Theatre party

“ At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their aunt—Aunt Wess'—were still waiting for the rest of the theatre-party to appear. ”

“ Sometimes one party will storm the band-stand and seize the musicians' instruments, while another invades the stage of the little theatre, or overpowers the women in charge of the shooting-gallery, or institutes a hurdle-race over the iron tables and the wicker chairs. ”

“ Noting the name and address of the theatre, we went back to our hotel for dinner, and as soon as it was finished returned to the city to seek the theatre.
When we entered it the house was crowded, and the arrival of the Government House party was every moment expected. Presently there was a hush, then the orchestra and audience rose while God save the Queen was played, and the Governor and a brilliant party entered the viceregal box. You may be sure of all that vast concourse of people there were none who stared harder than Beckenham and myself. ”

“ But when managers began to consider the whims of their patrons, when the King’s Players petitioned the People’s Parliament for leave to continue their vocation because “they will not entertain any comedian that shall speak his part in a tone as if he did it in derision of some of the pious,” then the theatre ceased to be a looking-glass that could image life truthfully. ”

“ The entire audience are making heroic efforts all through the play to prevent each other from seeing that they know they are listening to the most finished acting to be seen anywhere, and looking at the prettiest stage pictures ever set. All the actors are all the while trying to conceal the fact that they are doing any good acting. The whole theatre is in a condition of sweet repose, like the placid bosom of a mill-pond on a summer afternoon, when STODDART shoots the Dam.
Well, when you have society theatres, where they do this sort of thing, you must have society plays. ”

“ In the first place, a theatre audience is composed of individuals more heterogeneous than those that make up a political, or social, or sporting, or religious convocation. The crowd at a foot-ball game, at a church, at a social or political convention, is by its very purpose selective of its elements: it is made up entirely of college-folk, or Presbyterians, or Prohibitionists, or Republicans, as the case may be. ”

“ Then comes some season of political ferment: the liberty boys kick up a dust: the public voice calls for the play clamorously: the theatre fills nightly: every allusion is caught at with rapture: and, as to the actors, they may lie upon their oars; for, let them play as ill as they choose, they are sure of applause for the sake of what they utter. ”

“ Of the countless thousands who can enjoy Molière’s incomparable humour, how many are there who would pause before Leonardo’s Monna Lisa in the Louvre? How many again in our own country, of those who are familiar with the tragedies of Shakespeare, ever find their way into the British Museum or the National Gallery?
And yet the prejudice against the public support of the theatre endures, and can only, I think, be broken down by the demands of the democracy. If a national theatre is to be established in England, it must realise that it has a national mission. ”

“ It is impossible to imagine a man making anything which might justly be called a play merely to please himself and with no thought whatever of pleasing also an audience of others by presenting it before them with actors on a stage. But the mere existence of a theatre, a company of actors, an audience assembled, necessitates an economic organisation and presupposes a business manager; and this business manager, who sets the play before the public and attracts the public to the play, must necessarily exert a potent influence over the playwright. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Instead of being governed by general principles of equity, and with a view to general results, it was alternately subjected to the caprice of a coterie, or to the passions of an artist. The stage was looked upon as a resort of gallantry, enlivened by the envies, jealousies, and battles of the prima donna; and the audience part of the theatre, where the greatest personages of the land habitually appeared, headed by Royalty itself, was frequently turned into a bear-garden, for uncouth exhibitions of temper and unseemly rows. ”

“ We were, and are, a collection of many individuals—actors, authors, artists, and art-lovers—all fired with the sincere desire to give to playgoers something they had not been able previously to find on the American stage. And our desire has been strong enough to face and fight, and to continue to face and fight, the ever-growing, ever-changing problems of finance, art, and human inter-relations, which are the inescapable factors of the theatre. ”

“ When the time for the performance drew near, the scene almost baffled description. All the approaches to the Comédie-Française were so blocked with people that the actors themselves could with difficulty persuade their excited patrons to make way for them. An enormous crowd surged round the theatre, forced the doors, and struggled and fought for the best places in the pit. ”

“ We found that even amateurs who acted for charities were forced to take one of the licensed theatres, so leaving but little profit for the charity. There were suggestions made of forming a society like the Stage Society in London, to give performances to its members only, but this would not have been a fit beginning for the National Theatre of our dreams. ”

“ I grieve to add that the second performance, given for the edification of the London Press and of those members of the Stage Society who cannot attend the Sunday performances, was a less inspiriting one than the first. A solid phalanx of theatre-weary journalists in an afternoon humor, most of them committed to irreconcilable disparagement of problem plays, and all of them bound by etiquette to be as undemonstrative as possible, is not exactly the sort of audience that rises at the performers and cures them of the inevitable reaction after an excitingly successful first night. ”

“ In the common theatre the guests are at home, where the politer forms of good breeding are not so nicely regarded. Every one there falls to, and likes or finds fault, according to his natural taste or appetite. At Court, where the Prince gives the treat and honours the table with his own presence, the audience is under the restraint of a circle where laughter or applause raised higher than a whisper would be stared at. At a public play they are both let loose, even till the actor is sometimes pleased with his not being able to be heard for the clamour of them. ”

“ The theatre, having ceased to form an integral part of our social life, has come to be the pastime of people with nothing better to do,—the floating population of our hotels, the shop-girl and her young man enjoying an evening out. The plays produced by the gentlemen who, I am told, control the stage in this country for the moment, are adapted to the requirements of an audience that, having no particular standard from which to judge the literary merits of a play, the training, accent, or talent of the actors, are perfectly contented so long as they are amused. ”

“ When that time comes—if it does come—one of the results will undoubtedly be a more flexible theatre, the growth of repertoire companies, the expansion of the activities of popular players. In a more flexible theatre, where repertoire is a rule rather than a strange and dreaded experiment, and where actors pride themselves on versatility and the public honors them for it, the one-act play will again have its place, but not then as a curtain raiser or afterpiece, to pad out an evening or "send the suburbs home happy," but as a serious branch of dramatic art. ”

“ When the repertory system becomes more universal, and broadens out on the wide healthy lines of providing entertainment for all classes of people and giving smaller proportion of time, say one day in seven, to the cranks and pulpiteers of the drama, we shall find the repertory theatres getting a greater hold on local patriotism, and one by one growing stronger in good work and higher ambitions, until at last they unite into what will be in truth, as well as in name, a national theatre.
285 There is one thing in which I heartily agree with the expressed opinions of many well-known actors. ”

“ They at present are the people’s favourites, and all have individually a large public following. It was but just to these men to ask them to come into the scheme as honorary members of the institution, in the hope that they would associate themselves with those parts and plays of more than ordinary merit which undoubtedly have a claim to be admitted into the repertory of a National Theatre, and with which they individually were specially identified. ”

“ Still, a crowd it will be; they will come and listen and applaud. The theatre contains room for fifteen hundred people. There are about one hundred and fifty seats so bad that nobody will take them, but the remaining thirteen hundred and fifty will be occupied at every performance. Now, how many people will come and listen and applaud? Be modest, Patrick, old boy. Say twenty-five performances at an audience each of thirteen hundred and fifty. ”

“ A standing theatre would be a material advantage to a nation. It would have a great influence on the national temper and mind by helping the nation to agree in opinions and inclinations. The stage alone can do this, because it commands all human knowledge, exhausts all positions, illumines all hearts, unites all classes, and makes its way to the heart and understanding by the most popular channels.
If one feature characterized all dramas; if the poets were allied in aim—that is, if they selected well and from national topics—there would be a national stage, and we should become a nation. ”

“ I have once before pointed out that, even accepting the theory of crowd psychology and its direct and indirect implications so far as drama is concerned, it is as nonsensical to assume that one thousand persons assembled together before a drama in a theatre are, by reason of their constituting a crowd, any more likely to be moved automatically than the same crowd of one thousand persons assembled together before a painting in an art gallery. ”

“ For two movements that are bound to affect the theatre of the future are bringing the lay public clambering over the footlights and crowding in at the stage door. One, the Little Theatre Movement, is almost altogether a lay insurgency. In scores of communities, it has made its way; tradesmen, students, clerks, mechanics, people of leisure and working people with a little leisure, have come together and in a short time have plumbed the silly little mysteries of back-stage, and have brought into their theatres a little bit of the real Mystery of life and art that belongs there. ”

“ By the side of the rum curse flourishes, as our author points out, the low theatres and concert halls, but he wisely observes that these places must not be confounded with the first-class and reputable houses, whose managers are ceaselessly striving to entertain and elevate their patrons. Music may be made one of the most inspiring and ennobling agencies, while the theatre holds a power for the education and elevation of the masses possessed by few other popular agencies, for it appeals simultaneously to the eye, the ear, and the heart of the people. ”

“ They had the true theatric instinct—the right theatre spirit. They were in their seats as soon as the opened doors would let them enter. The tuning of the fiddles was exquisite music to their ears—an essential part of the drama. Every moment was precious to them. They would as lief have missed the rising of the great curtain, sweeping upwards with ecstatic jerk into the flies, as have gone out before the last act, or worn their hats to spoil the delight of others. For them the Theatre held something of a sacred pleasure—the dear pleasaunce of populous cities. ”

“ Remember, therefore, O ye who indiscriminately abuse the theatre, and sanctimoniously turn away your eyes from the stage! that you are not only deserting a strong post, but basely surrendering it to the enemy; that you are building up the school-room door, and transferring the possession of it to people who may perhaps convert it into a gin-shop. Let us therefore hear no more hootings against theatrical performances in the abstract, but let them stand or fall by their own merits. ”

“ But the great annual excitement to the peasant under normal conditions is the theatrical performance that takes place in every district. The company brings its own theatre, an enormous mat-shed erection capable of accommodating an audience of a thousand people. This is erected in a few days, and for a week or more historical or social plays are performed. The actors make up and dress upon the stage, on which the more prominent members of the audience are sometimes accommodated. All the actors are men, as women are not allowed to perform ”

“ It was a rule of the theatre of the last century that, although the audience were at liberty to demand the presence of an actor upon the stage, particularly with a view to his giving an explanation of any matter in which he had offended them, this privilege did not extend to the case of anyone connected with the theatre other than in a histrionic capacity. ”