Evenat the Burgtheater, Europe’s premier theater, as he put it, all we get is compromises. But what compromises! he said, implying that the compromises reached at the Burgtheater still constituted great theater. Any accidents that happened there were after all Burgtheater accidents, he said, implying that when all was said and done the Burgtheater was a great theater, despite repeated disasters. What he said was quite ludicrous. I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open, but the actor was obviously not at all tired. The rest of us were exhausted after attending Joana’s funeral and then spending more than two hours waiting for the actor to make his appearance. To think that you have to devote a whole six months to a part like Ekdal, he said, and that during these six months you have to give up everything else! A role like Ekdal completely takes you over, robbing you of all creature comforts while you’re studying it (this was the word he used), for after all it’s not much fun locking oneself away for weeks in a chalet in the Tyrol for the sake of Ekdal, living on virtually nothing but bread and water and pea soup, sleeping in an uncomfortable bed and hardly ever washing — the audience has no idea about all this and gives one no credit for it. And even if they applaud and the role is a great success, as Ekdal was this time, he said, the price one paysfor suchdevotion — I might evensay for such sacrifice — is toohigh. But then an actor’s life was a life of sacrifice, he said, trying to insert a note of irony into the remark but not succeeding, since it was clear to all that it was meant seriously. Such a role, he said, required an actor to give his all. First getting inside the work, he said, but how? Then arriving at a proper understanding of the writer, then of the part, and then the long period of rehearsals, which in this case had taken up the whole of the fall and the winter. We begin rehearsing at the end of August, and when rehearsals are completed we’re not aware that spring has come around again. With Shakespeare it’s quite different, he said, without telling us what it was that made Shakespeare different from Ibsen. Or Strindberg. During the rehearsal period, unless he happened to be acting in another play and had to appear on stage, he went to bed at ten and got up at six. He memorized his lines, incidentally, in front of the open window, pacing up and down in his bedroom. Being unmarried has always been an advantage, he said suddenly. I walk to and fro in my bedroom more or less from seven o’clock to eleven and memorize the text. I arrive at the first rehearsal having learned the whole text, he said. Producers are always amazed at this. Most actors turn up for rehearsals without knowing their lines, he said. I always have all my lines in my head when rehearsals begin. It’s sickening when one’s colleagues don’t know their lines. Sickening, he repeated as he helped himself to more of the pike, which was served with a sauce containing far too many capers. If I hadn’t built myself a house in Grinzing in 1954, he said, I might have gone on the German stage — who knows? I had numerous offers. I could have gone to Berlin, to Cologne, to Zurich. But what are all these cities compared with Vienna? he said. We hate Vienna, and yet we love it like no other city. Just as we hate the Burgtheater, though we love it like no other theater. Thissuccess I’ve had with Ekdal was quite unpredictable, he said, and as he said this I was watching Jeannie Billroth, who had become somewhat agitated, feeling that this evening she had been pushed into the background; she could not make herself the focus of attention that she always wanted to be, since the Burgtheater actor had so far not allowed her to get a word in, despite her repeated attempts to intervene. Again and again she had tried to take him up on some remark or other, but he had not given her the chance. But now, having heard him say that Ekdal was the most difficult part he had ever studied or played, she managed to remark that in her opinion the role of Edgar in Strindberg was much more difficult. But Edgar is a much more difficult part than Ekdal, she said. At any rate that had always been her impression from reading the play. She had never thought of Ekdal as a difficult part — except of course that all parts are difficult if they are to be well played and if they actually are well played. She had always felt, when reading the plays, that Edgar was more difficult than Ekdal. No! cried the Burgtheater actor, Ekdal is the more difficult of the two — that’s obvious. There she could not agree with him, said Jeannie Billroth, pointing out that she had once studied drama, incidentally under the famous Professor Kindermann. This evening too, as on all such occasions, she managed to mention the fact that she was once a pupil of Kindermann. Perhaps an actor was bound to think that Ekdal was the more difficult part, she said, whereas in fact Edgar was the more difficult. No, you must understand, the actor said to Jeannie Billroth, that when one has been an actor for decades, as I have — and an actor at the Burgtheater moreover — and when one has played nothing but leading roles for as long as one cares to think back, one knows what one is talking about. As a student of drama, of course, one has quite different views about the theater, he went on, but there’s no doubt that Ekdal is the more difficult role and Edgar the easier — easier when it comes to playing it, don’t forget. Jeannie Billroth was not satisfied with what the actor had said, and replied that it had surely been a proven fact for as long as the two roles had existed that Ekdal, not Edgar, was the easier role to play. Kindermann, her teacher, had demonstrated this quite clearly in an article entitled Edgar and Ekdaclass="underline" A Comparison. Had he not read the article? Jeannie Billroth asked, to which he replied that he was not familiar with Kindermann’s article. That was regrettable, said Jeannie Billroth, for if he had read Kindermann’s discussion of Edgar (a Strindberg character) and Ekdal (an Ibsen character) before beginning rehearsals he could have spared himself many of the unpleasant aspects of his study of The Wild Duck, whereupon Auersberger, who had been on the lookout for an opportunity to say something himself, suddenly interjected, And all those weeks in the chalet! By now the actor himself wanted to change the subject and announced that he had lost one of his gloves on the way to the Gentzgasse. Had he not been late setting out he would have gone back to look for it, but he could not retrace his steps as he did not want to keep the Auersbergers on the rack any longer. People did not know what they were letting themselves in for when they invited him to dinner. It’s easy enough to invite me, he said, but the hosts don’t realize what’s involved until they notice that it’s half past twelve and the guest still hasn’t arrived. Yes‚ acting is quite a profession, he said, as though this were one of the remarks he habitually made when he was at a loss for anything else to say. The hostess, who had had a second serving of pike brought to the table, remarked that it really was a pity he had lost one of his gloves on the way to the Gentzgasse. Losing one glove was just as bad as losing two, she said, as there was nothing one could do with one glove. And all the people at the table said that they had once lost a single glove and had the same feeling. But possibly whoever had found the glove would have handed it in, the hostess suggested.