STAGE TRAINING.

MOST old stagers view the academy, musical and dramatic, with a scepticism based on experience. " The only possible training for the stage is to be found on the actual boards," say many of them. Suggest to such that one is expected to sing right well before one can get beyond the stage-doorkeeper of the Royal Opera House, also that one is expected to do some honour to Terpsichore before adventuring for the last row of the ballet, or the chorus of some musical-flightiness, and the answer is : " Oh, yes, of course, but you can't teach people to act."

Personally, I consider three things absolutely necessary for the stage aspirant—first temperament, then character, and lastly training. The academy does not concern itself with the two former qualifications, because it is paid for the third, which is worthless without the other two. By temperament I mean the synchronism of the subjective with the objective mind which constitutes the faculty of the artist, or one that does creative work. If absent this faculty cannot be acquired, although when present it can often be developed to a great extent.

All artists live more in the subjective than the objective; hence they are often dubbed helpless, thriftless, impossible even, when judged by objective standards of utility ; the artist is a psychic, and is born such. This explains the importance of what I have called character, or those qualities of mind which conduce to equilibrium and harmony. No profession calla

for so much moral backbone as the profession, and because the liinelight of public opinion X-rays every little shortcoming of those who live in its glare, they are exposed to the darts of wanton wit. This harmonious balance is necessary to health, and that magnetism without which one bids in vain for public favour. One who is not a true psychic will attempt to drive emotion instead of letting the emotion express itself.

This comes out very plainly in kinematography. On one occasion a very good-looking premiere was intended to represent a delightful little heroine in a big British kinema production. The intentions were good, so was the photography. The little lady was intended to laugh with merriment at the gambols of a dog and join in a frolic, but there was only a stiff ambling down some steps with an expression that lacked all charm. Later, she was to express untellable grief by tears ; there was so much dabbing of dry eyes, with obvious respect for make-up, that an exhibitor at the trade show called out : " Oh, get on with it !" Then there was a switch-off, and the next turn of the handle disclosed lovely crystal drops at a favourable distance from the lashes. " Onions ! " growled a man beside me.

But on another occasion I saw an American actor, neither young nor good-looking, whose eyes overflowed with unaffected grief as he contemplated the Dead Sea fruit of prized effort. It was not merely the great tears tracing furrows down the worn face that moved us, so that we tasted the ashes of our own hopes over again ; it was the self-expressed emotion which drew a huge burst of applause from the buyers present, little given to anything but criticism. This technique—for it is that of the true artist—will move the most money-crusted heart, when the artistry of the impersonator, however carefully rehearsed, will leave us cold and unconvinced.

Now as to training. All my training off the stage was Continental ; what English training I had was on the stage itself. If we are to judge a tree by its fruit, then I am tempted to borrow a line from W. S. Gilbert to describe my experience of the product of musical and dramatic academies here : " Too much Theatre Royal back-drawing-room." On the Continent every candidate for a conservatoire is throughly tested, and only suitable material is selected for training ; but here all is grist that comes to the academical mill ; you pay at the door and go in. The result of such a system is chaos. At the conservatoire a student does not pay, and he has to work hard, or make way for some one else who will ; so that when he becomes a pensionnaire of a certain theatre, he does not find himself killed with hard work ; also, and this is a very important point, his salary begins at once.

Here are samples of the many I could cite of those who have the highest awards given by the academies : instrumentalists who cannot play an operatic accompaniment at sight ; vocalists who did not know the essential difference between speech and song. Recently a diplOmee in elocution asked my opinion of her rendering of Romeo in the bedroom scene which was about to be given to a select public. I listened with surprise to something between the wail of the banshee and the moan of the crl king. " My dear child," I ventured, " my actual experience of young men in love is, although their manner varies with nationality, that they all treat it as something rather pleasant than otherwise. I recollect an exception. A man once told me that he loved me with all his heart and soul, in exactly the same tones as if he had said : ' The 24 'bus goes to Hampstead.' Of course I couldn't believe him; neither do you convince me that I am listening to Shakespeare's Romeo." Then I dilated somewhat after the fashion of Mr. Louis N. Parker a short time ago, in his admirable article "Shakespeare on Stilts."

I was asked to do something to introduce a charming American, with a beautiful voice (by the way, there is no lack of beautiful voices), a student of New York and London, whose aspirations soared to prime donne at Covent Garden to begin with. Her method was a simplification of musical theory and practice ; for instance, she used only one expression-mark, which was ad lib. I never found out what time signatures she favoured, but I remember that they dispensed with a musical director, and that she informed me that there wasn't such a thing as a double-dotted crotchet. I would rather not expatiate on her habit of treating a composer as a negligible quantity ; I still feel sore about it.

W. S. Gilbert once set the English stage ablaze by declaring that there was not an actor on it who could make a thirty-line speech interesting. It only showed what he must have an &rad

as a producer to have overlooked such diction as that of Sir J. Forbes-Robertson, Tree, Waller, and others. And that reminds me to pass on some advice that was given to me in my early days: " Embrace every opportunity to hear good English." listened to University dons, celebrated Q.C.'s, eminent politicians, famous preachers, and went much oftener to the theatre than I do now, and I came to the conclusion that with perfect diction no language excels English for oratory.

But the diction of those turned out by the dozen from the academies ! I have listened in wonderment to the shuttlecock use of the letter " r." With the vocalists there seems to be a sort of rule when in doubt to roll it out. With others it is, " When in doubt leave it out." We do need a school where the grammar of diction is thoroughly taught, where deportment is completely mastered, for it is not the business of the stags manager or producer to teach stagecraft to would-be actors and actresses: The italics are those of a London producer struggling with an unsuitable product from one of the academies, who informed him with all the sweetness imaginable that she couldn't laugh, couldn't cry, couldn't scream. I think that the London stage managers and producers are generally marvels of courtesy and monuments of patience.

I recollect a celebrated playwright who was helping in the production of his piece. An actress had to kneel insupplication The stage manager, looking doubtful, siKitested " Try again," several times. The author said the posture did not give the lines he wanted in the suppliant figure. Could it be in the dress ? Then followed an attempt to rearrange the draperies, till the lady, rising, said with some asperity : " Mr. A. B. C., Nature has not made me in such a fashion that I can do what you seem to require." Yet all that was wrong was that the actress should have dropped on the other knee for that side of the stage.

I consider the best training available to suitable candidates is to be found in the chorus of musical comedy. !fere the beginner learns to wear clothes—a most important item—to move with grace and freedom, and cultivate charm of manner. It is in serious work that improved training is necessary. Inadequate at present, it will not meet the requirements of the future ; the laws that govern pronunciation and oratio versa. will have to mean more to the stage aspirant than they do at present.

If such diction as is sometimes heard here in classical work were offered to the Parisian, all the contents of the vegetable market would be requisitioned to express his disapproval Blank verse is quite familiar to one who has studied prosody, and is much easier to scan than French verse with its metric syllable ; yet what would be thought of a student from the conservatoire who lumbered through the works of Corneille, Racine, Moliere, and the latest masterpieces of modern classics ?

My opinion is that the system of the conservatoire is the only one that can furnish adequate training for the stage.

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