I read that on a sign in the waiting room of Daly’s Theatre, more than thirty-five years ago, and I made up my mind if ever I had a theatre of my own I’d put it up where my actors could see it,—and I did. It’s over the Call Board at my theatre now. The second maxim I would teach actors is this: ‘Never fake on the stage. The public will always catch you and never forgive you!’”
“The day of the drunken actor, like that of the drunken statesman and the drunken doctor, has gone forever.”
“Try with all your might to think sweet and happy thoughts—and in time you will come to have faith in real things and so will understand life.”
“Life is very short, and happiness an elusive will-o’-the-wisp—a wraith of the night of Time who beckons and beckons, and when we try to follow him, escapes us very easily.”
“The ‘star’ actors of to-day lack that careful schooling and full equipment conspicuous in all the great ‘stars’ of twenty-five, thirty, fifty years ago, and which is to be acquired only through the old-time stock system. According to the method of those days, it was never possible for the actor to play the same part many times in succession. He was obliged to demonstrate ability not only in many parts but through a period of many years, and thus to establish himself deservedly in the good opinion of the public.... I doubt whether any of the young ‘stars’ could play as many and as great a variety of parts and play them as well as the ‘stars’ of former days,—although striking successes are made repeatedly in characters especially written for some particular ‘star.’ ...”
“In the old days we frequently produced plays with hardly anything at all to enhance them, either scenery or properties, but merely by a judicious use of clothes and lighting we made them effective: we did this because we did not have means to do them correctly. Nowadays, productions so made are hailed as novelties and the wonders of the age!”
“I maintain that the great thing, the essential thing, for a producer is to create Illusion and Effect. The supreme object in all my work has been to get near to nature; to make my atmosphere as real as possible, when I am dealing with a drama or a comedy of life. In mounting a fantastic play there is but one thing to do, and that is to be as fantastic as possible. And so, in a realist play to be as realistic as possible. And by this I mean to create the illusion of reality. To do that every scene must be treated as a separate, a new, problem,—and the setting of it so as to create illusion is a problem that will never be solved by the ‘new art.’... When I set a scene representing a Child’s Restaurant how can I expect to hold the attention of my audience unless I show them a scene that looks real? They see it, recognize it, accept it and then, if the actors do their part, the audience forgets that it isn’t looking into a real place. In ‘Marie-Odile’ some benches, chairs, tables, a pot of carrots and a few other things, with the bare walls of the convent, were all we needed. But suppose I had tried to put ‘Adrea’ on in the same way? Let us cut our cloth to suit our pattern. Do not let us attempt to ‘suggest’ a Child’s Restaurant by setting up a counter with a coffee cup and a toothpick on it, nor try to picture the court of a Roman emperor with the same bare simplicity that answers for a lonely convent in Alsace!...”
“After all, hard work, a little love, courage to go on, strength to fight the daily battle,—what more can a man ask?”
