Each member should provide his or her own dress. To give the required expressions to the faces, a box of good water colors, some fine chalk powder, camel’s hair pencils, and rouge saucers, are wanted. To make frowns, scowls, or comical expressions, such as a broad grin, smirk, or simper, stand before a mirror and assume the desired expression; then trace the wrinkles produced, with a fine brush of the brown tint; this will fix the required expression on your face. Rouge is best applied with the finger. Burnt cork is excellent for darkening eyebrows, and making moustaches, also for representing leanness, which will be done by applying a faint tint just under the eyes, on the sides of the cheeks, and under the lower lip. A strong mark running from the corner of the nose down towards the corner of the mouth on each side, marks age or emaciation.
A few directions may be of use in regard to the preparation of theatrical dresses. Powdered wigs can be made of tow, raveled yarn, or gray colored horse hair; beards and moustache of the same, or a piece of buffalo skin. Ermine can be made of cotton flannel with tags of lion skin cloth sewed on, or black tags painted. Pelisse wadding is sometimes used.
Crowns and sceptres are easily made of pasteboard and gold paper. Velvet talma cloaks, capes, or even the loose velvet sack, can be converted into cavalier cloaks (the arm-holes in the sack must be fastened up on the inside), by fastening them gracefully over one shoulder. Then put on a large old-fashioned lace collar, ruffles around the hand, a Kossuth hat, looped up on one side with a paste pin or buckle, fastening a white or black plume, (taken from some lady’s bonnet), stockings drawn over the pantaloons and fastened at the knees with bows and buckles; and lo! with but little trouble, you have a fine cavalier of the olden times. With old finery and a little ingenuity, a theatrical wardrobe can be quickly made, if all are willing to do their part, but the larger share of the work is generally done by a few. Rocks can be made by throwing plain gray blanket shawls over ottomans, tables, &c. Rain may be imitated by dropping peas in a tin pan, thunder by rattling sheet-iron, lightning by means of a tin tube, larger at one end than the other, and filled with powdered resin. The smaller end of the tube should be open, the other end so managed that the resin may sift through. Shake the tube over a lamp, or blow the resin through a plain tube into the flame of a lamp, and you will have a good imitation of lightning.
Dissolve crystals of nitrate of copper in spirits of wine, light the solution and it will burn with a beautiful emerald green flame. Pieces of sponge, soaked in this spirit, lighted and suspended by fine wires over the stage of theatres, produce the lambent green flames, now so common in incantation scenes. Strips of flannel saturated with it, and wrapped around pieces of copper, will form the swords and fire-forks brandished by the demons in such scenes. Devices like the above are very simple, and add much to the general effect.
The following is a list of plays which are easily and often acted in private theatricals:
Comedies.
| The Rivals. Fashion. | London Assurance. Lady of Lyons. |
Farces.
| The Loan of a Lover. The Widow’s Victim. Perfection. Sketches in India. Morning Calls. Swiss Cottage. My New Wife and My Old Umbrella. Kill or Cure. Poor Pillecody. | Bombastes Furioso. Lend Me Five Shillings. Phantom Breakfast. Rough Diamond. A Pretty Piece of Business. Old Guard. A Game of Romps. Betsy Baker. |
