Stage door

“ My not going often to the theatre is not because I don't like it, but because the things I like best about it can be seen without actually going in. I like to gaze at the actors, not when dressed for their parts, but as they emerge by the stage door. I have never got past the satisfaction of this and it is heightened when the play is my own. The stage doorkeeper is still to me the most romantic figure in any theatre, and I hope he is the best paid. ”

“ Those who are led to the stage-door by curiosity are numerous and they are all promptly repulsed; and the "mashers" who stand at the stage-door after the performance is over, must get into the good graces of the door-keeper, and retain his friendship if they desire the course of true love to run smoother than the old adage says it runs. ”

“ AT THE STAGE-DOOR.
The patrons of the theatre must all find their way into the house through the front doors; only the privileged few are allowed access to the mysteries and wonders of the stage through the back door. ”

“ A dressing-room door, inopportunely opened, will let a beam of light fall upon the stage, often spoiling the lighting of a scene. The slamming of doors, sound of voices, and other noises are almost unavoidable. And the argument usually advanced for so arranging dressing-rooms—that the actors can hear what is going on on the stage and thus be in time for their entrances, is fallacious. This very fact breeds in them a confidence that makes them careless, and they are more often late than if they were required to wait for their cues on the stage. ”

“ These doors are very useful, as they enable the artists to appear in response to encores, without raising the curtain, which means loss of time which is much needed in changing the scene. It is a wonderful sight to look through the little peep-hole in the door at the audience. Tier upon tier of splendidly clothed humanity rises up to the family circle at a dizzy height above. The whole is bright and gay, and is very different from the practical world behind the stage, where stand the stalwart stage hands ready for their duties ”

“ The last member of the company out of each dressing room is required to put the light out, lock the dressing-room door and leave the key to the room with the stage door tender who is held responsible for the contents of the rooms. ”

“ To the eyes of the audience there appeared to be no break in the wall above the doorway, neither did the eyes of the audience detect the painting of the tiled floor on the rear back drop, done in perspective, another bit of cleverness, which seemed to give width to what otherwise would have appeared a very narrow corridor. Whenever one sees a puppet going out through a door, or passing by outside a window, he is interested, because it gives the suggestion of life and activity beyond the stage. ”

“ At that door, which is dark and dreary, the glamour of the stage begins to wane. It is no portal to a palace. The folk hanging about are not arrayed in velvets and satins; quite the contrary; torn cashmeres and shiny coats are more en évidence.
Strange people are to be found both behind and upon the stage, as in every other walk through life; but there are plenty of good men and women in the profession, men and women whose friendship it is an honour to possess. ”

“ One side of the passage was a blank wall, for the building it supported was an old unsuccessful theatre restaurant, now shut up. The other side of the passage contained two doors, one at each end. Neither was what was commonly called the stage door; they were a sort of special and private stage doors used by very special performers, and in this case by the star actor and actress in the Shakespearean performance of the day. Persons of that eminence often like to have such private exits and entrances, for meeting friends or avoiding them. ”

“ One door opening into a large hall is absolutely necessary, if no better arrangement can be made. The best stage is, of course, like that of a theatre, with areas all around and behind it, so that the actors have a space to retire into. This is difficult in a parlor, unless it be a very large one. The difficulty, however, has been and will be solved by the ingenious. Drawing up the big sofa in front of the footlights, and arranging a pair of screens and a curtain, has often served well for a parlor play. ”

“ A double drawing-room with folding doors is of course "made for theatricals." The difficulty of having only one exit from the stage—the door of the room—may be met by having a screen on the other side. But then the actors who go out behind the screen, must be those who will not have to come in again till the curtain has been drawn. ”

“ As the doors in the back flat open, there can be had a glimpse of footlights, and just beyond them, a neutral drop, in grayish black, to represent an auditorium. Between the back flat and the stage footlights, (as distinguished from the regular footlights) the miniature stage is set to represent the interior of a doctor’s waiting-room. Through the door at the right can be seen a desk and revolving chair, and a couple of plain chairs against the wall; and through the left door, a table, littered with magazines, a cabinet, a revolving bookcase and two more chairs. ”

“ And there is a marked general analogy in the stage-directions. Here also those who leave the stage go ‘in’, and music and voices can be heard ‘within’. There are the same formulae for the use of several doors, of which one is definitely a ‘middle’ door. [431] Spirits and so forth can ‘ascend’ from under the stage by the convenient traps. [432] Possibly they can also ‘descend’ from the heavens. [433] The normal backing [133] of the stage, even in out-of-door scenes, is an arras or hanging, through which at Paul’s spectators can watch a play. ”

“ She entered the stage-door with no presentiment of conquest, and inquired of the man in the little recess if Mr. Casey was in the theatre. Stage-door keepers are probably the surliest class in existence. They have much to try them, and they spend their official lives in a violent draught; but if there is a stage-door keeper sweet and sunny in his home, he provides an interesting study for the dramatic authors. ”

“ There were practicable and fairly solid doors; in A Knack to Know an Honest Man, a door is taken off its hinges. [210] And as the doors give admittance indifferently to hall scenes and to out-of-door scenes, it is obvious that the term, as used in the stage-directions, often indicates a part of the theatrical structure rather than a feature properly belonging to a garden or woodland background. ”

“ Stage artists have no business in the front of the house, nor, conversely, have those whose employment is in the front of the house any business on the stage. Both keep315 their separate places at all times. Artists are always required to enter and leave the theatre through the stage door. All first-class managers forbid the artists to be seen in "the front of the house." ”

“ I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an open-air place for the audience—a large upward-sloping glade walled by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to look part of it by a green groundcloth. ”

“ Before any attempt is made to sum up the result of this long chapter, one other feature of sixteenth-century staging, which is often overlooked, requires discussion. In the majority of cases the background of an out-of-door scene need contain at most a single domus; and this, it is now clear, can be represented either by a light structure, such as a tent or arbour, placed temporarily upon the floor of the stage, or more usually by the scena or back wall, with its doors, its central aperture, and its upper gallery. ”

“ By and by one may be able to turn one’s attention to the stage, though one has certainly not been unconscious of it, auricularly at least, since entering the door. The stage is nothing but a raised platform with a low railing on all four sides, such as might have been the auction-place in the days when the building was perhaps the warehouse it looks as if it must have been. Whatever serve as dressing-rooms at the rear, which according to the space there cannot be much, are separated from the stage by an alleyway across which the exiting and entering players hop. ”

“ When all is ready for representation, the stage manager must give the signal to those in charge of the curtain, machinery below the stage, and colored fires at the same moment, so that all will work in unison. The whitish-blue fire should be burned in small quantities near the trap door and larger quantities of the same in the ante-rooms, which will reflect on the forms of the performers. The curtain should be drawn up quite fast, while the spectre, starting at the same time, should rise very slowly. ”

“ On the right, up stage, is a door; on the right, down stage, another door. A lady's writing-table stands between the two, nearer centre of stage. There is another door up stage; below it, an open fireplace, filled with potted plants, andirons, &c., not in use. Over it is a tall mirror; on the mantel-piece are a French clock, candelabra, vases, &c. On a line with the fireplace is a lounge, gay with silk pillows. A florist's box, large and long, filled with American Beauty roses, rests on a low table near the head of the lounge. ”

“ Notice that in the preliminary stage directions the center entrance is not designated. It soon becomes evident, however, that a center door (or one, at least, at the back of the stage) is taken for granted.
This elementary diagram will serve as a working basis. A very little rehearsing will soon make it necessary to arrange the furniture, and so on, in a manner more pleasing to the eye and more convenient to the actor.
There is one more kind of text with which amateurs have to do: it is the reprint of [pg 46] actual prompt-copies, and is usually accurate in material details. ”

“ The great majority of them, both out-of-door scenes and hall scenes, were acted on the open stage, under the heavens, with no more properties and practicable terrains than could reasonably be carried on by the actors, lowered from the heavens, raised by traps, or thrust on by frames and wheels. For more permanent background they had the scenic doors, the gallery above, the scenic curtain, and whatever the tire-man might choose to insert in the aperture, backed by an alcove within the tire-house, which the drawing of the curtain discovered. ”

“ In the large theatres of Eastern cities the cerberus who guards the stage entrance generally has a little sentry box just inside the door, with a window cut in it, a stove placed inside in cold weather, a number of pigeon-holes for letters, and indeed all modern conveniences, as the saying goes. ”

“ Malcontent, V. ii. 1, ‘Enter from opposite sides’; E. Ho!, I. i. 1, ‘Enter ... at severall dores ... At the middle dore, enter ...’; Sophonisba, prol., ‘Enter at one door ... at the other door’; May Day, II. i. 1, ‘Enter ... several ways’; Your Five Gallants, I. ii. 27, ‘Enter ... at the farther door’, &c.
[432] For Paul’s, 2 Antonio and Mellida, IV. ii. 87, ‘They strike the stage with their daggers, and the grave openeth’; V. i. 1, ‘Balurdo from under the Stage’; Aphrodysial (quoted Reynolds, i. 26) , ‘A Trap door in the middle of the stage’; Bussy d’Ambois, II. ii. ”

“ On the top of the platform a door leading to the ball-room. When this door is opened, one generally hears the ball music. At the foot of the stairs, about three yards from the footlights, two square columns having a brass ornament with eight electric lamps attached. There are heaps of plants and flowers about the room. Two chairs and a table stand on the R. side of the stage, about three yards from the footlights, two chairs and a table on the L. side of the stage, about five yards from the footlights. ”

“ Very few halls ostensibly built to house amateur play-giving are adequate for the purpose.—Often the stage is merely a shallow platform without curtains to separate the actors from the audience, and the ceiling and walls surrounding the stage are so finished that the necessary screws for hanging curtains, may not be driven into them. The amateur manager reaches the depths of despair when he finds that even the floor of the shallow platform offered him, is of polished hardwood and may not be marred by the screws of stage braces. ”

“ To the layman a rehearsal is a bewildering and murky affair. Seated in the "front of the house," in the clammy shadow of shrouded seats, a student of human nature finds much to interest him. Under the light of a single "bunch" or the "blanching" irregular foots, the players look old and insignificant. The blue white light has a cruel way of exposing the lines and seams. They sit about or stand in groups, the blue-covered typewritten parts in hand awaiting the call of the first act. A youngish man, probably the assistant stage-manager, sets the stage ”

“ THERE is an uninteresting part to every theatre—a part which is so isolated from the luxury of the auditorium and from the glamour and mystery of the stage as to be associated with neither. It is usually reached from a frowsy little side-street through an ugly narrow entrance. The stone stairs are steep, and the flagged landings are restricted to the accommodation of one portly tenor and a large soprano. ”

“ Another time I recollect was at a very small provincial theater. There was only one dressing-room in the whole place, and that the ladies had of course. We men had to dress on the stage itself. You can imagine the rest—the yell, the confusion; the wild stampede; the stage looking like the south bank of the Serpentine after 8 P. M.; the rapid descent of the curtain; the enthusiastic delight of the audience. ”