Baskets full of dramatic efforts are emptied by degrees, and the few promising productions they contain are duly handed over to the manager for his final opinion.
In spite of the enormous number of plays submitted yearly, every manager complains of the dearth of suitable ones.
CHAPTER XV
THEATRICAL DRESSING-ROOMS
A Star’s Dressing-room—Long Flights of Stairs—Miss Ward at the Haymarket—A Wimple—An Awkward Predicament—How an Actress Dresses—Herbert Waring—An Actress’s Dressing-table—A Girl’s Photographs of Herself—A Grease-paint Box—Eyelashes—White Hands—Mrs. Langtry’s Dressing-room—Clara Morris on Make-up—Mrs. Tree as Author—“Resting”—Mary Anderson on the Stage—An Author’s Opinion—Actors in Society.
AFTER ascending long flights of stone stairs, traversing dreary passages with whitewashed walls, and doors on either side marked one, two, or three, we tap for admission to a dressing-room.
Where is the fairy pathway? where the beauty?—ah! where? That long white corridor resembles some passage in a prison, and the little chambers leading off it are not very different in appearance from well-kept convict cells, yet this is the home of our actors or actresses for many hours each day.
In some country theatres the dressing-rooms are still disgraceful, and the sanitary arrangements worse.
Even in London it is only the “stars” who have an apartment to themselves. At such an excellently conducted theatre as the Haymarket, Miss Winifred Emery has to mount long flights between every act. Suppose she has to change her costume four times in the play, she must ascend those stone stairs five times in the course of each evening, or, in other words, walk up two hundred and fifty steps in addition to the fatigue of acting and the worry of quick changing, while on matinée days this exertion is doubled. She is a leading lady; she has a charming little room when she reaches it, and the excitement, the applause, and the pay of a striking part to cheer her—but think of the sufferers who have the stairs without the redeeming features. An actress once told me she walked, or ran, up eight hundred steps every night during her performance.
While speaking of dressing-rooms I recall a visit I paid to Miss Geneviève Ward at the Haymarket during the run of Caste (1902). It was a matinée, and, wanting to ask that delightful woman and great actress a question, I ventured to the stage door and sent up my card.