MEALS

In spite of all you can do in the way of avoiding soililoquies and
getting your characters on and off the stage in a dramatic manner, a time
will come when you realize sadly that your play is not a bit like life
after all. Then is the time to introduce a meal on the stage. A stage
meal is popular, because it proves to the audience that the actors, even
when called Charles Hawtrey or Owen Nares, are real people just like you
and me. "Look at Mr. Bourchier eating," we say excitedly to each other in
the pit, having had a vague idea up till then that an actor lived like a
god on praise and greasepaint and his photograph in the papers. "Another
cup, won't you?" says Miss Gladys Cooper; "No, thank you," says Mr.
Dennis Eadie--dash it, it's exactly what we do at home ourselves. And
when, to clinch matters, the dramatist makes Mr. Gerald du Maurier light
a real cigarette in the Third Act, then he can flatter himself that he
has indeed achieved the ambition of every stage writer, and "brought the
actual scent of the hay across the footlights."

But there is a technique to be acquired in this matter as in everything
else within the theatre. The great art of the stage-craftsman, as I have
already shown, is to seem natural rather than to be natural. Let your
actors have tea by all means, but see that it is a properly histrionic
tea. This is how it should go:--

_Hostess_. How do you do? You'll have some tea, won't you? _[Rings
bell]_.

_Guest_. Thank you.