Cast

“ Therefore let us leave the personal element to take care of itself, and turn our minds entirely towards the actor and the actress and not towards the man and the woman. I know you are an actor, for I have seen you play, although you are not in the present cast at the Theatre Tragique. You have your foot on the boards, and the whole world lies before you. ”

“ But actors are so bad, in general, and the best are spread over so many theatres, that the "cast" is black despair and moody madness. There is no one to be got for Marion but a certain Miss ——, I am afraid—a pupil of Miss Kelly's, who acted in the private theatricals I got up a year ago. ”

“ The length of the cast in some of the plays need-xvi- not be daunting, as the principal characters are usually few, the minor ones often having been introduced in answer to the frequent pleading "May I be in the 'show' this year?" Though some of the parts are rather long, none are in the least calculated to strain the actors in any way—children act them with zest and absolute naturalness. ”

“ Early portions will have to be repeated more frequently than later ones to allow the actors to get into their characterizations. Tense, romantic, sentimental, comic scenes may have to be rehearsed privately until they are quite good enough to interest other members of the cast. ”

“ Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great victory has been won, either on the battle-field or at the polls. Two rows of shops, with windows down nearly to the ground, cast a glow from side to side, while the black night hangs overhead like a canopy, and thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. ”

“ No sir, no. We act that rôle for which we have been cast, that rôle which we are given in life. And in my own case, passion itself, as usually happens, becomes a trifle theatrical when it is exalted. ”

“ Every Passion gives a particular Cast to the Countenance, and is apt to discover itself in some Feature or other. I have seen an Eye curse for half an Hour together, and an Eye-brow call a Man Scoundrel. ”

“ The only thing to do is to pull the act to pieces and start afresh. And when you consider that this sort of thing happens not once but a dozen times between the start of a musical comedy book and its completion, can you wonder that this branch of writing is included among the dangerous trades and that librettists always end by picking at the coverlet?
Then there is the question of cast. The author builds his hero in such a manner that he requires an actor who can sing, dance, be funny, and carry a love interest. ”

“ Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. ”

“ People might have headaches almost any time. He wondered if his friend the casting director were subject to them. He must carry a box of the Eezo wafers.
He strolled down the street between the rows of offices and the immense covered stages. Actors in costume entered two of these and through their open doors he could see into their shadowy interiors. ”

“ The Cosmic Director has written His own plays, and assembled the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of eternity, He pours His creative beam through the films of successive ages, and the pictures are thrown on the screen of space. Just as the motion-picture images appear to be real, but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The best actor was he who represented the blind man. The chief actress is an overgrown dame, all fat and dimples, who kept up a constant sobbing and heaving of her chest, yet never getting rid of an eternal smirk upon her face. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have the actors in this great drama in their private dress, become acquainted with their personal habits, listen to their familiar sayings, and, in short, gather up those minutiae which in the aggregate make up so much of life, and not less of character. ”

“ Beautiful and sprightly, talented and accomplished—possessing, too, the most exquisite taste and skill as a vocalist and musician, I saw no reason why she should not succeed upon the stage as well, and far better, than many women a thousand times less talented. Therefore, encouraged by my cordial approbation of her plan, and acting in accordance with my recommendation, the fair aspirant to dramatic honors placed herself under the instructions of a popular and well-known actor, who was fully capable of the task which he had undertaken. ”

“ As soon as we all three were inside the little office, I was introduced to the manager, who turned out to be an actor I had often seen on the boards, but who did not look a bit like himself, though he would have done very well for his own son; he was so much shorter and younger than he ought to have been. The clean-shaven face gives actors such a youthful appearance. It was difficult to believe, at first, that the sedate-looking boys I used to meet at rehearsal, were middle-aged men with families, some of them. ”

“ In those good old days a black-shrouded mute hovered about each actor after dark, holding out a candle at the end of a long stick to illuminate his features, that the audience might see the fine play of expression. ”

“ When I joined the company in which I met my husband I was singled out for marked attention by the star. I believed this attention to be a kindly interest in a novice. It never occurred to me to question the intent and purpose. I was the understudy for the leading woman; the star had told me that I had exceptional talent, and with the proper direction I should develop into a splendid emotional actress. Quite often we would have private rehearsals—sometimes in the theatre, but more often in the star's apartment in the hotel. Invariably we rehearsed alone. ”

“ Another time she talked about her profession as an actress. 'Acting,' she said, 'cannot be otherwise than delightful—but it takes an actor away from himself. When one has been two or three years on the stage nothing is left but the stage and the dressing-room: the company behind the scenes and the audience in front. Nothing is real. Everything that happens is but a scene in a play. ”

“ First then, a valuable actor must sleep in the pit, and wake early to sweep the theatre, and throw fresh sawdust into the boxes; he must shake out the dresses, and wind up and dust the motion-jacks; he must teach the dull ones how to act, rout up the idlers from the straw, and redeem those that happen to get into the watch-house. Then, sir, when the Fair begins, he should sometimes walk about the stage grandly, and show his dress: sometimes he should dance with his fellows ”

“ 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. ”

“ An excellent actor when properly guided, and fresh from the hands of one of the most astute producers connected with the American stage, without uttering a word Quard contrived to infuse into this first brief appearance at the window a sense of criminal and sinister mystery which instantly enchained the imagination of the audience. ”

“ Thus, though the absence of actresses and the stiff conventional costume of the puffed and padded-out actors must have been a serious hindrance to the subtler graces of acting, the dramatic poets were provided with scenery and accompaniments quite adequate to stimulate their imagination, and yet not so perfect as to provide them with splendid stage effects as a cloak for dramatic feebleness. ”

“ The powerfully dramatic effect of the situations, and the two characters of Master Walter and Julia, the great scope for good acting in all the scenes in which they appear, the natural fire, passion, and pathos of the dialogue, in short the great merits of the piece as an acting play cover all its defects; even the heroine's vulgar, flighty folly and the hero's absurd eccentricity interfering wonderfully little with the sympathy of the audience for their troubles and their final triumph over them. ”

“ Some of the actors would represent several characters; they would wander about for a certain length of time in one costume, then change and reappear in another. Some of your helpers would have more talent than the others and could enact more rôles. ”

“ So the lad tells us the leading woman is a sterling actress of legitimate methods—all too hard to find in this day of sensationalism, and the play is a triumph of advanced realism written by a serious student of the drama that is trying to save our stage from commercial degradation. ”

“ Until then a piece was often nothing more than a star actor planted well in the front of the stage, taking his time and prolonging his effects, and behind him a dozen or so nonentities mumbling mere odds and ends of dialogue and addressing themselves to the back of their more famous colleague. ”

“ Half a century ago only a few favoured professionals were admitted into the sacred circle called Society, and then only on rare occasions, but all that is now changed: actors and actresses are the fashion, and may [Pg 291] be found everywhere and anywhere. Their position is remarkable, and they appear to enjoy society as much as society enjoys them. They are fêted and feasted, the world worships at their feet. In London the position of an actor or actress of talent is a brilliant one socially.
[Pg 292]
CHAPTER XVI
HOW DOES A MAN GET ON THE STAGE? ”

“ MONG the sham agents must be classed the “Professors,” or “X. Y. Z.‘s,” who are always “able to place two or three” (never more than two or three: it would be no use four applying) “lady and gentlemen amateurs, of tall or medium stature, either dark or fair, but must be of good appearance, at a leading West-end theater, in good parts: Salaried engagement.” These gentlemen are appreciative, and very quick to discern real talent. They perceived mine in a moment. They were all of them sure that I should make a splendid actor, and I was just the man they wanted. ”

“ Yes, they are motion picture actresses, and I am a play reader. It is our profession, Mr. Merrick, and we earn our living in this way. To be frank with you, I am very proud of the fact that my girls are popular favorites with the picture theatre audiences. ”

“ I think the voice of actors when off the stage is peculiar. It is deep and hollow, as if trained to be thrown to a distance. By the drama two of the senses which afford most pleasure are entertained—the eye and the ear. ”

“ Now, the actor on the regular stage is one kind of individual; the actor for the motion picture is quite another. The stage has a limited and well-defined category of beings and shadows, of vessels, so to speak, for the fancy of the poet in words. There is the youthful lover, the sentimental dame of uncertain years, the first hero, the first heroine, the doughty old father, the droll old lady, and so on. ”

“ Scene rehearsals and dress rehearsals occupy the last week of preparations. Actors and actresses act at rehearsal: they have been taught and required to do so from the first, and the consequence is that a bad actor becomes a reasonably good actor, and a reasonably good actor becomes an admirable actor by sheer dint of the microscopic investigation that his acting receives from the stage-manager and from the author. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In other words, that actor or actress is the most competent and effective whose imagination is successful in meeting literally, and translating, the imagination of the dramatist which has created the rôle played by the particular actor or actress. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, my poor lad, granting your actress is a divine instrument of amorous music, I don't believe you capable of drawing from it one single note of passion's fugue.... Just consider. I don't spend my nights supping with ladies of the theatre; but we all know what an actress is. It is an animal generally agreeable to see and hear, always badly brought up, spoilt first by poverty and afterwards by luxury. ”