BURNT CORK.
HINTS FOR PRIVATE THEATRICALS. III.
MY DEAR ROUGE POT, I promised to say something about scenery screens.
If the house happens to boast a modern pseudo-Japanese screen of a large size (say six feet high), it will make a very pretty background for a drawing-room scene, and admit of entrances as I suggested. But screens with light grounds are also very valuable as reflectors, carrying the light into the back of the stage. There is generally a want of light on the amateur stage, and all means to remedy this defect and brighten up matters are worth considering.
Folding screens may be covered on both sides with strips of lining wall-paper of delicate tints, pinned on with drawing-pins. The paper can be left plain, or it may serve as the background on which to affix "Shakespeare Scenery." Or again, your amateur painter will find an easier and more effective reward for such labour as he will not grudge to bestow in the holidays, if, instead of attempting the ambitious task of scene-painting on canvas, he adorns these scenery screens with Japanese designs in water-colours. Bold and not too crowded combinations of butterflies and flamingoes, tortoises, dragons, water-reeds, flowers and ferns. He need not hesitate to employ Bessemer's gold and silver paints, with discretion, and the two sides of the screen can be done in different ways. The Japanesque side would make a good drawing-room background, and some other scene (such as a wood) might be indicated on the other with a nearer approach to real scene-painting. These screens light up beautifully, and are well adapted for drawing-room theatricals. 
In the common event of your requiring a bit of a cottage with a practicable door to be visible, it will be seen that two folds of a screen, painted with bricks and windows, may be made to do duty in no ill fashion as the two sides of a house, and with a movable porch (a valuable stage property) the entrance can be contrived just out of sight. The stage will be brightened up by laying down a "crumb cloth," or covering it with holland. A drawing-room scene is made very pretty by hanging up pairs of the summer white muslin curtains, looped with gay ribbons, as if there were windows in the sides of the stage.
If a fireplace is wanted and will do at the side, a mantelpiece is easily represented, and a banner screen will help to conceal the absence of a grate. A showy specimen of that dreadful thing, a paper grate-ornament, flowing well down into the fender, may sometimes hide deficiencies. The appearance of hot coals in a practicable grate is given by irregularly-shaped pieces of red glass, through which light is thrown from a candle behind.
A very important part of your preparations will be the dresses.
Now of dresses it may be said as we have said of scenery that if the actors are clever, very slight (if suggestive) accessories in the way of costume will suffice. At the same time, whilst the scenery can never be good enough in amateur theatricals to cover deficiencies in the performance, good costumes may be a most material help to the success of a piece. Very little wit is demanded from the young gentleman who plays the part of a monkey, if his felt coat is well made, and his monkey-mask comical, and if he has acquired some dexterity in the management of his tail.
I think, my dear Rouge Pot, that you were taken to see that splendid exhibition of stage properties, Babil and Bijou? Do you remember the delightful effect of the tribe of oysters? The little boys who played the oysters had nothing to do but to hop and run, and keep their shells nicely in front of them, and yet how we laughed at them! Now, in a large family, such parts as these afford an opportunity for allowing "the little ones" to "act," and so to become accustomed to the stage, before they can be trusted to learn written parts. Nor are comical costumes beyond the powers of home manufacturers.
You know those men sandwich-men as they are often called! who go about the London streets with one board in front and one behind. These boards are of simple shape and only reach from the shoulder, to a little below the knee; they are only wanted to paste advertisements on. But if you think about it, you will see that to have the boards high enough to hide the head, and low enough to hide the legs, rounded at the top like a scallop shell, with the ribs of the shell nicely painted, eyeholes to peep through, and the hinge of the shell arranged to conceal the feet, would be no very great effort of skill. Sandwich costumes for the little ones might be of many effective shapes. Thick paste-board would probably be strong enough for very little people, and in many cases a covered framework would be better still, and if you have a kite-maker in your troupe, you had better commit these costumes to his skill and ingenuity. A very simple device would be that of flower-pots painted red. They need come no higher than the chin, if a good thick bush is firmly held by the little hands behind, so as to conceal the face. But no doubt, my dear Rouge Pot, you will say, "if we have no plays with such characters in, we cannot have them, however desirable it may be to bring in the little ones." But I think you will find some of the elders ingenious enough to "tack them on" to your pieces if required, especially to those founded on fairy tales.
Glazed calico is the amateur costume-maker's best friend. It is cheap, it is shiny, and it can be had in all the most effective colours. I have never seen a very good green; but the turquoise blue, the pink, and the yellow, are of those pretty Dresden china shades which Mr. Marcus Ward and other Christmas-card makers use to such good purpose against gold backgrounds. Many of these Christmas cards, by the bye, with children dressed in ancient costumes painted by good artists, will give you and your sisters help in a tasteful combination of colours; and besides the gold and silver powder paints, which answer admirably, gold and silver paper can be had to cut stars and trimmings of various sorts from, to stitch or gum on to fairies'
dresses, &c.
Tarlatan can now be had in hues that almost rival the colours of flowers, but I fear that only the white can be had "fire-proof."
Gauze wings, flowing hair, and tarlatan skirts, combined with the "flurry" of the performances, the confined space behind the scenes, and lights everywhere, form a dangerous combination which it makes one shudder to think of. The truth is, my dear Rouge Pot, it cannot be too often or too emphatically repeated that naked lights on the stage or behind the scenes in amateur theatricals are as wrong as in a coal-mine. Glass shades for the bedroom candles with which boy-brothers, seeing imperfectly through masks, will rush past little sisters whose newly-crimped hair and tarlatan skirts are sticking out, they can't feel how far behind them cost a few shillings, and the mental effort of resolving to have and use them. Depend upon it, Rouge Pot, the latter is the greater difficulty! And yet our petty economies in matters which affect our health, our daily comfort, or our lives, are wonderful, when the dangers or discomforts we have to avert may, by chance, be averted by good luck at no cost at all. So perhaps the few shillings have something to do with it. I hope they will always be expended on safety glasses for all lights in use on or about your stage.
Well, glazed calico and tarlatan are very effective, and so is cotton velvet or velveteen; but in every family there will probably be found a few articles of finery originally made of expensive materials, but which are now yielded to the juvenile property-box, and from experience I can assure you that these are valuable treasures. I have a tender remembrance of a few which were our pièces de résistance when we "dressed up" either for charades or one of Miss Corner's plays "in my young days." A black satin dress ancient, but of such lustre and softness as satins are not made now; a real camel's-hair burnous, dyed crimson; a green satin driving cloak, lined with fur these things did not crush and tumble during their long periods of repose in the property-box, as tarlatan skirts and calico doublets were apt to do. Most valuable of all, a grey wig, worn right side foremost by our elderly gentlemen, and wrong side foremost (so as to bring the pig-tail curls over the forehead) by our elderly ladies. Fur gloves, which, with a black rabbit-skin mask over her rosy cheeks, gave ferocity in the part of "the Beast" to our jolliest little actress. A pair of claret-coloured stockings, silk throughout, and a pair of yellow leather slippers, embroidered with gold, doubtless bought long years back in some Eastern bazaar, &c., &c. There came a date in our theatrical history when only one pair of feet could get right into these much-desired shoes, heels and all; and as the individual who owned them was also supposed to display the claret-coloured stockings to the best advantage, both these important properties, with the part of Prince to which our custom assigned them, fell to an actor who could lay no other claim to pre-eminence.
Surely your home will provide one or two of these "stand-bys" of the green-room, and you will not fail to value them, I assure you. I hope you will not fight for them!
Wigs are very important. Unbleached calico is a very fair imitation of the skin of one's head. A skull-cap made of it will do for a bald pate, or, with a black pig-tail and judicious face-painting, will turn any smooth-faced actor into a very passable Chinaman. Flowing locks of tow, stitched on round the lower part, will convert it into a patriarchal wig. Nigger wigs are made of curly black horsehair fastened on to a black skull-cap. Moustaches and whiskers can be bought at small expense, but if well painted the effect is nearly as good.
As to face-painting. Rouge is indispensable, but care must be taken not to overdo it. The eyebrows must be darkened with sepia or Indian ink, and a camel's-hair brush especially for fair people. With the same materials you must deepen all the lines of the face, if you want to make a young person look like an old one. The cheek lines on each side of the nose, furrows across the forehead, and crow's-foot marks by the eyes, are required for an old face; but if the audience are to be very close to the stage, you must be careful not to overdo your painting. Violet powder is the simplest and least irritating white for the skin. Rouge should be laid on with a hare's foot. If your "old man" is wearing a bald wig, be careful to colour his forehead to match as well as possible with his bald pate. All these applications are more or less irritating to one's skin. It is said to be a mistake to wash them off. Cold cream should be rubbed over the face, and then wiped off with a soft towel.
As a parting hint, my dear Rouge Pot, when you have passed the stage of child-plays in rhyme but do not be in a hurry to discard such universal favourites as Dick Whittington, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella don't be too ambitious in your selection from "grown-up" plays. As a matter of experience, when we got beyond Miss Corner we took to farces, and found them very successful. There are many which play well in young hands, and only require the omission of a few coarse expressions, which, being intended to raise a laugh among "roughs" in the gallery of a public theatre, need hardly be hurled at the ears of one's private friends.
I am bound to say that competent critics have told me that farces were about the most difficult things we could have attempted. I can only say that we found them answer. Partly, perhaps, because it requires a less high skill to raise a laugh than to move by passion or pathos.
Partly, too, because farces are short, and amateurs can make no greater mistake than to weary their audience.
If you prefer "dress pieces" and dramas to farces or burlesque, let some competent person curtail the one you choose to a suitable length.
The manager of juvenile theatricals should never forget the wisdom embodied in Sam Weller's definition of the art of letter-writing, that the writer should stop short at such a point as that the reader should "wish there wos more of it."
Yours, &c.,