The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-12-04
BILL NYE's FARCE.
Collaborating with rauI Potter
PIaywriting in Prisons.

Collaborating with 1>auI Potter
PIaywriting in Prisons.
Bill Nye is going to try again to
utilize his humor in farce. His first
attempt was an utter failure. He talk
ed the other day about the second,
which has taken the form of "A Stag
Party" and is in rehearsal for early
production. 1t is a collaboration with
Paul Potter. Sometimes I fancy
said Mr.. Nye, chat Potter looks upon
humor as a sort of literary varnish that
can be applied with brush whenever
and wherever it may be deemed neces-
sary. I know he has a pleasant habit
of handing me the manuscript of a
scene and saying, Here, old man, just
put littel repartee in that. will you?
Sometimes 1 have fancied from his
manner that he expected me to do it
while he waited. just as if he were hav-
ing his hat blocked. L have found out
already that there is a great deal of
difference between a joke that is in
tended for the stage and one that is
intended for publication in a. magazine
or newspaper. In the theater you have
no time to roll a good bit of humor
under your tongue, or to hear it over
again, whereas if you come across
something funny in book you can go
back and read it over again and study
its subtleties and enjoy it at your lies
ure. DR.. Holmes, whose humor, by the
way, was of the kind that will bear the
closest of study, said that lecture was
never thoroughly successful until it
had been delivered about 100 times and
had been shorn of all the things that
the man who wrote the lecture and de-
livered it considered clever and en-
riched with all the cheap and obvious
jokes that he could pick up in the
course of his travels.
"Well, 1 have conscientiously tried to
put some original jokes into my work.
although it has been a sore temptation
to get even with the farce comedies
and comic operas which have been US
ing my stuff for the last ten or fifteen
years. Potter and I have worked to-
gether very harmoniously. although we
have been separated from one another
during the period of our collaboration
by a great many hundred miles of
space He does the trunk and branches
of the dramatic tree and put on the
foliage. You must really see Potter
and get some of his ideas on dramatic
man can become his own dramatist If
he will only study the Potter rules of
instruction. I must say, too. that he
is always willing to let other people
profit by his experience, and his latest
scheme is to teach in Cooper union"
'What do you mean by that?'
well, he has a very praiseworthy
and charitable plan for helping the
city's poor. A great many intelligent
young men are either out of employ
ment or else working for very meager
wages. and Potter purposes to open a
class at the night school and teach
them the trade of play writing. He
tells me that at the end of the winter
he will have several dozen strong and
healthy young men hard at work writ
ing plays for Palmer and the Froh-
mans and making excellent wages.
and that in the course of a few years
there will be a chair of dramatic in
struction in every trade school in the
land. Now, like his idea very much.
but there is one thing that fills me
with grave apprehension. 1 am afraid
that in the course of time play-writ
ing will be introduced into the prisons.
and that managers in need of new COM
edies or farces will go to the prison
contractors for them. and they will
send up to Sing Sing, where they can
be made more cheaply than by work
men who go free and obliged to pay
board bills. AS a humorist I have
never suffered from this sort of COM
petition. and L hope 1 shall not be if
become a dramatist. New York Sun.