The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1913-05-19
.W0MAN's CLUB IS
SAVER Of PLAY
STAGE DIRECTOR IN DESPAIR
OVER LACK OF A FRENCH
NEWSPAPER.
LOOK HIGH AND LOW
STAGE HAND FINALLY SUGGESTS
THE TEMPLE OF CULTURE AND
APPLICATION Is DULY
REWARDED.
LOOK HIGH AND LOW

An incident occurred at the Ac-
ademy theater recently, small in it
self. but illustrative of seemingly
trivial details the careful following
out of which produce stage realism.
the audience realizes the amount of
thought that has been expended upon
every trifling thing seen upon the
stage.
In the multitude of things to be
attended to incident to the staging
of the production which opens at the
Academy on Monday, Mr.. Percival
Aylmer, stage director of the Lucille
La Verne company overlooked one
requisite. The story of the play
takes place In France. In one of
the scenes a newspaper Is used. Or
dinarily an English paper would have
sufficed. but to be in keeping with
the elaborate detail with which the
production had been staged nothing
short of an actual Franch newspaper
would do. The newsdealers were
tried first. then, the clubs and finally
the directory was consulted and those
whose names had any trace OF French
origin were appealed 10. Failure
crowned every effort, however. 1t
other large city, and Mr.. Aylmer was
about to give up In despair.
Woman's Club to Rescue.
One of the actors, who have trou-
bles of their own learning their parts
and who are inclined to take the at
titude of II should worry" over the
predcaments of the stage director,
spoke of Mr.. Aylmer's efforts. One
of the stage hands asked If the
Woman's club had been tried. Here
was tip, which. upon being followed
up, resulted In a copy of the Paris
La Patrie. The production at the
academy therefore will be an exact
duplicate of the original to the very
last detail.
Another incident, even more striking
than that of the newspaper, is told
of one of Mr.. Belascos productions.
He is noted for his creations Of stage
illusions. In one of his recent pro-
auctions a cat walked upon the stage,
stretched itself and Tapped from a
saucer of milk. Nothing was found
Belasco had been known to go to
further extremes than that of having
a cat In the scene to produce a home
like atmosphere.
Teaching Cat to Act.
| The cat could easily be taught to
expect saucer of milk In that par
ticular place and naturally go to 1t.
However, after about a weeks run
/ 1t was marked that night after night
/ this cat when through the same mo-
lions of stretching itself Surely Be
lasco could not have expended the
time and effort of teaching a sat to
stretch itself Aside from the UNI
necessary expenditure of time. the
thing seemed impossible in itself. II
would take many months of pain
stalking teaching to train the cat to
do this one action. 1T was not CO.
incident-time after time, the thing
had happened, at every performance
in fact. 1t seemed uncanny.
Finally Belasco was appealed to
and it was explained. He had kept
the cat confined in restricted space
several hours before each performance
i At the proper time ii was released and
the natural thing for it to do was to
stretch itself and seek the saucer OF
milk. Such is thought expended, yes
the genius. to make the stage picture
1 real.