FullReads

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, etc.,

BURNT CORK.