How a play is produced/The Dress Rehearsal-II

by Karel Čapek

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The Dress Rehearsal—II

 

IT is a well-known fact that theatrical folk are very superstitious. For instance, before a first night you must never wish an actor or actress “Good Luck,” but rather, “May you fall down and break your neck,” at the same time spitting in the face of the person thus addressed. It is also asserted that there must be at least one row at the dress rehearsal if the first night is to pass off smoothly. There may be something in this. In any case, no one can prove the contrary, owing to the fact that there has never been a dress rehearsal without a row.

The size of the row varies with the amount of authority possessed by the producer. The finest rows take place when the director of the theatre is himself producing. But if, by chance, the producer does not happen to be strong enough to cause a disturbance, then the scenic designer, the stage-manager, the foreman of the technical staff, the chief electrician, the mechanic, the upholsterer, the property-man, the prompter, the head tailor, the wardrobe mistress, the man up in the flies, the hairdresser, or any other technical authority in the theatre will see to it that a real row does take place.

There is but one rule to be observed in this battle: neither fire-arms nor weapons for stabbing purposes may be used. All other methods of attack and defence are more or less permissible: especially screaming, shouting, weeping, insults, complaints to the manager, rhetorical questions, and other forms of violence.

But I do not want to insinuate for a moment that the theatrical milieu is a particularly wild, bloodthirsty, or brutal one. But it is rather, so to say, a little touched in the head. Observed from a purely sociological standpoint, the theatre is a complex mass of individuals of the most diverse origin, and the most varied professions. For instance, the stage hairdresser and the man who manufactures the stage thunder are more distant from each other than Parliamentary deputies of the Left and Right wing parties, who are, at least, to a certain extent, professional colleagues.

There is an eternal fight for supremacy between the property-man and the upholsterer. If a table is to be used in a stage setting, the tablecloth is the upholsterer’s business; the plates, on the contrary, are under the property-man’s jurisdiction; while it is the duty of the electricians to see that the table-lamp is in order.

On principle, the theatrical tailor underestimates the importance of the stage-carpenter’s activities, a contempt which is reciprocated by this gentleman. The property-man is always busily in the way of the scenic-designer, while both in their turn disturb the electrician as much as possible while he is working with his cables, reflectors, and other apparatus, thus embittering his whole existence. The upholsterer, with his carpets and ladders, increases the confusion still more, and is generally abused by all and sundry. When one adds that all this technical confusion takes place amid the greatest haste, with usually nothing quite ready, with the producer urging on the stage-manager, and the stage-manager urging every one else on—it is already noon, and the rehearsal has not yet begun, some idea of the exciting and catastrophic atmosphere in which a dress rehearsal takes place may be gathered.

Good: the producer is now calm and resigned to the unfinished state of the stage; the tailor fits an unfinished coat on to the actor who must now play his part: the hairdresser places the improvised wig on to his head; the wardrobe-man pushes on to him some unnecessarily large gloves; the producer presses the required stick into his hand; now the play may begin.

The curtain rises, and the hero opens with something like this: “Clara! Something unexpected has happened to me!” At once, in a shrill, hysterical voice, the producer screams out that something is not as it ought to be. Of course, it is the light which is all wrong.

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” But it does not say in the Holy Bible whether the light was red, yellow, or blue. There is nothing in Genesis about switches, tubes, funnels, or searchlights, about ones, twos, threes, fifties, hundreds, or thousands, about regulators or reflectors, about horizons or shadows, and other lighting effects. The Lord did not command: “Turn the second switch to six yellow one.” Nor did He shout: “Give a blue spotlight on the doorway. Damnation, not a blue one. Switch the moon into the chandelier, and veil it. No, that’s very bad. The horizon must be yellow, and the chandelier must not shine on the doorway like that,” and so on.

It was quite easy for the Lord, for He created light first, then Man, and then, the theatre. The dress rehearsal is a rehearsal on the theme: “Let there be light”; only things do not proceed so smoothly at a dress rehearsal as they did in the times of Genesis.

“Mr. Producer!” cries the hero at last. He has been standing on the stage all this time. “It’s one o’clock already. Are we going to rehearse or not?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to go on,” croaks the producer angrily. He has already screamed himself hoarse.

“Clara! Something unexpected has happened to me!”—and the rehearsal begins again.

But the producer bursts out with: “That’s all wrong. Reduce the third switch by fully half.”

“What has happened to you?”

“More . . . still more subdued . . . enough . . . come along now, what’s the matter?”

“Mr. Producer!” cries the electrician, “the third switch isn’t burning any more.”

“Then what is burning if not that switch?”

“The chandelier. You told me to switch on the chandelier.”

“Never mind that. It’s nothing to do with you what I told you to do,” storms the producer; “turn the chandelier off, and turn the third switch to six.”

“Clara! Something unexpected has happened to me!”

“What has happened to you?”

“That’s all wrong. Switch the yellow into the chandelier, and turn off the footlights.”

There is one marvellous moment of extraordinary silence. Oh! That this precious silence might last.

“What’s the matter with you all?” cries the producer. “Why aren’t you rehearsing?”

The stage-manager comes on to the stage: “Mr. Producer, Clara has gone out.”

“But she’s damned well got to rehearse now,” storms the producer. “Tell her she’s got to come on to the stage at once . . . at once, mind you.”

“But—but——”

“There are no ‘buts’ about it,” rages the producer. And then, suddenly collapsing like a man completely crushed, he murmurs:

“All right, let us begin then.”

And at last the rehearsal begins all over again.

“Clara! Something unexpected has happened to me!”

“What has happened to you?”

At this moment the upholsterer stumbles on to the stage with his steps which he places near the window.

“Man! What are you doing here?” the producer asks in a breaking voice.

“I’m putting up the curtains,” answers the upholsterer professionally, crawling up his steps.

“Putting up what curtains? Go away! Why didn’t you put them up before?”

“Because the material wasn’t sent sooner, that’s why,” answers the man on the steps.

The producer makes a rush at him, prepared to throw both him and his precious steps on to the ground, burning to choke him, throttle him, trample on him, or assault him in some other manner. The poor author of the play, who is also present, covers both his eyes and ears. For now the proper dress-rehearsal row has burst out in its full glory. It is a wild, howling, screeching affair; a feverish stormy row, unjust as the world, and as necessary as a storm created by Nature herself; a row which fills all those present, whether author, actor, manager, producer, electrician, with dull despairing rage, weariness, disgust, and an intense longing to be outside; far away from this accursed atmosphere of the dress rehearsal.

Slowly the producer returns to his place in the auditorium. He has aged by ten years, is exhausted, bad-tempered, and hated by every one.

“Begin again,” he says with disgust.

“Clara! Something unexpected has happened to me!”

“What has happened to you?” whispers Clara, without any voice at all.

Heavily and joylessly the dress rehearsal drags on.

“Wrong!” croaks the producer, “ back. You must enter quicker.”

Weariness fills the players. Their legs begin to wobble. Their voices begin to stick in their throats. Memory suddenly fails them. Will it never end?

“Back,” thunders the producer, “you are hiding your partner.”

Oh! if it were only at an end. The words are rattled out in feverish haste. The producer tries to interrupt, but only succeeds in making helpless signs with his hands. He wipes the cold sweat from his brow. The end.

The players creep silently out of the theatre. Out on the fresh air of the street they begin to sway and stagger. The author of the play hurries home with lowered eyes; his shoulders seem to bear the burden of the “weariness and depression of all. To-morrow is the first night. Good! Nothing matters to him any more.

But in spite of it all every one will look forward to the next dress rehearsal. You authors, players, producers, electricians, it is a long dark day for you all, as heavy as a millstone about your necks, but perhaps you will look forward to it just because it is so exhausting.