Acting School Notes

The struggle of drama, in its own measure the same as the struggle of faith, is to become, and remain, interwoven with the life of the common man.

A student who takes part in the production of a play under really competent guidance gains a training that cannot be duplicated by any other means. It is, or should be, to him an educational experience of a high order, and no less truly educaational because it is pleasurable. His preliminary study of the character that he is to impersonate, his attempt to render that character completely in voice, action, and all the other means within his power, inevitably give him a broader and more searching knowledge of human nature - a keener sense of what is admirable and what is despicable. His imagination is quickened and developed healthily and normally. His sense of the varying values of words and of their expressivearrangement into sentences of speech is also quickened. His pronunciation of words, his articulation, and his enunciation are immensely improved (in all these the American student is notably and deplorably deficient.) His voice is also improved (the average American voice is nothing less than atrocious), and the improvement of this organ of individual expression is of the utmost value to him in society, in business, and in the development of his own personality. His use of his body and the coördination of of speech and bodily action, his bodily poise, his legitimate self-possession, all are immeasurably and beneficiently developed. Nothing can so well accomplish these very desirable results as can acting. In this light, acting becomes not a frivolous pastime, not a form of self-indulgence, not an effeminate diversion for those unable to participate in sterner activities, but an essential art, - dignified, educational, invaluable.

People laugh at truth.They don't laugh at cheap gags - they laugh deepest and loudest at their own foibles. The same is true in drama: they are looking to recognise human behaviour.

If there is one among my readers to whom the dim and dingy half-light of the theatre is dearer than the God-given radiance of the sunlight; if the burnt-out air with its indescribable odour, seemingly composed of several parts of cellar mould, a great many parts of dry rot or unsunned dust, the whole veined through and through with small streaks of escaped illuminating gas - if this heavy lifeless air is more welcome to your nostrils than could be the clover-sweetened breath of the greenest pasture; if that great black gulf, yawning beyond the extinguished footlights, makes your heart leap at your throat; if without noting the quality or length of your part the just plain, bald fact of "acting something" thrills you with nameless joy; if the rattle-to-bang of the ill-treated old overture dances through your blood, and the rolling up of the curtain on the audience at night is to you as the magic blossoming of the mighty flower - if these are the things you feel, your fate is sealed: Nature is imperious; and through the brain, heart, and nerve she cries to you, ACT! ACT! ACT! - and act you must!

If age may bring respect, then certainly the art of acting ought to rank among the honorable callings. But acting has something more than to recommend it to our favorable consideration. It has been regarded as an exponent of great mental culture among all enlightened nations. Acting is worthy of encouragement, because it is to-day our most intellectual public entertainment, and because it is a powerful factor in the highest and best civilizing influences of the world. Acting is worthy of consideration, because it strengthens, develops, and beautifies mentally all who study it as an art.

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.