"Wait! Mr. Leeds, I've told you a dozen times to count five before that entrance!"
"I thought I—"
"Never mind what you thought! Go back! Now!"
"Hello! Only you two here! What's become of—"
"Wait!... Flynn, take this entrance for the sunset cue. Dim your borders and throw in your reds.... Now, Mr. Leeds, once more!"
Doesn't make sense, does it? Yet this is a commonplace passage from an ordinary dress rehearsal. Anybody really connected with theatricals could translate the extract at a glance, but intimate knowledge of the stage, and its language, is gained only by actual experience. Of the method of producing plays, more has been written and less is generally understood than of any other common process. The outsider who devotes an hour to watching a rehearsal is as well qualified to describe that function as you or I, after seeing a ship steam down the bay, would be to pen a treatise on the science of navigation.
Most laymen have a vague idea that theatrical performances spring into being full-fledged, like birds which prestidigitators hatch by the simple expedient of shooting at the cage. If this statement seems far-fetched, you have but to read the stories of the playhouse written by clever men, like O. Henry and Hamlin Garland, whose wide knowledge of most things under the sun does not seem to extend to things under the calcium.
Rehearsals are much more than aimless walking and talking, as navigation is more than the turning of a wheel. Their direction is a fine art, a very fine art, not the least unlike the painting of a miniature, and one must comprehend something of this art to explain or describe it.
There are many points of similarity between a performance and a painting, which must create an impression without reminding the spectator of the brush-strokes which made that impression possible. The preparation of a play is a succession of details. It is astonishing how small a thing can cause the success or failure, if not of the whole work, at least of an incident or an episode. A pause, a movement, an expression, a light or a color may defeat or carry out the intention of the dramatist.
William Gillette's melodrama, "Secret Service", has a scene in which a telegraph operator, dispatching military orders, is shot in the hand. When the piece was given its initial hearing, Mr. Gillette, in the role of the operator, upon receiving the wound (1) bandaged his hand with a handkerchief, (2) picked up his cigar, and (3) went on "sending." There was no applause. The second night the "business" was changed. The operator (1) picked up the cigar, (2) bandaged his hand, and (3) went on "sending." The audience was vociferous in its approval. This particular instance of the importance of trifles is easily explained. That a wounded man's first thought should be to care for the wound is not remarkable, but that his first thought should be of his cigar suggests pluck and intrepidity which the spectators were quick to appreciate. Frequently, however, author and actors experiment for months before finding the thing that makes or mars a desired effect.