Evening star., 1902-08-09
A Morning on a Vaudeville
Stage Watching Acts.
NO FASCINATION THERE
AN OVERFLOW OF WoULD-BE RE.
HEARsERs TRYING IT, TOO.
Takes Nerve to Stand the Criticisms of
Managers and the Other Wait
ing Artists Of "Renown."
Special Correspondence Of The Evening Star.


NEW YORK, Aug 8, 1902.
The fact that most OF the theaters
are still boarded up. with the weather
faded will reopen in September signs
nailed to the boards. does. not i'm
ply that the stages are dark
at this fateful preparatory season in
the theatrical world. Not only are re-
hearsals in full blast on all of the stages,
but great overflow of rehearsers. unable
to secure regular theater stages for their
purpose, are chartering little dance and
concert halls all over town. The out-of-
door fun for the great bulk of the the
atricai colonists who pass their summers
but little way from New York is virtual
ly over. They are all catching early morn
ing trains from their serene and cherished
loafing places in order to be on hand for
rehearsals, and most of them are kept at
it in the now distressingly humid and
sticky city until well n igh sundown.
This correspondent put in a recent morn
ing at a dingy theater at which applicants
for positions with a number of travelling
vaudeville shows conducted by a we'll
known manager of entertainments of that
sort were being tried out-'gittin' their
mornin gallops,'' as the horsy stage hands
expressed it, The writer is bound to state
that vaudeville show which he ever wit
messed was ever quite so laugh-compelling
as this experience.
The ~would-be vaudeville artist who can
stand a series of such try-outs. which are
calculated to test the nerves of logger,
without giving way to Mysteries or extreme
wrath need never have any fear Of being
attacked by nervous prostration
The gray moon of the bare, stripped
stage, the awful racket of hammering and
pounding and saving and scraping kept up
by a corps of house mechanics preparing
for mid-August opening, and the vast
and hopeless Indifference of the manager
!, tIn toll Ine Cd ~ .SS
to the booking point-these were depressing
and d!scouraging features of that dismal
morning try-out experience, to which were
added many others not quite so poignant,
but sufficiently conducive to low spirits on
the part of the candidates.
There were quite lot of new candidates
for vaudeville honors-the blase, world
weary stage hand calls them rockies, hay
seeds, Ipswich Zekes, shoemakers, counter
vaulters, ribbon shippers, cash girls,
chambermaids, piano movers and other
names equally derogatory IL. not con-
temptuous-wating for their try-outs
stage. These huddled in dark corners in
morunful-looking groups. They were all
in their street raiment, and they looked
and acted like persons borne down by
low tones, jerkily and spasmodically, while
waiting for the managers appearance.
Others of the candidates were veterans OF
the variety stage looking for the oppor-
as they called it.
The piano player, induiging in frequent
cavernous yawns, fidgeted and stretched
his arms on his stool in the orchestra space,
scowling wickedly every time he glanced at
the huddled groups of candidates in the
dark corners. and occasionally banging a
vicious minor chord with one hand, as If to
give expression to the things he'd like to do
to folks who made him abandon his bunk
at the unholy hour Of 10 In the morning.
The stage mechanics in their dungarees
plodded heavily around the stage, finding
apparently as much work as possible to
do in the immediate neighborhood Of the
waiting groups of aspirants for the mere
pleasure, 1t appeared, of bawling at them,
Hey, get out o. tn road there, will yer? or
"W're dyer tink youse is. in church?' and
so on.
Still others of the stage hands were heard,
| but not seen. They kept up a steady
whacking and saving at what seemed to
| be mighty stubborn and recalcitrant props,
| and hoarse laughter occasionally punctuat-
| ed their unseen labors. The invisible ones
were probably talking over the chances of
| the aspirants to 'git bookin'."
The manager of the assembling travelling
| vaudeville shows, his face puffy with sleep
| or the need of 1t, drifted in, yawning por-
| tentously, about 1870. accompanied by his
rehearsing stage manager, who talked
| volubly all the time, without extracting
much more than grunts from the manager.
| The two climbed onto the stage and in
| spected the huddled and now silent groups
| of candidates and bestowed distant jerky
mods upon some of them. Then the stage
| manager jawed couple of the stage hands
! while the manager turned his back upon
| the aspirants and gaZed into the flies with
much interest that one could easily
fancy that he had never before looked up
into the flies Of theater In the whole
course Of his life. Then he stretched his
| al ms and yawned horribly once more thus
setting the piano player of on another dis
tressing yawning spell. and called out to
ha eli Ia In Cfa ma ynr
Hey, let's get a wiggle on with this
thing. Get that monologue man on and
let's what kind O. stun he's got"
He Was All Ready.
The monologue man needed no invitation
from the stage manager. He had the CEN
ter of the stage almost before the manager
had ceased speaking. He was a smooth
faced. cadaverous, not particularly clean
looking chap. He sailed right in without
be about the same that Of all the mono
logue men. The wit vas pretty cheap. The
jokes sounded much more hollow and far
fetched than they really were. because of
the blue and clammy surroundings. The
quips of the monologue man are endurable
enough after a good dinner and a good
smoke, and with the lights and the music
and the propinquity Of many other folks
whose faces are wreathed in amused smiles;
but they sound grisly and unoonvincing
enough when exuded at IL o'clock on an
intensely sticky morning by an unShaven
and unshorn and not particularly clean
looking individual on a stage that sug
gests the deSolation of rnisa sma tic swamp.
At the pauses in his 11ow Of humor-in
the course Of which there were many ref
Crences to them people and them
things" and to certain facts which the
candidate declared he didn't know nothin'
about'-the monologue man would shoot
rather pathetic glances out Of the tan of
his eye at the manager and the stage
manager, as IL to ascertain by their atti-
tude how his stuff was going They
were paying absolutely no attention to him.
however They had left the stage and
stood in the middle aisle with their backs
to the monologist, lingering their watch
chains and talking stridently about mat
ters not even remotely connected with the
try-out of the monologue man, who stum-
bled on with an occasional twist of his
head and a black look when the sounds Of
hammering and saving by the unseen stage
mechanics became distracting.
Meanwhile, the groups still huddled in
the dark corners were exchanging rather
sardonic grins with one another.
Pretty punky. hey?"
Rotten
Talks like a car driver"
"Ha, ha! How vairy. vairy funny!'
'.All to the bad"
II heard all O. his stuff on the minor