Specific performance

“ 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 ⁠... ”

“ 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? ”

“ If the expression of the intention of poet and composer fulfilled the sum total of interpretation, one performance would differ little from another. A clear-cut, automatic precision would be the result, perhaps as perfect as the repetition given out by a music-box and certainly no more interesting. ”

“ Throughout the whole performance their eyes are directed modestly to the ground, and their body and limbs are by slow movements thrown into every graceful attitude that the most flexible form is capable of exhibiting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again, the excellence of the performance has its effect, and there is a wonderful difference between the radiant beauty of the form produced by the work of a true artist, perfect alike in expression and execution, and the comparatively dull and undistinguished-looking one which represents the effort of the wooden and mechanical player. Anything like inaccuracy in rendering naturally leaves a corresponding defect in the form, so that the exact character of the performance shows itself just as clearly to the clairvoyant spectator as it does to the auditor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With many, there predominates a brilliant, shewy, and strongly marked manner; with others, an expressive, quiet, connected, and gentle style of playing is most generally called for; others, again, require a characteristic, impassioned, or even fantastic and humorous expression; and, in many compositions, a tender, warm, playful, and pleasing mode of execution is most suitable. Lastly, there are pieces which include all these different styles, and which therefore compel the player to adopt corresponding alternations of manner in his performance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I say, for only if the actors, especially of the principal parts, are equal to their most difficult task, if the unaccustomed nature of that task does not frighten them and cripple their good intentions, only then the lucky case can happen of the performance being comprehensible and effective. If one circumstance gives me hope of success, it is that you have undertaken the task. ”

“ And everybody knows ... that when a class of acts are performed regularly and frequently, they are at last performed by habit; in other words, the idea of the act and the performance of it follow so easily and speedily that they seem to cohere, and to be but one operation. It is only necessary to recall some of the more familiar instances, to see the mode of this formation. In playing on a musical instrument, every note, at first, is found by an effort. ”

“ It will be time enough for you to take lessons previously to your performance in public, and that not because you need musical instruction, but there are certain peculiarities which it is necessary that public performers should know. ”

“ If artistry is to be attained, every organ must be individually well trained. Yet, during performance, no one part [Pg 79] should be given undue prominence. The voice should be the product of all the organs equally well developed. Continued practice will enable the performer to correlate the whole—blend the strength of all in one. ”

“ The work of critically examining all stage plays in their written form, and of witnessing their performance in order to see that the sense is not altered by the stage business, would, even if it were divided among so many officials as to be physically possible, be mentally impossible to persons of taste and enlightenment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, as the habitude of acting, continually tends to the perfection of action, we may perceive the reason, why the right side acquires a greater facility in the performance of many motions than the left. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among plays of which record of performance has been kept, about four hundred in number, the largest group would be that of comedy, and it was from this group that the most significant plays form the point of view of stage development evolved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance—all strewn with crumpled playbills. ”

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

“ but the distance is commonly very great between actual performances and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as has been done to-day, may be done to-morrow; but on the morrow some difficulty emerges, or some external impediment obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker’s mind. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Above all, you must select, for this purpose, such compositions as are fully within your powers, and respecting the good effect of which you can entertain no doubt. Every difficult piece becomes doubly difficult when we play it before others, because the natural diffidence of the performer impedes the free development of his abilities. ”

“ Are we to take it that the poet, with his eye in a fine phrenzy rolling, sees all the minute details of form, color, light, sound, and action which have to be rendered complete on the stage? Is there nothing in what the individual actor, who is gifted [192] with fine sense and emotional power, can add to mere words, however grand and rolling in themselves, and whatsoever mighty image they may convey? ”

“ As to my Performances, the Audience are the only, proper Judges: But I may venture to affirm, That my Labour, and Application, have been greater than any other Performers on the Stage. I have not only acted in almost all the Plays, but in Farces and Musical Entertainments ”

“ If at the theatre you see a drama represented, and you feel impelled to judge within yourself whether this or that character is well played—whether the gestures, the expression of face, and the inflections of voice are such as properly belong to the character, and accord with the affections that move him, or the passions which agitate him—then hope. ”

“ The minor characters, a priest and an officer, have no great latitude for individuality, while the work of the chorus comes as near mathematics as anything human can. The play is a passion play. No actor has ever played the principal part more than once. ”

“ There are heights and depths and breadths and subtleties in acting, still more in producing, of which the casual playgoer, even the regular playgoer if he only sees the stage from the front, knows nothing. ”

“ Under the strong impulse of a desire to fill his part, a noted actor used, night after night, to go upon the stage and sustain his appointed task, walking about as spry as the youngest member of the company. ”

“ Who is better equipped than you to meet this mighty challenge? Can't you see that at long last you will be able to achieve your great synthesis of the theatrical arts—as producer, teacher, director, actor, playwright, whatever you will, working with a cast of individuals who can assume any shape or form, who have no preconceived notions of what can be done and what cannot. Oh, Paul, what a glorious opportunity awaits you on Sirius V. How I envy you! ”

“ But it is a truism that deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character; wherefore, from time immemorial, it has been the recognized business of the theatre to exhibit character in action. ”

“ Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet. ”

“ Exceptional instances apart, the actor who is speaking or being spoken to, or who is singing a song, should stand well to the front of the stage. Not only does this let you make the best use of your voice, but it helps you, what is more important, to rivet the attention of the audience.
6. Keep up a keen personal interest in the play. If you are in the chorus, your job is not solely to help in the singing and to show off a picturesque costume, but to assist in focussing the interest on the central incident. ”

“ And it was peculiarly interesting to me, because the argument touched upon problems in the actor’s art that I have always thought to be profoundly significant. How far may the personality of the performer intrude itself in the presentation of the chosen character, and to what extent are assumption and disguise part of the indispensable equipment of the artist? These are questions which every generation is apt to raise in regard to its popular favourites upon the stage. ”

“ All Passions may be lively Represented on the Stage, if, to the well writing of them, the Actor supplies a good commanded voice, and limbs that move easily, and without stiffness: but there are many Actions, which can never be Imitated to a just height. ”