-
Title
-
en
The Training of an Actress by James Neill
-
list of authors
-
James Neill
-
list of contributors
-
Horner Boston
-
Date
-
July 6, 1902
-
volume
-
87
-
issue
-
36
-
page start
-
3
-
page end
-
3
-
content
-
en
The Training of an Actress by James Neill
Pointers for Girls Who Are Interested in a Stage Career.
“How did she arrive?” asks the inquiring mind after witnessing the performance of a star; “by what process of training did she acquire that hypnotism that holds me and believe she is the character she portrays?”
It takes more than grease paint and make-up to perfect this delusion, but what more – that is the question.
It is an interesting evolution, the making of an actress, and one that to the audience, settled back in comfortable chairs, is a sealed book. They see the results of hours of patient application, but if the training has been effective the noticeable traits are not obtrusive ones. They are grace, simplicity and entire absence from affection.
For this reason, perhaps, it is that the idea of apprenticeship is not dwelt upon by the lay observer. The stock company is the normal training school of the embryo actress. This is the budding ground, where the tender spear of ability is placed, fertilized by endeavor and strengthen by the virility of environment. Girls who are interested in a stage career will doubtless be glad to know what this system of training is. Many it may be will be deterred thereby, but it is will so, for there is no royal road to learning, here as elsewhere.
Coquelin, the celebrated delineator of comedy, once said “Comedy is serious business.” It is an art to hold people’s attention to make them laugh.
In the James Neill company Blanche Rates and many another now famous actress when through their first struggles toward recognition. He has an interesting story to tell the systematic training that he considers productive of the best results.
“If you want to strike conviction beyond the footlights you must feel it yourself,” said James Neill. “Earnestness is the keynote of success on the stage, as it is in other walks of life.”
The Neill company at the present time has a novitiate in training, and if earnestness of work counts each day sees a credit mark placed to Mary Elizabeth Forbes’ account. Miss Forbes is a sweet, unaffected girl of the Gibson type; demure, healthy and alert, and fresh with the enthusiasm of twenty summers.
The powers that the gods have given her she distributes through the twenty-four hours of every day as follows: She rises at 7 o’clock and allows herself an hour for breakfast, and then the day’s programme begins: “Bike” riding, 8 to 9 a. m.; studying part, 9 to 10 a. m.; rehearsing, 1 a m. to 12 noon; luncheon, 12 to 1 p. m; gymnasium or fencing, 1 to 3 p. m.; rehearsing, 3 to 5 p. m.; voice, 5 to 6 p. m.; dinner, 6 to 7 p. m; rest, 7 to 7:30 p. m; “making up,” 7:30 to 8:15 p. m; playing part, 8:15 to 11:15 p. m.; studying part, 11:30 p. m. to 12:30 a. m.; sleep, 1 to 7 a. m.
Of course, the programme is elastic and must give way on matinee days, but her work is not allowed to lapse for social functions and for the most part out of the eighteen hours that Miss Forbes is awake every day thirteen hours and forth-give minutes are given to constant work, three hours for meals and forth-five minutes to dressing in the morning and undressing preparatory for sleep at night, and thirty minutes for rest. On days when the Neill company gives matinee performances one hour is given to the gymnasium or the fencing of Professor L. Tronchet, and the afternoon rehearsing for that day is omitted.
Four of the hours are given to physical training.
The first step is to get the body under perfect control of the mind. The body is the servant of the mind. It is the instrument on which is transmitted the various emotions. It is ordinarily stiff and unwieldly; it must be made supple and commandable and trained to respond instantly. In this age and generation we don’t get half enough exercise. Living is made too easy. I tis as though we had to fight nature, overcome civilization in a way and get back to the primitive, so we can bend our body and twist our trunk and arms without showing the strain.
“Practice with dumb-bells makes the body strong; using the gloves makes the arms forceful and gives them character; Indian clubs make the entire body lithe and supple; fencing makes the body graceful and gives it poise as nothing else can do.
“Voice culture and breath control are great factors in emotion or in any work in expression.
“There is no magnetism in wasted breath. A person who does not know how to use, control and give out her breath for the emotion in question loses just so much power over her audience. It is like the boiler of an engine that is constantly leaking.”
Miss Forbes has had two years of stage training along the lines usually experienced by the beginner and she is now in the period of her evolution to engage in other practical efforts. She has taken hundreds of lessons in elocution and voice culture and has played small parts in some thirty-seven different plays. She has not been taught to an effective degree the art of stage “make-up” and the consistency of style and color in stage gowns. All this has been gained by hard and constant work, and while the voice and intonations are still to be persistently perfected, the physical strength, fire and grace of gesture must be worked upon also. Four times a week she goes to Professor Tronchet and takes fencing lesssons [ha, ha, spelling error] for two hours each visit; three other days of each week she is obliged to spend at a ladies’ gymnasium. The days that she does not go to the gymnasium she spends two hours riding horseback or on a bicycle.
One hours every day, “bike” riding or no “bike” riding, gymnasium or no gymnasium, she must spend with the professor of voice culture. One hour many days is given to the study of facial expression, four hours each day to the rehearsals for the regular Neill performances and three hours each evening to playing the parts assigned to her in the regular Neill performances.
Mr. Neill was seated in a piece of stage property back on the stage in the California Theater and just as he spoke in dashed the subject in question, Miss Forbes, with book in hand and an every-minute-counts expression on her face.
“I am a minute late,” she said, breathlessly. “But I have my lines letter perfect to-day; I studied till 1 o’clock last night on them.”
She was talking to Scott Seaton, who appeared from the opposite wing of the stage stretching himself and looking most apologetic. Miss Forbes, it appears, is going to take the role of Barbara Freitchie next season with Mr. Scott Seaton as manager and in connection with her other work she is crowding in a rehearsal now and again with an eye for a future triumph.
We watched them stepping about the stage and reading their lines in a low voice which made the pantomime seemlike a take off on the real Barbara Freitchie, save for the earnestness that marked both these young faces. It seemed rather weird, this saying of lines and appealing to a houseless audience.
“Do you believe in elocution as a stage requisite?”
“Elocution with practice – yes,” answered Mr. Neill, “But the trouble is that the mind of the elocution student is crowded with ideals and theories that only irritate the managers, and excite ridicule and have to be suppressed, while a knowledge of the real technique of the theater and preparation for the stage is being obtained. He who takes up elocution and labors alone without the accessories and other stage characters which go to make up a picture and the ensemble that appeals to the audience and suggests dramatic action lacks the inspiration of imaginate listeners and is like a student of painting who has canvas and brushes but lacks the colors.
“The student who takes up elocution with an eye for the stage should study it in connection with stage work or at least in connection with some practical side of stage work.
“Elocution as taught is not elocution according to the dictionary. Webster defines it as ‘the proper expression of thought.’ The elocutionist speaks as if he knew the technique of expression—the actor speaks as if he thinks. The underlying thought is the main thing, so first let the aspirant for the stage master the thought and try to get an inspiration out of it, and this mastery of thought will show in the delivery of his lines if he has the indispensable groundwork of an education and the ability to enunciate.
“And even if his delivery be contrary to the set ideas of elocution, the actor endowed by nature for the stage will grasp the inspiration of the situation and be capable of creating an illusion, while the elocutionist will be more apt to show the evidences of his work and its mechanical limitations in his self consciousness and his adherence to the technique. The cultured, cold and correct actor will not be so true to the die as the rugged, vehement, impulsive soul that appeals by natural methods to the sympathies of the listener. The one by carefully studied intonation and a nice punctuation into sentences may excite admiration, perhaps, but does not always carry conviction with it. The other will emphasize the thought in a way that will appeal to his audience.
“And that is what it all means after all; it is the power of convincing the audience, of making them feel that your emotions are real. That is what carries a piece on to victory.
“The question of training for the stage has been a difficult problem to solve with any degree of satisfaction, and with such results as will elicit the recognition and encouragement of the managers who engage and the public who patronize stage artists. In no art is it more clearly demonstrated by the artists who acquire prominent and fame that experience is the bets if not the only teacher. Acting is like swimming; all the theories in the world will not serve until the first plunge is made, and as water is necessary for the learning to swim, so are accessories and audiences necessary to determine the aptitude or unfitness of the aspirant for dramatic laurels. It is with a full appreciation of the difficulties that beset the beginner upon the stage that employing managers and producers of plays are obliged to reject so many applicants.
“Genius and hard work may not be twin companions, but they are so often found together that one is warranted in asserting that they are closely allied. As soon as a new genius is sprung on the world the wonder often is, ‘Why were they not discovered before?’ and the answer probably is that they have not had time to work hard and long enough. There are hundreds of young women with ambition to shine behind the footlights who have not the temperament nor the desire to work hard enough to reach their cherished goal. There are also many of splendid natural ability for conception of stage characters who fail when they do finally have an opportunity, for lack of persistent and constant endeavor. Then there are others ambitious for the stage who believe that all an actress has to do to gain an enviable reputation as an artist and the accompanying enviable salary is to wear fine gowns, receive the flattering attentions of numerous admirers, countless bouquets and late suppers, where glasses clink to the music of gay laughter.”
A study of the daily routine of Mary Elizabeth Forbes, a beautiful, charming and talented girl, will quickly dispel that delusion. How many factory girls, how many milliners, how many dressmakers, how many stenographers, how many lady clerks are there who are obliged to work nearly fourteen hours a day, Sundays included, to gain recognition in the line of endeavor to which they are addressed their efforts?
-
depicts
-
Photograph : "To develope the muscles."
-
Photograph : "To make the whole body supple."
-
Photograph : "Studying her part."
-
Photograph : "Fencing teaches one quick movements."
-
Photograph : "To limber the joints of the arm."
-
Photograph : A few minutes of actress morning work."
-
Photograph : "Rehearsing a new pose"
