Stage Confidences: Talks About Players and Play Acting

only happen in a play!" and yet it's surprising how often actors receiv

e, and gesture; and the one action of drawing the knee up into her clasping arms, and then swaying the body mechanically from side to side, while muttering rapidly to herself, thrilled the audience with the conviction of her affliction more subtly than words cou

he fashion then, stopped and half rose from their places. It was a dreadful moment! Somehow I kept a desperate hold upon my strained and st

Clara Morris in

is an audience-those people, brought to their feet in an agony of terror, of fire, panic, and sudden death by a woman's cry, now at that familiar tap, tap, tap, broke here and there in

moment, and said, "Good girl, good girl!" and I, pleased, deprecatingly remarked, "It was the

heer her up (Heaven save the mark!) and help her to forget her dreadful and recent experience of placing her own mother in an insane asylum. Learned, too, that her very first suspicion of that p

all unexpectedly that dread scene was reproduced be

, volatile style of acting, and he had a high opinion of his power as a maker of fun; so that he was considerably ann

lking to himself, and ran against Mr. Lewis and me, as we were just about "going on." Instantly he exclaimed, "Look here! look here!" taking from his vest poc

I've toiled over him till I sweat like a harv

a graven image"; while Lewis sugge

t look here now, you're a deucedly funny pair; just turn yourselves loose in this scene. I'll protect y

the star had failed. I seized one moment in which to notify old man Davidge of what was

es they knew the actors had taken the bit between their teeth and were off on a mad race of fun. Everything seemed to "go." We three knew one another well. Each saw another's idea and caught it, with the certainty

mad?" to the little Frenchman whom he had made prompter because he could not speak English well enough to prom

tthews's protection, we grinned cheerfully at him and continued on our downward path. At last we r

gh. Yes, he was moving! his face wore some faint expression; but-but he was turnin

whole business was that man in the box; while Mr. Daly angrily declared, "The man in the box co

ngs under his breath; and then Mr. Matthews, exclaiming with wonder, told us he had been playing for years in a farce where th

s found to reflect a s

ion: Charl