§ §. THIS was a period of great hopefulness for
Thyrsis, but also of desperate struggle. For until the production of his play in January, he had somehow to keep alive, and that meant more hack-work. Also he had to lay something by, for after the rehearsals the play would go on the road for a couple of weeks, to be "tried on the dog"; and during that period he must have money enough to travel, and stay at hotels, and also to take Corydon with him, if possible.
The rehearsals began an interesting experience for him; he was introduced into a new and strange world. Thyrsis himself was shy, and disposed to run away and hide his emotions; but here were people—the actor-folk—whose business it was to live them in sight of the world. And these emotions were their life; they were very intense, yet quick both to come and to go. Such people were intensely personal; they were like great children, vain and sensitive, their moods and excitements not to be taken too seriously. But it was long before Thyrsis came to realize this, and meanwhile he had some uncomfortable times. To each of the players, apparently, the interest of a play centered in those places in which he was engaged in speaking his lines; and to each the author of the play was a more or less benevolent despot, who had the happiness of the rest of the world in his keeping. Once at a rehearsal, when Thyrsis was engaged in cutting out one of the speeches attributed to "Mrs. Hartman", he discovered that lady standing behind him in a flood of tears!
In the beginning Thyrsis paid many visits to the apartment on Riverside Drive; for Miss Lewis professed to be very anxious that he should consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to Tier ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis'
portrayal of Helena—it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going to make. She was always trying to make Thyrsis realize this incongruity, and to persuade him to put some "charming" lines into her part. "You boy!" she would exclaim. "I believe you are as obstinate as your hero!" Miss Lewis was only two years older than the "boy", but she saw fit to adopt this grandmotherly attitude toward him.
And then came Robertson Jones, suggesting a man who could play the part of Lloyd. But Miss Lewis declared indignantly that she would not have him, because he was not handsome enough. "If," she vowed, "I've got to make love to a man and be rejected by him, at least I'm not going to have it an ugly man!" When an actor was finally agreed upon and engaged, Thyrsis had a talk with him, and it seemed as if Miss Lewis, in her preoccupation with his looks, had overlooked the matter of his brains. But Thyrsis was so new at this game that he did not feel capable of judging. He shrunk from the thought of having any actor play his part—that was so precious and so full of meaning to him.
But when the rehearsals began, Thyrsis speedily forgot this feeling. The most sensitive poet to the contrary notwithstanding, the purpose of a play is to be acted; and Thyrsis was like an inventor, who has dreamed a great machine, and now sees the parts of it appearing as solid steel and brass; sees them put together, and the great device getting actually under way.
The rehearsals were held in a little hall on the East
Side, and thither came the company—six men and three women. There was no furniture or setting, they all wore their street clothing, and in the beginning they went through their parts with the manuscript in their hands. And yet—they had been selected because they resembled the characters in the play; and every time they went over the lines they gave them with more feeling and understanding. So — vaguely at first, and then more clearly—the poet began to see them as incarnations of his vision. These characters had been creatures of his fancy; they had lived in it, he had walked and talked and laughed and wept with them. Now to discover them outside him—to be able to hear them with his physical ears and see them with his physical eyes— was one of the strangest experiences of his life. It was so thrilling as to be almost uncanny. It was a new kind of inspiration, of that strange "subliminal uprush" which made the mystery of his life. And it was a kind that others could experience with him. Corydon would come every day to the rehearsals, and for four or five hours at a stretch they would sit and watch and listen in a state of perfect transport.
§ 7. ALSO, there were things not in the manuscript which were sources of interest and delight. There was Mr. Tapping, the stage director, for instance; Thyrsis could see himself writing another play, just to get Mr. Tapping in. He was a man well on in years, arid wrecked by dissipation—almost bald and toothless, and with one foot crippled with gout. Yet he was a perfect geyser of activity—bounding about the stage, talking swiftly, gesticulating—like some strange gnome or co-bold out of the bowels of the earth. Thyrsis was the creator of the play, so far as concerned the words; but
this man was to be the creator of it on the stage. And that, too, required a kind of genius, Thyrsis perceived.
Mr. Tapping had talked the problems out with him at the beginning—talking until two o'clock in the morning, in a super-heated office filled with the smoke of ten thousand dead cigars. He talked swiftly, eagerly, setting forth his ideas; to Thyrsis it was a most curious experience—to hear the vision of his inmost soul translated into the language of the Tenderloin! "Your fiddler's this kind of a guy," Mr. Tapping would say-"he knows he's got the goods, and he don't care whether those old fogies think he's dippy, or what the hell they think. Ain't that the dope, Mr. Author?" And Thyrsis would answer faintly that he thought that was "the dope."—This was a word that Mr. Tapping used every time he opened his mouth, apparently; it designated all things connected with the play—character, dialogue, action, scenery, music, costume. "That's the way to dope it out to them!" he would cry to the actors.
Miss Lewis, and Mr. Tilford, the leading man, moved through their parts with dignity; the stage director showed them the "business" he had laid out, but they did not trouble to act at rehearsals, and he did not criticize what they did. But all the other people had to be taught their roles and drilled in them; and that meant that Mr. Tapping had to have in him five actors and two actresses, and play all their seven parts as they came. Marvellous it was to see him do this; springing from place to place, and changing his whole aspect in a flash—now scolding shrewishly in the words of Violet Hartman, now discoursing, with the accent and manner of Prof, von Arne, upon the psychopathic, sexualis of Genius.
He did not know all the parts, of course; but that
was never allowed to trouble him. He would take a sentence out of the actor's lips, and then go on to elaborate it in his Tenderloin dialect; or, if the scene was highly emotional, and required swift speech, he would fall back upon the phrase "and so and so, and so and so." He could run the whole gamut of human emotions with those words, "and so and so."
"No, that's no good!" he would cry to "Mrs. Hart-man." "What are those words?—'Wretched, ungrateful son—do you care nothing at all for your parents' feelings? Do you owe us nothing for what we have done? And so and so? And so and so? And so and so?' Mr. Tapping's voice would rise to a wail; and then in a flash he would turn to Moses Rosen (he called all the actors by their character-names). "That's your cue, Rosen, you rush in left dentre, and throw Up your hands—right here—see? And what's your dope? —oh yes—'I have spent seven thousand dollars on this thing! You have ruined me! You have betrayed me! And so and so! And so and so! And so and so!'— And then you run over here to the professor—'You have trapped me! And so and so!'