Performance

“ When you sit in front and see a show going along prettily and smoothly, you little think of the amount of brain work, foot work and executive power and force that has been necessary behind the curtain to make the performance what it is! ”

“ A student with plenty of physical energy may by sheer hard labour arrive at a kind of noisy performance which attracts attention to his name, but the delicate and tender spirit of true art is absent from such work. ”

“ Nevertheless, whatever admiration you may be brought to feel, and with justice, for this lovely workmanship,—the more distinctly you comprehend its merits, the more distinctly also will the question rise in your mind, How is it that a performance so marvelous has yet taken no rank in the records of art of any permanent or acknowledged kind? ”

“ I HAVE entered upon a performance which is without example, whose accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself. ”

“ I mean, when there was any extraordinary power of performance, when great national movements began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict a grasp as that of the hands on the sword, or the pencil, or the trowel. ”

“ To understand the power of performance that is in their finest wits, in the patient Newton, or in the versatile transcendent poets, or in the Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, Eldons, and Peels, one should see how English day-laborers hold out. ”

“ I determined that I would attempt to live a little before I indulged in baseless generalisation, or lectured other people on the art of life. I soon gained great facility in writing, and developed a theory, which I have ever since had no reason to doubt, that performance is simply a matter of the intensity of desire. ”

“ A perfect theatrical performance must harmonise the work of many men. The dramatist, the actors main and minor, the stage-manager, the scene-painter, the costumer, the leader of the orchestra, must all contribute their separate talents to the production of a single work of art. ”

“ Moreover, the acting, speaking and dancing provided the perfect medium for my ideas; and the whole performance was the consummate representation of my first conception; even the scenery shifted swiftly and noiselessly, and the intervals between the acts were hardly noticeable⁠ ⁠... ”

“ Everyone has observed how much easier in the performance and more skillful in its execution is the act, be it playing a piano, painting a picture, or driving a nail, when the movements involved have ceased to be consciously directed and become automatic. ”

“ By increasing the power of performance, we mean enlarging our knowledge of the technical process, or the medium through which thought is expressed; a most important species of knowledge, which, if to be otherwise attained, is at least most readily learned from those who have left us the result of their experience. ”

“ A performance is spoken of as either a GOOSER or a SCREAMER, should it be a failure or a great success;—if the latter, it is not infrequently termed a HIT. To STAR IT is to perform as the centre of attraction, with none but subordinates and indifferent actors in the same performance. ”

“ Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious. ”

“ He can then dismiss all care from his mind, and may easily find that performance an addition of confidence, a fortification that turns the scale in social encounters, and allows him to go gayly into conversations where else he had been dry and embarrassed. ”

“ And with this uniform exercise, the acts which concern one single virtue are performed with less fatigue, in consequence of their resemblance to one another. The performance of one act facilitates the performance of the next, which is like unto it ”

“ Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women. ”

“ I won’t indicate them closer than to say that they are not those sheets which [135] support the brilliant chaps who skilfully ride hobbies of their own, or who are most skilled at vivisecting and eviscerating a playwright and splitting each particular hair of an actor, singer or entertainer. The papers for which there is general demand are those which tell whether the performance was good of its kind, specify the kind and tell how the audience regarded it. ”

“ They are not qualities, to be sure, which of themselves carry performance to a high poetic level; but they are qualities which give to it practical and picturesque values, and which—well laid in—will make work survive. ”

“ Having gone through the drudgery, the hard study necessary to the full comprehension of the art, we now reach a stage when it may be put into practice, and can do nothing better than give an imaginary performance to show the application of the principles previously laid down. ”

“ Ease in the executant corresponds with enjoyment in the listener, or, at all events, if nothing more, it puts him in such a frame of mind, that the more positive qualities of the performance find him in an undisturbed, receptive state. ”

“ But for your comfort I may say that I believe the brain goes on developing on artistic lines in an enthusiastic nature almost as quickly in spite of the shorter time given to actual performance. ‘Then in 5 or 6 years you may find that your proved ability justifies you in joining the ranks of professional artists. ”

“ But as regards the motive force of interests, the various phases in the progress of the action, the suspended interest and development of situations, the just degree in which characters assert their effect on each other, the appropriate force and truth of their demeanour and speech—in all such respects the mere perusal unassisted by a theatrical performance can only in the rarest cases arrive at a reliable decision. Reading a work aloud is only under great qualification a further assistance. Speech in drama requires the presence of separate individuals. ”

“ Sometimes this prefatory performance occupies several minutes, for when the men are well matched and highly skilled, they attach importance to points of the most trifling nature, quite imperceptible to ordinary observers. ”

“ It is yet a more offensive discouragement, that the same actions performed by different hands produce different effects, and, instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performance by the man. ”

“ Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance? ”

“ and literary performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought—frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste. ”

“ And why need I add any remarks of delivery itself, which is to be ordered by action of body, by gesture, by look, and by modulation and variation of the voice, the great power of which, alone and in itself, the comparatively trivial art of actors and the stage proves; on which though all bestow their utmost labor to form their look, voice, and gesture, who knows not how few there are, and have ever been, to whom we can attend with patience? ”

“ Some play with a certain natural passion, an unstudied directness, without grace, without modulation, with no study of the masters or consciousness of the pervading spirit of the plot; others gives all their thought to their costume and think only of the audience; a few act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great end and motive of the play, spending themselves like good servants, indulging no wilfulness, obtruding no eccentricity, lending heart and tone and gesture to the perfect progress of the action. ”

“ Just think for a moment: a comprehensive art effort which consolidates into one entity which has an end and object and purpose of its own, all the elements of which any or all of the arts and industries take cognisance—thought, speech, passion, humour, pathos, emotion, distance, substance, form, size, colour, time, force, light, illusion to each or all of the senses, sound, tone, rhythm, music, motion. Can such a work be undertaken lightly or with inadequate preparation? Why, the mere patience necessary for the production of a play might take a high place in the marvels of human effort. ”

“ For, in the effort—the conscious and laboured effort of acting—her movements, which had exercised such an enchantment over him in the first scene, had become mere strides and rushes, never indeed without grace, but often without dignity, and at all times lacking in that consistency, that unity of plan which is the soul of art. ”

“ Every beautiful thought is a teacher; every noble line speaks to the brain and heart. Beauty, proportion, melody suggest moral beauty, proportion in conduct and melody in life. In a great play the relations of the various characters, their objects, the means adopted for their accomplishment, must suggest, and in a certain sense solve or throw light on many social problems, so that the drama teaches lessons, discusses social problems and gives intellectual pleasure. ”

“ You watch it in rehearsal, and during the "breaking in" weeks you cut it here, change it there, make a plot-line do double duty as a laugh-line in this spot, take away a needless word from another—until your playlet flashes a flawless gem from the stage. The final effect in the medium of expression for which you write it is UNITY. Every part—acting, dialogue, action—blends in a perfect whole. Not even one word may be taken away without disturbing the total effect of its vital oneness. ”

“ Our amusements, though undertaken without judgment, and carried on without instruction, were not without their use to us. We trained our memories and persons, and acquired more dexterity in speech and gesture than is usually met with at so early an age. But, for me in particular, this time was in truth an epoch: my mind turned all its faculties exclusively to the theatre; and my highest happiness was in reading, in writing, or in acting, plays. ”

“ Enthusiasm and inventive power were wearied, and thinking men began to criticize and judge the work that was being done. It was clear to [24] them that there was need of proportion and symmetry, that each act of a play, for example, should do its special part in the development of the plot and in the revelation of the characters. The problem in the scholar's mind was: What is the best possible form or model to follow in making a play, a song, or a speech? ”

“ Let us try, then, to set before our eyes this public, this audience, and this stage—all connected with one another, as in every natural and living work; and if ever there was a living and natural work, it is here. ”

“ A wise theatre might make a training in strong and beautiful life the fashion, teaching before all else the heroic discipline of the looking-glass, for is not beauty, even as lasting love, one of the most difficult of the arts? ”

“ Acting was but repeating the words of others; singing was a gift of the gods; but talking to an audience, whether to delight or instruct, carried plain implications of self-conscious superiority in knowledge or power. ”

“ We recognize the relative insignificance of the individual drama, but its reality holds us. Its characters may be few, its scenery bare, its action trite and simple to other eyes, yet each of us, as the leading actor, finds in the development of a human soul a part which fascinates him, and lends itself to the finest shades of expression. ”

“ And all this time the performer, the conscious performer, is in a seventh heaven of artistic rapture at the results of all this tremendous business, or perchance lost in a flirtation with the individual who turns the leaves of the music book, and is justly persuaded she is giving him the whole of her soul. ”

“ The play begins; with the deepest earnestness the audience listen, and, crowded as they are, preserve the utmost quiet. The glorious drama scene by scene unfolds itself, and passage by passage we recognise the beauties of our great poet. ”

“ Let us fit up a stage for the purpose: make the invoked spirits visible as well as audible: and calling before us some of the illustrious of former days, ask them what they think of us and our doings? ”

“ Let us pass behind the scenes, and discover, if we can, what sort of piece is being rehearsed—what mode of action the performers affect. If we lose some illusions, we may gain a profitable glimpse of decorously veiled truths. ”

“ These traps of scene, of situation, of climax, of acts and tableaux or of whatever they are, require to be set and adjusted with the utmost nicety and skill so that they will spring at the precise instant and in the precise manner to seize and hold the admiration—sympathy—interest—or whatever they may be intended to capture, of an audience. ”

“ Who can say things so sweetly, so smoothly, so sonorously, as the leading character or characters in a play? Who can do things so neatly, so masterfully, and surmount such overwhelming difficulties in the twinkling of an eye? ”

“ MOVEMENT, play, art, are all a kind of preparation. They are all, but especially the last two, imitative in character, reflecting impressions received—and they are a preparation; but for what? For something that out-distances them all and is entirely different from every one of them. ”