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Show SOTHERN ON STAGE EFFECT. E. H. Sothern, who recently returned to New York after a long tour with Julia Marlowe in Shakespearean productions, was speaking the other day of stage technique. "Ah! if there were only stage directions," the actor said. "I can remember reading in my father's prompt books: 'Walk ten steps forward and to the right, count eight and then say: "My Lord.' " Deadly mechanical it seems, but it is on just those little things that perfection hinges. Take the scene in Juliet's room, where Romeo says good-by to Juliet. There is a table between the lovers and the window. Now, if that table were so placed that Romeo on his way to the window had to go around it, the directness of the scene would be wholly spoiled. Take the bolting of the door after the nurse goes out in the first scene in Juliet's room. I have seen that scene ruined by a too loud shooting of the bolt. People don't know what is the matter, but they feel it. "Only when the details of the thing are so sure that you can forget them are you free to express yourself. Besides, you must get the ensemble; en-semble; you must make things converge to an effective ef-fective center, have every tor working toward the high lights of the story, so to speak, to have each one really help the scene. Not the skill-fulest skill-fulest actor, but the most pliable is the most useful use-ful in small parts. Otherwise the effect is crooked, and, again, the audience doesn't know why, but they, feel it." |