Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-03-20
THE DRAMATIC SEASON

The dramatic season that is just draw
ing to close has been one of the most I'M
satisfactory that managers have expert
enced for many years. While many stars
and combinations have made money and
plenty of it, the majority have played to a
losing business, and their hackers find
themselves bankrupt, while the actors have
not received their salaries for some weeks
or months. Mccullough, Barrett and
Keene are each far ahead on the season, as
are Maggie Mitchell, Mary Anderson, Min
ME Palmer, and few other of the promi-
nent lady stars, while some of the more
prominent combinations, especially semi
musical and comic organizations, have
done well. But the majority of managers,
after hard seasons work, find themselves
over their ears in debt, and without the
means to start afresh in the autumn.
The combination system has been done
to death within the past few years. The
years succeeding 1875 proved exceedingly
| profitable to these organizations, and as a
consequence the old stock companies were
obliged to disband one after the other
while every actor of ability picked up some
speciality, organized a company, hired a
manager and started on the road. The
public was well pleased, for constant sue
csssion of novelties, new faces and new
scenery were presented them. The profits
of the more meritorious organizations were
at first enormous, and the combinations
increased and multiplied and overran the
country like a swarm of locusts. A collapse
of the system 10 therefore imminent sim
ply for the reason that the companies have
become too numerous, and have deterio-
rated in quality.
The system has been productive of great
harm to the drama and to the dramatic
profession. 1t has demoralized the pro-
fession so that there are really but few
good actors left. Actors and actresses by
the score play the same characters year
after year, with scarcely change in gest-
ure or infection, and they become mere
machines, like music box wound up to
| play only given air. If called upon to
assume different role from the one to
which they have become habituated they
would be completely at sea, and appear as
veritable sticks as any of the poor players
who strut and fret their hour upon the
stage and then are seen no more. 1t has
also brought into existence class of
dramas that are neither improving
in their tone nor calculated
to benefit the Professionalism
specially written for and fitted to some
particular individual and known as one
character plays, in which there is but one
central character, and the rest mere sticks
purposely dwarfed to bring the leading
role and the leading actor into undue
prominence.
There have been many attractive feat
ures about the combination plan-mors
for the public than for the dramatic pro-
fesslon-but the abuses that have become
attached to it render its demise a matter
of satisfaction. Dramatic art has suffered
by 1t, though the public has benefited by
the greater frequency with which they were
enabled to witness meritorious perform.
snces, ana at the same time a class of
trashy, insipid, if not harmful and degrad.
ing plays have been made familiar
through the agency of the system. The
managers will, no doubt, succeed in filIipo
: its place with some better plan.