How a play is produced/The Ensemble

by Karel Čapek

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The Ensemble

 

THE ensemble is always crowded a few apiece into the dressing-rooms. These dressing-rooms are tiny holes. They contain a dressing-table, a washstand, and are either very hot or very cold. Every player has in front of him or her a small mirror, a hare’s foot or a powder-puff, powder, flesh-paints, vaseline, towels for wiping the cosmetics off, carmine, an eyebrow pencil, greasy paper (in which some boiled ham has been wrapped), a half-eaten piece of bread, and the crumpled and creased rôle itself. There is a strong odour of human bodies, hastily consumed suppers, cosmetics, central heating, old costumes, gum, sausages, wigs; while in the ladies’ dressing-rooms there are the additional odours of various kinds of scented soaps and underlinen.

In the largest of the gentlemen’s dressing-rooms cards are everlastingly being played. Indeed, it is always noisy and lively in the gentlemen’s dressing-rooms: all kinds of practical jokes are played here, choruses are sung, trials of strength are made, while other wild pleasures are also practised. In the ladies’ dressing-rooms, on the other hand, a more distrustful and whispering silence prevails, a calm which is only broken by the running to and fro of the dressers, the clattering of the curling-tongs, and the rustling of the black-beetles, for these little creatures, you must know, gather in the ladies’ dressing-rooms because they find sugary sweets there.

We, however, as is quite correct and proper, will confine ourselves to the gentlemen’s dressing-rooms; admire the knights’ hose and doublets, heavily wadded and padded, which are hanging up on the walls; weigh in the hand the theatrical swords and helmets with their flaunting plumes; get into the way of the dresser who is pulling on the high riding-boots of the half-naked hero; of the hairdresser who is busy curling the hero’s wig; and of the tailor who is busy squeezing the hero’s waist in while fastening up his tight doublet. We sit down on his shirt and clothes, and to the best of our ability, add to the general disorder which develops between the first and third signals given by the stage-manager.

The performers are thus divided into a group of gentlemen and a group of ladies. In the group of males we have the tragedian, the hero or heroic lover, the comic lover (usually known as “Duckie”), the country boy, the bon-vivant who is usually a corpulent gentleman by profession, the comedian, the character-actor (father, schemer, bully, neurasthenic, etc.), and several other non-descript players, down to the man who plays the bow-wow. The actual limits of an actor’s capacities are not very clearly defined: the rarest types are the tragedian and the heroic lover; in most cases, the newly engaged heroic lover turns out to be a character-actor.

In the group of ladies we have the tragedienne or heroine, who plays in “costume,” the first lover, the “lyric lover” (also called “Grouser’’), the “heroic” mother (also known as “weeping Jessie”), the comic old woman, the feminine character-actresses, the innocent young girl (or “Pussy”), and the chambermaids usually known as “fat-heads.” Here, too, no clear line can be drawn. One usually finds that the réle which is handed out to a player is not at all in his or her “line,” while the rôle which is in his or her “line” is given to another player. This gives rise to much unpleasantness: rôles are brought back and taken upstairs, to “those in authority.” As though “those in authority” are responsible for the idiotic author having written such wretchedly small parts! And if he must write a small part then he should not drag it through every act; he should get rid of it in the first act and let the poor actor get home early.

I should like to lead you through the lives of the players, and reveal to you their pasts, their cares, their sorrows, their sensitiveness, the difficulties of their profession, their stage-frights, their curious superstitions, their loves and hates, their jokes and their lamentations, their brief joys which are always being revived: but I am not writing a realistic novel about stage life but only a short guide. I will, therefore, cease to wander round the dressing-rooms, between scenery, lamps, weapons, and theatrical thrones, and turn to the mob of both sexes. They are called “supers.”