Dramatic club

“ It is a question whether any of the girls kept their mind on the book. The Dramatic Club at Hilltop was a very important institution of school life. There were hardly ever more than twelve members, and they were chosen for a variety of reasons. The principal one was an understanding and appreciation of literature, but equally important were good looks and an ability to act, for the Dramatic Club gave two plays a year. They were not the usual amateur performances, for wise Miss Slocum, with the aid of the Seniors, chose her material carefully and trained it exceedingly well. ”

“ PRIVATE theatricals and dramatic or Shakspeare reading clubs are among the fashionable amusements of the present day. Many, I know, disapprove of them; but I think they do far more good than harm. They certainly strengthen the lungs, memory, and improve the intellectual tastes. But I will not discuss the subject, as far abler pens than mine have already argued on both sides of the question. Private theatricals amuse a large circle of friends, and any club willing to undertake the presentation of plays deserves the thanks of the audience. ”

“ She believes that intensive work carried on patiently and for a long time with a moderate-sized dramatic club is more effective than the ambitious endeavor to deal with a large company. As in all social work that amounts to anything, it seems better to get somewhere with a few than merely to start with the many. In the small group the mob spirit is entirely absent, and if it be a selected company, everybody is in earnest. ”

“ Even today, in the construction of hurried entertainments for club nights at the various actors' club-houses, often only the scenario or general framework of the act is typewritten and handed to the performers who are to take part. All that this tells them is that on some given cue they are to enter and work opposite so-and-so, and are, in turn, to give an agreed-upon cue to bring on such-and-such a performer. In a word, the invaluable part of any dramatic entertainment is the scenario. ”

“ It is sometimes the case that a few of the children outgrow the club. They begin to realize that they are much larger than the others, and they decide that they do not care to take part in the acting, yet they are still interested enough to come to the meetings. If there is no other dramatic club into which they may go, then they may be used as assistants in the younger club and made to feel that they are a necessary part of it. ”

“ An hour’s journey on the trolley brings me to the court-house. After one such visit the stranger needn’t trouble to enroll himself at the inn; some one is bound to offer to put him up. There is a dramatic club in that town that produces good plays with remarkable skill and effectiveness. The club is an old one as such things go, and it fixes the social standard for the community. The auditorium of the Masonic Temple serves well as a theatre, and our admiration for the club is enhanced by the disclosure that the members design the scenery and also include in their membership capable directors. ”

“ Every dramatic club in the land should possess a copy of this book, and no actor can afford to be without it. It contains so much valuable information that even old stagers will consult it with advantage. ”

“ We have no such private theaters on this side of the water, but there are nearly two hundred amateur dramatic clubs in Brooklyn, while other communities possess these organizations in proportion to their size. ”

“ With the program or literary over, all retire to the dining rooms, where the ladies have a lunch arranged [79] which is always looked forward to. Home talent plays and public speakers are from time to time in order and always enjoyed. A five piece orchestra composed from amongst the membership play for dances, at plays, etc. The dramatic talent of the club has just played ‘A Noble Outcast’ and despite a rainy evening the proceeds counted up to $93.00. The proceeds were used to pay for the inclosing of the stage and stage scenery. ”

“ And so you are going to raise the drama by setting up a club; [pg 30] that's another exquisite notion! You hire a great house in the neighbourhood of the theatre; you call it the Garrick Club. You allow actors and patrons to mix themselves and their negus there after the play; and this you call a design for exalting the drama. Certainly you English are a droll set; your expedients are admirable."
"My good Devil, any thing that brings actors and spectators together, that creates an esprit de corps among all who cherish the drama, is not to be sneered at in that inconsiderate manner." ”

“ The Club did not run to authors. What celebrities there were were chiefly actors and artists. But it was a club that consisted more of the admirers of the arts than their professors, men who packed the dinner-table every Saturday night, and made an enthusiastic audience for the actors and musicians and reciters, who did “turns” to amuse the company and get their names known to the public, if they were not already popular favourites, like W. H. Denny, Fred Kay, Odell, Willie Nichol and Reggie Groome. ”

“ Inside this everybody's club is a café, with hurrying waiters and a solid brass band, and opening from its smoke and absinthe laden interior blazes a small theatre, with stage footlights and scenery, where the several world-renowned artists redeem at a very considerable discount the promissory notes of the bill-boards outside. ”

“ But at gayer times, when there are gala receptions at the club, its steps are all buried under expensive carpet, soft as moss and covered over with a long pavilion of red and white awning to catch the snowflakes; and beautiful ladies are poured into the club by the motorful. ”

“ Large, with dark panels, and heavy beams which spring up and lose themselves in warm shadows overhead, it is a room combining dignity with gracious informality. And let me add that, to my mind, such a combination is at once rare and desirable in a club building—or, for the matter of that, in a home or a human being. A club which is too informal is likely to seem trivial; a club too dignified, austere. A club should neither seem to be a joke, nor yet a mausoleum. If it be magnificent, it should not, at least, overwhelm one with its magnificence ”

“ The Playgoers’ Club was almost the only one which admitted ladies; and at that time it confined them mostly to lectures. The ladies’ Clubs certainly welcomed men, but the serious element was more conspicuous there. The idea of having a literary club at which ladies and gentlemen constantly dined together for pleasure had not been born.
The actors and actresses and well-known speakers of our 62acquaintance we met mostly at the old Playgoers’ Club, or at Phil May’s Sunday nights in the stable which had become his studio. ”

“ We do not dine, as strolling players did, in the servant’s kitchen. We are, for the moment, almost respectable. We belong to clubs. We wear no distinctive dress. It is indeed the fashion for the artist of the day to look perfectly ordinary, to be, in fact, like everyone else, with short hair and servant problems. To-day Congreve would be content to style himself a dramatist and be a member of the Garrick Club. It is a phase. It is only the surface of life that alters. Another turn of the wheel and the artist will return to his own people. ”

“ To saunter down Beacon Street to the club, to play a game of whist with a trio as idle as himself, to drive, never in those days to ride, to sit near uncongenial people at a tedious, if fashionable, dinner, to dance attendance on his wife or some other woman in the brilliant crushes imposed on all who would be thought on intimate terms with society—this, he knew, was not the life he had once planned. ”

“ Club life—with its too studious indulgence of man's native selfishness and love of ease—fashionable life, with its insatiable craving for that latter-day form of display which calls itself Culture, Art, or Beauty—had afforded him no vision so enchanting as the wide hearth and high chimney of this sober, book-lined room, with the fair and girlish form kneeling in front of the old dogstove, framed in the glaring light of the fire. ”

“ Nothing could have been more tranquil except the cool spaces, the dusky, sunny, airy, oak-hued shadows of the wide-windowed club—neither could anything have been less like Mrs. Grubey's or even Professor Herrick's idea of what an actors' club would be. The whole place seemed to rebuke its visitor, more graciously than had Hermann Deutch, for the feverish suggestion which Christina's calling had hinted round her name. ”

“ This society, or club, it is well known, believes in celebrating literature—and all sorts of other things—in a thoroughly agreeable and human fashion. It meets not in any gloomy hall or lecture room, it has no gritty apparatus of blackboard, chalk, and bleared water-bottle. It summons its members and its guests to a well-known restaurant of the West End, it gives them red and white roses for their button-holes, and sets them down to an excellent dinner and good red wine at a gaily decked table, flower garlanded, luminous with many starry lamps. ”

“ The young aristocrats of family or wealth—the best known members of the Savage Club—began to flutter about her with the most pressing and eager attentions. If she appeared at a party a group of men fenced her round; if she went to church, another and a larger party stood in a row awaiting her exit; if she drove out in the Castellana Avenue, a cavalcade of admirers galloped beside her carriage as a guard of honour; at the theatre pairs of opera-glasses were invariably fixed upon her. ”

“ After supper I set out on the steep hillside up which the town is built and down which run red mud streets, and at length found at his club—the club, in fact—the manager of the local theater, a tar-brushed youth of aristocratic manners, or at least gestures, who naturally accepted and signed without argument the contract I handed him. Upon my return to the hotel I found the dingy-looking room I had left an hour before gay with speckless white bedclothes and fancy mosquito canopy, evidently in honor of the large theatrical troupe which rumor already had it would soon be following in my wake. ”

“ Shouts and yells ensued, during which our comic guest's health was drunk with three times three, to which he responded in a short and laughable speech that called forth more cheering.
"And now, gentlemen," said the chairman, "after [157] having spent the tenth anniversary of our club in the company of mermaids, sea monsters, ghouls, spirits, and phantom fleas, how can we do better than wind up this honourable meeting by joining hands and singing that song composed by one of our members—now, alas! no more—to be sung at the inauguration of the Wonder Club?" ”

“ Like the Lambs of New York, the Hermits give shows in their club-house, but the Lambs' is a club of actors, authors, composers, stage managers, etc., while the Hermit Club is made up, so far as the theater is concerned, of amateurs—amateurs having among them sufficient talent to write and act their own shows, design their own costumes, paint their own scenery, compose their own music, and even play it, too—for there is an orchestra of members. ”

“ They are in their nature more refining and intellectual. It is astonishing, when people really put together, in some one club or association, all the different talents for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever a circle may be gathered—in the least promising neighborhood. A club of ladies in one of our cities has had quite a brilliant success. It is held every fortnight at the house of the members, according to alphabetical sequence. The lady who receives has charge of arranging what the entertainment shall be,—whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation, or music ”

“ Under the influence of music antagonisms soften, moroseness disappears, and sociability and good cheer take their place. The old-fashioned singing-school was one of the most popular of local social institutions; something is needed to fill its place. A club or band for the serious study of instrumental music not only gives culture to individuals, but is also an asset of increasing value to a church or community.
[134] 141. Woman's Clubs.—These have become so common that they need no special description, but as a social phenomenon they have their significance. ”

“ Good manners in clubs are the same as good manners elsewhere—only a little more so. A club is for the pleasure and convenience of many; it is never intended as a stage-setting for a "star" or "clown" or "monologist." ”

“ At our annual arts and crafts show we have on exhibition loot from the four corners of the earth, and the club woman who has not heard it whispered around in our art circles that Mr. Sargent is painting too many portraits lately, and that a certain long-legged model whose face is familiar in the weekly magazines is no better than she should be—a club woman in our town who does not know of these things is out of caste in clubdom, and women say of her that she is giving too much time to her church. ”

“ You can't have a club room without mahogany tables, you can't have mahogany tables without magazines—Longmans, with a serial by Rider Haggard, the Nineteenth Century, with an article, "The Rehabilitation of the Pimp in Modern Society," by W.E. Gladstone—a dulness that's a purge to good spirits, an aperient to enthusiasm; in a word, a dulness that's worth a thousand a year. You can't have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver salver in his hand; then you can't bring a lady to a club, and you have to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull. ”