HINTS TO YOUNG STAGE ASPIRANTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 61, 9 September 1905, Page 13

HINTS TO YOUNG STAGE ASPIRANTS.

Mr. George Alexander, the well-known English actor-manager, gives in the Theatre Magazine for August some excellent advice to young women who are desirous of adopting the stage as a profession. Mr. Alexander says : — Don't — unless you can rough it! Don't — unless you can wait! Don't — unless you. can eat your heart! Don't — unless you can weep— and win ! Save you can accept as your portion disappointment, delay, weariness, travel and travail, opposition, malice, neglect, and heartache and the thousand natural shocks this stage flesh is heir to — why, I would din it into you, Don't! If you can and will — then here's luck to you ! If you would be an actor, study nature! Learn to hold up the mirror that is the whole duty of acting. Study her in the street, in the drawing-room, in the assembly; get at her secrets and her manifestations of them; learn to demonstrate them, to reproduce, repeat them; go into the solitude and meditate them, practise her expression, remember her accent, make her live in you again ! Perfect the machinery — learn her myriad ways of walking, of talking, of being and of doing! Let nothing seem too trivial nor too hard. Realise her every way, and seek how best to express her! It is in the nearer approach to nature's great self, great in all large and all small things, that the joy, the full-flowing joy of acting, lies, and only they who can feel this can ever hope to succeed. And 1 myself doubt if there be any exaltation so great as that of the supreme moment of the actor. 1 The greatest artist, and the closest to nature, was Shakespeare. Steep yourself in, Shakespeare, gain acquaintance with his men and women. Conceive them afresh — give them a new being! Walk apart and voice them, and gesture them, and act them "to yourself ! He touched the noblest and the meanest; and in him you will find all secrets. Then get all the practice you can! Act whenever and wherever you see the sligliest uncompromising opportunity! Never mind your friends; don't let them deter you! Treat home critics with contempt, and grumblers with disdain. Heat grows by friction— so will your enthusiasm; and there'll be plenty of friction, don't you fear for that! And as the parts get bigger and the performances moro frequent, so will the friction become more intense and the enthusiasm more glowing. Nothing divides a household so much as private theatricals. That is one of the sacrifices demanded by art, and when the Muses beckon, "papa" must take a back seat. Yes, be diligent in your ill-doing ! Weary them with Shylock and Portia, estrange them with Hamlet and Ophelia, sadden them with your humour, lighten them with your tragedy— only go on ! . Drama means "doing." ,Do your friends. So much the sooner will you bo able to do the public — successfully. jVVhen you have practised in private all the greatest parts of all the ages; whon you have forfeited your friends' indulgence and your relations' love; when you feel that only opportunity stands between you and greatness, go to some actor-manager — other than myself— and get a banner to wave !