Stage affairs in America today

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II. The Business Manager

HIS TRUE MISSION.

It is not the spirit of commercialism itself that can ever stand a menace to a healthy progression in art endeavor; that, to the contrary, is its essential benefactor ; but it is the ambitious strife to arrest, through loose integrity and a sacrifice of approximate idealism, the true mission of the high purposes of these conditions, and by the official force of monopolistic measure to gain and hold in close controlment the righteous freedom and natural legality of individual endeavor for supremacy, practised through the lawful ways and means of honesty, thrift and genuineness. To-day we are fast building commercial jails, and stuffing them with imprisoned wealth and empty notoriety. And yet the condition of equal opportunity has never before been so apparent and accessible as it is to-day. And the possibility of this most desirable condition has been due in no small measure to the beneficence of many individuals, who, in their quality of commercial importance, are ignorantly misjudged and abused by the very ones to whom they open a highway of plain direction, if such would but follow, and not transgress its roadway. I admire and believe in an honest fight for individual supremacy; but as bitterly despise the vain supremacy that finds its ends through doubtful integrity and a disregard for approximate idealism.

In America to-day very nearly every condition and phase of the theatre that might and should tend * towards placing its institutions on a high standard of business integrity, establishing a criterion in the composition and exhibition of dramatic material, and raising its expositors, the actors, to a just significance of the title "artist," — as one professing proper skill in the true accomplishment of a fine art, — nearly all such conditions and phases have become subservient to, or are wholly immersed in, the one predominant stipulation — irregular commercialism. While, when applied to the legitimate and necessary occupations in life (where actual needs are at the dictatorial dispensation of presumptuous control), such a condition is most deplorable and more freely open to censure, notwithstanding, in matters of art publication and exhibition directly affecting the moral and mental condition of the people, it should be none the less exempt from just criticism and an honest solicitation towards approximate adjustment..

Business is trade; buying and selling to realize a profit. A man is in business to make money. The theatre manager is no exception to this rule. If, with his business tact, he combines artistic tendencies and advances them to his common benefit, it is indeed a happy condition. But we look only for business qualities in the theatre manager. As a business man conducting a first-class establishment, buying and selling, — trading, — his all-important requisite should be integrity. He should deal in pure, unadulterated goods. He is dealing in a luxury, in a way, an extravagance. It is not, of course, a necessity strictly speaking. From a purely business point of view he might be classed, in just importance, with the wine merchant and the tobacconist; or any tradesman that, in an indulgence of his wares, in any degree, such gratification necessarily takes the form of a luxury.

In a way, the theatre merchant has the greater trust. He has in charge the mental and moral factors of the public he sells to. The wine merchant and the tobacconist perhaps satisfy first the appetite; they furnish first a sensual feast, which, if abused, it is true might readily impair, not only the physical condition, but the mental and moral agents as well. The theatre merchant supplies a feast also; it is a visual, intellectual one, but which, if offered in an impure, adulterate form, might easily assail the mental and moral agents. All of these merchants deal in luxuries, which, if impure and adulterated, become a menace to society, producing an evil condition. Their trusts are solemn ones. Perhaps you will say, the wine merchant and the tobacconist are dealing in tangible stable goods, while the theatre merchant deals only in unfixed, vacillating material. You will not be altogether wrong at this day in saying so. But right does not always consist of what is, but rather what might and should be.

The theatre should be a methodic business, not a speculative chance. It should be a durable playhouse in the keeping of honest, staid merchantmen, not a trifling plaything in the hands of feverish, changeable gamesters. Every reputable merchant to maintain his custom must keep his goods pure and unadulterated. The merchant, if he be honest, will, when offering a new line of goods to his customers and smaller dealers, be careful of the quality before he offers it. He will put it to a test. Even then it does not always meet favor with his custom; but if he be honest, he quickly withdraws it. The customer will seldom complain. He may say that the goods do not come up to his expectation, and he prefers not to handle them. He may offer no explanation. The merchant he has received them from has his confidence. He knows of his integrity, and such an occurrence could not sever their bond of trade.

The theatre manager does not recognize any special test of the goods he is about to dispense. He says, "We never know till we have tried a play whether it will go or not." He means by that, make money or not. If, when he has tried it, the public and press unite in repelling it, in refusing to handle it, does the theatre manager always quickly withdraw it? In a few cases, where it is a hopeless failure beyond any dispute, he may perhaps; but generally speaking he resorts to methods to force his goods upon unknowing customers. He sets to work play- jobbers to hack and hew and patch up again; to interpolate, regardless of congruity, just proportions and continuity; any means that may lead to a readjustment of his pecuniary outlay and a hope of ultimate remunerative gain on imperfect, unsatisfactory material. He discriminate^ and indiscriminately fills his theatre night after night with the show of patronage. He appropriates from press clippings fragments of sentences and falsely applies them in advertising purposes to deceive the public, his customers. He forces an unwarranted number of performances, and then prepares to send his salesmen ahead to delude his foreign buyers into purchasing his latest line of goods. He often supplies the places of superior, high-priced actors with inferior, lowpaid talent. He cuts and trims where he can, and then advertises the complete production, with its original cast. This is not business integrity, and it does not deserve success. But it too often attains its end, — satisfying box-office receipts. But it is truly a condition of irregular commercialism.

In this great expansive country, the existence of trusts, if they are honest in purpose and method, is a condition much to the public's good. Indeed, it becomes almost a necessity in facilitating large operations. But if a trust is not honest, the extent of the evil it is capable of committing is in just proportion to the rnonstrousness of the corporation itself. It is the vicious spirit of monopoly that is to be dreaded. That spirit, evident at the inception, transmits to its offspring, the trust, the same disposition. That condition, uncorrected and animated through disregard of integrity, grows into the corrupt monster that must feed on the vitality of its smaller species if it would subsist. When it has sufficiently devoured this sustenance, and corrupted it hopelessly by contaminating embodiment, and nothing more remains to glut its abnormal craving, it decays in the natural stagnancy of its corruptness, and carries along with it all that has succumbed to its tyranny.

For what it has consumed and unremittingly destroyed, it makes no restitution. But if this trust be honestly fathered, it transmits an inheritance of good, which, if uprightly pursued, and its offspring not liable of seizure and surrender to this vicious spirit, grows into a vast beneficence. If the natural area of its activity encroaches on its smaller kind, it makes reparation for its trespass by the added advantages, facilities and reasonableness of charges offered to its beneficiaries, the public. If its practices be regular and the material it dispenses honest, this is lawful competition and beneficent. It does not seek to prevent competition; it invites and exhilarates it by the mere fact of its regularity and honesty. The men who conduct the business are honest, the ones who furnish the counters are honest, and the ones who dispense the goods are honest, even though they may all contain one head. Every moral and lawful obligation is fulfilled to the purchasers. If the business of the theatre could be relieved of speculation, dishonesty and charlatanry, and placed in the power of honest business managers, dealing with honest playwrights, and dispensing through honest actors, all working through the offices of trusts honestly fathered, it would truly lead to the proper adjustment of the theatre in America, and by the integrity of its providers, relieve the compliant and indulgent public of any further show of indiscreet civility. Such a state of affairs is impossible now, of course. The stipulated conditions must be steadily and healthily brought to a fixedness and realization of their just importance.

Merited independence can not be despotically set aside. It must either sink or succumb to the irregularities and practices of that despotism first. Monopoly is contrary to nature, and consequently only nature herself can best provide the condition that shall dethrone its tyranny. You cannot supplant it otherwise except by the triumph of enforced despotic competition of another monopoly, that must in time become as vicious as the one overthrown. To advance the theatre to the true dignity and rightful power that would claim the respect of all honest trade, it should be represented by merchants whose purposes and methods exemplify in highest meaning the word "integrity." Integrity of the individual in an honest fight for supremacy. If that individual stands for the dominant power of some big combination, just to the extent that the scope of his trust offices exceeds that of the single-handed individual, just to that farther reaching and broader extent becomes he capable of benefiting the public and the class of workmen he must employ, which means still farther an accrued advantage to the general condition of workingmen. But he must be genuinely honest. Then, the trust creates and speeds good. But if dishonest, it must equally retard and demoralize any possible prospect of lasting benefit.

While the theatre manager should have positive views, and exercise the right to judge as to what material shall be exhibited from his stage, he should never presume to manage the preparation and exposition of it. That he may suggest or advise in quiet counsel is perfectly proper and desirable; but the affairs of the stage should be completely under the executive control of a competent stage manager. Each should amicably serve as a balance to the conservatism or liberalism of the other. We should do away with stage synonyms ; the stage director, the play producer, the actor-manager (the Pooh Bah of the theatre), who too often leaves no mark of future regard save the self-satiation of his personal vanity. We except, of course, a few of the great minds that have lent distinction and insured future worth to the stage. But they are few, and even with some of them it is questionable whether any positive benefit can accrue the future state of the stage through the greatness of actor-managers, who, in their autocratic insistence of a condition of complete subserviency to their predominant mentality, have checked and suffocated any apparent audacity of individuality fighting for deserved supremacy.

But to revert to the manager and now briefly discuss the tangibility of the material at the disposal of this theatre merchant. He conducts an art store. In the material he handles he is greatly reliant on a judicious employment and association with playwright, actor, musician, singer, scenic artist, art mechanics ; and, in the provident production of their crafts. If these workers be proficient in their separate vocations, if they have prepared (before they profess to practise) their arts, if they be reliable, and honestly endeavor to best aid the manager and serve his patrons, the results of such purpose must be of tangible, stable worth, and sterling material to traffic in. But if they be incompetent, charlatans and dishonest, brazenly intruding into such domains, unprepared, unpractised, without even having served an apprenticeship, their wares consequently sink to the state of unfixed, vacillating worthlessness. To exhibit such material is hazarding a chance. It is mere speculation. It is dishonest. If the manager is cognizant of such existing conditions (and of course he often must be), he so declares himself a trickster. If he wishes to be faithful and honest to the best purposes of his trust and to his public, -he would neither employ nor associate with any craftsman whose work did not possess the quality of tangible, stable worthiness. It is to be lamented that this condition of unpreparedness and incompetency exists almost exclusively in the vocations of the actor and the playwright, the two conditions of all that should be found most thoroughly prepared and proficient. The arts of scene painter, musician, and even mechanic are virtually pursued with much more general methodical preparation, progression and finish than are those of actor and playwright. What wonder, then, that the spectacular and musical element of stage production predominates to-day. It is by virtue of a natural right. Not until the condition of actor and playwright be raised to a status of self-evinced import, and some guarantee of fixedness attached to their liableness in the practise of their profession, just so long as these channels are open to the reckless intrusion of any mean applicant that has become possessed with a desire to write plays and act, unmindful of his lack of any proper degree of preparation or fitness to engage in such nice occupations, and just so long as the business manager will hazard a chance with such, through his speculative greed to seek quick pecuniary advantage, just so long there can be no healthy drama, nor any tangible worth attached to the trade of the theatre manager, nor any consequent dignity, importance and just respect shown for the institution he conducts — the theatre.

Assure the public of your integrity of purpose, and even if your production does not always come up to highest expectation, that public will not censure nor forsake you. It will leniently overlook the momentary relapse, and rest content in the assurance that the next offering will attain the standard of excellence which your integrity has taught them to expect. If it be argued that the supply cannot always meet the demand, I would reply that there lie unused hundreds of classic and standard dramas, high-class comedies, opera bouffe and burlesques, which in the hands of the skilled playwright and musician, aided by the adept stage manager, could, by expert uses of modern appliances, equipments and mechanical devices of the theatre of to-day, be reconstructed into highly approved, intellectual and relishable entertainment. At all events, they would be preferable to the inane, plotless fabrications of vulgar action and verbal slush concocted by brazen incompetency. Famous musicians and distinguished librettists have lent their art and talents to the building of opera bouffe and burlesque; now lost arts, emerged in the hectic whirl of distorted dialect, monkey grimaces and insolent ridicule masquerading as satire. Honesty and integrity in the business manager would move him to promote the former to the exclusion of the meaningless medley of current amusement that disturbs the best purposes of the theatre to-day. Such action would inspire an awakening to higher efforts in playwriting, and the ultimate results of such endeavor would furnish reliable material; tangible art goods. The theatre merchant then might take his place amongst the foremost tradesmen of the day. In his integrity and bid for public trust and confidence, it would not be unusual to find him presiding at some distinguished board of direction. Such a condition of reliable theatre traffic, either independently conducted, or through the channels of honest combination, free from the irregular practices of base monopoly and selfish gain, would eventually place the theatre in unquestioned repute as a public benevolence and educator, and would ever foreshow, an inheritance to others, and not alone tell, the mere momentary possession of individual personality and speculative flurry.

Number Three of " Stage Affairs," appearing January 29, 1907, concerns:

THE ACTOR.

THE QUALITY OF HIS IMPORTANCE.

Two Copies Received i -jCopyriffht Efitry

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—BY- ALLEN DAVENPORT.

III. The Actor

THE QUALITY OF HIS IMPORTANCE.

In the best type of American actor we find a person broad-minded, generous and charitable; of high intellect, becoming deportment and social import. He maintains with all a compliant nature, that attracts to him readily consequential men and women, ever demanding profit and entertainment from his companionship. In freely yielding to this condition, a serious devotion to a proper progression in his art must often necessarily be set aside, in surrendering to a few, the time, talents and nervous energy that should rather be constantly cared for, increased and expended on the many who make up the public to whom this actor must ever be a conscientious and .faithful, albeit fearless, servant. It is in the condition of this type of actor — if self-devoted and determined to attain the highest approximate state of perfection in the pursuit of his art — that the American stage might easily claim, at least, a predictive condition of excellence, foretelling with great surety a future of exalted and permanent worth in the conduction of its truly useful and beneficial institution, the theatre.

There exists another type of actor in America. He emblemizes the quality shown in the vast multitude of vagrant incumbents lounging on the unsound, tinseled frailty of an unseemly abuse of the institution and art, whose proper aims should rather stir them to an appreciation and effective use of the true resources and talents claiming a legitimate relation to the vocation that viciously they have slumped into. These men and women have no settled aim, no serious inclination. They entered into their calling with few natural attributes to recommend them, and they remain in it with few inclinations to pursue it, except to satisfy a mere sensual craving to be in it, and to enjoy the more or less unrestrained freedom and careless companionship that such a general nomadic life affords, regardless, and at the expense, of any expenditure of energy, and concentrated application of thought, to utilize their idle moments, and "resting" respites, towards elevating their conditions both as actors and as men. To this type of actor it is considered time enough to study a part when he gets a chance to play it Then when the chance comes, he is more intent on playing it first, and studying it afterwards (if, indeed, he does even then). To get work is his all-absorbing thought. To receive remuneration his all-important necessity. The means by which he is to attain these conditions, and the question as to his qualifications to rightfully assume the practice of the essential demands made upon him as an artist, are of minor importance or of no consideration whatsoever. The matter of art in the concerns of his stage career is hopelessly immerged in the constant strife for remuneration and the sensual desire to satisfy that condition through the alluring channels of stage life. He does not know, nor would he have the patience to endure the fact, that, if he properly prepared for his art and honestly practised it, the remuneration would be finally and securely awarded. But the actor is not wholly to blame for this existing state of his condition.

With the exception of a few names essential to the furtherance of pecuniary gain, the manager of to-day selects his cast much after the manner that he does the scenery, properties and effects of the play he is about to produce. The owner, author, director, or all three (whoever has the say), generally interviews the actors and actresses, — after days, sometimes weeks and even months on their part, of patient, or impatient, waiting, — looks them over, so to speak, and if they realize in personal favor, voice, looks and shape, the part under consideration, the possession or no of histrionic art is a matter of little or no consequence. If the vocation of the stage is to be considered a profession and acting an art, who can justly deny that the existence of such a condition as has just herein been cited, is not truly deplorable and somewhat discouraging, and indeed needful of attempted adjustment at least?

To-day the actor or actress possessing the advantage of an inheritance through relationship to prominent and famous antecedents is bought and sold in theatrical trade merely on the strength of that inheritance. This is not only an injustice to many more deserving actors lacking such advantage, but also, in many cases, a great injury to the human property thus bartered by the greed of theatrical speculation. The inherent talent in these actors and actresses would, if quietly awakened, carefully nurtured and sturdily matured, assure much hopeful expectancy for the best purposes of the stage and its future exaltation. But no, — they are thrust into the glare and focus of high lights, fitted, sometimes misfitted, with a vehicle to expose their personal charms of youth, decoying eccentricities of manner, and by the time that they should have quite securely moulded their art into a form that proper preparation, progression, study and experience might chisel into images of special beauty, they are too often left neglected by the traders who bartered them, and by the public whose senses then have become all too surfeited. Broken toys in a deserted corner of the playhouse.

The actor in America to-day (and there are very few exceptions, even amongst the so-called " big ones ") endures more, fawns and cringes, sacrifices intellectuality, temperament, and even manhood, to obtain and hold his position, a thousand times more than he would in any other employment or vocation under the sun. Every manager knows this and makes advantage of it. He doesn't disguise the fact; the actor can't. The actor to-day is relegated to the manager's " prop " list merely. He commands respect only as regards his use and durability. The quality of his importance is « estimated, and he is also subjected to the same' -abuse and censure, or attention and praise, in a like manner as are the inanimate properties purchased to adorn the stage. And yet this same actor too often waits upon the manager as no serf does upon his king. Why? Because the actor has little or no consideration for his art for its own sake. He prefers to earn his living by following the stage. He lives in hope that some lucky strike is going to bring him at once fortune and perhaps fame, and thereby reverse the quality of his importance. He has no proper, healthy estimate of the profession he would be a part of. He doesn't know, he doesn't care, nor will he recognize, that the actor's vocation is a profession, the practice of it an art. To him it is a business first and last. He, too, is a speculator. He is in the same game with the manager, and shows his hand at every play. The fault is here, — the actor lacks ideals and a true spirit of emulation. He lives, almost always, alone for the momentary prospect of pecuniary gain; seldom for the growing, lasting attainment of art gain. By forfeiting a respect for his art and its ideals, and confessing a disregard for the true spirit of emulation, he forfeits the respect of all the conditions and stipulations that surround that art and might tend towards his benefit. He does not justly respect his own condition, and consequently neither challenges nor deserves respect from others.

In this fact (a lack of ideals and the true spirit of emulation), almost solely, I believe, lies the cause for the failure of self-maintenance of the Actors' Fund of America. Therein lies, I believe, the stigma that blinds the path that might otherwise light the unobstructed way to self-supporting permanency of the Actors' Fund of America. A state that would allow its charity to exist unheralded, and unaided by the public whose purse and patience are perhaps taxed quite enough already. The gentlemen officiating for that Fund are pre-eminently equipped to efficiently discharge its business functions. It appears they do most thoroughly with tact and unselfish labor ; but notwithstanding, the president of the Fund in his annual report of May, 1905, makes this statement: " The only relief we have recourse to, is through the help of the actors and actresses; if they will contribute their small annual payments, as members of the Fund, it will then be placed above want; but we must allow for a large percentage of falling off, and so I presume the officers will have to continue organizing benefits from year to year." This is a condition that has existed for many previous years, and bids fair to remain unaltered. Reflect on that condition confronting a board of direction, for the most part business managers who are giving serious, arduous labor in the cause of charity, to benefit the condition of that same actor to whom they pay also a salary. Managerial skill, business tact, has not supplied, nor does it seem likely to worthily furnish, the deficiency caused by the neglect and failing duty of the beneficiary, — the actor. And he is not miserly ; he is almost always generous, helping, charitable if thrown into environments of immediate necessity. But he lacks ideals and the beautiful spirit of emulation. He vies with the manager for pecuniary gain. " I'm in the business for the money," says the actor. Not one in five hundred or more admits he is in it for anything else.

Acting is an art! An intellectual occupation! The actor should, first of all, live and work for his art. Pecuniary gain is the manager's need. He can't exhibit art without it. The actor who professes his art alone for the " money there is in it," has no honest claim to its possession. He has no right to remain and clog the mainspring of the true motive of the theatre; the art expression of human types and ideas. Such a one should be excluded from it. His place belongs to him who appreciates, and desires to the more appreciate, the true beauties of his art. Then, if the remuneration do not follow, he has not failed; and there awaits ahead to receive him, a home. It is what he has striven to make it. And when he has gained that home, there should be one thought uppermost in his mind : "I earned this ; it is mine by right."

A word concerning the instilling of idealism in the actor through emulation of the fittest of his own craft. I speak with no ill-disposed intent to assail and belie the stage, its institutions or its incumbents. There is a society in New York City, which, in its appellative significance, is all that might be desired to convey in a single thought its motive for existence. Nearly all of the most prominent personages inseparable from the stage of America to-day are members of this society. That is to say, they lend distinction to its roll-call. Some few are active and more or less earnest and devoted workers in its cause. But, — the great unswaying membership (albeit they may be good companions, honest fellows, willing givers) appear like the restless, drifting, unintentioned seafarer, unpurposed in the true significance that the practice of his craft implies. And so with this majority membership (pleasantly edging and elbowing each other in their endeavors to reach the newest favor, or present the latest grievance), what magnet anchor hove within their harborage makes them fast? A chance of pecuniary gain. A society whose banner is of such declaration as is theirs should be free from any semblance of pecuniary inducements. At its head should jet its sternest life and richest endowments to spray with precept, example, helpfulness and fraternity its component members. To the public that honors such, is owed a loyalty, it is true; but to the profession (the distinguished part of which they are), to that profession which in claiming them makes it possible for that public to honor them, they owe much more, — a sacred duty to keep it beautiful ! to banish from its altar every odor that might debasely infuse the actor's sense and art, and then to spread the incense of idealism through emulation, that it should arouse the brotherhood of actors in America to the highest sense of duty to the art that they are privileged to profess.

The spirit of charity would then be embodied in this fulfilment. It would need no urging. The opportunities to pursue one's art would appear from out this consummation without the sense of trade. There then would be an end to that unstable engaging agency, wavering (in its bid for patronage from manager and actor) on an uncertain balance, ready to shift its weight in that direction which may best fulfill the immediate prospect of its purposes, and insure some future favor. A vicious need, breeding and maintaining jealousy, partiality and a woful lack of self-reliance. In the practice of this medium is seen no proper spirit, no special attempt of an orderly, systematic and just disposal of positions to be filled. Here preferments often go to those unworthy, incompetent, inexperienced, but who, nevertheless, through bonds of affection, social ties and favoritism, must be advanced in spite of the lack of any real merit, and often to the sacrifice of experience, ability and rank. These agencies swarm with idlers, possessing no higher estimate of the institution they lie in wait to inhabit, than that it may give them the temporary indulgence of work, and thus fixes upon it a common condition, putting it in the same category with the multifarious forms of servility, whose individuals, to find their medium of activity, seek registration in the employment bureau.