Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 91

It will be well for the aspirant to begin with a simple one-act play of three or four characters. It should “play” from twenty minutes to half an hour (between three and four thousand words of actual dialogue). It should be mildly amusing and mildly sentimental, and quite pure, because it has to appeal to the pit and gallery as distinguished from the stalls and dress-circle. The demand for curtain-raisers is not immense, but it is appreciable. When a new three or four act piece is produced at 8.30 on the first night, the probability is that after a few weeks it will be timed to begin at 8.45 or 9, and a curtain-raiser put in front of it to “strengthen the bill.” Sometimes, when the success of the main piece trembles in the balance, a curtain-raiser with a star-part for the star-actor is put on and disaster averted.

One-act pieces are not strikingly remunerative, but, on the other hand, the veriest dullard could not spend more than a week in writing one. Some managers prefer to buy them outright for sums ranging from £25 to £50, and sometimes more. On the royalty system the author’s fee varies from 10s. to £ 1 per performance. The author should always reserve the amateur rights of a curtain-raiser, and when it has been successfully produced at a West End theatre he should invite the managing director of Messrs. French, Limited (theatrical publishers, Strand), to witness it. If Messrs. French, Limited, are pleased with it, they will print it and put it in their lists for amateur dramatic societies, and collect a fee for the author of a guinea per performance (less commission). Many one-act pieces have in this manner yielded a regular annual income for considerable periods.

Curtain-raisers do not usually run as long as three or four act pieces.