Brett Page

“ Just as a man is more than his body, his speech, his dress, his movings to and fro in the scenes where he plays out his life, and even more than his deeds, so is a play more than the sum of all its parts. Every successful play, every great playlet, possesses a soul—a character, if you like—that carries a message to its audiences by means which cannot be analyzed. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI DIALOGUE IN THE PLAYLET We have now come to one of the least important elements of the playlet—yet a decorative element which wit and cleverness can make exceedingly valuable.
If it is true that scenery is the habitation in which the playlet moves, that its problem is the heart beating with life, that the dramatic is the soul which shines with meaning through the whole, that plot is the playlet's skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the characters—then the dialogue is, indeed, merely a playlet's clothes. ”

“ Comedy is Achieved in the Same Dramatic Way
The only difference between the sublime and the ridiculous is the proverbial step. The sad and the funny are merely a difference of opinion, of viewpoint. Tragedy and comedy are only ways of looking at things. Often it is but a difference of to whom the circumstance happens, whether it is excruciatingly funny or unutterably sad. If you are the person to whom it happens, there is no argument about it—it is sad; but the very same thing happening to another person would be—funny. ”

“ No one likes a chooser; no one knowingly will have dealings with a chooser. Call a vaudeville man a liar and he may laugh at you—call him a chooser and you'll have to fight him.
There are, of course, deliberate choosers in the vaudeville business, just as there are "crooks" in every line of life, but they never make more than a momentary success. Here is why they invariably fail:
When you sit in the audience, and hear an old gag or point, you whisper, "Phew, that's old," or you give your companion a knowing look, don't you? ”

“ The clever playlet writer is advertised by the ease—the simplicity—with which he condenses every bit of the exposition into the opening speeches. You are right in the middle of things before you realize it and it is all done so skillfully that its straightforwardness leaves never a suspicion that the simplicity is not innate but manufactured; it seems artless, yet its artlessness is the height of art. The beginning of a playlet, then, must convey to the audience every bit of information about the characters and their relations to each other that is necessary for clear understanding. ”

“ I shall never forget an experience of my own, when I took a good French friend to see David Warfield in "The Music Master"; this young chap could not understand more than a word here and there, but we were compelled to miss the last act because he cried so hard during the famous lost-daughter scene that he was ashamed to enter the theatre after the intermission.
Every great play is, in the last analysis, a pantomime. Words are unnecessary to tell a stage story that has its wellspring deep in the emotions of the human heart. Words can only embellish it. ”

“ What is dramatic, is not what falls out as things ordinarily occur in life's flow of seemingly disconnected happenings; it is what occurs with precision and purpose, and with results which are eventually recognizable as being far beyond the forces that show upon its face. In an illuminating flash that reveals character, we comprehend what led up to that instant and what will follow. It is the revealing flash that is dramatic. Drama is a series of revealing flashes. ”

“ Therefore the word monologue means "to speak alone"—and that is often how a monologist feels. If in facing a thousand solemn faces he is not a success, no one in all the world is more alone than he.
It appears easy for a performer to stroll into a theatre, without bothersome scenery, props, or tagging people, and walk right out on the stage alone and set the house a-roar. But, like most things that appear easy, it is not. It is the hardest "stunt" in the show business, demanding two very rare things: uncommon ability in the man, and extraordinary merit in the monologue itself. ”

“ A dramatic entertainment is not written on paper. It is written with characters of flesh and blood. Strive as hard as man may, he can never fully foretell how an ink-written act will play. There is an inexplicable something which playing before an audience develops. Both the audience and the actors on the stage are affected. A play—the monologue and every musical form as well—is one thing in manuscript, another thing in rehearsal, and quite a different thing before an audience. Playing before an audience alone shows what a play truly is. ”

“ We count on the fact that some of the audience will be going out. Many have only waited to see the chief attraction of the evening, before hurrying off to their after-theatre supper and dance. So we spring a big 'flash.' It must be an act that does not depend for its success upon being heard perfectly. Therefore a 'sight' act is chosen, an animal act maybe, to please the children, or a Japanese troupe with their gorgeous kimonos and vividly harmonizing stage draperies, or a troupe of white-clad trapeze artists flying against a background of black. ”

“ With the germ idea the entire playlet may flood into the writer's mind, or come in little waves that rise continually, like the ever advancing tide, to the flood that touches high-water mark. But, however complete the germ idea may be, it depends upon the writer alone whether he struggles like a novice to keep his dramatic head above water, or strikes out with the bold, free strokes of the practised swimmer. ”

“ The very last thing that must be shown, and the final word that must be said before the curtain comes down, are the last loose ends of the plot which must be spliced into place—the final illuminating word to round out the whole playlet humanly and cleverly. "The Lollard" goes back to Miss Carey's sleep, which Angela's knock on the door interrupted: "Now, thank Gawd, I'll get a little sleep," says Miss Carey as she puts out the light. A human, an everyday word it is, spoken like a reminiscent thrill—and down comes the curtain amid laughter and applause. ”

“ In fact, the modern vaudeville stage is honeycombed with trapdoors and overhung with arching light-bridges, through which and from which all manner of lights can be thrown upon the stage, either to illuminate the faces of the actors with striking effect, or to cast strange and beautiful effects upon the scenery. Indeed, there is nothing to be seen in nature that the electrician cannot reproduce upon the stage with marvellous fidelity and pleasing effect. ”

“ They will supply lyrics to fit your music. They will print your song and push it to success. They will do anything at all—for a fee! And I have heard the most pitiful tales imaginable of high hopes at the beginning and bitter disappointment at the end, from poor people who could ill afford the money lost.
These "publishers" are not fair—they are not honest. They make their living from broken promises, and pocket the change with a grin over their own cleverness. Why these men cannot perform what they promise is perfectly plain in the light of all that has been said about the popular song. ”

“ While those who contend that a play may disregard the classical unity of time, if only it preserves the unity of action, base their contention upon the fact that an audience is interested not in time at all—but in story. In other words, a play preserves the only unity worth preserving when it deals with the incidents that cause a crisis and ends by showing its effect, no matter whether the action takes story-years to occur or happens all in a story-hour. ”

“ To complete its claim to the title of variety, to separate itself from a likeness to the circus, to establish itself as blood brother of the legitimate stage, and, most important of all, to satisfy the craving of its audiences for drama, vaudeville tried many forms of the short play before the playlet was evolved to fill the want.
Everything that bears even the remotest likeness to a play found a place and had a more or less fleeting—or lasting—popularity. ”

“ Now I must sound a warning against striving too hard after a surprise finish. The very nature of many playlets makes it impossible to give them such a curtain. If you have built up a story which touches the heart and brings tears to the eyes, and then turn it all into a joke, the chances are the audience will feel that their sympathies have been outraged, and so the playlet will fail. ”

“ If your memory and my recollection of numerous musical comedies of both the one-act and the longer production of the legitimate stage are to be trusted, a plot is something not vital to the success of a musical comedy. Indeed, it is actually true that many a musical comedy has failed because the emphasis was placed on plot rather than on a skeleton of a story which showed the larger elements to the best advantage. ”

“ Does it state its problem clearly, so that everyone can comprehend it, develop its angle absorbingly, and end, not merely stop, with complete satisfaction? Could one little scene be added, or even one little passage be left out, without marring the whole? Is it true to life—truer than life? If it is all this, it is good drama.
Good drama is therefore more than plot. It is more than story plus characters, dialogue, acting, costumes, scenery—it is more than them all combined. ”

“ And now it may be of advantage to sum up what has been said about stage business in this chapter. We have seen how business may be used to condense the story of a playlet; how business is often—though not always—the very heart of the dramatic; how pantomime may be skillfully used to condense salient parts of the playlet story and illumine character; how business may be employed to break up a clumsy but necessarily long speech—thus sometimes saving a playlet from the failure of the tedious;—and why business is more productive of comedy than is dialogue. ”

“ If it were, hardly one of our successful dramatists of today would have had the heart to persevere—for some wrote twenty full-evening plays before one was accepted by a manager, and then plodded through one or more stage failures before they were rewarded with final success. If producing managers could unerringly tell who has dramatic instinct highly developed and who has it not at all, there would be few play failures and the show-business would cease to be a gamble that surpasses even horse-racing for hazard. ”

“ Dialogue Reveals Character Humanly. Character is tried, developed and changed not by dialogue, but by action; yet the first intimate suggestion of character is shown in dialogue; and its trials, development and change are brought into clear relief—just as events, of which character-change is the vital part, are made unmistakably clear—by the often illuminating word that fits precisely. As J. Berg Esenwein says, "Just as human interest is the heart of the narrative, so human speech is its most vivid expression. In everyday life we do not know a man until we have heard him speak. ”

“ Dramatic instinct is the ability to see the dramatic moments in real life; to grasp the dramatic possibilities; to pick out the thrills, the tears and the laughter, and to lift these out from the mass and set them—combined, coherent and convincing—in a story that seems truer than life itself, when unfolded on the stage by characters who are more real than reality. ”

“ It is in the fulfilling of vaudeville's fine mission that writers all over the world are turning out their best. And because the mission of vaudeville is fine, the writing of anything that is not fine is contemptible. The author who tries to turn his talents to base uses—putting an untrue emphasis on life's false values, picturing situations that are not wholesome, using words that are not clean—deserves the fate of failure that awaits him. ”

“ Then he comes down stage to Goldie who is sitting on the trunk and has watched him. He taps her on the shoulder, taking Dugan's red wallet out of his pocket. "Go right ahead and pack," says The Eel, while Goldie looks astonished and begins to laugh. The audience, too, look astonished and begin to laugh when they see that red wallet. It is a surprise—a surprise so cleverly constructed that it hits the audience hard just above the laughter-and-applause-belt— a surprise that made the act at least twenty-five per cent better than it would have been without it. ”

“ If you have ever sat in the gallery of any theatre, and particularly of a vaudeville theatre, you certainly have noticed the very busy young man whose sole purpose in life appears to be to follow the heroine around the stage with the focused spot of light that shines like a halo about her. ”

“ Vaudeville managers never book a playlet that makes an audience smile—for while the humor that brings a smile may be more brilliant than the comedy that gets a laugh, it must always be remembered that vaudeville audiences come to laugh and not to smile. ”

“ If the obstacles against which the will of the hero has to contend are insurmountable, Fate or Providence or the laws of nature—then there is tragedy, and the end of the struggle is likely to be death, since the hero is defeated in advance. But if these obstacles are not absolutely insurmountable, being only social conventions and human prejudices, then the hero has a chance to attain his desire,—and in this case, we have the serious drama without an inevitably fatal ending. ”

“ If you are invited to purchase music for a new song, it is the part of wisdom to refuse—because only in very rare instances has a successful song been the result of such a method. The reason is perfectly plain, when you consider that the composer who offers you a melody for a cash price is interested only in the small lump sum he receives. You are his market. He does not care anything about the market the music must make for itself, first with a publisher and then with the public. ”

“ Art is only the expression of ideas. Ideas, emotions, impulses, are more important than the medium, just as religion is more important than theology. There is just as much excuse for saying 'theology for its own sake' as for saying 'art for art's sake.' The joy of a new word should make us grateful for the fertility of the street out of which most of the really strong words come. The street doesn't make us fine, but it keeps us from being too sweet and thin. It loves the punch. And the punch clears the path." It is the punch in dialogue that the playlet demands. ”

“ This age has been styled the age of the short-story and of vaudeville—it is, indeed, the age of the playlet.
The actor looking for a vaudeville vehicle today is not content with merely an incident that will give him the opportunity to present the character with which he has won marked success on the legitimate stage. Nor is he satisfied with a series of incidents, however amusing or thrilling they may be. He requires an offering that will lift his work into a more artistic sphere. He desires a little play that will be remembered after the curtain has been rung down. ”

“ It is largely owing to the addition of his thoughts that vaudeville stands to-day as a greater influence—because it has a wider appeal—than the legitimate drama in the make-believe life of the land. Even the motion pictures, which are nearer the eyes of the masses, are not nearer their hearts. Vaudeville was the first to foster motion pictures and vaudeville still accords the motion picture the place it deserves on its bills. For vaudeville is the amusement weekly of the world—it gathers and presents each week the best the world affords in entertainment. ”

“ How would you stage "When I Lost You"? Or—to show you that serious songs are not the only ones that may not be producible— how would you put on "Oh, How that German Could Love"? Of course you could bring the chorus on in couples and have them sing such a sentimental song to each other—but that would not, in the fullest sense, be producing it.
Just as not every "popular song" can be produced, so not every production song can be made popular. You have never whistled that song produced in "Staging an Act," nor have you ever whistled Cohan's song from "Hello, Broadway." ”

“ Keep your own personality out of the dialogue. Remember that your characters and not you are doing the talking. You have laid down a problem in your playlet, and your audience expects it to fulfill its promise dramatically—that is, by a mimicry of life. So it does not care to listen to one man inhabiting four bodies and talking like a quartet of parrots. It wants to hear four different personalities talk with all the individuality that life bestows so lavishly—in life. ”