Chapter 2 Chapter two

After the two men left, she looked through the photos one by one before putting them away. Not bad for a woman of forty-six, she said with a smile, and there was no denying that they were like me.She looked around the room for a mirror, but there was none.These damn decorators.Poor Michael, no wonder he never uses this room.Of course, I've never been good at taking pictures. It occurred to her to look at some old pictures of her.Michael was a neat and organized person, and her photographs were kept in large cardboard boxes, dated and arranged in sequence.His photographs are in other cardboard boxes in the same cabinet.

When someone comes to write about our stage career, he can easily find all the materials on hand, he once said. With equally laudable purpose he pasted all the clippings about them in order from the beginning in large volumes. There are pictures of Julia as a child, of her teenage years, of her first roles, of her as a young woman with Michael, and of her later with her son Roger as a baby.There was a photograph of the three of them together, Michael very manly and very beautiful, herself looking down at Roger with maternal affection, and Roger, a little boy with curly hair, was a very good photograph.All the pictorials published it on a full page, and it was printed on the program list.The miniature prints became postcards, which were sold in other provinces for many years.Roger hated it so much that he refused to take a photo with his mother after entering Eton College (Note: British aristocratic secondary schools, most of the students go to Oxford, Cambridge and other universities after graduation.).It seemed strange that he should not like being in the press.

People think you're crippled or something, she told him, and not because it's inappropriate.You should go to the theater and see the opening night show, and you'll see how the socialites flock to photographers, cabinet ministers, judges, and so on.Even though they say they don't like it, when they feel that the photographer's eyes are on them, you can see how they all pose and wait to be photographed. Yet Roger was stubborn. Julia found a picture of her playing Beatrice.This is the only Shakespeare role she ever played.She knows that she doesn't look good in ancient clothes; she still doesn't understand why, because no one can match her in fashion.Her clothes, both stage and everyday, are made in Paris, and her dressmaker says she makes more clothes than anyone else.Her figure was well known; she was tall for a woman, and had long legs.It's a pity that she has never had the chance to play Rosalind (Note: One of the heroines in Shakespeare's comedy "As You Like It", in which she wears leggings to play the role of a book boy.), she must be very suitable in boy's clothing, of course for now It was too late, but maybe she hadn't taken the risk.Though you'd believe that with her wit, mischief and her sense of comedy, she'd do very well.Critics didn't really appreciate her Beatrice.The problem is that damned blank verse (Note: Shakespeare's plays are basically written entirely in blank verse in pentameter.).Her voice, her rather deep, round voice, with a charming husky, could give you a heart-wrenching tinge in an emotional line, or really amuse you in a comic line, but It just doesn't sound right when you say blank verse.And then there's her articulation; she utters it so clearly you don't have to raise your voice to make you hear every word when you're sitting in the back balcony; they say it makes poetry sound like prose .In fact, she thought, she was too modern after all.

Michael started out as a Shakespeare play.That was before she knew him.He had played Romeo at Cambridge University, and after he had left Cambridge for a year at a drama school, Benson absorbed him.He went on tour and played many different roles.But he realized that Shakespeare could not make him successful, and that if he was to become a leading actor, he must gain experience in modern plays. There is a man named James.Langton's men ran a repertory theater in Middlepool, which was well noticed; Michael had been with Benson for three years, when the troupe was going to Middlepool for their annual show, and he So he wrote to Langton and asked him if he could see him once.Jimmy (Note: James' nickname.).Langton was a fat, bald, well-coloured forty-five-year-old man who looked like Rubens Paintings and genre paintings are characterized by extravagance and vanity, and are representatives of Baroque art.) A wealthy citizen in the painting has a strong interest in drama.He was eccentric, arrogant, spirited, vain and endearing.He liked acting, but he was limited by his size and could only play a few roles, which was fortunate, because he was a poor actor.He is naturally flamboyant, contrived, and irrepressible. No matter what role he plays, despite careful study and thinking, he always becomes a grotesque character in performance.He exaggerates every movement, every tone of voice.But it was very different when he taught his actors to rehearse; here he allowed no affectation.He has excellent ears, and although his tone of speech is always wrong, he never allows others to read a line that is out of tune.

Don't be really natural, he told the people in his troupe, the stage is not the place to do that.The stage is false.But make it look natural. He keeps his troupe busy.They rehearse every morning, from ten o'clock to two o'clock, and then tell them to go home to recite the lines, and take a break before the evening performance.He was domineering and furious with them, sometimes mocking them.He paid them exceptionally low salaries.But he would cry like a child if they did a good, touching scene, and laugh aloud when they delivered a funny line, as he demanded.When he was happy, he would lift one leg and jump on the stage, and when he got angry, he would throw the script on the ground, trample on his feet, and burst into tears in anger.People in the troupe laughed at him, scolded him, and tried their best to make him happy.He aroused in them a protective instinct, so that they all felt that they could not let him down.Though they said that he had driven them like slaves, that they had no time for themselves, which flesh and blood could not bear, they all yielded to his exacting demands, and derived an unpleasant satisfaction from it.When he squeezed the hand of an old member of the seven-pound-a-week salary and said to him, man, you're amazing, the old member felt as if he were Charles.Keane (Note: British actor, the second son of Edmund Keane, who is famous for his performance in Shakespeare's "Othello", once performed with his father on the same stage, and he played the cunning and cruel Iago.).

Michael made an appointment to meet Jimmy whom he asked to meet.Langton happened to need a teenager to play the leading role.He had expected why Michael wanted to see him, so he had gone to see his play the night before.Michael was playing Mercutio (Note: "Romeo and Juliet" in Romeo's friend.), he thought it was not very good, but when Michael walked into the office, he was shocked by his beauty.Michael was seen in a brown top and gray flannel pants, even without makeup.It's also so beautiful that people can't breathe with envy.He behaves chicly and speaks elegantly.When he explained his purpose, Jimmy.Langston studied him shrewdly.If he can really act, with his looks, this young man has a bright future.

I watched you play Mercutio last night, and he said, what do you think? Very bad. I feel the same way.how old are you? twenty five. I think people have told you that you are beautiful? Because of this, I chose to go on stage.Otherwise I would have entered the military like my father. God, what a great actor I would be if I had your looks. As a result of the meeting, Michael was hired.He spent two years at Middlepool.He was soon loved by his colleagues in the troupe.He is amiable and will go out of his way to be of service to anyone.His beauty caused a sensation in Middlepool, and the girls used to hang around the backstage door to see him come out.They wrote love letters to him and sent him flowers.He took it as a natural admiration without letting himself get carried away.He is eager to get ahead and seems determined not to let any entanglement interfere with his career.

In the end it was his beauty that kept him, because Jimmy.Langton quickly came to the conclusion that, despite Michael's persistent efforts to excel, he was at best a passable actor.His voice is not wide enough, and it tends to screech when impassioned.The effect it produced was not passion but hysteria.And his biggest flaw as a teenage protagonist is that he doesn't know how to woo.He can read ordinary dialogue very well, and can deliver his lines with a certain characteristic, but when it comes to expressing strong love, it seems that something is stuck in him.He was embarrassed and seemed bewildered.

Asshole, don't hug that girl like a sack of potatoes, Jimmy.Langston yelled at him.You kissed her like you were afraid you were standing in the air.You are in love with the girl; you must feel that you are in love with her.Feel as though the bones are melting all over you, and you will let the earthquake go to hell even if the next minute the earthquake will engulf you. But it didn't work.Despite his good looks and easy demeanor, Michael was a cold lover.This didn't stop Julia from falling madly in love with him.It turned out that they had met during his time with Langton's repertory company.

Her own career was uniquely smooth sailing.She was born in Jersey, where her father was a veterinarian.Her mother's sister married a French coal merchant who lived in St. Malo (Note: a seaport city in northwest France.), Julia was sent to her aunt to study in the local public high school.She learned to speak French as fluently as a French woman.She's a natural actress, and for as long as she can remember, it's been assumed that she should be on stage when she grows up. Her aunt, Mrs. Fallow, has a relationship with an elderly actress. She used to be a dividend actor of the French Comédie (Note: Founded in Paris in 1680, mainly performing classical traditional plays.), after retirement Lived in St. Malo, living on the meager alimony one of her old lovers paid her after she had been his mistress for many years and then broke up.

When Julia was a child of twelve, the actress was a noisy, fat old woman in her sixties, but she was full of energy and liked eating more than anything else.She laughed loudly, like a bell, like a man, speaking in a deep voice and raising her voice high.It was she who gave Julia her first lessons.She taught Julia everything she had learned at the School of Music and Drama, about Reichenberger playing the ingénue up to seventy, about Sarah P.Bernhardt (Note: French actress, once played the heroine in "Phaedra", "La Traviata", "King Lear" and other dramas and has a high reputation.) and her golden voice, speaking of Munay.Sully (Note: French famous actor, good at playing roles in French classical tragedies.) and his style, speak of Coquelin, the greatest actor among them.She used the idea she learned in the French Comedy Theater to perform Corneille (Note: French playwright, the founder of French classical tragedy.) and Racine (Note: French playwright, the tragedy "Phaedra"). was attacked by court nobles.) The spouting lines from the script were read to her and taught to do the same.It was moving to hear Julia recite the limp, impassioned lines of Phaedra in a childlike voice, translating the Alexandrian lines (note: six iambic steps per line, after the third A pause.)'s rhythm is clearly pronounced, and the pronunciation of each word is so pretentious, but so wonderfully full of dramatic flavor.This Jenny.Tatbe must have been a very artificial actress, but she taught Julia to speak with absolute clarity, how to walk, how to control herself, how not to be afraid of her own voice, and, emphatically, to have a sense of timing , which was instinctively possessed by Julia, and which later became one of her greatest talents. Never stop unless you have a reason to stop, she yelled and pounded her clenched fist on the table next to her, but when you do stop, it should be as long as possible. When Julia entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Gower Street at the age of sixteen she already knew much of what could be taught there.She needed to shed some outdated showmanship and learn a more colloquial tone.But she won every prize she could possibly strive for, and by the time she finished her studies her fluency in French almost immediately landed her a small role as a French maid in London.For a while it seemed that her knowledge of French would lead her to play roles requiring a foreign accent, since she was then hired to play an Austrian waitress.Until two years later, Jimmy.Langton had only discovered her.She was touring in a romantic drama, which had been successful in London, in which she played an Italian swindler who finally failed, trying somewhat inappropriately to look like a woman of forty.Because the heroine was a blond milf who was playing a teenage girl, the performance lacked realism.Jimmy was on a short vacation at the time, traveling from city to city, going to the theater every night.At the end of the scene, he went backstage to find Julia.He was quite famous in the theater world, so she was flattered by the compliment he paid her, so he asked her to dine with him the next day, which she accepted. As soon as they sat down at the table, he began to talk directly. I stayed up all night thinking about you, he said. It was so sudden.Is what you are going to propose legitimate or not? He pretended not to hear the flippant reply. I've been in this business for twenty-five years.I've been a rusher, a stagehand, a stage manager, an actor, a passer, damn it, and a theater critic.I've lived in theaters since I was a baby right out of public elementary school, so I know everything about acting unless it's not worth knowing.I think you are a genius. Much appreciated by you. shut up.Let me speak alone.You have everything.You are just the right height, you have a slender figure, you have a face that is as soft as rubber. Are you flattering me? Exactly so.This is the face an actress needs.This face can show everything, even beauty, this face can express every thought that passes through the heart.Duss (Note: Italian actress, who played the roles of Juliet in Shakespeare's plays all vividly, so she became famous for a while.) has such a face.Last night, even though you didn't really think about what you were doing, every word you said seemed to be written on your face at every moment. That character sucks.How can I act with my heart?Did you hear the lines I had to say? The actors suck, not the characters.You have a great voice that can break the hearts of audiences.I don't know how you are at comedy, I'm going to take a chance. what do you mean? Your timing is absolutely perfect.It can't be taught, you must be born with it.This is much better than taught.Now let's get down to business.I have already asked about you.Looks like you can speak French like a French woman, so they cast you in the parts that speak broken English.It's no future, you know? I can only be assigned to this type of role. Are you content to play this type of role forever?You get stuck in these roles.Audiences won't accept any other role you play either.A supporting role, you can only be a supporting role.Earn twenty pounds a week at most, and such a great talent is wasted. I always think that one day I will have the opportunity to play a formal role. when?You may have to wait ten years.How old are you now? twenty. how much do you earn Fifteen pounds a week. lie.You take twelve pounds, and it's far from worth it.You still have to study hard.Your gestures are bland.You don't understand that every gesture must have a meaning.You don't know how to get the audience to look at you before you speak.You also wear too much makeup.With a face like yours, the less makeup you have, the better.Do you want to be a star? Who doesn't want to? If you come to me, I can make you the greatest actress in England.Can you memorize your lines quickly?It should be fast at your age. I believe that no matter what role I play, I can recite my lines verbatim within forty-eight hours. What you need is experience, and what you need is me to perform for you.You come to me, and I'll let you play twenty roles a year.Ibsen (Note: Famous Norwegian playwright.), Bernard Shaw (Note: British playwright, critic.), Barker (Note: British actor, playwright, critic.), Suderman (Note: German playwright , novelist.), Han Jin (Note: British playwright.), Galsworthy (Note: British novelist, playwright.).You have magnetism, but you don't seem to know how to use it.He giggled.But, my God, if you knew this, the old woman would never let you act in this play.You have to grab the audience by the neck and say, Hey, you bastards, watch me!You have to keep them under control.If you don't have this gift, others can't give it to you, but if you have it, they can teach you how to use it.Let me tell you, you have the qualities to be a great actor.I have never been more sure in my life than this. I know my lack of experience.Of course I have to think about it.I could come to you for a season. to hell with you.Do you think I can make you an actress in one season?Do you think I'm going to give you the hell out of there to teach you decent acting a few times and then let you go off to London and play a dud in a play for profit?What kind of goddamn fool do you think I am?I'll give you a three-year contract, and I'll give you eight pounds a week, and you'll work like a horse. Eight pounds a week is ridiculous.I can't accept it. Oh no, you can take it.You are only worth so much, and you can only get so much. Julia has been on stage for three years and has learned a lot.And Jenny.Tatbu is not a strict moralist, and has taught her a lot of useful knowledge. Is it possible that you got the impression that I would let you sleep with me outside of acting? My God, do you think I have time to sleep with the actresses in my troupe?I have much more important things to do, my girl.You'll find that after you've rehearsed for four hours, played a role that satisfies me in the evening, plus two matinees, you don't have much time to spare, and you don't have much desire to make love to anyone.When you go to bed, all you want is a good night's sleep. But this time Jimmy.Langdon was wrong.