Producing a play seems to me, as I have recently watched it, to be
partly the art of dealing with people. And the new word in dealing with
people is to deal with them, not to direct them.
Watching Mr. Brock Pemberton staging my play, I used to think that if
one of the oldtime producers were to enter the theatre, he would say:
“But this man is not doing anything. He just sits there.” It was true
that he seemed just to sit there, hour after hour. The director of my
fears, he who stood tense or wild in the midst of the players and cried
that fire from heaven had fallen on such and such a reading, or bit of
business, or tempo--he was not in the theatre. Soon he will not be in
any theatre. Or in any other creative work. Which means almost all work.
Instead there was, in this case, a man who sat in the house, halfway
back, and who at first said principally: “From the beginning, please.”
Or, “Once more, that scene.” And very often: “Come now. Let’s all
help.” There also was I who in those first days kept saying to him:
“Don’t you think that should be read so and so?” or “That oughn’t to
be done so, just there” or “That isn’t the right reading.” And the
invariable reply would be: “Let’s let them get the lines first.” “Let’s
see if they won’t come to that in a day or two.” In the first weeks of
rehearsal I must have said these things literal scores of times and
always to that same reply, delivered without impatience and without a
shadow of turning.
Gradually, in instance after instance, it was clear that the suggestion
which I had been so eager to make was either finding its way into
the reading by the feeling of the actors, or was being supplanted
by something of their own creation that was better. When I spoke
of this--“It means so much more when they find out a thing for
themselves,” the producer said.
After a time, at the close of a rehearsal, he would go down to the
front row and say: “I have a few notations--will you take them down?”
He would make innumerable suggestions, and the company would note them
on their parts. When a member of the company asked how a line should
be read the first reply from the producer was usually: “How do you
feel that line--what do you feel is the most natural reading?” Again
and again he asked them for suggestions. If a line needed something
and I could not make the suggestion, he would ask the one to whom it
belonged to try to think of the thing he would like to say in such a
situation. Some of the least unsatisfactory lines, therefore, came from
the company themselves.
Often it seemed to me that the producer thought of himself as one of
the company. And as if industrial difficulties might be solved if only
all the coöperators in industry could recognize themselves in this
way. That which Walter Hampden welcomes as “industrial and artistic
coöperation” was assuredly here. It is the new word in industry as in
art--the third word, the human factor. Yet in the end this play was
shot through from first to last with the ideal of naturalism which all
along had been the ideal of the producer--but he had developed it, he
had not stamped it on from without.
This attitude cannot be unique. There must be others of the modern
stage who are producing in this way, but it is not the old way, and it
is not the way in which the public generally thinks of a production
being made. Nearly everyone has said: “Isn’t it a terribly difficult
experience, having a play put on? Isn’t it nervous work? Don’t you have
to fight for your own interpretation?” But it was not difficult. There
was nothing “nervous” about it--excepting that one couldn’t engage all
the actors who applied for the parts. And so for my own interpretation,
my fear was that they were sometimes reading a line in my way to please
me when they knew it would be better some other way. I have always
believed stage people to be the most likable people alive, and now I
know it.
There is far more reason why play producing should be nervous work than
that routine work should be so; because, first, there is no routine to
follow and, second, everybody involved is in some degree a creative
artist--who carries his own authority. By reason of the daily intimacy
and the swift work and the high pressure and the risk for everybody,
it is true that irony or arbitrary authority or lack of sympathy could
make of play producing about as uncomfortable an association as any
other association dominated by “nerves”. Perhaps, as Dr. Joseph Jastrow
once suggested, all these things are not alone in the domain of art
and of ethics but of manners. Or perhaps it is merely that theatrical
producers, in common with all other business men, are eliminating
waste--waste nerves along with the rest. The roots of art are fed and
watered by undivined agencies. In this case I believe that the work
ran smoothly because the producer was more intent on getting out of
every creative worker his creative bit than in remembering that he was
the director and that his way was best. He was not only directing a
play--he was dealing with people. The final art.
_William Lyon Phelps_
Few professors of English literature have inspired the undergraduate at
large as has William Lyon Phelps of Yale University. Professor Phelps
humanizes literature, understands the ordinary human being’s approach
to it, loves a good joke and is a constant but a master punster. As a
lecturer he is known from coast to coast. His word on books is gospel
to librarians and club women. This is due partly to his keen sense of
the dramatic. If you could sit under him at Yale you would understand
what I mean. Thoroughly of Connecticut is Professor Phelps. He was
born in Hartford and educated at Yale, where he has lived ever since
except for summers in Michigan and a sojourn for post-graduate work at
Harvard. His published volumes are innumerable, as are his interests
and activities. Alive to every movement in the theatre, exceedingly
fond of music, interested in young people and their efforts, he is as
definite a personality in American educational and literary life as I
know. His library at New Haven, with its crackling fire, the Browning
chair, Rufus the dog, and Mrs. Phelps, the always cordial hostess, is
filled with undergraduates on any winter Sunday afternoon. Probably
no man now living has created a love of books in so great a number of
souls as has William Lyon Phelps. This is a task worth the greatest
effort. It is one which needs must be prompted by enthusiasm which is a
quality Professor Phelps has in the highest degree.