DR LAWRENCE MASON, MUSIC AND DRAMA CRITIC 1924-1939.

Anton Wagner

The history of theatre criticism in Canada is just beginning to be uncovered. The author examines the career and critical aesthetic of Dr Lawrence Mason, music and drama critic for the Toronto Globe from 1924 to 1939, and traces his influence on Canadian theatre production and playwriting. The author concludes that Mason was a major national theatre critic whose work anticipated the criticism of Nathan Cohen and Herbert Whittaker after the Second World War.

L'histoire de la critique théâtrale au Canada est encore peu connue. L'auteur étudie la carrière et l'approche esthétique de Dr Lawrence Mason, critique du théâtre et de la musique au Toronto Globe depuis 1924 jusqu'à 1939, et analyse son influence sur la mise-en-scène et la dramaturgie canadiennes. L'auteur démontre que la critique théâtrale de Mason était d'une importance capitale pour le pays en entier, et qu'elle annoncait l'émergence de celle de Nathan Cohen et de Herbert Whittaker après la deuxième guerre mondiale.

One of the difficulties in writing about pre-1946 Canadian amateur theatre lies in coming to terms with the many negative connotations associated with the term 'little theatre', particularly the question of the quality of production standards and the overall importance and effect of specific amateur theatre companies. Perhaps the main reason for this scepticism has been our distrust of the quality of theatre criticism itself of the period. In a 1975 article on Nathan Cohen, for example, David McCaughna asserted that

Prior to Cohen, the critic had not played a very significant role in this country's theatrical development. There were those who reviewed plays and there were even writers who ventured to submit opinions on the merit of what they'd seen. But, by and large, these reviews were mainly concerned with a quick synopsis of plot, a rundown of characters, and perhaps a few encouraging words for the local thespians.

Cohen took the theatre as well as his duties as a critic more seriously, however, and it was that - as well as his insistence that because of the decentralized nature of the Canadian theatre that a theatre critic in this country had to travel - that made him Canada's first truly national drama critic.¹

In his 1981 article 'Homage to Cohen', Allan Gould similarly noted of Cohen's reviewing for the Toronto Star in the 1960s that 'Cohen flew everywhere across Canada, becoming the country's first, and only, national theatre critic'. ²

McCaughna and Gould's comments on the poor quality of Canadian theatre criticism in the 1940s and at earlier periods is perhaps true as a generalization, though it ignores the intelligent theatre criticism of reviewers such as Morgan Powell, Hector Charlesworth, B. K. Sandwell and many others. Besides Herbert Whittaker's work at the Toronto Globe and Mail from 1949 on, Cohen actually had a precursor as a national theatre critic in Dr Lawrence Mason, music and drama critic for the Toronto Globe from November 1924 to his death in December 1939. Mason joined the Globe following the death of the 76 year-old E.R. Parkhurst 10 June 1924. Parkhurst began writing for the Globe in 1873, was music and drama critic of the Mail from 1876 to 1898, and filled the same position at the Globe for the next twenty-six years. Parkhurst's obituary in the Globe quotes Hector Charlesworth, music and drama critic for Saturday Night, to the effect that 'the late Mr Parkhurst was the oldest musical critic in continuous service in America, and probably in the English-speaking world.... above all, his nature was kindly, and he loved to write words of encouragement rather than censure'. ³ Parkhurst was a well qualified music critic though his expertise lay in that field rather than drama. His obituary in the Globe indicates that 'in his comments and criticisms of the theatre, Mr Parkhurst stood out strongly against the modern problem play and the school of Ibsen and Maeterlinck'.⁴ A Toronto Telegram editorial asserted that the 'powers and pen of the late E.R. Parkhurst, dramatic critic of The Globe, were always employed on the side of the ANGELS and against ANIMALISM on the stage. THE CESSPOOL IDEAL of theatrical art and dramatic art never received aid and comfort from the ability of E. R. Parkhurst'.⁵

The arrival of the forty-two year old Mason (he was born in Chicago 8 October 1882) meant more than a breath of fresh air for the arts in Toronto. He was exceptionally well qualified for his position, graduating from Yale in 1904, then obtaining his doctorate there in 1916. Mason taught English and philosophy at Yale from 1907 to 1924, editing Julius Caesar and Othello for the Yale Shakespeare series. ⁶ Besides his coverage of foreign professional touring theatre and dance companies and concert artists in Toronto, Mason's fifteen years of reviewing at the Globe spanned the explosion of amateur theatre activity across Canada until the decline of theatre production caused by the onset of World War II. To refute McCaughna and Gould's assertion that there were no critical standards before Cohen, I would like to cite Mason's 1926 'A Critic's Annual Report to His Readers', in which Mason defended himself from charges that his critical standards were too high. 'The present writer, for one, thinks of criticism as something higher than fulsome flattery or deliberate propaganda', Mason stated.

The critic's first duty would seem to be to the public. Assuming that he is properly qualified for his task, he should use his special knowledge to keep people from being exploited for private profit and to help them to form sound standards of judgement. Manifestly, he cannot serve the public in these desirable ways unless he is free to point out defects where they exist . . . Pointing out defects with these ends in view is constructive criticism, not destructive. Artists may improve themselves by taking this intelligent criticism seriously and endeavoring to remedy the faults indicated. The public may learn to distinguish between what is truly praiseworthy and what is not, by heeding these careful analyses.... The present writer prefers to reserve his whole hearted enthusiasm and unqualified superlatives for clear manifestations of the genuinely first-rate, the intensity of these experiences more than counterbalancing his other disappointments. ⁷

He concluded his 'Annual Report' with 'a brief statement of the critical principles by which he proposes to be guided, and the critical aims or objectives which he has set before himself, for the ensuing season'. He quoted Mathew Arnold's essay 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' in order to help 'us to take a larger view of things and to rise above the petty parochial atmosphere' and 'strengthen our struggling will with high ideals and noble aims'.⁸ The scope of Mason's learning and critical philosophy can be inferred from his declaration that

Knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, of the best that has been known or thought or accomplished in the world by ancient Greek, Roman and Oriental, or modern Britisher and European; this must be the ceaseless endeavor of any who would follow, even afar off, the Arnoldian ideal. Such a conception, if steadfastly carried out, should make of reviewing something better than a trivial personal commentary dealing with equally undeserved panegyric or detraction.... This department will endeavor next season to bring to its readers more fully into the mainstream of the world's cultural progress, while preserving an independent Canadian point of view; to promote the recognition and appreciation by Canadians of their fellow Canadians' achievements in the arts; to advance the general understanding and enjoyment of the fine arts by supplying necessary information and maintaining critical standards; to assist the lay public in learning to distinguish between the truly excellent and the less admirable; and to support all worthy undertakings while reserving the right to record honest opinions upon the merits of the performances.⁹

Mason admitted at the conclusion of his 'Annual Report' that 'this is an ambitious program' but even a cursory overview of his fifteen years at the Globe indicates he fully achieved his objectives. In order to bring his readers 'more fully into the mainstream of the world's cultural progress', Mason became the most widely travelled and activist Canadian theatre critic until Cohen's work three decades later. In 1925, as the Globe editorialized in June of 1926 announcing Mason's departure for Europe, 'Dr Mason toured Ontario surveying the creditable musical and dramatic activities in many centres of our own Province. . . . Assurances have come spontaneously from leaders in artistic endeavor that the series had the effect of stimulating interest and promoting development. This year Dr Mason is travelling in the Old World, where he will chronicle for Globe readers the post-war revival of the art'. ¹⁰

From 19 June to 28 August 1926, Mason forwarded eleven weekly theatrical 'letters', appropriately entitled 'from a Globe-Trotter', covering the stage, concert halls, film and arts festivals in Great Britain. On 28 August, the Globe announced an autumn extension of Mason's European reviewing in order to cover the opening of the new season in Britain, 'something that has not hitherto been done by any Canadian newspaper'.¹¹ Fifteen additional letters followed reviewing productions in Great Britain, Germany and Austria, including more general articles, all of essay length, on such topics as methods of producing Shakespeare ('Assorted Shakespeare', 23 October) and 'Wagner and Post-War Art' (25 September). Mason's reviews and essays were important not only for placing the arts in Canada in an international context but also for examining theatrical institutions and developments in other countries and proposing them as possible models for Canada. Mason's article 'The Big Little Theatres' (9 October), for example, examined repertory companies in Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham and Bristol with 'possible suggestions for Canada'. Mason's series concluded with 'Scotland's Message', in which, referring to indigenous playwriting and production and the resulting development of a national consciousness, he commented, 'if Canadian Little Theatres can learn much from England's famous Repertory Theatres, they can learn something higher still - how to be truly Canadian - from the Scottish National Players'. ¹²

A second series of fourteen European reviews ran in the Globe from 6 July to 26 October 1929, and a third series of twenty-four letters from 13 June to 28 November 1931. Mason also travelled widely within Canada, becoming a truly 'national' theatre critic. A 1933 report on 'Western Drama Festivals' indicated that Mason had travelled 'well over three thousand miles in ten or twelve days' adjudicating the Saskatchewan and Manitoba Regional Dominion Drama Festivals.¹³ He had begun covering theatre in the Prairie provinces in 1928, noting of a six-part survey of music and drama in Alberta and Saskatchewan from 6 October to 15 December that 'the announced purpose of this survey was to promote national unity by opening the eyes of Eastern Canada to the noteworthy things now being accomplished in Western Canada in the field of the fine arts'. ¹⁴ A 1930 survey on 'Western Little Theatres' compared stage production in Western and Eastern Canada and concluded that

the standard of acting is at least as high in the West as in the East, that the lighting equipment is still old-fashioned almost everywhere with a few notable exceptions like Hart House and Sarnia, and that aside from the work being done by H.A. Voaden and Brownlow Card, neither Toronto nor the West has an actively experimental Art Theatre group, unless the undergraduate work in the drama course at B.C. University qualifies for this honor. Other conclusions are that the menace of the 'stock company' tendency must be fought almost everywhere, that the invasion of Canada by Broadway plays is more dangerous in the East, that the competition of the 'talkies' cannot crush the need for genuine stage performances, that native Canadian drama flourishes when given an opportunity, and that Canada's Little Theatres can take an important place in the modern art world by concentrating on advanced production methods and the endless possibilities of the beautiful new 'art of the theatre'. ¹⁵

But Mason's concerns were national in more than merely a geographic sense. As for Cohen, theatre and drama for Mason were vital means of individual, communal and national self-expression. Inspired by Herman Voaden's work with the Sarnia Drama League, Mason coined, on 3 November 1928, the term 'The Sarnia Idea', signifying the

sincere desire for better things in the drama, for self-expression and self-development, for contact with the great realities of aesthetic experience ... The Sarnia Idea, then, is not the presentation of 'amateur theatricals' for profit or just for fun, as a pastime. It aims at remedying the drawbacks in the existing theatre situation, so far as professional companies and 'the road' are concerned; and beyond that, it aims at forwarding a National movement with deeply important implications.¹⁶

Mason indicated in his column that the indigenous creative theatrical developments he was giving his critical support were not unique in Sarnia:

Lethbridge, Alberta, reached the same point years ago, and so did Vancouver, Regina, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, and many other Western centres, to say nothing of Ontario.... The next step would be the uniting of the many scattered organizations in a Canadian Drama League, which would maintain standards, pool knowledge for the assistance of beginners, encourage the writing and performance of native original plays, establish strong ties with the British Drama League, resist the infiltration and dominance of United States influence, and promote the development of a national consciousness and a national culture. The practical utility of such a Dominion-wide association would be incalculable in maintaining a library and lists of plays, in founding new groups, in providing directors or technical experts, in adjusting disputes, and in other ways too numerous to mention.¹⁷

He concluded by expressing the hope that the realization of 'the Sarnia Idea' on a local and national level 'may well be a new renaissance, with Canada taking the lead in showing the world a whole nation vitally concerned with the great things of the mind and spirit'. ¹⁸

Prior to his departure for Europe in June of 1926, Mason had called for a competitive little theatre drama festival as in Britain and the United States and for 'a Provincial or National Association of theatre guilds or drama leagues, with an annual meeting devoted to promoting the improvement of theatrical conditions in general.... some Toronto group might render a fine service by leading the way in this direction'. ¹⁹ In a 24 November 1928 essay, Mason repeated his call for the formation of a Provincial Drama League 'under Governmental auspices' based on the model of the British Drama League and the Scottish National Theatre stating 'obviously, moreover, when each Province has completed this procedure, the next and final step will be the uniting of these Provincial associations in a National organization'. ²⁰ One of the functions of the provincial drama leagues outlined in his detailed proposal called for 'arranging annual elimination contests in producing one-act or longer plays, leading up to a final National tournament in some central location'. ²¹

While the creation of the Dominion Drama Festival in 1932 promoted the formation of an indigenous Canadian national theatre Mason had been advocating since 1926, the DDF did little to encourage innovation and experimentation in theatre production. Reporting on the adjudication point system announced for the second annual Dominion Drama Festival, Mason protested in October of 1933 that

the terms employed in these definitions are still chiefly those of the Nineteenth Century Theatre, and this reviewer regrets very deeply that no provision seems to have been made for modern non-realistic or non-representational productions.... At Ottawa last April ... Sarnia's expressionistic production of the 'Ant Play' was beyond the scope of the existing marking system. Furthermore, imagination and originality of treatment are still unrecognized and therefore unencouraged; this is certainly regrettable, since the Little Theatre movement is supposed to be advanced and experimental instead of just an imitation of the commercial theatre.²²

Mason advocated the adoption of the 'new stagecraft' not only in order to bring Canada into the mainstream of twentieth century theatrical developments but also because he perceived stylized presentational rather than representational staging as a solution to the physical production handicaps faced by Canadian little theatres. Reviewing a February 1932 uncut production of Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea by the Sarnia Drama League, for example, Mason criticized the use of a static painted canvas backdrop and realistic stage properties. 'The small stage . . . was badly congested by the would-be "realistic" details, so that the motions of the actors were manifestly hampered.' Mason noted that

Simplification and suggestion are the salvation of the small stage, and these are possible in their best modern form only through the use of a plaster cyclorama. It may be stated with complete positiveness that the league's, or any other Little Theatre group's, greatest need is a plaster cyclorama, for its producing methods would be instantly revolutionized and vitalized thereby. Instead of the fatally jarring painted canvas back-drop, a plaster cyclorama with its light-trench lets the audience look off into the luminous depths of infinite space, or at gorgeous non-realistic color effects such as never were, on sea or land.... The best modern methods use simplification and suggestion in order to gain not only novelty, thrill, beauty, but also pace, speed, verve, vitality. The tedious waits necessitated by the shifting of elaborate realistic scenery are eliminated, and the action drives onward to its goal with cumulative energy and effectiveness.²³

Always ready to make specific staging suggestions to enable little theatres to avoid 'the hackneyed banalities of realism' and to discover the 'inner spirit' of the dramatic text, 'the Globe's critic' (as Mason referred to himself in his column) added in his Sarnia review that

it is the imaginative treatment of this material, with creative originality and experimental ingenuity, that makes a production notable - and successful. Artistic imagination in planning the settings, costumes and whole presentation of a play so as to reveal its inner spirit, or to make it a legitimate vehicle for striking technical effects, is the prime essential for a modern director.... the use of steps and platforms at different levels is almost indispensible, while settings made up of abstract geometrical forms, such as pylons, arches, buttresses, pillars and various polyhedral masses are always effective when frankly used for their own sakes as a framework for the actors, not as mere imitations of real objects.²⁴

That Mason's criticism had a direct effect on Canadian little theatre productions is indicated by the Sarnia Drama League's April 1932 Community Playhouse News which thanked Mason for travelling to Sarnia to review The Lady From the Sea and 'for the illuminating suggestions which he advanced with the hope and expectation that some of the features which he advocated should be put into effect at Sarnia. We wish to assure him that all of his remarks have been thoughtfully considered'.²⁵ Over the summer, the League purchased a cyclorama and additional lighting equipment and on 16 and 17 December 1932 produced Herman Voaden's highly symbolical 'symphonic expressionist' drama Earth Song, designed and directed by the author. In his review of the production, Mason noted that

the lighting equipment was enormously increased for the occasion, so that the actors and stage areas were subjected to varied color and chiaroscuro effects, while the cyclorama was continually flooded with a gorgeous succession of hues in endlessly shifting combinations and intensities as a kind of visible orchestration of the text and action....

To this reviewer the Sarnia Drama League's production of 'Earth Song'. . . . was an unusually significant event. It launched a new art form, struck a valiant blow for experimentalism, and proved triumphantly the falsety of the claim that Canadian Little Theatres are physically and economically unable to put on anything but conventional realistic productions.²⁶

Mason's cultural nationalism and advocacy of the 'new stagecraft' and the creation of an indigenous Canadian national drama made him particularly receptive to the theatre work of Herman Voaden. In 1930, Mason called Voaden's introduction to and editing of Six Canadian Plays 'literally epoch-making, a definite point of departure in Canada's artistic history, from which succeeding years may be numbered'. ²⁷ In 1932 Mason referred to Voaden as 'the foremost figure in the Dominion's experimental theatre movement', ²⁸ calling him in 1934 'the prophet of a new art of the theatre which offers playgoers an altogether novel kind of experience. Herman Voaden is keeping Canada abreast of the most advanced European development in this field by his fascinating experiments in presenting dramatic productions which utilize the whole range of artistic resources open to the modern regisseur'. ²⁹ In 1936 Mason ranked Voaden's Play Workshop as the best of eight drama schools then operating in Toronto for adults adding that 'no other Canadian approaches Mr Voaden in first hand knowledge of the world theatre, and his courses offer genuinely experimental training'. ³⁰

Mason did more than champion Voaden's experimental theatre productions and writing of his multi-media 'symphonic expressionist' plays in the Globe throughout the 1930s. Beginning in 1929, he made space in his dramatic column for a series of aesthetic and nationalistic manifestos by Voaden with such titles as 'What is Wrong With the Canadian Theatre?' (22 June 1929), 'Government Owned Theatres?' (30 November 1929), 'Producing Methods Defined' (16 April 1932), 'Drama Festival Thoughts' (26 November 1932), 'Creed For a New Theatre' (17 December 1932), 'Toward Theatral Dance' (17 June 1933) and 'Towards a New Theatre'(9 December 1934).

Mason's support of Voaden's experimental theatre work did not prevent him from criticizing Voaden's productions. But his rich academic and theatre background made him much more receptive than other Toronto critics to the innovative aspects of Voaden's stagecraft and aesthetic-philosophic idealism. In his analysis of Voaden's 'symphonic expressionism' (the fusion of the spoken word, music, dance, lighting, costume and stage design into a higher synthesis) as exemplified by Voaden's 1932 drama Rocks, for example, Mason referred to the blending of the arts in Greek tragedy, Wagner's music dramas and the aesthetic theories of Pater, Kandinsky and Clive Bell. He also drew parallels with other experiments in combining art forms he had personally witnessed such as performances of Copeau's Compagnie des Quinze and Diaghilev's Ballet Russe in London in 1931 and 1929, a 1915 New York performance of Scriabin's Prometheus by the Russian Symphony Orchestra 'with corresponding light effects on the clavilux' and a reading in Germany by Moissl in 1909 of Schiller's poetry to orchestral accompaniment.³¹

Disillusioned by the lack of experimentation and vitality of the Canadian little theatre movement which placed 'the service of the box-office and of "the tired business man" above the service of art', Mason devoted the great majority of his critical coverage in the second half of the 1930s to professional music and stage productions and the cinema. He still attended amateur productions, however, praising the most noteworthy achievements in his 'Theatre and Concert Hall Brief Comment' column. In January 1936, Mason indicated that 'these columns often re-echo to the complaints of an overworked concert reviewer' and referred to 'this over-crowded page'.³² When he died of a heart attack at the age of 57 on 9 December 1939, his obituary in the Globe indicated that he 'had been troubled by a heart condition for some years'.³³

Playwright Lois Reynolds Kerr, who knew Mason from her work in the Women's Department at the Globe in the 1930s and on occasion covered plays and films for him when he had a conflict, recalls Mason as

a greying, rather short, stocky man, scholarly looking. I rather stood in awe of him and spoke when I was spoken to.... Mason was among the important people on the Globe who had their own little cubicles to which he would return late at night to write his reviews. He was as I recall rather a solitary person, I believe a bachelor, and I don't think he mixed with the rest of the editorial staff ..... he was a law unto himself, ran his own show from his dark little cubicle lit by a shaded desk, goose-neck light.³⁴

Herman Voaden, who also occasionally reviewed theatre and dance for Mason, recalled in a 1976 interview that 'I can still see the tiny little cubbyhole he had at the Globe. The most littered desk you ever saw. How he ever found anything I would never know'. ³⁵

Mason's 1939 reviews, such as the three part series on 'Amateur Shakespeare', reveal an impatience with declining production values of little theatres whose standards were far lower than those of amateur music societies like the Mendelssohn and Conservatory choirs. 'His patience sorely tried by amateur or novice fumbling about with Shakespeare's greatness', Mason declared,

this reviewer ventures to submit a code of 'musts' which (or some equivalent list of essentials) every Little Theatre group or amateur society should pledge itself to abide by before it attempts to give a public performance of any of The Bard's plays. Unless some such indispensable fundamentals can be assured, it is almost time to have Parliament forbid the performance of Shakespeare's plays by any companies except professionals....

Why should the public be expected to attend and pay for, and critics to attend and praise, unintelligently crude and bungling performances of dramatic classics, when a similar degree of incompetence would not be tolerated in any corresponding performance of a musical classic? ³⁶

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Mason called on Canadian performing groups to follow the example of their British counterparts and not suspend performances because of the war. His death came just before the great decline in indigenous theatre production, a five year hiatus from which Canadian theatre emerged with great difficulty in 1946. In a 11 December 1939 editorial, the Globe and Mail asserted that Mason's 'brilliant, constructive and authoritative criticisms did much to develop Canadian musical and dramatic talent. With this object in view, he travelled repeatedly to the various cultural centres of Canada, encouraging and stimulating choral, orchestral and dramatic organizations.... He made a notable contribution as an adjudicator at drama festivals and frequently was consulted by the Earl of Bessborough and others interested in establishing a national theatre'. ³⁷

Describing the formation of the Dominion Drama Festival at the Ottawa conference convened by the Earl of Bessborough seven years earlier, Mason had declared that 'Saturday, October 29, 1932, should be recorded as a red-letter day in the annals of Canadian drama':

The successful inauguration of a National Drama Festival could hardly have been achieved by anyone in a less exalted position than that of Governor-General. It would have been a hopeless task for any private individual or single Little Theatre group, as is readily seen from the fact that, while there has often been earnest talk about the desirability of such a festival, no one has been able to take any effectual steps to bring it into being.³⁸

That dependence on Vice-regal patronage to inaugurate a Canadian national theatre movement rather than on an indigenous cultural nationalism and aesthetic philosophy as advocated by Mason was characteristic of a cultural colonial mentality in the 1930s. Following the Second World War, it would be Canadian theatre artists and critics like Nathan Cohen and Herbert Whittaker who would continue Mason's work begun two decades earlier and shape amateur and semi-professional performers and companies into the professional national theatre we have today.

DR LAWRENCE MASON, MUSIC AND DRAMA CRITIC 1924-1939.

Anton Wagner

1 DAVID MCCAUGHNA, 'Nathan Cohen in Retrospect', Canadian Theatre Review No 8 (Fall 1975) p 27
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2 ALLAN M. GOULD, 'Homage to Cohen' Toronto Life March 1981, p 62 WAYNE EDMONSTONE expressed a similar view in his Nathan Cohen. The Making of a Critic Toronto: Lester and Orpen, 1977, pp 69-70
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3 'Dean of Reviewers in World of Music Lays Down His Pen' Toronto Globe 11 June 1924, pp 11, 13
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4 Ibid p 13
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5 'A Friend to True Dramatic Art' Globe 21 June 1924, p 19
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6 See 'Heart Attack Causes Death of Dr Mason' Globe 11 December 1939, pp 1,8
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7 LAWRENCE MASON 'A Critic's Annual Report to His Readers' Globe 22 May 1926, p 6
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8 Idem
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9 Idem
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10 'Dr Mason in Europe' Globe 19 June 1926, p 8
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11 'Announcement' Globe 28 August 1926, p 50
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12 'Scotland's Message' Globe 11 December 1926, p 6
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13 'Western Drama Festivals' Globe 25 March 1933, p 10
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14 'Music and Drama in Saskatchewan' Globe 10 November 1928, p 25
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15 'Western Little Theatres' Globe 12 April 1930, p 19
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16 'The Sarnia Idea' Globe 3 November 1928, p 22
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17 Idem
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18 Idem
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19 'Our "Little Theatre" Season' Globe 12 June 1926, p 20
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20 'A Provincial Drama League' Globe 24 November 1928, p 22
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21 Idem
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22 'Dominion Drama Festival' Globe 21 October 1933, p 5
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23 "The Lady From the Sea" Globe 5 March 1932, p 19
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24 Idem
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25 'Ibsen in Sarnia' Community Playhouse News No 14 (April 1932)
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26 'Sarnia Does It Again' Globe 24 December 1932, p 5
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27 'Genuine Canadian Drama' Globe 6 December 1930, p 21
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28 Introduction to Voaden's article 'Producing Methods Defined' Globe 16 April 1932, p 15
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29 Introduction to Voaden's article 'Towards a New Theatre' Globe 8 December 1934, p 19
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30 'List of Drama Schools' Globe and Mail 19 September 1936, p 8
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31 'Symphonic Expressionism' Globe 30 April 1932, p 6
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32 'Theatre and Concert Hall Brief Comment' Globe 18 January 1936, p 15
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33 'Heart Attack Causes Death of Dr Mason' Globe and Mail 11 December 1939, p 1
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34 Letter from LOIS REYNOLDS KERR to Anton Wagner, Vancouver, 22 June 1982
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35 HERMAN VOADEN, Ontario Historical Studies Series Oral History Project, 15 March 1976, p 45
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36 'Amateur Shakespeare' Globe and Mail 24 June 1939, p 25. See also 'Amateur Shakespeare' Globe and Mail 8 and 22 July 1939, pp, 23, 7.
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37 'Lawrence Mason' Globe and Mail 11 December 1939, p 6
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38 'National Drama Festival' Globe 5 November 1932, p 6
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