Meanwhile, the director has attended to several important matters with which the cast has no immediate concern. He has made out a list of "properties", or small articles to be handled in the performance, and has given it to the manager. This list requires care. For example, if matches are needed in the play, it must be ascertained what kind of matches were used at that period, and sulphur, parlor, or "safety" matches must be specified. The manager must also be given lists of furniture and draperies. Later on, a table of "music cues" must be made out for the orchestra, and one of "light cues" for the electrician. The play must be timed, so that it may be known to a minute at what hour the curtain will rise and fall on every act. Generally, a page of typewritten manuscript will occupy a minute, but guess work on this point does not suffice for the director. The players begin to consult him about their costumes, too, and he must take into account the blending of colors, the fashions of the period, and the personal characteristics likely to manifest themselves in attire.
I wish I could make you see a theater during the progress of a rehearsal. The great auditorium is dark and vacant, but for two or three cleaners, who may be sweeping and dusting. White cloths cover the seats, and hang over the facades of the boxes. Through the center of the stage, just behind the footlights, a gas pipe rears itself to a height of five or six feet, and a single jet burns at the end of it. Close beside this pipe is the table I have mentioned, where, with their backs to the auditorium, sit three very busy, very attentive gentlemen. Farther on the stage, which is bare except for a couple of tables and a few chairs, stand two or three actors, attired in street dress, talking in a fashion utterly out of keeping with their every-day appearance. And on all sides are little groups of men and women, who pay no attention to the people in the scene and to whom the people in the scene pay no attention, who laugh and chat in subdued tones until some "cue" brings them into the action.
One day a notice appears on the call board. The company will leave from the Grand Central Station the next morning at 7:20 o'clock. The destination may be Syracuse, N. Y. The hotels in that city are so-and-so. The theater is the New Wieting. There will be a dress rehearsal there tomorrow night at 8. "Everybody will please be made up half an hour earlier."
"This is the first time the director has seen them 'made up' and he is likely to have many suggestions"
The dress rehearsal is the crowning ordeal in the business of producing plays. It is the summing up of everything that has gone on before; the concentration into one evening of all the work and nervous strain of the past month. It is safe to say that in no other profession is so much labor and agony crowded into a single effort. Very often dress rehearsals last from eight o'clock at night until eight the next morning. Sometimes they last longer. The dress rehearsal of "The Burgomaster", at the Manhattan Theater, New York, began at noon on Sunday and continued, without intermission, until eleven o'clock Monday. Frequently, coffee and sandwiches are served in one of the dressing rooms, or on the stage, and the tired players snatch a bite or two between scenes.
The director has been in the theatre all the afternoon, superintending the setting of scenes and the "dressing" of the stage, which means the placing of furniture and the hanging of curtains. Half an hour before the rehearsal begins, the members of the company come from their rooms, one by one, for an inspection of costumes. This is the first time the director has seen them "made up", and he is likely to have many suggestions. This wig isn't gray enough, that beard is too straggling, the dress over there isn't in character. Back go the actors to remedy these defects, and after a time the rehearsal is started.
Dress rehearsals invariably are prefaced by the managerial announcement that there will be no interruptions, but I have never seen an uninterrupted dress rehearsal. The leading man stops in the middle of a love scene to inquire what he shall do with his bouquet, or the leading woman to complain that the property man hasn't placed a bundle of letters where it ought to be. I remember that, when we came to the final rehearsal of "The Little Gray Lady", the manager, Maurice Campbell, finished his remarks about interruptions, and called upon the orchestra to begin the overture. The orchestra promptly struck up "The Dead March from Saul", and the forbidden interruption came on the spot.
"The interruption came on the spot"