because they are of foreign origin, there is need for a wise and
discriminating selection of the best that all regions of the earth
have to offer in the domain of science, literature, music, painting,
the dance, and other arts, and their combination with the results
attained by American creative effort.
In no respect is there a more urgent need for the development of a
truly American art spirit than in the wide field offered by artistic
dancing, yet it would surely be a mistake to ignore all that has been
learned and accomplished in the long experience of other peoples. A
foolish prejudice against foreign dances should not be allowed to
prevent the incorporation of their best features into what will
ultimately be the distinctive American school.
That there assuredly will be an essentially American type of dancing
in all its branches, that will reach heights far above that yet
achieved by any other country, cannot be doubtful. As the increase of
wealth, not only for a few, but for the great mass of the people,
gives more leisure, creates new desires, and brings increased capacity
for enjoyment, it is inevitable that more and more will the public
appreciation of the dance call for still greater advances. As the
various races from other lands have mingled their several qualities
and gifts, and have produced the highest civilization on a broad scale
that the world has ever seen, so will the creators of new and more
beautiful dance forms utilize the characteristic dances of all nations
in achieving what will be the 100 per cent American dance.
YOUR OPPORTUNITIES
[Illustration]
Those of you who are perfecting yourselves for a stage career are
naturally giving consideration to your future as you advance in the
courses, and are wondering just how you will go about it to get well
placed in your chosen line of work.
I am going to tell you how some have tried to do this, and then tell
you the best, surest and safest way. And do not for a moment think
that I am guessing about what I tell you. I know the theatrical world
and theatrical ways and methods, and I know the managers, the
producers, and all the principals connected with our profession, and
they know me. So I am not guessing when I say that your personal
interests in all matters connected with the stage will be best
conserved by entrusting them to me.
In our classes here in the studio there is apt to be one or more
dominating spirits who become anxious to go around the booking offices
and seek for a tryout and an engagement.
It is true that to go to any office and say that you are a recent or
prospective graduate of the Ned Wayburn Studios is a good
recommendation, and you may get a hearing and a tryout on the strength
of it. But please be advised by me and let me give you the tryout
first when I am sure you are ready for it. Your teacher should first
be given a chance to see what you can do individually. His advice is
invaluable and impartial. When he reports that you are advanced
sufficiently to deserve consideration for a solo role, then come and
dance for me. I am glad to have you do this, and shall always give you
my decision honestly and fairly, and let me add, freely--no charge
whatever. If I see that you are deficient in any way, I will be frank
and tell you so, and will also suggest what you should do to correct
your fault. In other words, you will get constructive criticism, and
kindly advice, in my office, whereas anything short of perfection
shown to a booking agent or possible employer would be apt to insure
abrupt dismissal. They would give you no helpful advice, and you would
prejudice yourself, for your effrontery, in their eyes for any future
engagement you might seek.
So be advised by me. I respect an ambition that prompts you to go out
and hunt an engagement, but, believe me, yours is not the best way.
There are agents and agents. Some would do right by you, and perhaps
some would be unscrupulous. I am not going on record in this book with
any details that would seem to reflect in the least on anyone, so I'll
not enlarge upon this subject here. But I will tell you more about
this if you come to my office and ask me to.
Now if any pupil in the school asks you to go around the theatrical
agencies, please don't do it, but come and tell me. Perhaps some day
you both will come to me and say "Thank you."
[Illustration: ADA MAY (WEEKS)]
Oftentimes we send out groups of our students, two, four, six or
eight, to go on the professional stage for something special.
Sometimes they are paid; sometimes it is done gratuitously; but the
experience alone is worth money to them.
The regular theatrical season opens about Labor Day and lasts till
around Decoration Day. Summer engagements begin about the first Monday
in June and end about the last Saturday in August. Calls are sent out
about the middle of April for summer work, and about the middle of
July for the winter or regular season. If you are able to qualify, you
will get the benefit of these calls for dancers, and when you go with
my recommendation, it will be only to the best managers.
I will inform you fully as to the best forms of contract for you to
sign in every case, and make no charge for this. You know, when you
engage to go with a show, you do not simply take the manager's word
for it that he will employ you for so many weeks at so much a week,
nor does the manager simply take your "Yes, I'll come," and let it go
at that. This matter of entering his employ is a business affair, a
transaction of importance to you both, and calls for a signed
agreement that binds him, the manager, as to his responsibility to
you, and binds you as to your duties to him. It is a legal document,
binding on both parties, the manager and you--and let me tell you
right here, you feel mighty big with your first stage contract duly
signed and delivered, and in your pocket, and while you may in future
seasons get contracts that specify much larger salaries than your
first one does, no contract will ever _seem_ so big and important to
you as this first one, the start, the goal of your ambition. I love to
see my pupils with their first professional contracts! They are so
happy and hopeful; the world opens up new delights for them; they
have arrived. The reward of their untiring exertions here in the
courses is at hand, and they have earned it and deserved it. "Good for
you!" I feel like saying; and I am truly happy to think that I have
been in some degree instrumental in bringing this about.
My experience has been paid for. I have learned to profit by my own
mistakes, and I can and will save you all the risk in closing deals
that involve so much--perhaps your entire future stage career. I can
and will do this, if you let me.
[Illustration]
STAGE-CRAFT
[Illustration]
When my pupils become professional dancers and "sign up" for their
first stage engagement they will wish not to be or appear ignorant of
the marvelous mechanism that is the modern theatrical stage. Not that
they will learn it all from any book, but my knowledge of things back
stage will be of help, and I have jotted down here some of them for
that purpose. The rest of it the new entrant upon the real stage will
absorb in time, but with the help of my condensed explanation herein
no one who reads need appear lost or totally bewildered in the new
environment back of the curtain line.
Let me tell you some of the important things that every pupil of mine
who contemplates a professional career should know about the theatre,
the building itself and the stage upon which you expect to present
your offerings to the public.
[Illustration: _Proscenium Arch, the Frame of the Stage Pictures_]
In the first place, the theatre building is divided into two parts,
the auditorium and the stage. The dividing line is known as the
curtain line. In stage parlance the auditorium side of the dividing
line is the "front of the house," or "out front," and the stage side
is always "back stage."
The proscenium arch of the stage makes the frame for the pictures on
the stage. "The opening" means to the professional the width across
stage at the proscenium arch, and varies according to the size of the
auditorium and the line of sight of the auditors. It may be thirty
feet, forty, or even more, as is the case in the New York Hippodrome
and other large city theatres. The height is sometimes the same as the
width, or slightly less, the complete frame of the arch being usually
of an oblong shape, possibly thirty-five feet wide and twenty-five
feet high.
[Illustration: _Diagram of a Modern Theatre_]
The fire laws require a fireproof curtain, which is on the outer or
audience side of the two or more curtains that hang on the stage side
of the proscenium arch. Next to this asbestos affair is the "act
curtain," that raises and lowers, and is usually painted on
fire-proofed or heavy duck canvas. There may be used instead or in
addition to the act curtain, what is known as a tableau curtain, that
works in a traveler above, which can be drawn straight off stage, both
ways, parting in the middle, or be pulled to a drape at each side.
This is always made of material and sometimes painted in aniline dye;
if painted in water color or oil it would crack.
There is never any curtain in front of "the arch" or proscenium. The
footlights and the apron are in front of the fireproof curtain. The
apron may be deep or shallow, and at its front edge is the footlight
trough and a masking piece, fireproof always, to shield the eyes of
the audience and reflect the footlights onto the stage. The footlights
follow the front curvature of the apron, when it is curved, as is
usually the case, although many of the modern stages have no apron at
all, the footlights running in a straight line across, sometimes
within a foot of the fire curtain.
The stage itself extends from the curtain line to the back wall of the
theatre, and from left wall to right wall. Under the roof of the
stage, anywhere from sixty-five to ninety feet above the floor, there
is a horizontal lattice work of steel or iron covering the entire
spread of the stage, and known as the gridiron. The space on top of
the gridiron is called the rigging loft. The roof of the stage over
the rigging loft is a huge skylight, opened or closed from the stage.
The skylight is made light-proof for matinee performances. On the
gridiron are rigged the blocks and pulleys through which pass the
lines attached to all the scenery that goes up in the air, or "up in
the flies," which is the name given the space between the top of the
proscenium arch and the gridiron. To take scenery up, is "flying it,"
in stage language, leaving the sight of the audience; whatever goes up
"flies," and whatever is carried off to one side or back is
"struck." The stage manager, when he wants the scene taken away, gives
the order "strike" to the stage hands, or "grips," as they are called,
who are on the stage level, and he pushes a button for the head-flyman
in the "fly-gallery" to fly whatever scenery goes up.
[Illustration: GRAND BALL ROOM IN NED WAYBURN STUDIOS]
There is a "fly-gallery," as it is called, usually ten to fifteen feet
wide, some twenty-five to thirty-five feet above the stage level and
extending from the front to the back walls of the stage on one side,
against the side wall, usually of steel and concrete. Then there is
the "paint-bridge," perhaps five feet wide, extending across the stage
at the back wall from side to side, on a line with the "fly-gallery."
Sometimes there is a "paint-frame" attached to the back wall on which
scenery is painted. It is movable up and down. Sometimes twenty to
twenty-five feet above the stage level is a light-gallery, on each
side of the stage running parallel to the fly-gallery, but under it.
These galleries are for the purpose of holding calcium lights and
operators. Running from the back wall of the stage to the proscenium
wall all the way of the fly-gallery on the front edge nearest the
stage is the pin-rail, very strong and imbedded in the wall front and
back of the stage; it holds all the scenery that goes aloft. When the
scenery is raised, the "lines," as the ropes or cables are called in
stage language, are pulled down and tied off to this "pin-rail." These
lines attached to the scenery are usually in sets of three, sometimes
four, and extend straight up through the blocks in the gridiron and
across the gridiron down to the pin-rail in the fly-gallery. As they
are usually fastened to three or four different points on each piece
of scenery they are necessarily of three or four different lengths,
but the lines are tied and handled as one at the pin-rail, and pulled
all together. In a set of three lines, the line nearest the pin-rail
is called the "short line," the next one the middle line, the far one
the long line. "Trim it," you hear the order given. This means to
"level" whatever piece of scenery it is. "Tie it off" is the way they
direct that the lines be made fast to the pin-rail. In rainy or damp
weather the ropes get longer; in dry they shrink; then it is necessary
to "trim the drops," letting out the lines and tying them over before
the performance. This is done under the direction of the master
mechanic or stage carpenter. Often there is a counterweight or bag
attached to the lines above the fly-gallery to help carry the weight
of the heavy scenery as it is sent aloft to its resting place in the
flies, out of sight of the audience and out of the way of everybody on
stage.
The various drops are known on the stage as "solid," "cut" or "leg"
drops. Borders about forty feet long by twelve feet deep, hung
horizontally, mask in the top of all scenery, and hide the "flies"
from the audience on the lower floor, and may be interior, exterior,
foliage, straight, arched, or sky borders (plain blue). In troughs
hung across the stage by steel cables from the gridiron, their height
regulated from the fly-gallery, are the various border lights, each
usually in three circuits, red, white and blue. These are hung at
intervals of about six feet, the first being about that distance back
of the act curtain and the others spaced about every six feet to the
back wall of the stage. On the average practical modern stage there
will be anywhere from four to seven border lights. On the stage,
between the curtain line and first border light, are the first
entrances, known as left first entrance and right first entrance. The
right and left of the stage are always the dancer's right and left as
she or he faces the audience. About six feet back of this is located
the second entrance, and about each six feet interval is a
successively numbered entrance, as "third entrance," etc. In a
"full-stage" setting the last entrance to the rear is called "upper
entrance." A scene in the space covering the entire first entrance is
spoken of as being "in one"; in the second entrance, "in two." When
one passes out of sight of the audience he is "off stage." The various
entrances and exits are designated in writing and print by characters
that carry their meaning plainly, as RUE (right upper entrance), L2E
(left second entrance). So, too, with spoken directions on the stage.
When you are told to "exit LUE," for instance, you are supposed to
know that you are to go off stage at the left upper entrance. 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. All signals are given by the stage
manager, the buttons usually placed immediately above or at one side
of the prompt desk, within easy reach controlling buzzers, lights or
bells that tell as plainly as shouted words could do what is to be
done and who is to do it. Sometimes lights flash to give directions
and warnings, instead of the buzzer sounding. Every action of the
stage hands below and aloft is directed in this manner from one
central point of control by one master mind, the stage manager of the
show.
The orchestra usually has a music room of its own somewhere under the
stage or in the cellar of the theatre, where the musicians congregate
before the performance and during their "waits." A buzzer or bell
warning to them is said to "ring the orchestra in," and they are
usually allowed about three minutes to get into their places in the
orchestra pit after it sounds. There is also a "drop" signal buzzer or
light to give the head flyman in the fly-gallery the signals that
indicate when to raise and lower certain "drops," or hanging pieces. A
bell would be heard by the audience and detract from the performance.
A curtain buzzer or light gives the "warning" and "go" signals to the
stage hands in the fly-gallery who are called "flymen," for raising
and lowering the curtains or other scenery, like "drops," "borders,"
and any other pieces of scenery that have been "hung" to fly. In some
modern theatres the switchboard and its operator are raised some ten
feet above the stage. In such a case a buzzer signal from the stage
manager's prompt desk directs the manipulation of the lights for the
guidance of the chief electrician in his elevated perch, these signals
being given at a certain "cue" in the performance, and he knows from
his cue sheet, always before him, just what lights are required on
each succeeding cue.
Stage dressing rooms are by law required to be separated from the
stage proper by a permanent wall. Access to them is usually found near
the front wall of the stage, seldom along the back wall. In modern
city theatres dressing rooms are in tiers, as in the New Amsterdam
Theatre, New York, where there are seven floors of dressing rooms
reached by a private elevator used for no other purpose. The modern
stage dressing rooms in city theatres have every known arrangement for
comfort, sanitation and convenience.
Stage artists have no business in the front of the house, nor,
conversely, have those whose employment is in the front of the house
any business on the stage. Both keep their separate places at all
times. Artists are always required to enter and leave the theatre
through the stage door. All first-class managers forbid the artists to
be seen in "the front of the house." Members of the company usually
are required to report for matinee performances about 1:30 P.M. and
for evening shows about 7:30 P.M., but always before the "half hour"
is called, which is thirty minutes before the overture is played. The
stage watchman, known as the stage door tender, is always at the stage
door before and during a performance and permits none to pass in who
are not directly connected with the stage end of the theatre, the day
stage door tender being on duty usually from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M., and the
night stage door tender from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. The night watchman goes
his rounds regularly throughout the night at required intervals,
registering on a time-clock from different stations throughout the
theatre building; all outer doors and windows are locked about
one-half hour after the evening performance.
No messages, calls, telegrams or information of any character from
outside is permitted to enter the theatre for any actor or actress who
is inside and hence secluded from all outside contact and purely in
the realm of the playhouse. This and absolute exclusion of all
interlopers is one of the strictest rules of the theatre, and woe to
him who attempts its violations, or to the doorkeeper who permits it.
Any messages received are given to the artist after the performance.
No person who is not a member of the company should ever be permitted
to visit a dressing room during a performance, only afterwards; such a
contact takes the mind of the artist off her or his work.
Men who have obtained wrong ideas about members of the theatrical
profession and have boldly sought to force their presence onto the
stage have been summarily dealt with before now--and in some cases I
have helped in the good work myself. Sometimes, after the performance,
relatives, friends or escorts are permitted to enter the stage door
and there await the street-clad and departing performers. But
strangers and would-be "stage-door Johnnies" are always barred out.
There is no "green room" in the modern American theatre. We have all
read about a meeting place in the rear of the stage that went by this
title in the old English novels and biographies. They may exist still
in some foreign theatres, I am not sure--but I doubt it. What I am
sure of is that the American stage is sacred to its artists,
principals and subordinates alike, and to its stage manager and the
stage hands who keep things moving behind the curtain line.
It is a business and not a game. A theatrical life is taken seriously
by all who wish to succeed in it. No triflers need apply nowadays.
After every performance the stage is cleared of all obstacles, scenery
and everything else. The last member of the company out of each
dressing room is required to put the light out, lock the dressing-room
door and leave the key to the room with the stage door tender who is
held responsible for the contents of the rooms. The act curtain and
the asbestos curtain are raised. A single electric bulb or pilot light
on a portable iron stand about three feet high is placed centre of the
stage near the footlights, and casts its beam across the stage and
throughout the auditorium. The show is over and the fire-laws are
obeyed.
[Illustration: MARILYN MILLER]
MAKING A NAME
[Illustration: SALLY WITH MARILYN MILLER
MARILYN MILLER IN SALLY]
One may see big electric signs carrying bright-light messages similar
to the above placed conspicuously over theatre entrances in all cities
of any magnitude. Such signs convey to the passing populace the
interesting information that here is located a certain play, and also
that in this play a certain person appears as a main attraction.
Now to the passerby whose knowledge of things theatrical is merely
cursory, scant or non-existent, the two signs given above may have
exactly the same meaning, bear the same message in both cases. But to
all those "in the know" as to stage matters the two signs tell two
entirely different stories, and the location of the names of the play
and the actor convey important information in the theatre code that
the wise ones interpret at a glance.
Here are the two readings as the stage-wise render them, and when I
have told you about this you will catch the point at once and ever
after be able to "read the signs" with a clear conception of their
import:
The name at the top of each sign is "starred"; the other is
"featured." In one, the play is given the star position and Miss
Miller is featured; in the other, Marilyn Miller is starred and the
play featured.
"Well, what of that?" you ask.
Just this, and here is where the importance of it all comes in:
The one that is starred carries the burden of the success of the show.
If the play is starred, its failure does not reflect on the person
featured; but if the actor is starred and failure follows, the actor
and not the play is considered responsible, the actor not having
proven a _magnet_, not having drawn business on the strength of his or
her name. The personal difference to the actor is really very great,
yet "to star" is the actor's great ambition. No one should ever be
starred unless popular enough to attract plenty of patronage and
thereby insure "packed houses."