How a play is produced/In the Rehearsal Room

by Karel Čapek

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In the Rehearsal Room

 

NOW the play goes a further stage on its journey: there must be arrangement tests in the rehearsal room.

“Here is one door,” asserts the producer, at the same time pointing to empty space, “and this hat-stand is another. This chair is a divan, and this chair is a window. This table here is a piano, and here, where there isn’t anything, is a large lamp. Madame enters by the door on the left, and stands by the table. Good. And now George Danesh enters by the other door. My God! Where has Mr. X. got to again?”

“He’s rehearsing another part on the stage,” comes from two voices.

“I will play Danesh then,” sighs the producer as he hurries through the imaginary door. “‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!’ Madame Y., kindly step three paces forward towards me, and do try to look a little bit surprised, please. ‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!’ Then Danesh walks over towards the window—if you wouldn’t mind, please don’t sit on that chair, it’s supposed to be a window. And now, once more please. You enter from the left, while Danesh comes towards you. ‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!’”

“No, Father,” reads Clara from the part in her hand, “I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

The producer stops aghast: “What on earth are you reading?”

“Act One, Page Two,” Clara explains quite calmly.

“But that line doesn’t come in at all here,” cries the producer, snatching the part out of her hands, “Let me see, for Heaven’s sake! ‘No, father,’—I don’t quite—but look here, my dear young lady, you’ve brought the wrong play along.”

“Well, it’s the one they sent me yesterday,” says Madame Y., quite unruffled.

“All right then, take the stage-manager’s copy for the time being, and for Heaven’s sake do try and be more careful. I enter right——”

“Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!” bursts out Madame Y.

“But those are not your lines,” wails the producer, “You’re playing Clara, not me.”

“Oh, I thought it was a monologue,” Madame Y. explains.

“Well, it isn’t. I come in and say: ‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!’ Now, look out! ‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!’”

“What kind of a wig shall I wear?” Madame Y. asks.

“None at all. Now, once more, ‘Clara, something unexpected has happened to me.’”

“Shol ed epi gram,” Clara reads.

“What’s that, eh?”

“I can’t make out what it says here,” Clara announces.

“Oh, my God,” wails the producer. “It says: ‘What has happened to you?’ Read properly, for goodness’ sake.”

Clara calls the whole company to witness that in her copy of the play the words do really look like “Shol ed epi gram.” When this fact has been sufficiently demonstrated, the frantic producer rushes through the imaginary door for the fifth time, feverishly croaking: “Clara, something unexpected has happened to me!”

In this sentence the dramatist realizes all the stupidity and senselessness of the world. Never, he fears, will this chaos be resolved into beautiful harmony; the world will never, never recover from the terrible fact that something unexpected has happened; for they will never get any further on than this line. . . .

“Enter Katie,” announces the producer.

“Mm, mm,” comes from the rear of the room, where Katie has been simultaneously swallowing a sausage and executing a dance and chattering nineteen to the dozen. Crash. Two chairs fly to the ground, and Katie stands in the middle of the room hugging her knee in silent agony. “Katie has entered,” she informs the company at large. “Ouch! I did give myself an awful bang then.”

“You are supposed to enter left, miss,” says the producer waving her back.

“But I ca-a-n’t,” Katie mourns. “Can’t you see that I’ve broken my leg?”

“Then be more careful next time,” cries the producer. “Enter Gustav Vchelak.”

Gustav Vchelak looks at his watch. “I’ve got to go and rehearse another part on the stage now,” he announces rather coldly. “I’ve wasted a whole hour already. Good morning.”

The dramatist feels as though he were guilty of some offence. Meanwhile it is discovered that in the absence of both George Danesh and Gustav Vchelak it is impossible to arrange a single dialogue except the following crisp one from the beginning of the third act:

Servant: “Mr. Vchelak, Madame.”

Clara: “Show him in.”

The producer repeats this short episode seven times, after which there is nothing for it but to conclude the rehearsal. The author staggers home in the grip of a deadly terror that his play will not be produced in seven years.