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.
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