How a play is produced/A Guide Behind the Scenes

by Karel Čapek

Layout 2

PART III

Behind the Scenes

A Guide Behind the Scenes

 

IN the course of the preceding rather chaotic accountof how a play is produced (which, however, is far from approaching the wild confusion of the theatrical reality which inspired it) we have had occasion to speak about a whole series of persons, whose existence, nature, habits, privileges and abilities may not be quite clear to the general public, the critics and the dramatists-to-be. But desiring to make you better acquainted with them, we find ourselves at a loss as to where we should begin. Shall it be downstairs at the stage doorkeeper’s lodge, upstairs in the office, in the cellar with the boiler-man, at the box-office, or in those mysterious wide expanses of the theatrical store-rooms? Well, let us begin, as they say in the theatre, “upstairs”: at the offices. A minor branch of this place is the counting-house, where, according to a time-honoured custom, the players are paid on the first and the fourteenth of the month; the officials on the first, and the technical staff every Saturday. But while we are dawdling in this Temple of Mammon you must know that in addition to their regular salaries the players earn certain other sums: a fee for a doubled rôle, a fee for a song and dance, an extra fee for taking some one else’s place, a fee for appearing nude and painting the body. But, in spite of all these extra fees, the players do not seem to grow remarkably rich. As a matter of fact the counting-house is rather a sad little place, with its small window usually shut. Here, too, players may receive advances on their salaries.