 This group, which included all major producers, "effectively stifled dramatic experimentation for many years" in search of greater profits.Nevertheless, by the second decade of the 20th century, pure melodrama, with its typed characters and exaggerated plots, had become the province of motion pictures.Chicago philanthropists and arts patrons Arthur T. and Mary Aldis established an artists' colony called The Compound in Lake Forest, Illinois, and in 1910, Mary founded there the Aldis Playhouse, "a predecessor to the 'little theater' movement."