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Show 1 i A CHAT ABOUT PLATS. I I . ! Hew They nre ICemodeled at Re. j hearaal and Performances An j -Experienced manager Talks. "A manager would rather own a good play than a first-class theatre." This j was said to me the other day by Daniel j Frohman, who was brought up in the ; theatrical business, and was for some i years at the head of the Madison Square I theatre management, during which time manuscripts of plays passed through his j hands. "A manager," he continued, j "who owns a good play can always find first-class theatres in which to produce it ; a manager who owns a first-class theatre j cannot always procure a good play for it." i This remark started our conversation on j the subject of plays- It is regarded almost as a maxim in the dramatic profession that every writer reporter, editor, novelist or poet whom a manager meets, no matter how casually, casu-ally, -will sooner or later send a play to that manager. For every writer thinks hb. can write a play. In point of fact the art of play-writing is as much a gift as any other art. Success in another branch of literature, even in novel-writing, which of all literary branches seems most closely allied to play-writing, Is by no means a certain indication of capacity fop-- play-writing play-writing for the stage. A successful novelist nov-elist is reasonably certain of writing picturesque, pic-turesque, imaginative, and even exciting dialogue. But dialogue is of small importance im-portance compared to dramatic situations. They form the mainspring of every successful suc-cessful play, and the writer who possesses the gift of devising effective situations and climaxes is the successful playwright Give a manager a good plot and he can get the good dialogue by the yard. Unfortunately writers do not bear these consideration! in mind. As a result nearly every manager of a well known theatre receives from eight to twelve plays a week. There i3 a general opinion among writers of plays who have their manuscripts returned to them that a conspiracy against them has been formed among managers. As a matter of fact, managers, in this country at least, are as anxious to get good plays as playrights are to have their Work accepted and produced, and will therefore read through any amount of rubbish in hope of finding a. germ of success. English managers are less anxious than their American brethren. . For the old English theatres are rich in manuscripts, and rnany of the modern English dramatic successes are old manuscripts -worked over and made germane to our times. HOW THE FROHHAXS HANDLE THEM. I At the Madison Square Theatre, for instance, in-stance, every plav" is passed on, and a record kept bf the author and the story and source, whenever the latter is given or can be ascertained. This is done in order to check the writer in any attempt to palm off the play upon the" management manage-ment under a new title. Of course some plavs are so ridiculous on their face that a glance over a few pages suffices to satisfy sat-isfy a manager of their lack of availability. availabil-ity. Frohman gives me the following instances in-stances of the ridiculous plays which have been submitted to him : The scene throughout one play was laid in Central Park; it contained fifty-two speaking characters, each of them indulging in long speeches averairing 600 words. It was in printed form." In another play, the action throughout took place in "a court-room, and the audience would have been obliged to listen to the pleadings of the lawyers, the evidence and the rulings of the judge.. A play with some thirty speaking characters, with a moving panoramic pano-ramic scene in paradise. The hight of absurdity was reached in a play with 300 speaking characters. The scene throughout through-out was laid in the House of Representatives, Representa-tives, the characters including Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and all the Congressmen and other public men. These are of course extreme cases, but there are not a few almost as absurd. Curiously enough, distinguished actors, who might be supposed sup-posed to know the value of action and strong situations, are among the least successful playwrights. I know that within the "last fortnight a manager received a play written by an actor of great repute. The manager in reading over the play found difficulty in persuading himself that he was not the victim of a joke. These extreme cases excepted, the plays usually received by i managers are not utterly bad. On the contrary many of them are well written and tell a good story. Their- general fault is lack of strong, moving situations. Their stories, though they would read well as novels, are not entirely available for dramatic purposes. Often a good dramatic story is obscured by dialogue, or is not properly and effectively developed. The manager, if he knows his business, will at once recognize tho possibilities of success in such a play. . He will accept it with the provision that he will be allowed al-lowed to alter it and put it into such shape that it will have a chance of becoming dramatically effective. THE REMODELING OF THEM. Then begins ' the remodeling. This work i3 best done by men of the calibre of Mackaye, Cazawran, Boucicault, Daly and Belasco, Arthur Wallack is also good at it. One of tlie first principals applied in altering plays is that everything should happen before the public, which means that no event of vital importance should be narrated in the dialogue. It must be witnessed by-the audience, otherwise it will leave no impression and any events growing out of it will have no meaning. In certain plays of course it is impossible to carry out this principle, but is applied as often as leasable. An important Dart of the remodeler's work is to lop off the dialogue so as to quicken the action and prevent a fatal weariness from coming over the audience between the chief scenes. The author ; I often is loud in his protest against what 1 1 he considers vandalism, but what is really j ; only the choppine away of dead wood, j For instance, when Belasco was remodel- i i ling Alpine Roses, Boysen once rushed j almost frenzied from Belasco's room, exclaiming: ex-claiming: "He is cutting out all my fine sentences and spoiling my play." What was Belasco doing in reality? He had his eye on a climax, and with unerring j judgment was cutting right and left to clear the way to that climax. He was! changing Alpine Roses from a verbose j reading play to an acting play. The j dialogue should always bring the actor as ; j speedily as possible" to. the business in hand. j I HOWARD'S BANKER'S DAUGHTER. i t Of the standard success now before the t public, none probably has been so much 'altered as Bronson Howard's Banker's i Daughter. It was produced in Chicago under the title of Lillian's Love. It proved a failure. Then changes were made and the new version was brought out as Lillian. - The difficulty lay in the disposal of the lover. Cazawran took hold of the plav, rearranged it, and it came out of his shop a success as the Banker's Daughter. In Hazel Kirke Rodney was originally a typical stage villain instead of Hazels onerous, self-sacrificing lover. There was one scene in which he chased her j through the house with evil intent, an4 i the villain still pursued her" later in the ! play. The character of Met-was written j in some time after the production of the j play; The character of the Marquis in i Esmeralda was in Mrs. Burnett's manu- j script of far more importance than in the ' acting version. IIo had a mistress (to i have been played by Laura Don), who j was discovered by Esmeralda's lover, he j being thus enabled to unmask the mar- j quis. This being considered too naughty ' by the clerical portion of the manage- j ment, was altered to the injury of the j play, as Frohman admitted, for a good i point and a startling situation were sacrificed sacri-ficed to managerial policy. But even after a play has been remodeled re-modeled so as to bring out action which the dialogue observed it has not yet assumed as-sumed its final form, many changes are made at rehearsals and many more -after the first few performances. By watching an audience an experienced manager soon discovers the weak spots in tho play. A point upon which author and remodeler relied for effect may go unnoticed by the audience, or may strike the audience as ridiculous. Changes must be made so as to emphasize it, or render it intelligible. In Bartley Campbell's "Paquita," for instance, the climax of one act is brought about by a bullet, shot with unerring aim by a young girl. There does not seem to tho audience to bo anything unnatural in her skillful workmanship for (with this scene evidently in view) a specimen of it is given earlier in the play. One of the curious - features of theatrical theatri-cal management is the impossibility of foretelling whether a play will be successful success-ful or not. Until the production all is a mere matter of opinion. Some of the plays which were expected to be immensely im-mensely successful have been failures or only moderate successes. On the other hand, plays of which little was expected, have been immensely profitable. Boucicault Bouci-cault once produced three plays simultaneously simul-taneously in London. That from which he expected leaBt was the most successful success-ful ; that from which he expected most the least so. Success in writing plays means larger earnings than can be had in any other branch of literature. A genuinely successful suc-cessful play will earn for its writer at least $10,000. Great successes pay much more than that. Some $150,000 have been made by the "Lights O'London" in this country. "Hazel Kirke'.' cleared $80,000 the first year. Sardou has made about $30,000 .out of the performances bf "Fedora" in this country. Omaha Herald. |