AN ACADEMY FOR ACTORS.
WHEN the announcement was made a few days ago that Mr. Beerbohm Tree had founded an Academy of Dramatic Art, there was one question which, in the general chorus of approval and encouragement, apparently remained unconsidered. Clearly the movement initiated by Mr. Tree was likely to benefit the actor, or the would-be actor. The novice—possibly merely stage-struck, and possessed of no talent for acting—would be able to find out without the suffering usually involved whether or not he or she would be likely to succeed, adopting the stage as a profession. The really promising students would be drafted into touring com- panies, or possibly introduced without further ado to a London audience, in the same way in which so many actors and actresses have first come before the public. The difficulty experienced by a young man, possibly endowed with a genius for acting, in finding a manager willing to employ him would disappear, obviously to the mutual benefit of actor and manager alike. And so forth. Clearly•the Academy would be likely to make things better for the actor; but what of the playgoer? Would the Academy be likely to improve the acting of a play P Would it add to the number of really good actors ? Of course, expert teaching could make a ma*
into some kind of an elocutionist, or fencer, or dancer. Those are accessories of the art of acting, and their use can be taught ; the use of "gesture," for example, in a certain style of acting almost goes by rule-of-thumb. But can anybody teach, or can anybody be taught, how to act P
• In one of his most amusing tales, "The Sad Story of a Dramatic Critic," Mr. H. G. Wells describes the suffering inflicted upon a perfectly respectable young man who became stage-struck in the fullest and completest sense of the word. He was "a nice fellow, rather shy," and in love with a girl called Delia, who threw him over because of the change in his manners which ensued immediately after his first visit to the theatre. He became infected with theatricality, "although no one could be more alive to the arrant absurdity of the histrionic bearing." She meets him in the British Museum and asks for an explanation. " Involunbarily I clutched my diaphragm and averted my head (as is the way with them).— ' There,' she said.—' What do you mean ? ' I said, whispering in vocal italics—you know how they do it—turning on her, perplexity on face, right hand down, left on brow." She becomes more and more matter-of-fact and annoyed, and at last leaves him, finding it impossible to stand his changed manners any longer. He is speechless, unable to express what he really feels,—he is too deeply crusted with his new self. " Good-baye!' I said at last, watching her retreat- ing figure. How I hated myself for doing it! After she had vanished, I repeated in a dreamy way ' Good-baye ! ' looking hopelessly round me. Then, with a kind of heart- broken cry, I shook my clenched fist in the air, buried my face in my arms, and made my shoulders heave. Something within me said Ass!' as I did so." The end of it all is that he determines to go upon the stage. In the ordinary life he finds nobody regards him as either sane or sober; he is con- vinced that only upon the stage will he be taken seriously.
Of course, it is all satire ; but will any one, actor or play- goer, deny that behind the satire there is essential truth It is just that truth—the "theatricality" (there does not seem to be any other word) of most modern acting—which suggests the question we have asked: whether the new Academy will improve the prospects of the playgoer as surely as it will make things better for the actor. We have called it a " new " Academy, and advisedly. For it must be remembered, after all, that there has always existed an Academy for actors, ever since the days when the protagonist of the Agamemnon or the Electra shouted sonorous iambics through a hole in a mask, and stalked awkwardly in high-heeled buskins. It is the Academy of the stage itself. On the teaching and example of that Academy nearly all the modern traditions of acting have modelled themselves. Of course, stage management and the making of scenery have progressed a very long way since the time when an Athenian actor was recognised by the spectators to be a foreigner, or to have come from abroad, if he arrived on the stage from one side, ,and recognised to be a townsman, or living at home, if he entered from the other side. But there are still a large number of quaint conventions relating to gesture, habit, and voice which the old Academy—the stage itself—has faithfully perpetuated decade after decade, and which might be abolished by a new Academy without, probably, doing any very great damage to the sanctity of the drama. Most playgoers, with a little thought, could put a finger on a dozen of these conven- tions, to which they are so accustomed that they hardly think them ridiculous, but which if they occurred "in real life" would certainly excite surprise. For instance, it has happened before now that a young gentleman supposed to have been out shooting—his boots are usually quite speckless —has actually brought his gun into the drawing-room, or the boudoir, or the dining-room (he nearly always comes in through a French window), and there carefully extracted the cartridges; again, presumably, carrying on the traditions of the Greek stage. Even at a London theatre to-day (or at all events it was the case a few weeks ago) an Eton boy, who comes down late to breakfast, emerges from the breakfast-room in an Eton eleven cap and "blazer." Why? He would do nothing of the kind if he really were in the Eton eleven. But the school. boy is not the only stage personage who is invariably so con- spicuously labelled. There is the doctor, who never goes any- where without his hat, and who always accepts his fee as if he were pained at having to receive so mundane an expression
of gratitude, but was at the same time delighted to pocket the cash. Last, and perhaps worst and most offensive of stage conventions, there is the comic clergyman. He is commonly betrayed, with, on his part, an ill-concealed pleasure, into all sorts of compromising positions; and if he should be repre- sented as dining at table, the audience are exceptionally fortunate if he does not take more wine than anybody else. It is presumably the tradition of the old Academy that be should do so.
But there are other traditions and conventions : of voice and gesture chiefly, though there are tricks of pronunciation which are irritating. Mr. Wells'a description, "whispering in vocal italics," suggests one of them. How many playgoers have ever heard a friend or an acquaintance—at all events, an Englishman—hiss a sentence at the person whom he is threatening, or with whom he is arguing or quarrelling ? How often, again, do you ever see any one, in the course of an ordinary day's work or play or thought, strike an attitude, or use one of the many conventional gestures of the stage P The old Academy has taught its disciples quite a long series of gestures proper to different occasions,—gestures to express surprise, grief, perplexity, joy, anger, secrecy, and all the rest. How many people in "real life" use any gestures at all? Of course, nothing is more irritating to watch than an actor who does not know what to do with his hands, but it is even more exasperating when he does too much with them, or, what is worse, when you know exactly what he is going to do.
Is it true, then, or nearly true, that the old Academy, the stage itself, has had a bad influence on modern English acting ? Probably most of our best actors would admit that it has,—those actors, that is, whom it is a real pleasure to the playgoer to watch : quiet, restrained, easily beard, never using an unnecessary gesture: in a word, as naturally behaved on the stage as in their own drawing-rooms. If the new Academy can succeed in inculcating in its pupils more of the spirit which underlies this latter kind of acting, then it will deserve the thanks of actor and playgoer alike. At present it happens —and the fact should be set down to the discredit of the "old" Academy—that neither of the adjectives " stagey " or "theatrical" has a meaning which is complimentary. The new Academy, if successful, will have the distinction of making that meaning obsolete.
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