Gordon Craig on Ellen Terry ARTS

INTERVIEWED BY PETER BROOK

Gordon Craig and Peter Brook met towards the end of Craig's life; he was eighty-four when he recorded this conversation for Granada Tele- vision in 1956. It has not, however, been shown and has never been published before. In this shortened version, Craig discusses his mother, Ellen Terry, and Henry Irving at the Lyceum, where Craig himself worked before abandoning his brief career as an actor. From 1900 to 1904, Craig designed a series of revo- lutionary productions in London, ending with a season at the Imperial Theatre in Westmin- ster; but Craig's ideas were too startling for a theatre still dominated by Irving, and shortly aftirwards he left England for good to live and work in Europe. He designed 'Hamlet' for Stanislaysky at the Moscow Arts Theatre in 1912; Peter Brook's 'Hamlet for the Shakespeare Memorial Company was produced at the same theatre forty-four years later.

PETER BROOK We were talking about Irving; what I wanted to ask you was this: with Ellen Terry, did he actually show you how he wanted the scene played or did he leave her alone in the mise en scene and leave it all to her?

GORDON CRAIG Well, you know, as a matter of fact I have never seen a rehearsal of him and her alone.

PH Really?

cc No never, therefore I cannot answer and nobody can know. But I think it is very

likely that he would plan such and such entrances, but no more. She would see the scene and immediately have quick ideas how to put the scene to good use.

PB What about in rehearsals with Ellen Terry —did he tell her exactly what to do?

cc Nothing. . . . He probably would ask her and then not do what she said. But he would find out her mind about everything. That was a wonderful partnership because it was like a person who plays the piano, bass and treble, duet. The two know each other so well, they do not say, 'What are you going to play next?'

PB Why have you never written about her act- ing in the way you have written about Irving?

cc Because I really cannot analyse it. I cannot analyse his very much, but his was so much

made. Men like those things which are made

much more than the spontaneous things which you cannot trace. They love following

that. I believe writers who talk about other writers, it is their technique they are in- terested in. Now, with a woman you simply can't follow it. I do not know, I have not seen Peggy Ashcroft, neither have I seen Edith Evans, but I'll bet your boots you can't follow them—isn't it so?

PR Absolutely true!

cc And it is right. But you can with a man, however good he is. We have a great actor doing these mechanical things very cleverly, then in comes the actress and collars the whole thing. God, it is a little thing for them, but certainly exasperating!

PB Did she ever plan her performances—or was she completely intuitive?

GC Nobody ever asked me that—it is an in- teresting point.

PB Did she vary much from one performance to the other?

oc I don't think so. She writes in her memoirs of how she thought she had acted simply vilely on the first night of Hamlet and she was so desperate at the end of this mad scene that she got hold of her old maid and jumped into a hansom with her clothes on like Ophelia and drove up and down the Embankment in a state of misery.

PB Good heavens!

oc She thought she had spoiled the play, she thought she'd let Irving down, she thought the public was going to hiss her. I don't know what she didn't think.

PB And was it a success?

GC Wonderful, of course. Not only a success, but she had acted splendidly. . . . I saw her play that the last time she ever acted it at Drury Lane.

PB That was when you were working on Hamlet?

oc I don't know, about the same time, but I remember coming over to Drury Lane and I went into the corner where the prompt box is and there I found Lady Tree. She was very sweet and all that, but her eyes were glued on Ophelia and so were mine. I had not been in England and hadn't seen my mother act for years. . . . I used to worry about this Ophelia, and used to think this or that would be good, and that would be splendid and so on, but the moment I saw her walk on, the whole thing was like wiping a slate off with a wet towel, nothing left in my mind. For years I had been work- ing and that's a lesson for you and me, you who are a producer, I who am now only a back number, but this is a lesson to us to watch very carefully a good actor and not to suggest anything to him.

PB Quite true.

oc Isn't it true? Yes.

Edward Gordon Craig in 1948.

PB That most likely was what Irving was wise enough to do.

cc Oh yes, he would suggest to my mother, for instance, he suggested and it is so written

in her book. I think, too, she had great ideas

of playing the mad scene in Ophelia in a black dress. When he asked her what she

was going to wear, she said that. and be said, 'Dear me, dear me—most interesting,' and walked away. Two minutes later an old actor came up and said, 'Irving tells me that you are going to play Ophelia in a black dress. But, my dear madam, don't you know there can be only one black figure in this play?' All that sounds exaggerated and stupid, but it is true, isn't it?

PB So what happened in the end?

cc Of course she did nothing, but wore white. PB Belonging to the Irving theatre, how did she take to your ideas when you were starting?

cc She thought I'd gone mad! She was a little frightened and she used to shake her hair and look sad and sore. 'And besides,' she said, 'he's left the stage and he was a born actor, nothing can come of this.' But later on, after four or five years passed, she came right round and then she stood up for me through thick and thin and she said, 'Now 1 understand.' She really was very serious about it. . . .

PB But when you did the season at the [Im- perial Theatre] Westminster, was she happy then?

cc Yes, but not so much. It was when she found it was difficult for people to under- stand. She still had doubts about me but it was only when 1 began to write my books. Then she read these books—she'd mark them and then she'd give them back to me. I'd see them, or somehow I'd get hold of them and I'd find that it was then that she'd understood. I'd put the year at 1907, but it was 1903 that 1 was working with her in a theatre.. .

Ps Were her friends shocked . . . ?

cc No, I don't think so. Irving said he was, but he was getting very old.

PH Did he come to see her?

GC I don't know. I don't think so,mbut I think he must have spoken to a few people about it. He must have said, 'What is this damn nonsense being done down at that theatre?' But then Irving was like that, and anything Irving did, we who survived him are pre- pared to accept and kiss the great hand whatever.he might do and whatever he said. Because we remain, all of us, very loyal to him.

PB What were Ellen Terry's tastes off the stage?

GC Her private life was very much to her . . . One of her great excitements was to come across a little cottage in the country, driving by. She always wanted to have a cart and a horse, get in and drive. Then she'd see a house, she'd get down, go in and say, 'Excuse me, may I come in for a moment?' . . . And then she'd say, 'I suppose this soilage isn't for sale, is it?' Disgraceful thing, you know, that was her passion, going in and asking whether she couldn't get this cottage or that. . . .

PB How did she live in London? What was her London house like?

cc Well, after the Lyceum closed she was so much on her own, and she used to go to America and so on and I think, as her

daughter and son bad gone away, she no longer wanted a house. So she lived jn an apartment somewhere near the Coliseum Theatre. I know she used to go over there and very much enjoy looking in the., box office and asking Mrs Stoll for a seat. . . . I remember we got home one night, and she forgot which floor she lived on, so she went up to the third floor, into a little passage which was the same as on the second floor and began to try the key. The key would not go in and so she rang the bell. 'There must be somebody in,' and a man opened the door and said, 'What do you want?' 'Oh,' she said, 'my heavens, I am in the wrong thing,' and down she went....

PB You know, we have got one thing in com- mon: we both did Hamlet in Moscow. When was yours?

cc When was mine? 1912!

n Mine was three months ago.

cc And I will tell you another thing, you did yours quickly. How long did you take to prepare it in London?

PB Three months.

GC We took two years and a half up in Mos- cow, but that's Moscow, isn't it?

PB God, yes!

oc And I am not so sure that we aren't both wrong. I think we should take either five or six years over it or, say, one day.

PB The question I want to ask you is, as we are both producers, do you think that pro- ducers are necessary? Nobody believes they are.

cc Why, yes and no. Yes—very necessary where dealing with actors who have not and do not belong to a tradition such a§, we'll say, commedia dell'arte, where every word or cue is understood by the others and they can pick it up as easy as a woman when she is knitting. Then it is not necessary. And with the perfection of actors it may not be necessary, but we are in such a miserable state today. It is, of course, absolutely neces- sary for someone who is a very harsh direc- tor, like yourself, with a big stick to beat the actors, to guide the actors.

PB You bate actors, don't you?

cc Hate actors? I adore them! I like them, they have so many faults. . . . I come from a theatre actors' family—you remember my mother and my aunts and uncles and my grandmother and grandfather, they all were actors. Therefore how should I do anything but love the actors!

PB . . . Did you ever tell Irving about your ideas of scenery?

oc No, I would rather have gone down a trap at the Lyceum than have mentioned any- thing like that—I was too young!

PB . . . Did he know what you were doing, Irving?

cc No. Of course, he may have seen and been horrified, furious! When he got old, he got rather sad, and then a little bit bitter, I think. But he was such a great man that we need not bother whether he was bitter. What he said about you or me doesn't matter a fig.

PB Was he a good producer of actors?

oc Oh, magnificent, provided he could do it all himself. He went here, he went there, be would not have cared where he went. And according to where he went and what he said, the rest had to fit into it. You do exactly the same, I do exactly the same, only we do not go on to the stage.