Play actor

“ Prior to the enactment, and for the benefit of those in the audience who might be innocent of French, a British officer gave out the motif in English.
As I sat contentedly in my place—the burden of the wearinesses of the last weeks fallen from my shoulders—it was borne in upon me that much of the success of a play is in the eager and receptive mood of the audience; also that in the naïve freshness [61] of an amateur performance is a charm which has too frequently perished in the more finished production of the professional actor. ”

“ The rehearsal being over, Mr. K. advanced to him and said, "You wish to be an actor, eh!"—then turning to one of the actors, "Here is a person," continued he, "who desires to go upon the stage, and is content by the way of a beginning, to snuff the candles—humble enough you'll say. But he says he can sing;" then ironically to H. "Now, pray sir, do us the favour to say what song you can sing—you perceive the gentlemen of the band are in the orchestra—or perhaps you would rather accompany yourself, as you say you play the fiddle." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is doubtless true that there is no other actor in the world who has studied so thoroughly all the minor details of every play, arranging every bit of scenery, every position of the most unimportant member of the cast. ”

“ But in the scale of emotion and excitement the theatre comes next to fighting, whether you be the author of the play or opera to be given for the first time before the greatest and most critical audience in the world, or the actor, or actress, or singer, who has not yet been heard or seen and of whom wonders are expected on the great night. ”

“ And anyway, since it ought to be felt, known, understood, and practically admitted that an actor is something more than a telegraph wire, that his personal faculty and testimony enter into the matter of embodiment and expression, Jefferson's rare excellence and great success as Acres should teach a valuable lesson, correcting that pernicious habit of the critical mind which measures an actor by the printed text of a play-book and by the hide-bound traditions of custom on the stage. ”

“ Even ten years ago there were a number of stars who were sure of some business no matter what play they might appear in, but I think it is a fair statement that to-day no actor alive can do any business at all unless the play is satisfactory. ”

“ They profess a cult, a veneration, for those who practise our art, whether of their own nation or foreign, and their behaviour in the theatre is dignified. I recall one night when upon invitation I went to see a new play in which appeared an actor of reputation. ”

“ 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 whole of the actors were acquainted with the piece: he endeavored to impress their minds with the importance of these book-rehearsals. "As you require," said he, "of every musical performer, that he shall, in some degree, be able to play from the book: so every actor, every educated man, should train himself to recite from the book, to catch immediately the character of any drama, any poem, any tale he may be reading, and exhibit it with grace and readiness. ”

“ The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling, to the prompter's bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that's anything but gay. ”

“ The gentlemanly heavy unfailingly aspires to heroic rôles. The present incumbent of villainy had "fallen on his feet." Some seasons previously he had played an inconsequential engagement under the same management. The star took a fancy to him. Henceforth his engagements were assured—until the fancy waned. Everybody understood; they shrugged their shoulders and smiled. Nobody cared. Neither did the heavy man.
Character actors without exception are envious of the leading man. "Call that acting?" demands the man behind the make-up. "Call it acting to walk on and play yourself? ”

“ The actor, by the very nature of his calling, does, must, study personal effect. No playwright would dare to dump down his principal actor at the outset of a play. No sensible playwright would wish to do so. That actor’s personality is a part of the playwright’s material. Playwriting, it has been well said, is an art of preparing. The principal actor is one of the things for which we must be artfully prepared. ”

“ You are—if you keep on giving the audience what you've made it like once. But you maun do your best, nicht after nicht, or they'll soon ken the difference—and they'll let you know they ken it, too.
I'm often asked if I'm no sorry I'm just a music hall singer. It's a bonnie thing to be a great actor, appearing in fine plays. No one admires a great actor in a great play more than I do, and one of the few things that ever makes me sorry my work is what it is is that I can sae seldom sit me doon in a stall in a theatre and watch a play through. ”

“ A very curious thing is that what is called an "actor's" play—one, that is, that actors praise and enjoy in the rehearsing, is almost always a failure, while the managerial judgment has been reversed so often by the public, that even the most enthusiastic producer of new plays is apt "to hedge" a bit, with: "Unless I deceive myself, this will prove to be the greatest play," etc. ”

“ Irving to produce an original play in blank verse which he had written!
During our drive to the theatre he told me many things of interest. On the question as to whether Mr. Irving thought a school of acting necessary, he said that one could never make an actor. You can teach him elocution, technique, but there is no making an actor. Even technique is a life-long study. The fashions in hand-shaking change every day. He studies his parts everywhere ”

“ 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. ”

“ My friendly critics of the London press told me that a middle-aged man had taken to the stage as a duck takes to water. It was a bit of kindly nonsense. I had worked like a galley-slave for nine months, and the nine months of a man of the world is worth the nine years of a boy. And do I profess to be an actor now? Not a bit of it, my friendly critic—not a bit of it, in all honesty. But I mean to be. There is no art so difficult—granted; but there is none so enchanting, so inspiring. ”

“ The truth is, the performance last night was so realistic all round, that there is only the Low Comedy and a General Utility left. But we’ve a good many corpses about the theater, and with these, and the assistance of the two gentlemen mentioned, we will do what we can.’
“Even when studying in one’s own room, one cannot for a moment lose sight of one’s identity. A great actor, creating a character, doesn’t forget he’s himself, and think he’s somebody else. It’s only lunatics who have those fancies. ”

“ They have tried beauty, richness, novelty, to win back excitement. They have only just begun to see that the liveliest excitation in the playhouse may come from the art of the actor and the art of the régisseur when they are stripped to the task of providing exaltation. Present the actor as an actor, and the background as an honest, material background, and you are ready for what glories the playwright and the peculiar genius of the theater can provide. The drama is free again for its eternal task—the showing of the soul of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides, John, I am not jealous of your genius any more. My love has surged even over that. You have still a great dramatic career before you. You shall come into my company. You shall have every opportunity. Within two years you shall be my leading man; within five, co-star with me. Think of it. Your heart is still in the actor's art. Acting is religion. After God, the actor is the greatest creator. He alone can simulate life. The stage is the most powerful pulpit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have experienced before now the delicate irritability of the artistic genius, and I know that a reverential reticence is my safest course. Conversely, my reason for not describing the Actor is that I really do not know him well enough. An actor off the stage is about as exhilarating an object as a theatre by daylight. The brilliancy and the glamour have departed; the savour of sawdust and orange-peel remains. Let us render all honour to the histrion when his foot is on his native boards; but if we are wise we shall eschew in private life the society of Mr. ”

“ 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 ”