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Page:How a play is produced by Karel Čapek (1928).pdf/46

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Further Rehearsals

AND yet, at these first rehearsals, in a room where a rickety chair may represent a divan, a throne, a rock or a balcony, most of the real work of the theatre is done. But the dramatist who is simply dying to see his play, here finds it in a mangled and chaotic state calculated to bring tears to his eyes: it is rehearsed simply anyhow, from the end or the middle; an insignificant scene may be repeated twenty times while another far more important one gets left unrehearsed: half of the players are worn out with other rehearsals, while the other half are also worn out with these rehearsals. And yet, there are moments when the dramatist feels that “it”? is becoming a reality.

In a few days a new person appears upon the scene: the prompter. The players cease

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