School for Actors

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 816, 18 March 1955, Page 30

School for Actors

"T AM not sure," the Bishop of Chichester said of a certain book by George Bernard Shaw, "I am not sure but that I wili recommend some of it to candidates for ordination." The subject of this ecclesiastical pronouncement is called the R.A.D.A. Graduates’ Keepsake and Counsellor, a copy of which is presented to every graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. This is one of the incidental but interesting facts that come to light in the BBC programme, Speak the Speech, 1 Pray You, made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Academy which was founded by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in 1904. Speak the Speech will be heard, from a YA Tink at 8.30 p.m, on Monday, March 21. Prior to Sir Herbert’s founding of his School of Drama, explains Felix Aylmer, in this programme, actors in England learned their trade mainly on the road, as individual pupils of successful actors and with such extras as fencing lessons, ‘deportment lessons and so on from various sources. In contrast to this, France, and even America, had special schools where all departments of drama were

) ) taught. This lack of protessional apprenticeship to the English stage led to such comments as that made by the novelist Henry James about Sir Henry Irving: "Mr. Irving’s acting is, to my mind, not of a Rind to provoke enthusiasm, and I can best describe it by saying | that it strikes me as the act/ing of a very superior amateur," Sir Herbert first founded his school, to overcome this lack, in the dome -of His

Majesty’s Theatre. Something of its present crganisation and work is described by Sir Kenneth Barnes, principal of the Academy, and other speakers, For instance. only one in four of the candidates seeking admission to the Academy pass the two reading tests which they must make before a panel of five judges. Among other speakers in the programme is David Tree, grandson of the founder. He tells how a now famous actor played his first role under Sir Herbert in Julius Caesar, in which, as an aged senator, he had only to say, "Good morrow, Caesar." He concentrated on practising an ancient voiceso much so that when the big moment came he walked on to the stage with the gait of a 25-year-old. Realising it, he was so horrified he compounded his foolishness by forgetting his one line, and when Caesar bade him, "Welcome, Publius," he replied with "...er.., Hullo." Naturally he was later called in to see Sir Herbert and he approached the great man expecting all sorts of punishments. "What did you say to Caesar?" asked Sir Herbert. "I said ‘Hullo,’ sir," stammered the actor, : A look of huge relief passed across Sir Herbert’s face. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "I thought you said, ‘What ho."