Acting

“ It is the first time I have played with any one who can properly be called an actor, and it was quite a new sensation. I could myself tell that I was acting very differently to the way in which I usually act. I seemed to catch his energy and earnestness; the scene grew almost real, and I began to feel my part. And that is the most any one can do on the stage. As to ‘being the character you are representing,’ that is absurd. I can hardly believe in any sane person seriously putting forward such a suggestion. It is too ridiculous to argue against. ”

“ On the other hand, acting can rise in opposite conditions into the noblest of the arts. The great actor relies for genuine success on no mere gesticulatory mechanism. Imaginative insight, passion, the gift of oratory, grace and dignity of movement and bearing, perfect command of the voice in the whole gamut of its [Pg 15] inflections are the constituent qualities of true histrionic capacity. ”

“ Inkwell. How can we build when you don't give us any lines?
Sud. What do you call yourselves actors for if you can't supply acting when the playwright uses dashes!—This is the biggest scene in the play. [Crosses to lower left.] The very fact that I don't give you a lot of literary lines puts me in the class of the most forceful dramatists of the day! My plays are not wishy-washy lines! They are full of action—red-blood—of flesh and blood! ”

“ The fascination is to be conveyed in the acting.Nor is it any objection that the Wooing Scene comes early in the action. The play is not the book, but the actor's interpretation on the stage, and the actor will have collected even from the latest scenes elements of the interpretation he throws into the earliest: the actor is a lens for concentrating the light of the whole play upon every single detail. ”

“ The splendor of the colors is dazzling. Watching this crowd of five hundred actors 412 closely, one finds not a single man, woman, or little child performing his part mechanically or absently. The whole five hundred are acting as if each one regarded his part as the central and prominent one; in fact, they are so acting that it does not seem acting: this is characteristic of the acting throughout the play. ”

“ Many opportunities are passed over, which might have been employed to shew the manner in which the actor can represent a variety of feelings, which the language of the play may seem to admit; and we lose much of the art and skill of acting, when the talents of the actor are limited to the display of such sentiments only as accord with the simple and decided expression of character which he is anxious to maintain. ”

“ The acting is excellent and spirited; the feats of memory remarkable, and the costumes gorgeous. “Once an actor always an actor,” they say, regarding the custom of youths being bought or apprenticed by the traveling troupes. ”

“ It is a curious thing that, in all the pronouncements of acting as an art, the names chosen by the advocates as representative carriers of the æsthetic banner are those of actors and actresses who have most often offered evidence of artistic passion in fields separate and apart from their histrionic endeavours. ”

“ The instant he returned into the room, I gave him a look that I felt made it unnecessary to tell him what I thought.’—‘To be sure, he would see it immediately.’—‘And don’t you think, Sir,’ I said, ‘that this explains the difficulty of fine acting, and 340the difference between good acting and bad—that is, between face-making or mouthing and genuine passion? To give the last, an actor must possess the highest truth of imagination, and must undergo an entire revolution of feeling. ”

“ The finest actor is he who can play the comedy of life perfectly, as I aspire to do. To walk well, talk well, smile well, weep well, groan well, laugh well—and die well!—it is all pure acting,—because in every man there is the dumb dreadful immortal Spirit who is real,—who cannot act,—who Is,—and who steadily maintains an infinite though speechless protest against the body’s Lie!” ”

“ On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting:
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day; ”

“ the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. ”

“ A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. ”

“ In an accurate use of the words, sensational acting would be acting that took its origin in the senses and passed thence through the muscles without the intervention of the mind. This is the acting learned by the parrot, the dog, or the monkey, and by the mere mimic. Artistic acting, on the other hand, is acting which originates in the creative mind and is freely sent thence through the proper channels of expression. The true definition of art is feeling passed through thought and fixed in form. ”

“ Stage acting also affects the conversation, the tone of voice, and manner of expression. We were much amused once with the witty reply of a clever person, when asked why he did not admire a distinguished actress he had met with in private. ”

“ But if the great dramatist and inimitable poet shrank with disgust from the profession of acting, because of the estimation in which the actor then was held and the pollutions which surrounded the stage, he held a very different opinion of the vocation of a dramatist. ”

“ One wonders that the impermanency of his profession does not drive the actor to other vocations—perhaps "trades" were the better word, since the rank and file are better adapted to plumbing than to acting. ”

“ The plays written for them, though no genuine dramas, are not without value as spectacle, and the opportunity, however lame, gives freer play to the actor’s powers, than would the simple recitation, by which some have thought any attempt at acting whole plays should be superseded. ”

“ Since the production of the play the title rôle has been a popular one with leading men and with stars. The attractive combination of comedy and melodrama, with opportunities for declamatory climaxes, is of the sort to excite audiences; and for that reason, if for no other, would appeal to actors. In addition to acting opportunities, the play has a romantic story, and that popular feature,—a happy ending. ”

“ If the subject of the first charade is not guessed the same side must present another proverb, putting new actors in the place of those who have just taken part. Not a word must be spoken in the charade, but the actors must make their meaning as clear as possible by good acting. ”

“ I have not often seen more natural acting than that of these masks. It is such acting as can only be sustained by a remarkably happy talent and long practice.
While I am writing this, they are making a tremendous noise on the canal under my window, though it is past midnight. Whether for good or for evil, they are always doing something. ”

“ This is what I am pleased to term talk versus acting. The representative actors in London are much inclined in this direction.
COPY LIFE The student may well ask, "What are we to copy, and whom are we to copy?" Don't copy any one; don't copy any individual actor, or his methods. The methods of one actor—the means by which he arrives—cannot always be successfully employed by another. The methods and personality of one actor are no more becoming or suitable or adapted to another than certain gowns worn by women of fashion simply because these gowns are the fashion. ”

“ Now and again it suffices the poet to think and write in abstractions; but the actor's work is absolutely concrete. He is brought in every phase of his work into direct comparison with existing things, and must be judged by the most exacting standards of criticism. Not only must his dress be suitable to the part which he assumes, but his bearing must not be in any way antagonistic to the spirit of the time in which the play is fixed. ”

“ It is valuable, first, as the record of the impressions produced upon a mind of singular sensibility by many actors of renown, and lastly, indeed chiefly, because it formulates and reiterates sound opinions upon the little-understood principles of the art of acting.... ”

“ The actors not only have a deal of fun as well as hard work, but real acting involves putting one's self into the part and gaining an understanding of various types of people and social situations which is a most liberal education. ”

“ "Just as work is the curse of the drinking classes of this country," he said laughing, "so education is the curse of the acting classes." ”

“ "The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it," said Holmes. ”

“ Vary the pace. Charles Reade was never tired of saying this, and, indeed, it is one of the foundations of all good acting. ”

“ I had felt myself an actor in a drama, and now I had very much the feeling an actor would have who answers to a cue and finds himself in mid-stage with the scenery and the rest of the cast suddenly vanished behind him. ”

“ You are an actor. I am an actor. Come with me to a meeting at which I am to make a speech and I will show you a real-life drama truer than ever you will see or hear on the stage. The audience would kill me if they dare. ”

“ The choice of the one or of the other must be determined by the temperament of the actor, and in an equal measure by the response he receives from the temper of his audience. Speaking only for myself, I may frankly say that the greatest impressions I have received in the theatre have been made upon me by performers who never left me for a moment to imagine they were not themselves; but who, without greatly striving to realise the external attributes of the characters they were presenting, have succeeded in the power of constantly identifying themselves with the culminating passions of life. ”

“ In this latter case the actor, the poet actor, sees and creates in the air before him the being he delineates; he makes him, he builds him during the day, in the long hours of the night; the character gradually takes being; he is the actor's genius; the slave of the ring, who comes when he calls him, stands beside him, and envelops him in his ghostly arms; the actor's personality disappears; he is the character. You, you, and you, and all of you, have the right to object to the actor's creation ”

“ But remember you are an actor in it; not a puppet worked by wires, but an actor. It is yours to study the plot as it unfolds itself, to throw yourself into it intelligently, warmly, zealously. Be sure to learn your part well, and to recite it manfully. Be not clamorous for another or more dignified character than that which is allotted you—be it your sole aim to conspire with the Author, and to subserve his grand and wise conception. ”

“ A Broadway actor in a bald wig or an actor naturally bald, who is trying to pretend that he is in a room off in Budapest, and who refuses to admit that he knows it is all a sham, and that a thousand people are watching him, is a representational actor, or a realist. An actor who admits that he is an actor, and that he has an audience before him, and that it is his business to charm and move this audience by the brilliance of his art, is a presentational actor. ”

“ Hoping that my voice may reach across the waves that roll between us, I shout to them and their profession a hearty and sincere God Speed.
ON THE STAGE-AND OFF.
CHAPTER I. I Determine to Become an Actor.
Original
HERE comes a time in every one’s life when he feels he was born to be an actor. Something within him tells him that he is the coming man, and that one day he will electrify the world. Then he burns with a desire to show them how the thing’s done, and to draw a salary of three hundred a week. ”

“ Fourth, as an actor, always an actor in spirit, he seized upon every dramatic possibility, every tense situation, every peculiarity of voice and gesture in the people whom he met, and reproduced these things in his novels, exaggerating them in the way that most pleased his audience. ”

“ Only a practised and enthusiastic actor, who in reality was in love with his profession, and who saw the educating force and dignity of his calling, could have drawn up such an ennobling picture of the responsibility entrusted to the impersonators of the characters, who embodied the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. ”

“ When a fine actor does a fine thing, have we such a school of audience as to merit this admirable supply to their demands?—this applause of their understanding? Is there not in the whole excellent piece of work, something all too independent of their part in the theatre? ”

“ Who took their daily Stands where they might best elbow the Actor, and come in for their Share of the Auditor's Attention. In many a labour'd Scene of the warmest Humour and of the most affecting Passion have I seen the best Actors disconcerted, while these buzzing Muscatos have been fluttering round their Eyes and Ears. How was it possible an Actor, so embarrass'd, should keep his Impatience from entering into that different Temper which his personated Character might require him to be Master of? ”

“ But at least we must recognise the vast advantages with which a practised actor, impregnated by the associations of his life, and by study—with all the practical and critical skill of his profession up to the date at which he appears, whether he adopts or rejects tradition—addresses himself to the interpretation of any great character, even if he have no originality whatever. ”

“ For this reason, I should advise any actor, or actress, to cultivate some rational hobby or interest by the side of their work; for until the time comes for an actor to assume the cares and labours of management, he must have a great deal of time on his hands that can be better employed than in hanging about clubs or lolling in drawing-rooms. ”