A NOTE

On the Acting of a Fairy Play.

1. The difference between a Fairy Play and a realistic one is that in the former all the characters are really children with a child's outlook on life. This applies to the so-called adults of the story as well as to the young people. Pull the beard off the fairy king, and you would find the face of a child.

2. The actors in a fairy play should feel that it is written by a child in deadly earnestness and that they are children playing it in the same spirit. The scenic artist is another child in league with them.

3. In England the tendency is always to be too elaborate, to over act. This is particularly offensive in a fairy piece, where all should be quick and spontaneous and should seem artless.

4. A very natural desire of the actor is to "get everything possible out of a line" - to squeeze it dry - to hit the audience a blow with it as from a hammer, instead of making a point lightly and passing on as if unaware that he had made a point. There are many tricks of the stage for increasing this emphasis, and they are especially in favour to strengthen the degraded thing called "the laugh" which is one of the curses of the English stage. Every time an audience stops a play to guffaw, the illusion of the stage is lost, and the actor has the hard task of creating it again. Don't force the laugh. An audience can enjoy itself without roaring - as the French know.

5. In short, the cumulative effect of naturalness is the one thing to aim at. In a fairy play you may have many things to do that are not possible in real life, but you conceive yourself in a world in which they are ordinary occurrences, and act accordingly. Never do anything be

Front Scene: —
Knocker ready 3

ACT I.

Our early days.

The room is shaped as in diagram and if set on a large stage it should be made to look as snug and small as possible. Thus it should not be a deep scene. The chief articles of furniture are indicated above, but all the accessories of a cosy nursery in a middle-class family are to be included. There is a frieze round the walls representing pictorially a fairy tale. The wall, where fire is, takes an angle as in diagram, so that a person could sit naturally at it and yet be well seen by the audience; in front of fire the usual tall guard fender. The house is in a London street in Bloomsbury, and the roofs of houses opposite may be vaguely seen through the windows. It is winter time, but there is no snow. The fire is burning brightly and gives a certain light to the room, which is otherwise obscure, the hour being early evening. Time — The present.