As civilization becomes more and more complex, we can find more frequent
instances of "specialization of function," as the scientists term it.
Only a few years ago, engineering succeeded in getting itself recognized
as one of the professions; and it has already split up into half a dozen
branches, at least, and there are now not only civil engineers and
mechanical engineers and mining engineers, but also electrical
engineers--and even chemical engineers. The invention of the steel-frame
building has brought into existence a special class of artizans known as
"housesmiths," a word probably unintelligible to our British cousins.
Sir Leslie Stephen, in his delightful 'Studies of a Biographer,' has a
scholarly yet playful paper on the 'Evolution of the Editor'; and Mr.
W.J. Henderson, in his interesting book on the 'Orchestra and Orchestral
Music,' traces the development of the conductor--the musician whose
duties are as important as they are novel, and who is not now expected
to be able himself to play upon any particular instrument.
"It is impossible to tell when the conductor made his appearance in
music," Mr. Henderson asserts. "At the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the conductor was at first nothing more than a leader; he was
one of the performers whom the rest followed." An inscription in verse
on an engraving of a conductor, published in Nuremberg, early in the
eighteenth century, declares that "silent myself, I cause the music I
control." In the nineteenth century, the conductor had won full
recognition as an instrumentalist of a new type, who, without any
instrument of his own, played on the whole body of musicians under his
command. Of late, he has become so prominent in the eyes of the public,
and his personality has been so insisted upon, that there is danger
often lest he may distract attention from the music to himself. As Mr.
Henderson records calmly: "We have beheld the curious spectacle of
people going, to hear not Beethoven or Wagner, but Nikisch or Seidl."
What the conductor is to a performance of orchestral music, the
stage-manager is to the performance of a play in the theater. (And in
this paper the term "stage-manager" is to be understood as meaning the
"producer" of a drama.) His art is as special, as necessary, as novel,
and as difficult; and, if it is as yet scarcely recognized and rarely
appreciated, this is due in part to the conditions under which his work
must be done. The conductor is not only visible but conspicuous; the
audience is likely to watch him rather than any one of the musicians he
is guiding; whereas the stage-manager must ever be invisible, and is,
indeed, most successful if his existence is unsuspected. When the
conductor brings a concert to a close, he bows to the applause and then
lays down his wand; and all is over. The stage-manager has wrought his
wonders, and his labors are practically concluded, before the curtain
rises on the first act at the first performance. In this respect, he is
like the trainer of a college-crew, who cannot go into the boat with
them when the pistol is fired for the race to begin. But everybody is
now well aware what it is that the trainer has done for the crew; his
portrait appears with theirs in the newspapers and he shares in their
glory.
Only the expert ever thinks of giving due meed of praise to the hidden
stage-manager who is responsible for a more arduous victory in the
theater than any ever won on the river. His face is not familiar on the
posters; and his name is not in large type on the playbill. All the
credit he gets is contained in the single line which records that the
play has been "produced" by him. Yet he has been responsible for the
entire performance--for the acting and for the costumes, for the
scenery and for the properties, for the lighting and for the incidental
music; not so much indeed for any one of these things as for the harmony
of the whole. If there has been a perfect coördination of all these
elements, if there have been no jarring notes, if the spirit of the play
has been brought out completely, if everything has gone right from
beginning to end, if the whole performance has moved so smoothly as to
seem spontaneous, the stage-manager deserves the highest praise for what
he has wrought unseen. Yet his sole reward is his own consciousness of
work well done, and the chance appreciation of the scanty few who may be
competent to estimate the worth of his achievement.
The "producer" of the play, the person who assumes the responsibility
for the performance in all its details, may be the dramatist himself; M.
Sardou and Mr. Belasco have shown surpassing skill in bringing forth all
that lies latent in the inert manuscripts of their plays. He may be the
actual manager of the theater; the late Augustin Daly was a
stage-manager of striking individuality. He may be the actor of the
chief part in the play; Mr. Willard and Mr. Sothern have revealed
another aspect of their talent by the artistic manner in which they have
staged both new plays and old. He may be at once author and actor and
manager, like Mr. Gillette, a past-master of this new and difficult
art. Or he may be simply a stage-manager and nothing else, a craftsman
of a new calling, not author, not actor, yet able on occasion to give
hints to playwright and to player. Here, again, is another resemblance
to the conductor, who can impose his own will on the orchestra, altho he
may not be able to play one of the instruments in it, and altho he may
be quite incapable of composing.
That the task of the stage-manager is more difficult than that of the
conductor is due to the fact that the composer has prescribed exactly
what share each instrument shall take, the conductor having this full
score in his possession; whereas the stage-manager receives from the
author only the spoken words of the play, with but summary indications
as to the gestures, the movements, the scenery, and so forth. He has not
a full score, but only a sequence of themes incompletely orchestrated,
and with the missing passages to be supplied at his own discretion. And
as the richness of the harmony depends largely upon his ability to
amplify properly the hints of the author, the stage-manager is, in fact,
almost a collaborator of the playwright; he is forced into a more
intimate relation with the dramatist than that which the conductor bears
toward the composer. To a collaboration of this sort, ordinary playgoers
never give a thought, content to take the performance as they see it,
and ready often to credit the actor, not only with the inventions of the
stage-manager, but even with those of the author also. They accept the
play as it is presented to them, just as tho it had happened, with no
suspicion of the forethought by which the performance has been made
possible.
George Henry Lewes, in his stimulating essays, 'On Actors and the Art of
Acting,' has told us that audiences are inclined to overestimate the
genius of an actor and to underestimate his trained skill. We are prone
to accept the fallacy of the "inspiration of the moment," and to give
little credit to the careful preliminary rehearsing which is at once a
humble substitute for inspiration, should this fail to appear, and its
solid support, should it happen to present itself. For the thoroness of
this preliminary preparation the stage-manager is responsible; and it is
at rehearsal that he seeks to bring about the perfect "team-play" which
is absolutely necessary,--the subordination of individual display to the
larger advantage of the whole performance. The reason why the so-called
"all-star revivals" of old plays are often sadly disappointing, is to be
found in the absence of this team-play, in the exaggerated
self-assertion of the individual actors, whom the stage-manager has been
unable to control. Few members of an "all-star" company can be relied
upon for the "sacrifice-hits," which the best team-play may now and then
demand. And this is why a wise dramatist, if he were put to the choice,
would prefer to have his piece performed by a company of average merit
directed by a stage-manager of skill and authority, than by far better
actors under lax and inefficient stage-management. One of the varied
qualifications needed by stage-managers is the insight to estimate the
personality of the actors, so that the play may profit by what each of
them can do best, while the exuberance of an aggressive individuality is
restrained from interfering with the due proportion of the performance.
While it is the duty of the stage-manager to handle all the elements in
his control so as to make the performance as perfect as possible, his
most important function is to direct the actors themselves, to see that
they read their lines intelligently, with just the emphasis requisite at
that given moment in the unfolding of the story of the play, and to
advise them as to the gestures and movements which should tell this
story almost as plainly as the words themselves. Some actors scarcely
ever need a hint at rehearsal, reading their speeches naturally the
first time and finding for themselves the appropriate
byplay,--"business," as technical phrase terms it. Other actors, in no
wise inferior in power of personation, need to be guided and stimulated
by advice; even if not inventive themselves, they may be swift to take a
hint and to wring from it all its effectiveness. Rachel, probably the
greatest actress of the last century, felt herself lost without the
tuition of Samson, a comic actor himself, but a teacher of force,
originality and taste. Mrs. Siddons, again, owed some of her most
striking effects to her brother, John Philip Kemble. It was Kemble who
devised for her, and for himself, the new reading and the business now
traditional in the trial scene of 'Henry VIII,' where the _Queen_ at bay
lashes _Wolsey_ with the lines beginning: