Stagehand

“ If they have to handle some hand-prop, they will drop it at the wrong time. Most people are very clumsy in the presence of an audience. Rehearse them with hats. Gentlemen have very often come on the stage in amateur performances and worn their hats in drawing rooms in the presence of ladies. I have seen them take them off and place them in the most ridiculous places, even in professional shows. ”

“ But it is right there that we note the real task of the stage actor: he is not supposed to bellow forth scene after scene in uncontrolled eruptions of feelings. On the contrary, he is supposed to study each work of art, rehearse it, say it over, look into it, until he knows it from every angle and in its every aspect. There is only one state of mind that can be sure of success when it is a question of performing a written play on the legitimate stage: the calm, easy, superior assurance that comes from infinite study and practice. ”

“ We want a defined and permanent artificiality that shall give the actor scope, serve as a pied-à-terre, not join in a fantastic competition. We can escape plastic and limited reality in the Redoutensaal, while we supply the actor with a background that harmonizes with the living character of his body. At the same time we can secure the vivid indication of mood or time or place which we seek, and achieve it more vividly because of the permanence of the main fabric of the stage, and its contrast with the merely indicated setting. ”

“ The Stage, of course, has its Slang—“both before and behind the curtain,” as a journalist remarks. The stage manager is familiarly termed DADDY; and an actor by profession, or a “professional,” is called a PRO. A man who is occasionally hired at a trifling remuneration to come upon the stage as one of a crowd, or when a number of actors are wanted to give effect, is named a SUP,—an abbreviation of “supernumerary.” ”

“ Now that the puppet is on the stage, imagine what a shock it would be to your audience to see a great hand coming down below the proscenium arch. To prevent this, always keep your hand, even during rehearsals, close to your control.
While on the stage, every motion must have a reason behind it. Puppets cannot move aimlessly about the stage any more than real actors can. Every gesture, too, must mean something. ”

“ It is the stage-manager. He greets the members of the company with a curt, preoccupied air and hurries down to the prompt stand. There are consultations with the working staff and perhaps with one or two of the players. While he is thus engaged let us enquire into the personnel of the company; that tall good-looker in the well tailored gown is a newcomer to the stage. She has been given a small part—a half dozen lines at best. On twenty dollars a week she carries a maid—and a jewel case. ”

“ Put him upon an almost naked stage, and he must not only make his actors far more expressive in voice and feature, but he must also do fine things with their bodies and their meager surroundings. This is far easier for a pictorial artist than for the director, who is usually an actor without a well-trained eye. ”

“ So you see there is a definite reason why the "men behind the guns" in the battery of the stage are out of sight and so, often, out of mind. The hard work of the producer and his faithful subordinates is shown only in the superior attainments of his troupe and the ensemble as presented to your vision. They, themselves, the men who finance, prepare, rehearse and drill the show into shape, are seldom in evidence—never on the stage. ”

“ The cast is stuck up by the stage door every evening, and then, unless you happen to have the book yourself, you must borrow the stage manager’s copy, and write out your part. If somebody else wants it, too, and is before you, you don’t get hold of it till the next morning perhaps, and that gives you about eight hours in which to work up a part of say six or seven lengths (a ‘length’ is forty-two lines) .
“Sometimes there’s a row over the cast. Second Low Comedy isn’t going to play old men. That’s not his line; he was not engaged to play old men. ”

“ You will have a fixed position established at rehearsals, when you enter upon professional stage work, and if you do not hold it and observe the rules about standing still, you will not be wanted and will not last long. It seems a very simple thing to do, when you think of it, but unless you do it right here, while you are learning the basic facts about a stage career, you may fall down on it there. ”

“ When you start out, take with you a knowledge of dress and makeup as well as of dancing, and when you are mistress or master of these three arts and make use of them properly, you can go on the professional stage without dread of being overcome by stage fright. No real artist ever is, although any great artist will be a little bit nervous perhaps before making the first entrance in a new play on an important first night. ”

“ I had been highly successful as an amateur, and, as it was not necessary that I earn my own living, the stage appeared to their insapient minds an interesting playground for a dilettante daughter....
One week in a theatrical boarding-house was all we could endure. I wonder why it is that the rank and file of the theatrical profession are at such pains to impress one another with their importance. ”

“ The actors and actresses should be celluloid or papier-maché dolls, their feet being attached to thin strips of wood, which can lie flat on the stage and be operated from the sides. When the stage is on a line with the eyes of the audience, these thin strips will hardly be noticed. ”

“ Of late it has seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned anything and they, of course, knew it all already.
For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists we announced prizes. ”

“ You walk on the stage, and there in front of you are, say, twenty people dotted about the pit, a few more are lolling listlessly over the gallery rails, and there are two or three little groups in the boxes, while, as a background to these patches of unhappy humanity, there stares out the bare boards and the dingy upholstery. It is impossible to act among such surroundings as these. ”

“ The awkward position of a "masher" who gets into the "wings" by some hook or crook is often extremely laughable. I saw a serio-comic vocalist—as the songstresses of the variety stage are named—astonish a well-dressed and admiring gentleman who was lounging around at his leisure,—having in some mysterious manner passed the stage door-keeper,—by handing him a pin and remarking, "Pin up my skirts." ”

“ If the fun-maker is Fanny Brice, the method is a little less obvious, and it draws us closer to the sort of presentational acting which will dominate many theaters in the future, the sort of acting that presents an impersonation, and at the same time stands off with the audience, and watches it. ”

“ The stage hero always wears patent-leather boots, and they are always spotlessly clean. Sometimes he is rich and lives in a room with seven doors to it, and at other times he is starving in a garret; but in either event he still wears brand-new patent-leather boots. ”

“ On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting:
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day; ”

“ 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; ”

“ There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor. ”

“ TO THE members of an audience attending a theatrical performance it may appear as though the actors were the entire show and the only principals concerned with the carrying on of the affair. Of course the man in the box office, the ticket taker, and the ushers have been in evidence, and there is the orchestra and its leader. ”

“ What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious, you know; ”

“ For the stage is not merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. ”

“ A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. ”

“ He, in common with all stage carpenters, held actors and actresses in the greatest contempt, as people who were always in the way, and without whom the play would get on much better. The chief charm about him, however, was his dense stupidity. This trait was always brought into particular prominence whenever the question of arranging scenery was under discussion.
Fresh scenery is a very great rarity at the minor theaters. ”

“ Archie, you can believe I keep my mind on it. That’s the whole trick, in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there every second. If I think of anything else for a flash, I’m gone, done for. But at the same time, one can take things in—with another part of your brain, maybe. It’s different from what you get in study, more practical and conclusive. There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an audience.” ”

“ Here, as nowhere in England or America and only here or there in France, were theaters directed by a single mind, employing a permanent company of players, maintaining a repertory of plays, old and new, given in recurring succession night after night, theaters retaining therefore a permanent audience, dependable both in pocketbook and in taste. Supplementing these theaters were organizations of playgoers among the middle and lower classes, such as the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin, which widened the audience of subscribers to good work in the theater. ”

“ Few Germans, perhaps few men of any modern nation, have a proper sense of an æsthetic whole:—they praise and blame by passages; they are charmed by passages; and who has greater reason to rejoice at this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piece-work matter?" ”

“ It may include the Keith-Albee Palace Theatre in New York, the Mecca of all vaudeville artists. It is at the Palace that you know you and your act are322 seen by every revue, musical comedy, or dramatic manager, casting director whose business it is to pick and engage artists.
There is no school like vaudeville for the dancer, singer, actor or actress in any line of musical work. Most of the brightest stars in the theatrical firmament have graduated from vaudeville into greater things, and many of them return to the vaudeville stage for a flier now and then. ”

“ It is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. ”

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

“ They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they shew us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. The stage is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the world, with the dull part left out: and, indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all the rest. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every movement of the theatre, by a skilful poet, is communicated, as it were by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions, which actuate the several personages of the drama. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It was left by Aristoxenus, who with great ability and labour classified and arranged in it the different modes. In accordance with it, and by giving heed to these theories, one can easily bring a theatre to perfection, from the point of view of the nature of the voice, so as to give pleasure to the audience. ”

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

“ We occasionally see something on the stage that reminds us a little of Shakespear. ”

“ But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for YOU. They “laid themselves out,” they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favourable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their inmost heart of heart. ”