Theatrical performance

“ In melodramas like the 'Round Up' and 'Ben Hur,' as in fairy-plays like the 'Blue Bird,' the acting is properly subordinated to the spectacular splendor of the whole performance. When we enter a theater to behold a play of either of these types, we expect the acting to be adequate, no doubt, but we do not demand the highest type of histrionic excellence. What we do anticipate, however, is a spectacle pleasing to the eye and stimulating to the nerves. ”

“ The theatre was fitted up with the taste of a people more essentially theatrical than any other in the world. For not merely the eye, but the tongue, is theatrical; and not merely the stage, but every portion of private life. ”

“ I have never set foot inside a theatre myself, I am proud to say, nor attended even private theatricals before—such things are not in my line! But I can honestly assure you that I have rarely seen histrionic ability more consummate, or a dramatic performance more exceptionally complete in every respect, than that which it has been our truly enviable privilege to witness this evening! ”

“ At any rate a little hint of theatrical history, full of amazing surprises, might make you tolerant of such speculations as the following on the four types of acting to be seen in the theater to-day and on what is to come of them.
The art of acting is a miscellaneous sort of art. ”

“ All the externals of a theatrical representation are opposed to this notion; all is merely a symbol of the real. The day itself in a theatre is an artificial one; the metrical dialogue is itself ideal ”

“ I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances. ”

“ Every Movement of the Theatre, by a skillful Poet, is communicated, as it were by Magic, to the Spectators, who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are enflam'd with all the Variety of Passions, which actuate the several Personages of the Drama. ”

“ But in the scale of emotion and excitement the theatre comes next to fighting, whether you be the author of the play or opera to be given for the first time before the greatest and most critical audience in the world, or the actor, or actress, or singer, who has not yet been heard or seen and of whom wonders are expected on the great night. ”

“ How, during the performance of the Passion Play, they act and sing and stand about upon the uncovered stage without taking the slightest notice of the downpour of water that is soaking their robes and running from their streaming hair, to make great pools upon the boards; and how the audience, in the cheaper, unroofed portion of the theatre, sit with equal stoicism, watching them, no one ever dreaming even of putting up an umbrella—or, if he does dream of doing so, experiencing a very rude awakening from the sticks of those behind. ”

“ A play is a representation, by actors, on a stage, before an audience, of a struggle between individual human wills, motivated by emotion rather than by intellect, and expressed in terms of objective action. ”

“ New plays, while rare, are not theatrical events, and first nights by no means indicate success or failure. The play is tried on the audience, changed, cut, and altered as actors, manager, scene-painter, carpenter, and patrons desire, without consideration of the author’s rights or feelings. ”

“ For ourselves, we believe the day of the regular drama to be past; and, though we recognize the need of some kind of spectacle and dramatic representation to be absolutely coincident with an animated state of the public mind, we have thought that the opera, ballet, pantomime and briefer, more elastic forms, like the vaudeville of the French theatre, or the proverb of the social party, would take the place of elaborate tragedy and comedy. ”

“ An overflow performance is being given in the theatre to-day for the benefit of those people who could not gain admittance yesterday, and, through the open windows, we can hear the rhythmic chant of the chorus. ”

“ History thrusts upon the stage at once, or in quick and continued succession, tragedy, and comedy, and farce; and, as we weep, and laugh, and wonder, we must not forget that we are in the theatre, not of fancy, but of truth, and that every event, however slight, every entrance and every exit, possesses a real meaning and a real importance. ”

“ The phenomenal unnaturalness [266] of acting is a thing discounted in the minds of most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to the fantastic gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and other emotional symbolism of the stage. ”

“ But those who work day by day in the theatre sometimes find, as the rehearsals advance, that this ill-lit, unfurnished void can on a sudden be transformed into a world of enchantment. The actor and the author together are as yet undisturbed in their task, and what is still to come in the way of added illusion their imagination can readily supply. ”

“ As in a theatre, after the overture is played, the first thing shown to the audience is the scene in which the action of the drama commences, so let our first words be devoted to the locality in which the story opens. ”

“ You have no doubt been to the theatre to witness a dramatic performance. Before the performance com- mences, you must have noticed that the people are very busy talking to one another on a variety of subjects, — politics, household affairs, official business. ”

“ Moreover, in a theatre we must consider, not the marble of its pavements, not the boards of the stage, nor the columns of the back-scene, nay, nor yet the height of its gables, the splendour of its fretted roofs, the expanse of its tiers of seats; we need not call to mind that this place is sometimes the scene for the foolery of the mime, the dialogue of comedy, the sonorous rant of tragedy, the perilous antics of the rope-walker, the juggler's sleight of hand, the gesticulation of the dancer, with all the tricks of their respective arts that are displayed before the people by other artists. ”

“ At the theatre you used to see heroes, abandoned to depths of woe, making the stage re-echo with their wild cries, lamenting like women, weeping like children, and thus securing the applause of the audience. ”

“ Sitting on the edge of the rock, you can imagine the actors strutting out into the theatre below, and the acquiescent chorus chanting its surprise or horror, and almost see the bent shoulders and heads of the people filling the half-circle and leaning forward to catch each word of the play as it comes to them through the actors' masks. ”

“ Though it is ' literature ' throughout, it is never the literature of the closet, but always the literature of the theatre, with the rapid action, the marked con- trasts, the fierce beating passion, the broad effects proper to the theatre. ”

“ From this disposition of the light in our theatres, whenever an actor, whose features are not particularly sharp and pointed, comes near the front of the stage, and turns his face fully to the audience, every feature immediately becomes shortened and snub, and less capable of any expression, unless it be of the ludicrous kind. ”

“ THE THEATER.—The theatre has always been a vital influence in man's aesthetic and emotional life. Drama, opera, comedy, and burlesque are variant forms, but they are alike in that they influence the audience. In the last decade the moving picture has greatly increased the power and influence of the theatre. ”

“ All further attempt to describe the progress of this play, and its effect upon the minds of the spectators, we feel to be a mere impertinence. It seems indeed to ourselves, as in imagination we after eye it, a play within a play—where all is like romance. The audience, that theatre, the players, that "foremost man of all the world" speaking his own words; all is like the fabric of some vision seen before,—a shadowy recollection of some brilliant hour set apart from the dull stream of life, and that too, during a glorious epoch. ”

“ For there is a theatre in every imagination, where we produce the old masterpiece in its simplicity and dignity, and where the new work appears and is followed in plot and action, and conflict of feeling, and play of character, and rhythm of part with part, if not with as keen an excitement, at least with as fair a judgment, as if we were criticizing the actors, not the piece. ”

“ If at the theatre you see a drama represented, and you feel impelled to judge within yourself whether this or that character is well played—whether the gestures, the expression of face, and the inflections of voice are such as properly belong to the character, and accord with the affections that move him, or the passions which agitate him—then hope. ”

“ The theatre is here, as well as there, the most powerful organ of the people’s life. It has the greatest influence, and ours stands high, very high, when one reflects in what different directions it must extend its influence. ”

“ The actors in the mimic life of the theatre are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous. ”

“ It is divided into five acts, and each act is a complete performance. In the first act, which is a sort of introduction to the rest, we have depicted the distress of the players in vacation time, compelling them to let their theatre. Several applicants come forward, offering to take the building for various purposes, and among the rest a Frenchman proposes to hire it for the performance of a farce by his troop of French actors. ”

“ And already she used to say to her acquaintances that the theatre was the chief and most important thing in life and that it was only through the drama that one could derive true enjoyment and become cultivated and humane. ”

“ In three main, symbolic groups—Theatres, Actors, Dramatists—The Spirit of Time summons the creative forces of the art of the theatre, to defeat the destructive influences of War, Lust, and Death, and prophetically to survive them. ”

“ All that it behoves us to deduce from them is the unimpeachable principle that the success of the romantic drama on the stage depends not merely on the actor's gift of imagination, but to an even larger extent on the possession by the audience of a similar faculty. ”

“ There is a perennial charm about theatrical stories, and the history of these theatres must be illustrated by many a sketch of the loves and rivalries of actors, their fantastic tricks, their practical jokes, their gay progress to success or ruin. ”

“ I said, "is the accidental relish of a single night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in foreknowledge. In relation to the characters in the drama, the audience are as gods looking before and after. Sitting in the theatre, we taste, for a moment, the glory of omniscience. With vision unsealed, we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness, and smile at their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplaced exultations, their groundless panics. ”

“ The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance—all strewn with crumpled playbills. ”

“ Stage drama takes even a step in advance of fiction literature in its approximation of realistic illusion. The characters of the play become the breathing, living, walking and talking persons conceived by the playwright and anticipated by the audience. Audiences laugh and weep, rejoice and sigh, despite themselves, wherever good stage drama is offered. ”

“ We have yet to realize that, in truly great drama, the foreknowledge possessed by the audience is not a disadvantage with certain incidental mitigations and compensations, but is the source of the highest pleasure which the theatre is capable of affording us. In order to illustrate my meaning, I propose to analyse a particular scene, not, certainly, among the loftiest in dramatic literature, but particularly suited to my purpose, inasmuch as it is familiar to every one, and at the same time full of the essential qualities of drama. ”

“ The literature of the stage shows us with startling distinctness how in the world of the playwright there frequently went, along with the deepest and most original thought a revolting ferocity of manners, and along with a lofty sense of the beautiful and the pure a crude love of violence, a revelling in blood, a thirst for wanton outrage and low excitement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The plays written for them, though no genuine dramas, are not without value as spectacle, and the opportunity, however lame, gives freer play to the actor’s powers, than would the simple recitation, by which some have thought any attempt at acting whole plays should be superseded. ”

“ Among plays of which record of performance has been kept, about four hundred in number, the largest group would be that of comedy, and it was from this group that the most significant plays form the point of view of stage development evolved. ”

“ If the art of the drama, as a great French master of it has said, is above all the art of preparations, that is true only to a less extent of the art of the novel, and true exactly in the degree in which the art of the particular novel comes near that of the drama. The first half of a fiction insists ever on figuring to me as the stage or theatre for the second half, and I have in general given so much space to making the theatre propitious that my halves have too often proved strangely unequal. ”