranny of death' of 'the world of fact', Voaden found spiritual solace in his belief in an unchanging Platonic metaphysical universe of perfect beauty and truth and sought to recreate such a 'vision of the good', 'the kingdom of God' or a 'new world' in his life and art.
Reviewing Murder Pattern in the Toronto Star in 1936, Augustus Bridle cited 'the morbid depression that Voaden usually expresses', 25 apparently failing to realize that the transcendence of death, rather than death itself, constitutes the primary focus of Voaden's dramatic works. The philosophy of his 'new religion' was the means through which Voaden came to terms with the finiteness of man's existence and his ultimate mortality. The basic tenets of this 'new religion', stated in his private correspondence, journals, diaries and dramatic works, can be summarized as follows:
1. an idealistic conception of life, Canadian society and the function of art;
2. the perfection of self through life experiences, artistic self-expression and the aesthetic experience, and the creation of a society where these can freely occur;
3. the sensual and spiritual fulfillment derived from man's union with nature;
4. a belief in the archetypal power of love to achieve a higher state of human happiness and evolution;
5. the attainment of self-perfection and immortality resulting in what Voaden called 'godhood', best exemplified by his highly abstract, symbolical and ecstatic 1932 drama Earth Song, a dramatic expression of his 'new Superman faith'.
Voaden's 1942 autobiographical Ascend As the Sun constitutes a formal and thematic recapitulation of his dramatic writing from 1928. His notes for the play, begun in 1937, stated his concept of 'godhood':
god is the growing memory, mind, vision, heart, and will of men ... To dedicate yourself to god is thus to strive to create a higher more god-like self, and to identify yourself with the heart and purpose of mankind. Here you have a religion that shows itself in kindness to men and in a consecration to the task of creating a finer environment and propaganda to shape his experience ... Let your theatres ... be your temples and churches. 26
Indirectly referring to the relationship between his thematic preoccupation with the transcendence of death and its formal expression in the 'glimpses of perfection' described in his 1934 'Symphonic Theatre' Hill-land manifesto, Voaden declared,
Inasmuch as the god-spirit is the perfect life and character, our lives are always incomplete, except for those moments of contemplation, vision, ecstasy, peace, when we step out from our own lives and live in it, in its eternal completeness and timelessness ...
If in man this god-spirit, this spirit of life, illumines, warms, exalts, sweeps on - if it possesses him, then it, being deathless, will carry him beyond death.27
Voaden's search for meaning and 'a new religion' is dramatized in his plays from his first work, The White Kingdom (1928) to the unproduced Decision: A Poem for Chorus and Orchestra written immediately after the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan in August of 1945. In many of his symphonic expressionist plays, several of them quest dramas such as The White Kingdom, Symphony (1930) 28 Earth Song (1932) and, to a degree, Ascend As the Sun (1942), central characters struggle against youthful self-doubt and the loss of faith in conventional beliefs to achieve individual illumination and 'a new faith' in themselves, in Canada and in humanity at large. The guiding utopian vision in this body of dramatic works is Voaden's belief in the attainment of 'the perfect city', in the kingdom of heaven on earth.
Like Roy Mitchell and other theosophists, Voaden believed that, as Mitchell declared in the Canadian Theosophist in 1923, 'every man is potential God'. 29Voaden's 'new religion' asserts that the divine is the ultimate projection of human aspirations and that man's dreams of ultimate perfection, of the eternal, perfect forms of the neo-platonic metaphysical universe itself, are realizable on earth. As the Dance Chorus chants in Ascend As the Sun, 'the visions seize and shape us. The far lights illumine us. We become the gods we worship. We build the city we dream and desire'. 30
In his experimentation with non-realist production styles from 1929 to 1943 Voaden collaborated with leading Canadian artists, poets and writers such as George Herbert Clarke, E.J. Pratt, Nathaniel Benson, and Bertram Brooker, the dancer-choreographers Saida Gerrard and Boris Volkoff, and conductors and composers such as Reginald Stewart, Healey Willan and Godfrey Ridout. He successfully staged T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and dramatized Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine. His experimentation with poetry and choral speech, narrators, dance-mime, visual tableaux, and modernistic staging and lighting completely developed the vocabulary of his non-realist multi-media directorial style. The expressiveness and versatility of his symphonic expressionist aesthetic and production style were tested by the successful transfer of works like the 1936 dance-drama Romeo and Juliet from the small Central High School of Commerce stage to the large Varsity Arena and of Murder in the Cathedral from the 270 seat Convocation Hall at Queen's University to the 2,700 seat Massey Hall, also in 1936.
In November of that year, Lawrence Mason suggested in the Toronto Globe that Voaden's symphonic expressionist production style was finding critical and public acceptance on the professional stage, declaring,
Herman Voaden's fine production of T.S. Eliot's great poetic drama, 'Murder in the Cathedral', drew large audiences to Massey Hall for its three presentations last week, which would seem to indicate that 'symphonic expressionism' as a producing method has successfully graduated from the somewhat 'precious' art and specialized audience of the Little Theatre to the professional standards and general public of the 'legitimate' or regular commercial stage.31
Because they had been exposed to his symphonic expressionist productions and manifestos over a decade, Toronto critics were generally receptive to Voaden's 'theatre of beauty'. By contrast, the non-Canadian adjudicators of the Dominion Drama Festival, in which Voaden competed annually from 1933 to 1939, were generally puzzled by the content and form of Voaden's dramas, by his non-realist production style, lack of strong dramatic conflict, and the subordination of the actor to Voaden's other multi-media elements. In his 1936 evaluation of Murder Pattern, for example, the British adjudicator Allan Wade declared that
If 'acting' had not to be taken into account, this production might be ranked very high. The author's intention, however, seemed to be to leave as little scope as possible for what is usually looked to for the dramatic element in a play, substituting a ritual of speech for dialogue and reducing movement to the minimum. The result was a remarkable achievement of its kind, and the experiment an interesting one. But I felt that the direction was away from rather than towards drama as I believe the Festival conceives it to be.32
Unable to study his dramas in print and frequently seeing successive productions after considerable intervals, even the Toronto critics, with the possible exception of Lawrence Mason, did not fully comprehend the philosophic content of Voaden's 'new religion'. Nonetheless, his symphonic expressionist productions strongly impressed critics and audiences. Reviewing The Developing Mosaic on C.B.C. radio in 1981, Barbara Chilcott stated,
I remember being taken as a child to see one of Herman Voaden's productions ... I recall only space, light, hangings and draped figures. I felt I was being drawn into a strange, lonely magical place and I've never forgotten that extraordinary feeling of 'otherness'. 33
In 1943 Voaden largely abandoned both his mystical neo-platonic world view and the symphonic expressionist aesthetic he had developed over the past decade to express his life philosophy. As he stated in Geraldine Anthony's Stage Voices,
Ascend As the Sun was conceived and largely written before the war became a frightening and all-engrossing charge on our consciences. By the time it was produced, I knew in my heart that the idealism and ardent, heroic belief of the early plays which it developed with almost embarassing conviction were no longer tenable. We were not, in Whitman's words, a prelude to better players.34
Voaden curtailed his public theatre
productions, his playwriting and 'my dreams of the god-man, my hope and
belief in a new land, my vision of a new art to express all these'. 35
For the next three decades, he expressed his idealism and cultural nationalism
in 'the world of fact' as a socialist candidate in federal elections, as
an arts lobbyist and as a cultural animateur in order that, as he stated
in a 1943 speech, 'the world in which we live [will] become a finer place,
where that ideal person we dream of may be more easily shaped'. 36
Notes
HERMAN VOADEN'S 'NEW RELIGION'
Anton Wagner
1 RICHARD PLANT 'Hearts
of the West' Books in Canada Vol 12, No 4, April 1983, p 14
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2 ROSE MACDONALD 'Arts
Finely Inter-Twined in "Ascend As the Sun"', Toronto Telegram
14
April 1942, p 13
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3 For a detailed formal
and thematic analysis of Voaden's playwriting and production style, see
ANTON WAGNER. Herman Voaden's Symphonic Expressionism Ph.D. Thesis,
Univesity of Toronto 1984.
Return to article
4 For a discussion of the
relationship between Voaden's playwriting and European expressionism, see
SHERRILL GRACE, 'A Northern Quality: Herman Voaden's Canadian Expressionism'
Canadian
Drama Vol 8, No 1, 1982.
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5 'Introduction' to Six
Canadian Plays
ed HERMAN VOADEN Toronto: Copp Clark, 1930
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6 For a discussion of Brooker's
mysticism, and Herman Voaden's 1935 and 1936 Play Workshop productions
of Brookers' Within and The Dragon, see SHERRILL GRACE, "The
Living Soul of Man": Bertram Brooker and Expressionist Theatre' Theatre
History in Canada Vol 6, No 1 Spring 1985.
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7 1976 Ontario Historical
Studies Series oral history interview p 2a
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8 See BERTRAM BROOKER,
'When We Awake!' in the Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1928-1929
ed. Bertram Brooker Toronto: Macmillan, 1929.
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9 Diary Maeterlinck Summer
1926, Hart House Theatre Course notes. Diary Vi - cont'd. May 16, 1927
(Windsor)
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10 Undated address to
an unidentified play production group, probably the Beaches Library Drama
League in Toronto. The Blake citation paraphrases Voaden's 1931 ms 'Blake's
Poetry' in the Voaden papers, York University Archives.
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11 ROY MITCHELL Creative
Theatre New York: John Day, 1929 Facsimile edition Westwood, New Jersey:
Kindle Press, 1969 p 12
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12 Six Canadian Plays
op cit p xxiii
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13 Idem. For Voaden's
use of the terms symbolism, formalism, stylization constructivism and expressionism,
see his aesthetic manifesto 'Producing Methods Defined; Realism and Its
Modern Successors Explained and Contra-Distinguished - "Symphonic Expressionism.
as the Art of the Future'Toronto Globe 16 April 1932, p 15
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14 Six Canadian Plays
op cit p xxi
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15 Ibid Photo caption
facing page 88
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16 Ibid p xxi
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17 MONA KENNY CANNON to
Herman Voaden 14 December 1932
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18 AUGUSTUS BRIDLE, 'Drama
Is Presented in Lights and Colors' Toronto Star 23 April 1932
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19 1939 speech on art
and the symphonic theatre to the Women's Art Association, Toronto
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20 Diary No 2. 1921-2
or 1922-3 at Queen's. Alta (brief incident). Wells' "Invisible King", Chris
Morley's Essays'
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21 HERMAN VOADEN, 'The
Symphonic Theatre'. Program note for Hill-land. The Play Workshop,
Central High School of Commerce, 13 and 14 December 1934. Reprinted as
'Toward a New Theatre' Toronto Globe 8 December 1934, p 19
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22 Idem
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23 VOADEN to Lawrence
Mason, Toronto, 25 April 1932, p 1. MASON quotes from Voaden's letter in
his Rocks review, 'Symphonic Expressionism: Notable Recent Example in Toronto
of Ultra-Modern Producing Methods - Plea for Less Persistent Use of Realism
by Canadian Directors' Toronto Globe 30 April 1932, p 6. For a discussion
of Mason's critical aesthetic, see ANTON WAGNER, 'Dr Lawrence Mason, Music
and Drama Critic 1924-1939' Theatre History in Canada Vol 4, No
1, Spring 1983.
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24 MALCOLM MORLEY 'Toronto
Festival' Saturday Night Vol 51, 7 December 1935, p 31
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25 AUGUSTUS BRIDLE '"Symphonic"
Murder Is Skillfully Written: Voaden's Third Four-Dimensional Play, Great
Advance on Former Productions' Toronto Star 1 February 1936, p 17
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26 1937 Ascend As the
Sun notes
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27 Ibid
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28 For a discussion of
the writing of Symphony, See ANTON WAGNER 'A Country of the Soul": Herman
Voaden, Lowrie Warrener and the Writing of Symphony' Canadian Drama
Vol 9, No 2, 1983.
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29 ROY MITCHELL, 'Theosophy
in Action. VI. Speakers' Canadian Theosophist Vol 4, No 8, 15 October
1923, p 113. See also his 'Theosophy in Action. 1. Origins' and 'Theosophy
in Action. II. Method 'Vol 4, No 3 15 May 1923 and Vol 4, No 4 15 June
1923. Mitchell's articles on theosophy in the Canadian Theosophist
are concentrated in the period 15 May 1923 to 15 October 1925 (Vol 6, No
8).
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30 HERMAN VOADEN Ascend
As the Sun p 4
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31 LAWRENCE MASON, 'Murder
in the Cathedral' Toronto Globe 7 November 1936, p 22
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32 ALLAN WADE, March 1936
Central Ontario Region Dominion Drama Festival adjudication score sheet
for Murder Pattern, Voaden papers, York University Archives
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33 BARBARA CHILCOTT, review
of The Developing Mosaic: English-Canadian Drama to Mid-Century, ed Anton
Wagner Toronto: Canadian Theatre Review Publications, 1980 on CBC Radio'Stereo
Morning', 17 February 1981. I am grateful to Barbara Chilcott for supplying
me with a written copy of her review.
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34 HERMAN VOADEN, Chapter
II in Stage Voices: Twelve Canadian Playwrights Talk About Their Lives
and Work ed GERALDINE ANTHONY Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1978, p 46.
Voaden's last symphonic expressionist production was the mime-dance drama
The Masque of the Red Death, adapted from the short story by Edgar
Allan Poe, produced at the Central High School of Commerce on 19 and 20
February and on 5 March 1943 and for the Ontario Educational Association
Theatral Arts Committee at the Harbord Collegiate, 26 April 1943
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35 Ascend As the Sun
notes, Munich, 7 May 1937
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36 HERMAN VOADEN, 'The
Theatre and the Church' Lecture at the Danforth United Church 1 February
1943, p 1
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