Theatrical work means too much work or none. It is a great strain to play eight times a week, to dress eight times at each performance, as in a Drury Lane drama, and to rehearse a new play or give a matinée performance as well, and yet this has to be done when the work is there, for what one refuses, dozens, aye dozens, are waiting eagerly to take. Far more actors and actresses are “resting” every evening than are employed in theatres, poor souls.
“Resting!” That word is a nightmare to men and women on the stage. It means dismissal, it means weary waiting—often actual want—yet it is called “resting.” It spells days of unrest—days of dreary anxiety and longing, days when the unfortunate actor is too proud to beg for work, too proud even to own temporary defeat—which nevertheless is there.
A long run of luck, the enjoyment of many months, perhaps years, when all looked bright and sunny, when money was plentiful and success seemed assured, suddenly stops. There is no suitable part available, new blood is wanted in the theatre, and the older hands must go. Then comes that cruelly enforced “rest,” and, alas! more often than not, nothing has been laid by for the rainy day, when £10 a week ceases even to reach 10s. Expenses cannot easily be curtailed. Home and family are there, the actor hopes every week for new work, he refuses to retrench, but lives on that miserable farce “keeping up appearances,” which, although sometimes good policy, frequently spells ruin in the end.
Photo by Bassano, 25, Old Bond Street, W.
MRS. BEERBOHM TREE.
Some of the best actors and actresses of the day are forced into this unfortunate position; indeed, they suffer more than the smaller fry—for each theatre requires only one or two stars in its firmament. Theatrical folk are sometimes inclined to be foolish and refuse to play a small part for small pay, because they think it beneath their dignity, so they prefer to starve on their mistaken grandeur, which is, alas! nothing more nor less than unhappy pride.
Clara Morris, one of America’s best-known actresses, shows the possible horrors, almost starvation, of an actress’s early years in her delightful volume, Life on the Stage.