Stage (theatre)

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stage has a curious effect on people. Many a person has gone to see a play, and some line has altered the whole course of his life. Some idea has been put forth, some tender note played upon which has opened his eyes to his own selfishness, his own greed of wealth, his harshness to a child, or indifference to a wife. There is no doubt about it, the stage is a great power, and that is why it is so important the influence should be used for good, and that illicit love and demoralising thoughts should be kept out [Pg 20] of the theatre with its mixed audiences and susceptible youth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In quite a friendly way—
I like your theatre, though but a minnikin;
For though small stages Kean dislikes to spout on,
Renounce me if I don’t agree with Dowton,
The Minors are the Passions’ proper schools
For me, I never can
Find wisdom in the plan
That keeps large reservoirs for little Pooles.
I like your boxes where the audience sit
A family circle; and your little pit;
I like your little stage, where you discuss
Your pleasant bill of fare,
And show us passengers so rich and rare,
Your little stage seems quite an omnibus. ”

“ The play in a modern theatre is not on the stage but in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as a kind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, out behind us in the dark, are happening in the audience. ”

“ A person reads a book to himself or to a small group. In most cases, he may choose the conditions under which he will read it, indoors or out, alone or with people about him, etc. In the theatre, according to the size of the auditorium, from one hundred to two thousand people watch the play, and under given conditions of light, heat, and ventilation. They are at a distance, in most cases, 8 from the stage. It is shut off from them more than once in the performance by the fall of the curtain. The novel appeals to the mind and the emotions through the eye. The stage appeals to both eye and ear. ”

“ GOOD AND BAD BUSINESS AT THE THEATRE.
When a play is a success the theatre-goer is treated with less consideration than when it is a failure. In the latter case he is overwhelmed with attention and kind words.
[36]
Stage “waves” have often afforded no little amusement to the audience. The troubled ocean is simulated on the stage by a number of men lying on their backs under a painted canvas, kicking their legs and throwing their arms about with a certain amount of regularity, the men being blindfolded to prevent the dust getting into their eyes. ”

“ The early years of the twentieth century have been a period of rapid development in the theatre, a development marked by at least two broad phenomena: first, the growing public349 sense of the drama as an art, of which acting is a component part, not the chief end; and, secondly, the revolution in the technique of stagecraft. To sum up the matter in a word, the stage is struggling, rather blindly, to liberate itself from the conventions that intervene between audience and play. ”

“ Experienced professional stage-managers, with all the tricks and methods of the theatre at their fingers’ ends, find it impossible, out of a body of men and women born and bred in the atmosphere of the playhouse, to construct a crowd that looks like anything else except a nervous group of broken-down paupers waiting for soup. ”

“ The theatre is the coolest place I have yet been in, I mean at rehearsal; when the front is empty, and the doors open, and the stage is so dark that we are obliged to rehearse by candlelight. That washed-out man, who failed in London when he acted Romeo with me, is to be my Fazio ”

“ Leaving aside the argument that with a sceneless stage it is possible to perform all the incidents of the play in their original order, and thus give the story a greater narrative continuity, it may also be maintained that with a bare stage there are far fewer chances of dispersing the attention of the audience by attracting it to insignificant details of setting. ”

“ Its first scene was a counterfeit of real stage life in an English theatre. An important performance is impending and at the last moment both the leading lady and her understudy are suddenly taken ill. The management is in a quandary. In the midst of its confusion the stage carpenter suggests that he has a daughter who can play the part. When this functionary came upon the scene my interest in the play began to wax stronger. ”

“ The stage during rehearsals is like a workshop—a certain amount of noise and confusion is necessitated by the labour going on in it, but no one has time to spare from his share of the job in hand, and the discipline in a good theatre is remarkable. ”

“ It is not with the stage performance that we are most concerned, but with that other play, quite out of sight of the audience in the little theatre that night, which is to us more interesting than the scenes they acted behind the footlights. ”

“ The players either acted at a regular theatre or in an inn-yard, and at both places acting took place in the open air. The only solution possible is that the actors rented a large room of one of the inns or taverns and there acted by candlelight, otherwise beginning at such a late hour cannot be accounted for.
[Pg 237]
AS YOU LIKE IT STAGE, PLAYERS, EXITS, ENTRANCES, PLAYS, PARTS, ACTS, SCENE.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. ”

“ The dull dead eyes of the puppets are all turned to the proper part of the stage; their stiff arms are raised in horror, or extended in surprise, at the fitting moment; and, with the exception of four, or perhaps five, of the principal actors in the real stage, we consider that there is less appearance of sawdust and wool in the dramatis personæ at this theatre than at —— or ——. ”

“ In these essays the author is largely concerned with the problem of representational versus presentational stage performances. Should illusion be carried to its furthest limits? Should the play be represented, as at the Moscow art theatre, as ‘an independent entity existing side by side with’ the observing audience? Or should it be presented through the medium of the stage? Other matters dealt with are the advantages and disadvantages of ensemble-acting, and long-run plays. ”

“ And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on stage-illusion.
A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in order to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same time and in common. Thus, an old Puritan divine says:—"Those who attend public worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of the church, and turn God's house into the devil's. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They then plan a stage-setting for each act, employing whatever accessories may be necessary for the action. If papers are to be burned, they introduce a fireplace; if somebody is to throw a pistol through a window, they set the window in a convenient and emphatic place; they determine how many chairs and tables and settees are demanded for the narrative; if a piano or a bed is needed, they place it here or there upon the floor-plan of their stage, according to the prominence they wish to give it ”

“ No views or records of the interior of this theatre exist, therefore, in reconstructing the stage, or auditorium, from imagination, conjecture must take the place of facts. Whether galleries surrounded the stage, as we find in the public theatres, or whether the spectators were seated on a level in front of the stage, is a matter of dispute. ”

“ When all is said and done, this time difficulty caused by the greater vividness of stage presentation remains the chief obstacle in the way of the dramatist who would write of 11 a sequence of historical events or of evolution or devolution in character. Again we foresee probable differences in technique, this time caused by the theatre, the stage, and the intense vividness of the latter.
The novel is, so to speak, the work of an individual; a play is a cooperative effort—of author, actor, producer, and even audience. ”

“ He shines on the stage—or I should say, in this case, under the stage—but once outside the theatre, he turns dark again, particularly if he happens to have the bad habit of drinking with the servants in the families where he may happen to stop. ”

“ As a rule in this theatre the back scene is only about a third of the way down the stage, the figures appear in front of it and are manipulated by men who stand on a platform behind, leaning over a strong bar which runs along the top of the scene, their heads, shoulders and arms being concealed by a piece of scenery which falls just low enough. ”

“ As in a theatre the eyes of men After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious; ”

“ But in this Appeal I only speak to such Spectators as allow a good Play well acted to be the most valuable Entertainment of the Stage. Whether such Plays (leaving 83 the Skill of the dead or living Actors equally out of the Question) have been more or less recommended in their Presentation by either of these different Forms of that Theatre, is our present Matter of84 Enquiry. ”

“ The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage, ”

“ 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 ”

“ each had depended after all on the set stage and the convention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food. ”

“ He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry for the lad." ”

“ They are of poetry all compact, and the more simply they are presented, the less obtrusive the scenery and the less protruded the needful effects, the more the effort of the producer is centered upon preserving the ethereal atmosphere wherein the characters live, move, and have their being, the more harmonious the performance is with the pure fancy which inspired these two delightful pieces, then the more truly successful is the achievement of the stage-manager. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I will give you all part of some play to masquerade on the stage with, and if any prying spies intrude, you will be supposed to be rehearsing for to-night’s performance. As evening approaches, the theater will be lighted up, and before the real artists arrive you must so dispose yourselves as to be able to join the audience unobtrusively. ”