The age-herald., 1900-03-11
MISS NETHERSOLE TELLS HOW TO I BECOME AN EMOTIONAL ACTRESS She Describes the Process Through Which the Body
 and Mind Must Pass.

If you are at all tinid about your own feelings, mean if you are afraid to use the extent of natural impulse born in you, there Is every hope that you will attain distinction in some other profession than the stage.
 The stage is no place for timid people. I sometimes think that nerve Is better than talent, for 1t often seems to sue ceed quite as well.
 | hope I have not misled you by saying too much about stage-art as against the value of stage-heart.
 Perhaps I ought not to say stage-neart, because actually there is no such thing.
 Our hearts are always that high court to which we women appeal nearly all our best impulses.
 I only used the term stage-heart to qualify the value of complete heart in- terest to the stage. And just here let me tell you there Is a tremendous egotism about the stage. It Is a masterful com manding. exorbitant creditor, demanding your body and soul as ransom, a pledge of your ambition to succeed.
 7 Your bodily strength, your emotional nature, all your passionate and tender inn pulses, all that you can love and all that you can hate is absorbed by that glittering temple of the actors creed-the theatre.
 It is not, In the same sense that ladylike fiction would describe 1t, sweet home life.
 It Is nomadic, restless, anxious, almost soldierly in its characteristic lighting" qualities.
 So much of necessary warning to sus- tain the purpose I wish these lessons to convey. I want you to be quite sure that you are competent to face the difficulties.
 We have come to that point in these educational talks which is most important dn self-examination for admission to the dramatic profession.
 Have you emotional power?
 Nearly every one has an emotion or two that they are quite proud of. Nearly every one avoids those emotions that an emotan- al actress is called upon to impersonate. The emotional motives of great trage- dies are exceptional. They do not occur in ordinary lines. They are conceived by men and women who have vfgor of im- agination.
 < Emotional power, therefore, is not merely physical strength to sustain the bodily tension of tragedy but an unusual mental genius for imagining situations. In fact, the most vital part of emotional power is the imagination.
 ,2 Emotional acting Is the torture of spirit plunged into a four or five act tragedy, to which is added physical endurance to sur vWe the Torture. Dramatic situations that would kill two-thirds of the audiences were they to encounter them in life are the duties set down for an emotional actress. IHeTeIOTe Vilt QueSllOH lO dSh yOuISSll IS, can you suffer the agony of Juliet's mind and heart as she would suffer in the ~ tomb scene without a complete collapse? Have you the physical nature or the in- domitable will to dismiss your emotions when the play is over?
 Can you violate your own intimate standard of good morals by impersonating the character of woman whose nature has no parallel motioin in your own, and conceive her disposition, voice. boise and passion? Can You submit your soul to the con- temptation of pathetic death scene and live through 1t?
 These are questions that put to you from my own knowledge, knowing how they will weight upon your ambition. I know also that unless you are born with the true spark of intense purpose that they will frighten you into other trades.
 Of course, I am assuming that you aim to become a leading example of the best emotional actin.
 As T have told you, my own emotions on the stage are real for the time being, and T am quite positive that without a degree of actual tragic sympathy with an