I do not think the profession to which I have the honour to belong has any necessity for a Dramatic Academy. Actors and actresses have come, and are constantly coming, to the front who have learnt their business at the best of schools—the stage, which is always self-instructing. It is not so much a lack of ability (which is the cause of a seeming lack of artists) as opportunity.
Cyril Maude thinks it necessary.
It seems to me that under the existing state of affairs, actors and actresses have to spend the best and most useful years of their life in a struggle to acquire a bare knowledge of the principles of their art. Could not the acquisition of this knowledge be aided and accelerated by a school in which, for reasonable terms, the beginner could learn the adjuncts of the art he has chosen, such as ease of carriage, how to speak properly (let us drop that misused word elocution, which only suggests the schoolgirl’s recitation), fencing, production of voice, dancing, etc., not forgetting how to make up? Then let the tyro go into the provinces, where he must gain a certain amount of experience with constant change of theatres and of audience week by week. Who will say that this preliminary training would not be of enormous advantage to the beginner? But surely this school should not profess to teach acting, but the different arts and accomplishments which go to help to make the actor.
Mr. Murray Carson is of opinion that the actor’s own discretion should be his tutor.
I do not think a Dramatic College is either practicable or necessary. You could not expect the public, or the critics, to attend a series of performances given by novices; and as constant appearances in public must outweigh all other forms of teaching, it would be more profitable to the beginner to join a provincial répertoire company, and thus come into nightly encounter with his final judges, the public, thereby learning the most essential quality of the art—how to make his personality and his particular form or method the master of their feelings. Now, as the personality of every actor differs, so, I contend, must his method vary, not only in what is termed the “reading” of a part, but also in the technique of his execution. If to become a mere walking, talking machine, be the object of a beginner, by all means let him be instructed in calisthenics and elocution, and the art of first-night speech-making; but to call such a combination of classes a School of Dramatic Art is degrading; it robs the calling of its highest attribute—imagination. Innate ability must undoubtedly be developed, “which nobody can deny,” but such an institution as is suggested would develop everything in the same form; and as there is no accepted standard to aim at, the result would be, so many impressions of the mind of the teacher, who might possibly be wrong. It is impossible to talk about learning to “walk the stage,” dancing, fencing, etc., etc., as being of sufficient importance to demand a national institution. I have known very fine actors who neither walked well nor spoke distinctly. A school supported by the profession, at which it would be possible for an actor to take lessons in any of these accessories from accredited masters, for a small fee, would be invaluable, but it could not by any possibility lay claim to the title “School of Dramatic Art.” After a few general hints, which are not in the nature of an academical lecture, Shakespeare himself says, in that memorable address to the players, “But let your own discretion be your tutor.” You cannot learn discretion, it must be the result of experience—an experience made up of hard work, many disappointments, self-analysis, and, above all, much patience.
Cecil Rayleigh does not believe in it.
I do not believe in an Academy of Acting, because I do not believe that the art of acting can be taught. The art of the actor is merely the faculty or instinct for simulation that everybody possesses in a greater or less degree. Every savage can simulate or imitate the cries of birds and beasts. Every savage can cover himself with a skin and stalk a herd of deer so disguised. But some savages do these things better than others. Every child, when it wants to thoroughly enjoy itself, plays at being something other than it really is. The girl takes a doll and plays at being a mother. The boy puts on a paper cocked hat and plays at being a soldier. We can all act more or less. Between Mr. Irving as King Lear, and the beggar who shivers on your door-step and swears that his wife and six children have not tasted food for a fortnight, the difference is one of degree, not of kind. The Pharisees of Scripture pretended to be what they were not, and got roundly denounced as hypocrites for their pains. As a fact, they were only incipient actors. The talk about teaching is, to my thinking, undiluted twaddle. The inherent desire to simulate grows, or it does not grow. You cannot make it grow. If a naturally awkward man can simulate the graces of a dancing master, if a naturally graceful man can simulate the limp of a cripple or the clumsiness of a hobbledehoy, if a comparative dwarf—like Kean—can assume the majesty of a monarch, then he is an actor. You may teach him to fence, and to dance, and to elocute till he is black in the face; you will never teach him to play “Othello” unless he is an actor. That fencing, dancing, and elocution are useful to the actor I do not deny. But if he is an actor he will pick these things up for himself easily enough under existing circumstances. A high development of the faculty for simulation necessarily implies a corresponding development in the faculty of observation. The actor sees, notes, and reproduces. That is to say, he simulates. Moreover, being an artist, he only reproduces just so much as is necessary. He need not study anatomy, and walk a hospital, in order to indicate with a few graphic gestures the cripple’s limp. Equally he need not be a superb swordsman in order to get through an effective stage combat. It is not absolutely essential that he should be elevated to the peerage before being permitted to play a duke. People talk about fencing, dancing, and elocution, as if actors had nothing to do but fence, dance, and spout. An actor has to simulate everything, from “shouts off” to a crowned king in the centre of the stage. As in all probability neither the unseen but angry shouters, nor the king, knew anything whatever of the acquirements alluded to, why should the actor bother about them? They do not help in the least. If he is an actor he can act. If he is not he can’t. In the old days when an actor had to go before the curtain between the weary acts of an interminable tragedy and engage in a broadsword combat or dance a hornpipe, I can understand the necessity for his having to be a swordsman and a dancer. But I do not see the use of those accomplishments now. In these days a man need not, like Mr. Gilbert’s “Jester,” always climb an oak to say “I’m up a tree.” In these days we prefer the actor who thinks to the actor who dances. The institution of an Academy of Acting would do one thing, and one thing only. It would deluge an already overcrowded profession with a flood of mediocre automatons.