142. Guest Plays

When I traveled to Berlin a few years ago just to get to know the one and only acting phenomenon, Duse, I also visited an outstanding art historian. It was only natural that I asked this man for his opinion of the artist. But he had no such opinion. He hadn't been to any of the Berlin Duse performances and said: I don't want to see Duse because the old, insignificant plays in which she appears don't interest me at all. What a contrast this statement was to my own feelings. We Duse enthusiasts were completely indifferent to the roles in which the great Italian appeared. We didn't care about the artistic value of the plays in which Duse appeared, we were interested in getting to know the great style of the artist, regardless of whether she appeared in good or bad plays.

Later, however, I had to think a lot about what the witty art historian had said. And the guest performances that took place in Berlin this winter clearly showed me how right he was. This season, we had the opportunity to get to know the guest performances of R&jane, Mr. Zacconi, Tina di Lorenzo and an English troupe in Berlin. And it struck me, indeed I became certain, that truly great acting can only be judged by great roles. A good actor is not the one who achieves his greatest successes in bad plays, but the one who performs perfectly and satisfactorily in good ones.

Most touring companies of actors sin against this sentence. They usually choose the worst and most derivative plays in order to show off their art in a hurry. I was particularly aware of this in the case of Tina di Lorenzo: she and her troupe performed "Cyprienne", the "Hut Owner" and similar things for us. We got nothing out of these performances. You couldn't judge the art of the guest actors in these plays. How easy it was to judge when Zacconi played Oswald in the "Ghosts" or when the aforementioned English troupe performed "Macbeth" or "Hamlet". It cannot be emphasized enough that only truly important dramatic works of art should be chosen for guest performances of this kind. If it is important for the guest performers to show their art, then they must first appear in plays whose artistic value is beyond all doubt. If they violate this requirement, then even the most distinguished critics will have enormous difficulties. That is why the Berlin verdicts on Tina di Lorenzo were so vague, why they came to light with so many reservations. The choice of only important, artistically valuable plays is a matter of life for touring companies of actors.