Part 702: Those Who Play Should Pay, 1907
I primarily focus on the Masonic stages hands and scenery. Scottish Rite stages may have rivaled their commercial counterparts, but the performers were primarily amateurs without any professional training. Would a degree team composed of bakers, ranchers, bankers, oil barons, attorneys or clerks understand that a director was really the one in charge? Here is the view of one frustrated thespian who was tired of watching and working with amateur actors. The following excerpt was from the article “Detail and the Drama of the Degree,” written by Epes W. Sargent and published in New Age Magazine (August, 1907, Vol. VII, No. 2, page 181). What was said in 1907 could likely be repeated today:
“… in a recent presentation of the Twenty-third Degree (Northern) we had Moses wearing gold-rimmed eye glasses without a beard that was the pride of every Hebrew of his time. The eyeglasses might have been excused upon the ground of necessity, but there was no excuse for the shaven and shorn appearance of the Patriarch. That the Moses of the moment was an officer who was presently to address the class of candidates in his proper person was no condonation. The costume was slipped off at his exit in character; the removal of the beard would not have required ten second additional delay.
The natural conclusion was that the player feared that by thus masking his identity behind a creation of false hair and wire he might fail to obtain full credit for his work.
It is conceded that few men devote their time to the degree team through some wholly unselfish motives. With some there is hope that efficient work upon the floor may lead to the chairs (as indeed, it often does), others find in their work a gratification of their love of acting, while a score or more of reasons may account for the interest in addition to the proper one of welfare of the rite. It is not to their discredit that they look for reward. That is to be expected.
But those who play should pay. It is not sufficient that they should memorize the speeches, attend some of the rehearsals, and otherwise devote their time to the presentations. They should yield unquestioning obedience to their director and strive with all earnestness to supplement his work by realizing to the fullest the meaning of the part entrusted to their care as well as paying attention to the details of dressing and conduct.
The director cannot be expected to devote his time to the observance of such petty details as personal appearance. Since the exemplar has volunteered for a part, and in someway expects reward, he should give more than passing thought to his work.
In the matter of the beard, the director saw that it was laid out. He could not patiently wait until the exemplar dressed to see that it was worn, nor could he, in this instance, insist that the beard could be put on.
It was the law of Moses that hair whould be worn upon the face. Several passages in Leviticus and elsewhere expressly allude to this, and yet we are asked to regard with due seriousness a Moses who had evidently visited a barber shop on his way to the Tabernacle, and to believe that this was the most majestic figure of Jewish history.”
To be continued…
