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THE MAROON TIGER
Page 3
the theatre
THE WAGE OF THE AMATEUR ACTOR
E Pluribus Unum
Maybe the following account isn’t authentic; but
whether true or not, Aristotle’s contribution to the dark
ening of the human mind remains the same. However,
Aristotle is supposed to have advised a very important
young Grecian woman to see a certain play. He urged
upon her the possible greatness of the play. But she
didn't have the scope old “Stoty” had, though she could
out-think him; so because she couldn’t grasp the thor
ough interpretation of two roles, she criticized the actors
severely in her small way. “Stoty” inferred that she
didn’t enjoy the play, and his powerful intuition foretold
her future indifference. “Stoty,” quite deflated, went
into the “Red” flower to get drunk. No, wait before we
go in, wasn’t it Socrates? Nope, ’twas “Stoty” (imagi
natively). Anyhow, “Stoty” got humid. Now, the
slightest inspiration of high humidity always made
“Stoty” sensitive to every wobble of the earth’s rotation.
Each time the earth wobbled, “Stoty” would lose his
balance and fall. Walking through the shadowy streets
he demonstrated just how difficult it would be for a
soldier with one short leg to walk a barrel across a
battllefield. And he’d go through all the motions of
dodging bullets. Yet he’d always reach home without
getting “shot” again.
But all that is incidental to the fact that “Stoty must
have been drunk or love-sick when he felt inspired to
think out his philosophy of the play. He insisted that an
unwitnessed play is complete within itself, analogous to
an unread book or an unseen painting; that there could
still be a complete play—script, actors, motion and scenes
—without an audience. Such would be comparable, I’d
say, to a fight with no adversary, fire with no fuel, or a
Lord’s Supper without communicants. //a young wom
an’s criticism did motivate “Stoty’s” inadequate phil
osophy of the play, he could he excused for it if he
had restricted its application to the play she didn t like;
but there is nothing to justify his offering such an in
terpretation for all plays. Yet the truth is Aristotle is,
probably because he confined his thoughts to the needs
of his age, inadequate in many of his conclusions. Mat
ter of fact, many of the few science students whose pow
ers of conceiving haven’t been discarded as unneeded and
antagonistic faculties to uncreative existences of para
sitic perceiving, and mot a few philosophy students who
can be shaken from static dreams of a Utopia and be
made to think, wonder why collectors of antiques haven’t
offered them bids for “Stoty’s” philosophies.
But however inadequate, “Stoty’s” philosophy of the
play does confirm the view's of entomologists that during
the Aristotelian age the play world had not yet been
infested by three pathogenic parasitic species. The high-
powered producers and big-moneyed backers, who do
their acting behind stage and quote lines that few play
wrights ever swapped at home with their mates, were
probably larvae ripening in the foundation of the stage.
A nd amateur critics were lisping little girls with bright
myopic eyes who, after stubbornly accepting their ina
bility to act. “turned critics next.” An assumption that
their chrysalid efforts drove men of later ages to univer
sally deprive women of the blessings of democracy
would not be wholly untenable.
Roy Mitchell, author of Creative Theatre, acceptably
explains “Stoty’s” deficiency in a statement derogative to
a well-rounded philosopher. He says, “Aristotle prob
ably never heard an actor about to go on ask one who
had just come off what the audience was like.” That
may not be credible, but what can be believed, and what
any actor, professional or amateur, will confirm is Mr.
Mitchell’s further analysis, which is as follows: “Actors
feed upon the beliefs of audiences. Not upon one belief
but upon wave after wave as the shaping goes forward.
It is a manifestation from instant to instant of the
artist’s need to “feel” the persons for whom he makes
his revelation. It is a cumulative process by which the
play mounts step on step to its full strength, and al
though words and motion may remain precisely as they
were in rehearsals when there was no audience, the fluent
thing (the mood of the audience) in which I have said
the art of the theatre dwells, rises in response to the
increasing necessity. The quickening of the audience is
the life-blood of actors and their constant preoccupa
tion.
“Our audience is, then, a vital part of the theatre, an
alter ego, and what is of the artistic forces of the theatre
is true also of this which complements them. The audi
ence is not mere consumers of theatre, as we have been
led to believe, but participant in theatre and contributor
—of something far more important to us than the dollars
in the box-office.”
Alfred Henson, in his article / Look at the Audience,
corroborates the findings of Mr. Mitchell. We are forced
to agree with Mr. Henson that “an expectant force is
there ... a personality made up of all those men
and women who have sunk their separate individualities
in the larger common soul of the mob . . . sometimes
it is a thing to be fought to move it, and on these occa
sions the performance is a big effort, as every sensitive
actor will tell you. At other times one is conscious of a
something that is feeding the actor life . . . and on
these occasions he can rise to heights greater than he
thought possible. He is being given a greater life and
the audience get what is often called a great perform
ance.
The relations between the audience and professir ial
actor and audience and amateur differ in the sami way
as those of father and son and mother and son ough
both instill the life-blood, the latter relation ally
and usually is closer and more sympathetic. Pi ...arily,
the reason for a difference in degree of sympathy is
not that the amateur steps directly from the audienc
onto the platform, and the professional withdraws first
to acquire a veneer, but that the audience recognizes in
the amateur a sincere attempt to reflect certain motions,
emotions and gestures of some one of its individual per
sonalities. The amateur must, having no training, ab
stract from daily life the signs that give it meaning.
And then the interchange between audience and ama
teur is enrichening to both. “To it he brings values from
the common life of the people; from it he carries back
into his daily grind something richer to live by. Who
shall say that such barter and exchange is without artis
tic and social signaficance?” asks Victor H. Hoppe, au
thor of The Gallant Amateur.
Unfortunately, however (quoting Mr. Hoppe), “always
he feels the common man’s fear of daring to speak in pub
lic on the stage. The stamp of daily identity is upon him;
he has a local laundry mark. The pattern of daily life