CHAPTER XIV

DRAMATICS

Difference between Public Speaking and Acting. In practically all the aspects of public speaking you deliver your own thoughts in your own words. In dramatic presentation you deliver the words already written by some one else; and in addition, while you are delivering these remarks you speak as though you were no longer yourself, but a totally different person. This is the chief distinction between speaking in public and acting. While you must memorize the lines you deliver when you try to act like a character other than yourself, speeches in dramatic production are not like usual memorized selections. Usually a memorized selection does not express the feelings or opinions of a certain character, but is likely to be descriptive or narrative. Both prose and verse passages contain more than the uttered words of a single person.

As preparation for exercise in dramatics, whether simple or elaborate, training in memorizing and practice in speaking are extremely valuable. Memorizing may make the material grow so familiar that it loses its interest for the speaker. Pupils frequently recite committed material so listlessly that they merely bore hearers. Such a disposition to monotony should be neutralized by the ability to speak well in public.

Naturalness and Sincerity. When you speak lines from a play inject as much naturalness and sincerity into your delivery as you can command. Speak the words as though they really express your own ideas and feelings. If you feel that you must exaggerate slightly because of the impression the remark is intended to make, rely more upon emphasis than upon any other device to secure an effect. Never slip into an affected manner of delivering any speech. No matter what kind of

## acting you have seen upon amateur or professional stage, you must

remember that moderation is the first essential of the best acting. Recall what Shakespeare had Hamlet say to the players.

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus: but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.

Character Delineation. In taking part in a play you must do more than simply recite words spoken by some one other than yourself. You must really act like that person. This adds to the simple delivery of speeches all those other traits by which persons in real life are different from one another. Such complete identification of your personality with that of the person you are trying to represent in a play is termed character delineation, or characterization.

You may believe that you cannot represent an Indian chief or a British queen, or an Egyptian slave, or a secret service agent, but if you will recall your childish pastime of day-dreaming you will see at once that you have quite frequently identified yourself with some one else, and in that other character you have made yourself experience the strangest and most thrilling adventures. When you study a rôle in a scene or play, use your imagination in that same manner. In a short time it will be easy for you to think as that other character would. Then you have become identified with him. The first step in your delineation has been taken.

Visualize in your mind's eye--your imagination--the circumstances in which that character is placed in the play. See yourself looking, moving, acting as he would. Then talk as that character would in those circumstances. Make him react as he would naturally in the situations in which the dramatist has placed him.

Let us try to make this more definite. Suppose a boy is chosen to act the part of an old man. An old man does not speak as rapidly as a boy does. He will have to change the speed of his speech. But suppose the old man is moved to wrath, would his words come slowly? Would he speak distinctly or would he almost choke?

The girl who is delineating a foreign woman must picture her accent and hesitation in speaking English. She would give to her face the rather vacant questioning look such a woman would have as the English speech flits about her, too quickly for her to comprehend all of it.

The girl who tries to present a British queen in a Shakespeare play must not act as a pupil does in the school corridor. Yet if that queen is stricken in her feelings as a mother, might not all the royal dignity melt away, and her Majesty act like any sorrowing woman?

EXERCISES

You are sitting at a table or desk. The telephone rings. You pick up the receiver. A person at the other end invites you to dinner. Deliver your part of the conversation.

1. Speak in your own character.

2. Speak as a busy, quick-tempered old man in his disordered office.

3. Speak as a tired wife who hasn't had a relief for weeks from the drudgery of house-work.

4. Speak as a young debutante who has been entertained every day for weeks.

5. Speak as the office boy.

6. Speak as an over-polite foreigner.

7. Delineate some other kind of person.

Improvisations are here given first because such exercises depend upon the pupil's original interpretation of a character. The pupil is required to do so much clear thinking about the character he represents that he really creates it.

Dialogues. As it is easier to get two people to speak naturally than where more are involved we shall begin conversation with dialogues. Each character will find the lines springing spontaneously from the situation. In dramatic composition any speech delivered by a character is called a line, no matter how short or long it is.

As you deliver the dialogues suggested by the exercises try to make your speeches sound natural. Talk as real people talk. Make the remarks conversational, or colloquial, as this style is also termed. What things will make conversation realistic? In actual talk, people anticipate. Speakers do not wait for others to finish. They interrupt. They indicate opinions and impressions by facial expression and slight bodily movements. Tone changes as feelings change.

Try to make your remarks convey to the audience the circumstances surrounding the dialogue. Let the conversation make some point clear. Before you begin, determine in your own mind the characterization you intend to present.

Situation. A girl buys some fruit from the keeper of a stand at a street corner.

What kind of girl? Age? Manner of speaking? Courteous? Flippant? Well-bred? Slangy? Working girl? Visitor to town?

What kind of man? Age? American? Foreigner? From what country? Dialect? Disposition? Suspicious? Sympathetic?

Weather? Season of year? Do they talk about that? About themselves? Does the heat make her long for her home in the country? Does the cold make him think of his native Italy or Greece? Will her remarks change his short, gruff answers to interested questions about her home? Will his enthusiasm for his native land change her flippancy to interest in far-off romantic countries? How would the last detail impress the change, if you decide to have one? Might he call her back and force her to take a gift? Might she deliver an impressive phrase, then dash away as though startled by her exhibition of sympathetic feeling?

These are mere suggestions. Two pupils might present the scene as indicated by these questions. Two others might show it as broadly comic, and end by having the girl--at a safe distance--triumphantly show that she had stolen a second fruit. That might give him the cue to end in a tirade of almost inarticulate abuse, or he might stand in silence, expressing by his face the emotions surging over him. And his feeling need not be entirely anger, either. It might border on admiration for her amazing audacity, or pathetic helplessness, or comic despair, or determination to "get even" next time.

Before you attempt to present any of the following suggestive exercises you should consider every possibility carefully and decide definitely and consistently all the questions that may arise concerning every detail.

EXERCISES

1. Let a boy come into the room and try to induce a girl (the mistress of a house) to have a telephone installed. Make the dialogue realistic and interesting.

2. Let a girl demonstrate a vacuum cleaner (or some other appliance) to another girl (mistress of a house).

3. Let a boy apply for a position to a man in an office.

4. Let a boy dictate a letter to a gum-chewing, fidgety, harum-scarum stenographer.

5. Let this stenographer tell the telephone girl about this.

6. Show how a younger sister might talk at a baseball or football game to her slightly older brother who was coerced into bringing her with him.

7. Show a fastidious woman at a dress goods counter, and the tired, but courteous clerk. Do not caricature, but try to give an air of reality to this.

8. Show how two young friends who have not seen each other for weeks might talk when they meet again.

9. Deliver the thoughts of a pupil at eleven o'clock at night trying to choose the topic for an English composition due the next morning. Have him talk to his mother, or father, or older brother, or sister.

10. A foreign woman speaking and understanding little English, with a ticket to Springfield, has by mistake boarded a through train which does not stop there. The conductor, a man, and woman try to explain to her what she must do.

11. Let three different pairs of pupils represent the girl and the fruit seller cited in the paragraphs preceding these exercises.

12. A young man takes a girl riding in a new automobile. Reproduce parts of the ride.

13. Two graduates of your school meet after many years in a distant place. Reproduce their reminiscenses.

14. A woman in a car or coach has lost or misplaced her transfer or ticket. Give the conversation between her and the conductor.

15. Let various pairs of pupils reproduce the conversations of patrons of moving pictures.

16. Suggest other characters in appropriate situations. Present them before the class.

Characters Conceived by Others. In all the preceding exercises you have been quite unrestricted in your interpretation. You have been able to make up entirely the character you presented. Except for a few stated details of sex, age, occupation, nature, no suggestions were given of the person indicated. Delineation is fairly easy to construct when you are given such a free choice of all possibilities. The next kind of exercise will involve a restriction to make the

## acting a little more like the acting of a rôle in a regular play. Even

here, however, a great deal is left to the pupil's thought and decision.

How much chance there may be for such individual thought and decision in a finished play written by a careful dramatist may be illustrated by _Fame and the Poet_ by Lord Dunsany. One of the characters is a Lieutenant-Major who calls upon a poet in London. Nothing is said about his costume. In one city an actor asked the British consul. He said officers of the army do not wear their uniforms except when in

## active service, but on the British stage one great actor had by his

example created the convention of wearing the uniform. In another city at exactly the same time the author himself was asked the same question. He said that by no means should the actor wear a uniform.

In the next exercises you are to represent characters with whom you have become acquainted in books. You will therefore know something about their dispositions, their appearance, and their actions. Your task will be to give life-like portraits which others will recognize as true to their opinions of these same people. For all who have read the books the general outlines will be identical. The added details must not contradict any of the traits depicted by the authors. Otherwise they may be as original as you can imagine.

In the _Odyssey_, the great old Greek poem by Homer, the wandering hero, Odysseus (also called Ulysses), is cast up by the sea upon a strange shore. Here he meets Nausicaa (pronounced Nau-si'-ca-a) who offers to show him the way to the palace of her father, the Bang. But as she is betrothed she fears that if she is seen in the company of an unknown man some scandalous gossip may be carried to her sweetheart. So she directs that when they near the town Odysseus shall tarry behind, allowing her to enter alone. In this naive incident this much is told in detail by the poet. We are not told whether any gossip does reach the lover's ears. He does not appear in the story. We are not told even his name. Nor are we told how either she or he behaved when they first met, after she had conducted the stranger to the palace.

If you enact this scene of their meeting you will first have to find a name for him. You are free to create all the details of their behavior and conversation. Was he angry? Was he cool towards her? Had he heard a false account?

Before attempting any of the following exercises decide all the matters of interpretation as already indicated in this chapter.

EXERCISES

1. Molly Farren tries to get news of Godfrey Cass from a Stable-boy. _Silas Marner_.

2. The two Miss Gunns talk about Priscilla Lammeter. _Silas Marner_.

3. The Wedding Guest meets one of his companions. _The Ancient Mariner_.

4. Nausicaa tells her betrothed about Odysseus. _Odyssey_.

5. Reynaldo in Paris tries to get information about Laertes. _Hamlet_.

6. Fred tells his wife about Scrooge and Crachit. _A Christmas Carol_.

7. Jupiter tells a friend of the finding of the treasure. _The Gold Bug_.

8. Two women who know David Copperfield talk about his second marriage. _David Copperfield_.

Memorized Conversations. You can approach still more closely to the material of a play if you offer in speech before your class certain suitable portions from books you are reading or have read. These selections may be made from the regular class texts or from supplementary reading assignments. In studying these passages with the intention of offering them before the class you will have to think about two things. First of all, the author has in all probability, somewhere in the book, given a fairly detailed, exact description of the looks and actions of these characters. If such a description does not occur in an extended passage, there is likely to be a series of statements scattered about, from which a reader builds up an idea of what the character is like. The pupil who intends to represent a person from a book or poem must study the author's picture to be able to reproduce a convincing portrait.

The audience will pass over mere physical differences. A young girl described in a story as having blue eyes may be acted by a girl with brown, and be accepted. But if the author states that under every kind remark she made there lurked a slight hint of envy, that difficult suggestion to put into a tone must be striven for, or the audience will not receive an adequate impression of the girl's disposition.

So, too, in male characters. A boy who plays old Scrooge in _A Christmas Carol_ may not be able to look like him physically, but in the early scenes he must let no touch of sympathy or kindness creep into his voice or manner.

It is just this inability or carelessness in plays attempting to reproduce literary works upon the stage that annoys so many intelligent, well-read people who attend theatrical productions of material which they already know. When _Vanity Fair_ was dramatised and acted as _Becky Sharp_, the general comment was that the characters did not seem like Thackeray's creations. This was even more apparent when _Pendennis_ was staged.

If you analyze and study characters in a book from this point of view you will find them becoming quite alive to your imagination. You will get to know them personally. As you vizualize them in your imagination they will move about as real people do. Thus your reading will take on a new aspect of reality which will fix forever in your mind all you glance over upon the printed page.

Climax. The second thing to regard in choosing passages from books to present before the class is that the lines shall have some point. Conversation in a story is introduced for three different purposes. It illustrates character. It exposes some event of the plot. It merely entertains. Such conversation as this last is not good material for dramatic delivery. It is hardly more than space filling. The other two kinds are generally excellent in providing the necessary point to which dramatic structure always rises. You have heard it called a climax. So then you should select from books passages which provide climaxes.

One dictionary defines climax: "the highest point of intensity, development, etc.; the culmination; acme; as, he was then at the climax of his fortunes." In a play it is that turning-point towards which all events have been leading, and from which all following events spring. Many people believe that all climaxes are points of great excitement and noise. This is not so. Countless turning-points in stirring and terrible times have been in moments of silence and calm. Around them may have been intense suspense, grave fear, tremendous issues, but the turning-point itself may have been passed in deliberation and quiet.

EXERCISES

1. Choose from class reading--present or recent--some passage in conversation. Discuss the traits exhibited by the speakers. Formulate in a single statement the point made by the remarks. Does the interest rise enough to make the passage dramatic?

2. Several members of the class should read certain passages from books, poems, etc. The class should consider and discuss the characterization, interest, point, climax.

3. Read Chapters VI and VII of _Silas Marner_ by George Eliot. Are the characters well marked? Is the conversation interesting in itself? Does the interest rise? Where does the rise begin? Is there any suspense? Does the scene conclude properly? If this were acted upon a stage would any additional lines be necessary or desirable?

4. Read the last part of