The herald., 1896-09-20
Staging Plays for the Coming
Season Is Hard Work
REHEARSALS DULL AFFAIRS
Busy Times for the Makers Of Amuse.
ments
The Efficient Stage Manager Must Be An
Artist, Mechanic, Electrician,
Carpenter and Actor.

NEW YORK, Sept. 15.-Pretty nearly
every little obscure dancehall in town is
filled these bright evenings with what
the neighborhood boys call the per
fesh.' Ladies with suspiciously golden
hair and with compilations of the live
Hest possible order. gowned in clothes
of uncertain newness, trip gaily in, ac-
complained by smooth faced gentlemen
whose finery must have been quite i'm
pressive in the early part of the summer,
but which now has a chilly down at-the-
heel look.
All this means that the rehearsing
season is now at it's height The COM
panies, which, within a month or two,
will seek to win in rural localities golden
dollars by their histrionic abilities, are
now learning their business. The people
in the bigger cities will never see them
or know of their existence. Perhaps
about December three-line Geographic
dispatch from some distant point will
appear in the newspapers notifying the
world of the fact that "the Great Unique
Novelty company went to pieces last
night at Wayoff. eighteen miles from
here, and their baggage has been seized
for board"
This para graph will mean little or Moth
ing to the average newspaper reader,
but to a dozen weary and heart-sick
stage folk it will be the recital of a
little show companies are organized
in New York to Ego on the road 1t
would seem that the managers of these
affairs would use some other term than
that just quoted. for to the old cam
paigners is has literal ring to it, reviv-
ing painful memories of long walks to
some place where enough could be bor
rowed to land them in New York again.
OF the two hundred companies which
go out during September and october
to lose themselves in the little byplaces
most of them go to pieces before Christ
mas. A few may struggle through the
whole season. meeting a succession of
hearty frosts but managing in some oc
cult way to get out of every town with
their properties and baggage. Those of
the "perfesh" who go through success
full campaign of this kind are heroes
during the next summer months and are
looked up to by their comprades who
went to pieces before a month had
elapsed.
ACCOUNTING REHEARSALS.
In their full-hedged beauty the shows
which these unfortunates give are bad
enough, but their rehearsals would drive
any sane person crazy. In the lay mind
there is always hankering for the mys-
terry of seeing actors and actresses re-
hearsing, and those who have had their
hunger satisfied by viewing one of these
affairs in first class theater have been
bored to death inside of half an hour. But
the rehearsals in a first class theater
are nothing to compare with those now
going on in dance halls and queer places
in the city where the floor space is large
enough. These latter are so shockingly
bad that they are almost interesting.
To begin with there is either no plot
at all or it is so fearfully tangled up that
| there is no use trying to fathom the
story of the play. The stage manager sits
! at a little table with the play manu-
script in front of him and various plans
of different scenes spread out Then the
terribly bad actors and ACTRESSES do
their work. Without the glamor of stage
settings and clothed in their frowsy
street dress, almost any one would be
willing to wager million dollars to a
| cent that the show would fall fiat before
it got dozen miles away from New
York and usually he would win, or come
close to it.
In the large theaters things have a