DEMON OF THE GREEN ROOM.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10765, 13 May 1911, Page 3 (Supplement)

DEMON OF THE GREEN ROOM.

(By Alice Crawford.)

Almost every actor and actress Las to suffer from stage fright in one form or another, but no one has ever found a remedy for it. Short of giving, up acting, Ido not know.of a radical-cure. From the., auditorium stage fright may seem a symptom of inexperience; I only wish that were the case. However experienced an actor may be, however . sure of himself in the particular part he is playing, if he is subject to stage fright, before everjf new production in which he is taking part this dread monster will lay its icy paw on his heart.

Nelson, I have read somewhere, for all he was a naval hero, was never a good sailor, and every time.he went to sea he is said''to have promptly succumbed and remained a hopeless phyical wreck until he had found his sea legs. . It is rather the same thing with stag© fright. If you are disposed that way it catches you on the first night, though your part may not be exacting, though all the rehearsals may have gone well, and though you may feel full of confidence.

You may come down to the theatre in good time to dress leisurely, you may be thoroughly fresh and rested, when the first night comes round. You may have had a splendidly smooth, uninterrupted dress rehearsal the night before. You may be so familiar with your part that already you are vaguely reflecting about the next play you will be in.

None of this matters; none of it matters in the least. Do not deceive yourself; if you are a slave to the demon of Stage Fright the monster is waiting for. you in the dressing-room; he is crouching amid your sticks and greasepaint or hiding behind the covers of your stage frocks, and in his good time out he files and grapples with you. Dressing amid continual interruptions from without in an atmosphere of nervous suspense, by the time your call 'comes you are more dead than alive. You creep' downstairs. You are awed still more bj r the solemn hush prevailing in the half-light of the wings and by the realisation that to-night for the first time the lighted semi-circle of the stage, with the rising bank of unsympathetic humanity in front of it, is sacred ground. To-night is deadly earnest. No mistake can be rectified; the Public is in the house to-night. The nervousness of the others! What weird forms it takes! Twitching lips, drumming fingers, restless pacings—one gets to know so many of the symptoms. I often wonder why psychologists have never turned their attention to this branch of subconscious activity. It would be well worth their while.

By the time your cue arrives you have reached the last stage of nervousness—the point, in other words, at which the mind takes hope from the sensation that whatever happens worse mental anguish cannot he endured. This thought gains the upper hand and sweeps you on. Suddenly you find yourself on the stage, and though perhaps you cannot distinguish a single face in the audience, you feel the presence of the crowd. And in a. moment the monster Stage Fright has left you. The hush of the stage and regular to-and-fro of the dialogue give you an instant sense of security; yon slip insensihly into your niche in the fabric of the play, and as your personality falls away from you and merges into the character you are acting the fear of the crowd dissolves and leaves you mistress of yourself.

The dragoon of Stage Fright has vanished until your next first night. Happily stage fright is not one of the emotions which get across the footlights. Audiences are, for the most part, as serenely unconscious of it as they are of other individual sentiments in the actors having no relation to the incidents of the play. I shall never forget an instance of this curious insensibility of the crowd. Once when I was touring one of the most charming and popular girls of the company died after only a few days' illness. She was one of those sweet, tranquil natures, and had endeared herself to us all. Her death in lodgings in the small provincial town had an element of real tragedy in it. The news that she was dead reached the theatre in the evening, just as two of the actors and I were about to go on for a scene of broad comedy. We went on the stage with tears in our eyes, and I can still see the face of one of those comedians with the great tears glistening on the paint. He was dreadfully affected. Try as he would he could not control his voice, and the tears kept choking him as he rattled off his lines.

'die audience were convulsed every time his poor voice broke, and it made me cry more than ever to see the grief shaking him as he grinned and chaffed through his tears. Yet that comedy scene never went so well before. The audience never guessed. So, too, the spectators seldom fathom the palpitating awe which dominates many an experienced actor as the ordeal of a first performance. Singers say that stage fright makes them sing false. I heard only the other day of a miserable man in an Italian lunatic asylum who spends the lifelong day singing au aria from "II Trovatore." The story goes that at his debut in Naples he was so nervous that he sang false, and the appalling uproar which ensued in theaudience —according to Italian custom —so imhinged him that he lost his reason on the spot. Stage fright develops the most extraordinary symptoms. Extreme nausea is a common, for instance, or a nervous contraction of the mouth or dryness of the throat, both rendering articulation extremely difficult, or again a fluttering of the eyelid which gives the victim the appearance of winking knowingly at frequent intervals. One of the commonest expressions of stage fright is loss of memory, and I have heard of famous actors and actresses forgetting whole scenes of parts which ihey had played .hundreds ot times before. -n j I can only think of one possible advantage of stage fright. It must help to keep the art of acting fresh. It must help to impregnate a part with tbo self of the player and prevent him from, giving a rather soulless study, however polished. Perhaps stage fright has its compensations after all.