THE REHEARSAL.
When the seeker after histrionic honors has at last crossed the
threshold of the stage, he or she will find it entirely different from
the glitter and glory with which the imagination had clothed things
theatrical. The first revelation made to new-comers in the profession
is the rehearsal. This generally begins about ten A. M. and ends about
two P. M. In the old days of stock companies, performers had more
laborious work to perform than men who carry railroad iron out of,
or into, steamboats. Often there were new plays every night, which
meant new parts to be memorized, and rehearsals every day. Leaving the
theatre at eleven P. M., about the usual hour of closing a performance
at that time, the actor took his part with him, and instead of going
to his bed, was obliged to sit up and study his lines--no matter how
many lengths there were. Torn and worn out with his night's work on
the stage, and the mental toil that followed, it was often already
morning when the actor sought his couch. He was then obliged to be up
in a few hours and at the theatre at ten. If he absented himself there
was a fine that would materially reduce his already low salary. Where
was the room for enjoyment for the actor or actress in those days?
There was little opportunity given to anybody at all employed upon the
stage to be of dissolute habits or to indulge in any of the excesses
that pulpit-pounders and their intolerant and intolerable followers
generally charged against the profession. These super-moral individuals
could not make a distinction between the stage of the days of Mrs.
Bracegirdle and Mistress Woffington, of Mrs. Jordan and Mrs. Robinson,
when filth and licentiousness prevailed because the public found no
fault with it, and the same things were prevalent in ranks of the very
best society. Now that we have travelling combinations, and that one
part will last a man or woman who pays attention to business for a year
or more, the profession is not so heavily taxed; still there is plenty
of work, and there is little, if any, time to devote to any of the
pleasures or excesses that prurient piety points out as the portion of
players. But this is moralizing. Let us get back to the rehearsal. Less
than ten years ago a rehearsal might be found going on in any theatre
in the country between the hours of ten A. M. and two P. M. Now it
is a rare thing to find a rehearsal except on Monday, and in the few
cities where Sunday-night performances are given this day may be set
apart, when the opening or first performance is on the same night. As
travelling goes now, a company reaches a town either the night before,
or the morning of the day for their initial entertainment. No matter
what the time of arrival--unless it be, as often happens, that the
company gets off the train and to the theatre fifteen minutes before
the curtain is to go up--every member of the company will be expected
at the theatre in the morning for rehearsal, not so much to go through
their parts as to familiarize themselves with the entrances and exits
and the general arrangement of the house. The stage manager is there
and the orchestra is in its place. If it is comic opera there is a
rehearsal of the music, and if it is one of the musico-farcical or
burlesque pieces that were epidemic during the past two seasons, the
play will be rehearsed that the musicians may come in with their flare
up at the proper time.
A rehearsal is calculated to take all the starch out of the ambition
of a neophyte, and to drench his hopes in a sorrowful manner. The
stage bereft of its flood of light, of its gorgeous color and wealth
of splendor, is the darkest, dreariest, and most commonplace region in
the world. The buzz of saw and the clatter of hammer are heard in all
directions, while men in aprons, overalls, and greasy caps are making
the saw-and-hammer noises, and others even less romantic are dragging
about scenery or boxes; gas men are at work on the foot-lights, and
there is noise and confusion enough to set a whole villagefull of
sybarites crazy. Down in front a group of ladies and gentlemen are
moving about and talking. These are the players--the people we saw the
night before in rich attire, with glowing jewels and surrounded with
all the magnificence, wealth could bestow or royalty command. Now, the
king's crown is a black slouch hat and the royal robes are a dark sack
coat and vest, light trousers, and white shirt with picadilly collar.
The queen has a last-year bonnet on her head and a water-proof cloak
envelopes her form. The other actors are also in every-day dress, some
showing that their owners patronize first-class tailors and others
that they have been handed down from the shelves of cheap ready-made
clothing houses. The stage manager is pushing everybody around, and
the actors and actresses are talking at one another in lines. Some
have books of the play, for they are rehearsing, and all rattle over
their lines as if running a race with a locomotive that is drawing
Vanderbilt's special car over the road at its topmost speed. It is
impossible to understand what they are saying, and the on-looker would
be willing to wager a $10 gold piece against a silver dime with a hole
in it that the performers do not hear or understand each other. But a
California journalist has written a very truthful and funny account of
a rehearsal he attended in San Francisco. Olive Logan has it in her
book, but it is so good I will make use of it again. Here it is:--
[Illustration: AGNES BOOTH.]
You may get as perfect an idea of a play by seeing it rehearsed as you
would of Shakespeare from hearing it read in Hindustani. The first act
consists in an exhibition of great irritability and impatience by the
stage manager at the non-appearance of certain members of the troupe.
At what theatre? Oh, never mind what theatre. We will take liberties
and mix them thus:--
Stage Manager (calling to some one at the front entrance): "Send those
people in."
The people are finally hunted up one by one and go rushing down the
passage and on to the stage like human whirlwinds.
Leading Lady (reading): "My chains a-a-a-a-a rivet me um-um-um
(carpenters burst out in a tremendous fit of hammering) this man."
Star: "But I implore--buz-buz-buz--_never_--um-um" (great sawing of
boards somewhere).
Rehearsal reading, mind you, consists in the occasional distinct
utterance of a word, sandwiched in between large quantities of a
strange, monotonous sound, something between a drawl and a buz, the
last two or three words of the part being brought out with an emphatic
jerk.
Here Th----n rushes from the rear:--
"Now my revenge."
Star (giving directions): "No, you Mrs. H--s--n, stand there, and then
when I approach you, Mr. B--r--y, step a little to the left; then the
soldiers pitch into the villagers and the villagers into the soldiers,
and I shoot you and escape into the mountains."
Stage Manager (who thinks differently): "Allow me to suggest, Mr.
B----s, that"--(here the hammering and sawing burst out all over the
stage and drown everything).
This matter is finally settled. The decision of the oldest member
of the troupe having been appealed to, is adopted. Then Mr. Mc----h
is missing. The manager bawls "Mc----h!" Everybody bawls, "Mc----h!"
"Gimlet! Gimlet!" This is the playful rehearsal appellation for
_Hamlet_. Gimlet is at length captured and goes rushing like a
locomotive down the passage.
Stage Manager: "Now, ladies and gentlemen. All on!"
They tumble up the stage steps and gather in groups. H--l--n fences
with everybody. Miss H--w--n executes an imperfect _pas seul_.
Leading Lady: "I-a-a-a-a love-um-um-um--and-a-a-a another--"
Miss H--l--y, Miss M--d--e, or any other woman: "This engage-a-a-a my
son's um-um Bank Exchange."
A--d--n raises his hands and eyes to heaven, saying: "Great father!
he's drunk!"
Leading Lady (very energetically): "Go not, dearest Hawes! The
Gorhamites are a-a-a-um-um devour thee."
Mrs. S--n--s: "How! What!!"
Mrs. J----h: "Are those peasantry up there?"
Boy comes up to the stage and addresses the manager through his nose:
"Mr. G., I can't find him anywhere."
H----y J----n: "For as much as I"--(terrible hammering).
Nasal boy: "Mr. G., I can't find him anywhere."
L--c--h: "Stop my paper!"
Manager: "Mr. L., that must be brought out very strong; thus, _Stop my
paper!_"
L--c--h (bringing it out with an emphasis which raises the roof off the
theatre): "STOP MY PAPER!"
The leading lady hero goes through the motion of fainting and falls
against the star, who is partly unbalanced by her weight and momentum.
The star then rushes distractedly about, arranging the supernumeraries
to his liking. Ed--s and B--y walk abstractedly to and fro. S--n--r
dances to a lady near the wings. These impromptu dances seem to be a
favorite pastime on the undressed stage.
Second Lady: "Positively a-a-a- Tom Fitch um-um amusing a-aitch a-aitch
a-aitch!"
It puzzled me for a long time to find out what was meant by this
repetition of a-aitch. It is simply the reading of laughter. A-aitch is
where "the laugh comes in." The genuine pearls of laughter are reserved
for the regular performance. Actresses cannot afford to cachinate
during the tediousness and drudgery of rehearsal. Usually they feel
like crying.
Stage Manager: "We must rehearse this last act over again."
Everybody at this announcement looks broadswords and daggers. There
are some pretty pouts from the ladies, and some deep but energetic
profanity from the gentlemen.
[Illustration: "NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ALL TOGETHER."]
The California journalist has just about done justice to the subject. I
have attended rehearsals when it was utterly impossible to comprehend
whether they were reading Revelations or going through Mother Goose's
melodies. Drilling the chorus for opera is attained by the same trials
and tribulations as rehearsals for dramatic representations. The
leader grows furious at the surrounding noise, and the distractions
that members of the chorus give themselves up to. It is a bad thing
to get them together at first and harder still to keep them together
afterwards. When the leader with an atmosphere of the kindest humor
surrounding his smooth head holds his baton aloft imagining that
everything is all right, says: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, all
together," he gracefully lowers his arm, but suddenly arises in an
angry mood, for they are not all together. About one-half the throng
begin, and the other half loiter behind to drop in at intervals. And
so it goes from act to act until the opera is finished. The singers
are in street dress and the shabbiest of garments brush against the
most stylish. In rehearsing grand opera only one act is taken at a
time, and the scenes presented, with the mellifluous Italian and the
sweet-scented garlic floating around the stage, are picturesque to
the eye, charming to the ear, and simply entrancing to the nose. The
principals rehearse sitting.
[Illustration: TRAINING BALLET DANCERS.]
Ballet dancers have as hard work, if not harder than any other class
in the profession. They must rehearse or practice daily, and for hours
and hours at a time. The _maitre_ is there with cane and eye-glass,
with velvet coat and lavender trousers, to show them the motions,
and line after line the strength and limberness of the limbs of the
_corps de ballet_ are tested. From the premiere who sits with sealskin
sack over her stage costume with her pet dog by her side down to the
latest acquisition to the _maitre's_ (the ballet master's) corps,
all must be on hand to rehearse with or without music. In the latter
instance the steps are slowly but carefully gone through. Not only is
there a day rehearsal, but there is private individual rehearsal of
the steps at night previous to going on the stage; for there is much
grace in a _corps de ballet_, and no girl in love with her art wishes
to be considered awkward or in the rear; hence the emulation that
exists, and the private rehearsals in the dressing-room. Many of these
ballet dancers live poor lives, getting salaries which after buying
their stage dresses leaves them little for the cupboard and very little
to waste upon street costumes. Some are frail, and have admirers whose
purse-strings they pull wide open, and are therefore able to rustle
around in silks and sport rich golden and jewelled ornaments, while the
honest girls must sup at home on crusts and share the opprobrium their
shamless companions bring on the entire class. Ballet girls everywhere
have a throng of giddy, dissipating male followers, and those who
resist the temptations thrown in their way are deserving praise rather
than condemnation.
[Illustration: NATIONAL DANCES.]
Just as the Spanish have their Mauzai, the Hindoos their Nautch
girls, the Japanese that remarkable dance travellers have written so
frequently and so much about, and each country its own particular sway
or whirl, so this country seems to have taken kindly to the ballet.
When a ballet dancer--one of the famous dancers of the beginning of
the century--presented herself for the first time to an Albany, New
York, audience, the ladies rushed from the stage and there was almost
a panic. But it did not take long to accustom the Albanians to the
undraped drama, and they are as fond of it now as any of the rest of
the not over-scrupulous people of the country. Not so many years ago,
there was a ballet every night in the first-class variety theatres;
now there are few, except in the East, that have this feature, and for
this reason--the abandonment of it in the West and South--the people
who draw conclusions from everything they see and hear cry out that the
ballet is dying out. This is not so. The ballet has been dropped from
the list of attractions in the West, because the managers thought it
too costly an institution for them to carry and not because the people
did not want it. Some of the best paying theatrical investments of the
day are based upon the fascinating and drawing qualities of a displayed
female limb. Burlesque with its blonde attributes kept the country in
a rage for many years, and the reason why it is so rare now is that
comic opera and the minor musical attractions of the _quasi_ legitimate
stage have usurped its principal feature--the leg show--and under the
cover of art get the patronage of people who would shun burlesques, and
at the same time supply the demand of about three-fourths of the male
persuasion who are as fond of as much anatomy in pink tights as the law
will allow them. If any one thinks the ballet is on the decay just let
him wait until such an attraction is announced in his neighborhood and
then stand back and count as the bald-headed brigade goes to the front.
And for those who take any interest in the ballet, or care to hear
anything about the women who have become famous as dancers, the
following bit of history which I found in Gleason's _Pictoral_ for 1854
will be very agreeable reading: "A recent performance at her majesty's
theatre in London has been signalized by an event unparalleled in
theatrical annals, and one which, some two score years hence, may be
handed down to a new generation by garrulous septuagenarians as one of
the most brilliant reminiscences of days gone by. The appearance of
four such dancers as Taglioni, Cerito, Carlotta Grisi and Lucile Grahn,
on the same boards and in the same _pas_, is truly what the French
would call "_une solemnite theatrale_," and such a one as none of those
who beheld it are likely to witness again. It was therefore as much a
matter of curiosity as of interest, to hurry to the theatre to witness
this spectacle; but every other feeling was merged in admiration when
the four great dancers commenced the series of picturesque groupings
with which this performance opens. Perhaps a scene was never witnessed
more perfect in all its details. The greatest of painters, in his
loftiest flights, could hardly have conceived, and certainly never
executed, a group more faultless and more replete with grace and poetry
than that formed by these four danseuses. Taglioni in the midst, her
head thrown backwards, apparently reclining in the arms of her sister
nymphs. Could such a combination have taken place in the ancient palmy
days of art, the pencil of the painter and the pen of the poet would
have alike been employed to perpetuate its remembrance. No description
can render the exquisite, and almost ethereal grace of movement and
attitude of these great dancers, and those who have witnessed the
scene, may boast of having once, at least, seen the perfection of
the art of dancing so little understood. There was no affectation, no
apparent exertion or struggle for effect on the part of these gifted
artistes; and though they displayed their utmost resources, there was
a simplicity and ease, the absence of which would have completely
broken the spell they threw around the scene. Of the details of this
performance it is difficult to speak. In the solo steps executed by
each danseuse, each in turn seemed to claim pre-eminence. Where every
one in her own style is perfect, peculiar individual taste alone may
balance in favor of one or the other, but the award of public applause
must be equally bestowed; and the _penchant_ for the peculiar style,
and the admiration for the dignity, the repose and the exquisite grace
which characterize Taglioni, and the dancer who has so brilliantly
followed the same track (Lucile Grahn), did not prevent the warm
appreciation of the charming archness and twinkling steps of Carlotta
Grisi, or the wonderful flying leaps and revolving bounds of Cerito.
Though each displayed her utmost powers, the emulation of the fair
dancers was unaccompanied by envy. Every time a shower of boquets
descended on the conclusion of a solo _pas_ of one or the other of the
fair _ballerine_, her sister dancers came forward to assist her in
collecting them. The applause was universal and equally distributed.
This, however, did not take from the excitement of the scene. The
house, crowded to the roof, presented a concourse of the most eager
faces, never diverted, for a moment, from the performance; and the
extraordinary tumult of enthusiastic applause, joined to the delightful
effect of the spectacle presented, imparted to the whole scene an
interest and excitement that can hardly be imagined by those not
present."
[Illustration: MARION ELMORE.]