Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/8

Rh the curtain is up, a complete and exact list of the lights required for each tableau must be supplied to them beforehand, so that no hitch occurs. The gas wants good arrangement, so that the man who attends to it can turn the footlights and floats up exactly at the right moment, or moderate the light as required. The curtain should, as a rule, be up for fifteen to twenty-five seconds, or even more, at the stage-manager's discretion, as he will be at the side watching the group, and, should any of the members show sign of wavering or moving, he will at once ring down the curtain.

It is necessary to have three or four rehearsals, the last of which should be, if possible, a dress rehearsal, and the stage-manager should use the same properties for the members of the various tableaux that are to be in use when presented to the audience; and it is a good plan to label these, in order that there may be no confusion at the last moment. The properties require quite as much rehearsing as the posing of the figures. Some people are instinctively better able to pose than others, and it is the want of power in this direction that gives the stage-manager so much trouble. As one remarked: "When you ask for the hand or arm to be extended, the effect is very often more like an old Dutch doll than anything else." In this lies the hardest part of the work. Of course, when a tableau is taken from a picture, line for line, the picture, or a copy of it, should be on the stage, in order that the members may study each individual part; but when, as is more often the case, the manager is responsible for the group, it depends a great deal on his artistic ability as to whether the posing and grouping are good. Very often the moving back of a member will mar or make the success of a tableau. Again, the turn of a wrist, or the inclination of a head, will have the same effect; as, although a tableau is judged in its