There are few plays produced in which a stage ‘effect’ of some kind is
not required. The following explanations of how these effects are
produced will be found quite reliable, but the amateur stage manager
will do well to bear in mind that each effect must be produced shortly
before it is actually needed. Thus, if the stage direction says, ‘Horses
heard without,’ it will not do to wait until the characters on the stage
have reached the point in the dialogue. Otherwise, however good the
stage effect may be from a practical point of view, it will seem absurd,
because it will appear to the audience to have been dragged in just when
it was required.
Possibly someone may say to this: ‘But the audience know that the effect
is not real; they know that in reality there are no horses without; why
be so particular?’
[Illustration:
DRAWING-ROOM.
]
[Illustration: Old English Furniture Jacobean and Georgian]
To this I reply: ‘If the stage manager and the actors know their
business they will make the audience forget for the time that the things
they see and hear are not “real.”’ If the play is produced and acted
well everything will seem to be so perfectly natural that, for a time at
any rate, the audience will forget that they are looking at a play; that
is to say, they will forget the artificiality of it all. It is by
attention to the smallest details of the production of a play that the
stage manager will succeed at his work.
[Illustration:
LIMELIGHT BOXES
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[Illustration:
The colours are obtained by means of Sheets of Gelatine.
]
For instance, who has not seen at an amateur production of a play a man
coming in from a long country walk—according to the play—wearing boots
that had obviously just been cleaned? Or a man walking in from a
snowstorm in an overcoat that was perfectly dry? It is the amateur’s
inattention to little details of that kind that makes an audience smile
indulgently at the stage picture. They say to themselves: ‘After all,
they are only amateurs and we must make allowances.’ But there should be
no need for such indulgence. A company of amateurs may not be able to
succeed in playing a drama with all the skill of professionals, but
there is no reason why their stage management should not be ‘clean’ and
smart, because, after all, when once you have the knowledge, the
production of stage effects is merely a matter of common sense.
The man walking in from a snowstorm should have a little common salt
laid on the shoulders of his overcoat just before he enters, and his
boots should be ‘made up’ muddy. When he removes his overcoat the ‘snow’
falls away and apparently melts—which, of course, is just what real snow
does when a little is brought into a warm room.
The windows of a stage are usually the amateur’s bugbear—or rather one
of his many bugbears. I have known an amateur to open a window of a
house in a busy London street—according to the stage directions of the
play—and, save for the fact that the audience has seen the window
opened, there has been no attempt to deceive their sense of hearing;
whereas, everyone should know that if you open a window of a house in a
busy London street you naturally hear the sound of traffic.
[Illustration:
INTERIOR OF ANN HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE, STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
]
Thanks to motor cars this sound of traffic is easily produced on the
stage. Two or three motor horns will produce some of the sounds with
which people are familiar, but to get the right effect the men using the
horns must retire from the window; indeed, one of the horns should be
some distance from it in the first place. The only way to get this
effect of distance is to stand in the auditorium and have the horns
sounded from different places behind the scenes.