Stage station

“ At the back of the theatre is the stage door. Generally up an alley, it is mean in appearance, more like an entrance to some cheap lodging-house than to fairyland. Rough men lounge about outside, those scene-shifters, carpenters, and that odd list of humanity who jostle each other “behind the scenes,” work among “flies,” and adjust “wings” in no ornithological sense, but merely as the side-pieces of the stage-setting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the early years of the theatres the stage was merely a platform, which could be easily removed when necessary; as before mentioned, the theatres were used for other than dramatic performances. The stage platform jutted out far into the yard, the technical name for the space allotted to the audience. The spectators who occupied this part of the building were called the groundlings. The yard surrounded the platform on three sides, the stage buildings occupying the fourth, the audience reaching up as far as the barrier, which divided the stage from the auditorium. ”

“ Nelson Waldron, the stage machinist, who elaborated the system and obtained a patent on it. The stage in the theater we refer to is moved up and down in the same manner as an elevator car, and is operated so that either of its divisions can be easily and quickly brought to the proper level in front of the auditorium. This enables the stage hands to get one scene ready while the other one is in view of the audience. The shaft through which the huge elevator moves up and down measures one hundred and fourteen feet from the roof to the bottom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one in the theatre ever speaks of standing "in the wings"; always it is "in the entrance."
The prompt side in a theatre is usually the left first entrance, though sometimes it is on the other side, where are located the electric switchboard controlling every light in the building, under the personal direction of the chief electrician, and a series of buttons above a shelf or prompt desk attached to the wall about the height of a bookkeeper's desk, where the stage manager makes his headquarters during each performance, the stage manager being like the captain or skipper of the ship. ”

“ With the sliding and sinking stage a little further advanced, you can imagine the scenery taking a really furious interest in the actor, pursuing him from floor to basement and back again. You can imagine some new director working out a drama in which a cathedral chases an apostate priest about the stage, or a phallic column pursues the heroine into the darkness of the cellar only to lose her as she rises triumphantly on the last of the seven mystic stages guided and blessed by that unique functionary of the German theater, the Obermaschineninspektor. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Stage floor should be four inches thick, solid, laid on concrete bed.
"A special waiting room with a special exit, entrance to same to be from main foyer, should be used especially for patrons using carriages so as to prevent the present system of blocking exits and vestibule with people waiting for carriages and preventing exit of crowd.
"On stage of every theater there should be a fire plug, also a hose long enough to reach any part of the house, to run on a reel. ”

“ A wise stage-manager, when he uses a set as magnificent, for example, as the memorable garden scene in Miss Viola Allen's production of Twelfth Night, will raise his curtain on an empty stage, to let the audience enjoy and even applaud the scenery before the actors enter. ”

“ Now that I have taken you back of the curtain line and out into the front office and shown you just how the wheels go 'round that make the show go, you have become aware that there is something more in the theatre business than a mere group of good actors and singers and dancers doing their best to please you up on the stage. The more the machinery of the stage is kept out of sight, the better the management and the greater the satisfaction, both to the folks behind the curtain and the audience out front. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is preferable to have the board raised high enough above stage level to allow all space on the stage to be used by actors. If the switchboard is located on stage level it takes up much room that is valuable and makes stage exits for actors difficult. ”

“ If anything ought to be free from dust in a stage house, it should be the legs of the drawing-room chairs.
She is going to marry the man-servant, is the stage servant-girl, as soon as they have saved up sufficient out of their wages to buy a hotel. They think they will like to keep a hotel. They don't understand a bit about the business, which we believe is a complicated one, but this does not trouble them in the least.
They quarrel a good deal over their love-making, do the stage servant-girl and her young man, and they always come into the drawing-room to do it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sometimes folks wait at the corner of the street to see the stage people come out. If the piece is a burlesque or a comic opera, much life moves in the darkness back here. Light comes from the up-stairs windows of the theatre, the dressing rooms of the subordinate players being up there. Snatches of song from feminine throats, mere trills sometimes, isolated fragments of melody, break into the silence. These are always numerous during the half-hour after the performance and before the actors have left the theatre. ”

“ The public theatre gets in some ways a greater variety of dramatic situation, partly [102] owing to its free use of the open stage, instead of merely a portico, for hall scenes, partly owing to its characteristic development of action ‘above’. This, in spite of the battlements of the Revels accounts, may perhaps be a contribution of the inn-yard. The main change is, of course, the substitution for the multiple staging of the Court, with its adjacent regions for different episodes, of a principle of successive staging, by which the whole space became in turn available for each distinct scene. ”

“ Every one who has attended a magical entertainment will have seen a narrow platform extending from the stage to the auditorium, by means of which the performer passes to and from the audience.
This platform is known technically as a run or slip-stage. With Sir Kellar this run crosses the footlights and goes over a short distance on the stage, where it is slightly elevated, and is boxed in at the sides. A hole is cut in the stage, and through this hole, shielded from view by the run, sits Mr. Kellar's assistant. ”

“ Opportunities to build stages are not frequent; he knows more about building them than using them, and the models he follows have not been often enough refreshed by the innovations of theatre experts. His patterns are largely outmoded. In the largest high school in one of the greatest midwestern cities, I have seen a stage built no more than five years ago in which is exemplified almost every stage feature of the civil war period—a vast curved apron, grooves for wings, and a stage floor sloping from the back wall toward the footlights. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At least one door opening into another room is absolutely necessary, if no better arrangement can be made. The best stage, of course, is like that of a theatre, raised, with space at the back and sides, for the players to retire to, and issue from. ”

“ As travelling goes now, a company reaches a town either the night before, or the morning of the day for their initial entertainment. No matter what the time of arrival—unless it be, as often happens, that the company gets off the train and to the theatre fifteen minutes before the curtain is to go up—every member of the company will be expected at the theatre in the morning for rehearsal, not so much to go through their parts as to familiarize themselves with the entrances and exits and the general arrangement of the house. The stage manager is there and the orchestra is in its place. ”

“ Roller, alone of the artists who were new fifteen years ago, is still busy in the theater. The mood he arouses is mixed. It is thoroughly annoying to find him so unable to grasp the problem of setting in the remarkable new theater in the Redoutensaal in Vienna, unable to see that the Gobelins and the crystal, the golden moldings and the rich baroque ornament of that marvelous room which is both stage and auditorium, must set the style and color of the screens and formal set pieces of the stage. ”

“ Each of the mechanical departments should likewise have its two rooms, one a shop and the other for storage. The carpenter, if the scenery is built in the theatre, often can use the space under the stage for building. If he cannot build his scenery there, either another place should be set aside or the scenery should be built outside the building. He should not use the stage. It must be kept free for rehearsals. ”

“ For each act the location on the stage of all scenery and furniture must be definitely determined, as well as the exact place for each performance, and the producer determines the location of the same, and the different heads of the mechanical staff mark the stage ground-cloth in colored crayons or water-colors for the guidance of the stage carpenter, property man, and electricians, upon whom devolves the duty of setting the stage, props and electrical equipment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At either end of the stage, coming forward, is an immense wing--immense in height, I mean, as it reaches to the top of the scenic wall; the other dimensions are not remarkable. The division to the right, as you face the stage, is pointed out as the green-room; its portentous altitude and the open arches at the top give it the air of a well. The compartment on the left is exactly similar, save that it opens into the traces of other chambers, said to be those of a hippodrome adjacent to the theater. ”