In this section you will read 2 passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose one best answer to each question.
Passage 1
Before Opening Night
1 “We’ re going into rehearsal tomorrow” , an actor may say, his face showing a mixture of a certain apprehension and an anticipation close to elation. The explanation for the duality of his reaction lies in his knowledge that on the one hand, rehearsal is the crucible of creation for everyone concerned in play production, and that on the other hand, for all the blood, sweat, and tears that will be expended, the play he is in may fail or he may fail in it.
2 When you read the script of a play, all you have are words suggesting what may happen on the stage. In terms of color, sound, movement, people, and a specific environment, all is shadowy. The function of rehearsals is to transmute words into a world.
3 Many dramatists do not even trouble to write stage directions. But a stage setting has to be built out of real materials. So that people can move on it and certain actions can be conveniently performed on it; the audience, moreover, must be able to sense in looking at it what sort of theme and mood they are to dwell in and enjoy for the duration of the performance. .
4 The physical aspect of production, though most immediately striking, is not the most important. When rehearsals begin, the settings and props have already been designed and ordered, though they will not appear till the last four days of rehearsal usually out of town. What is crucial to the production is the integration of the company of actors in their individual interpretations. It is this that the director must effect so that all the elements the visual and human form a coherent and pleasurable meaning.
5The director is, to a considerable degree, the “author” of the stage play. He should always be in charge， but he may not always be in control. It is often said that the director “molds” the actors, interpretations; this is largely true and most flattering to the director but accomplished actors may themselves be creators.
6 The wise director knows and hopes for this: he tries to understand his actors and what each has to offer and can be induced to reveal. Hence the most complex and fascinating aspect of rehearsal is the give-and-take between actors and director as well as the relations between the actors themselves.
7 Some directors have the company sit and read the play together for three or four days. Other directors desire no more than a single joint reading of the play; some though very few even insist that actors know their lines before rehearsals have begun.
8 After the play is read, the company gets “on its feet” ; the process of staging commonly called “blocking” begins. This involves the placement of actors, the timing and manner of their movements on the stage in short, the setting of the mechanical or visible patterns of the production.
9 Sooner or later, the director will in some way indicate not only where the actor is to move cross, sit, rise, turn but why and how. These questions imply others. Is the play to be given a comic or a sober interpretation? What style suits the material? Is a certain character to be regarded as sympathetic or not? Does it help or harm if particular line or bit of business provokes a laugh?
10 The actor may contest interpretations or even refuse to carry out bits of action on the grounds that they are false or he does not happen to be able to enact them convincingly. Such arguments generally end by one or the other yielding a point, depending either on the authority and persuasiveness of the director of the humility, receptiveness, or status of the actor.
11 A compromise may be arrived at that will enrich the issue. It is never good counsel to make these occasions a contest of wills. The director who by force of will beats the actor at this game wins a fruitless victory.
12 Some directors prefer to communicate with their actors rather privately in odd comers of the stage or in dressing rooms. Others always pronounce themselves within the hearing of the entire company. The director may act a bit himself by way of illustration rather dangerous if his demonstration fails to be clear, and sometimes discouraging if he should be too brilliant an actor.
13 Out in front in the theater auditorium where, after the first days of blocking， the director usually sits, all is darkness; on the stage, a rather evil illumination is projected from a wan work lamp. The production’s eventual furniture is suggested by broken-down chairs, uncouth couches, dirty steps, and insecure card tables, and crockery by paper plates, cups, knives and forks.
14 The playwright and producer attend all the first rehearsals. They visit less frequently after the first five-day trial period when cast changes may be most conveniently effected and do not make their presence seriously felt until the run-throughs when the play in its entirety is given without interruption.
15 There are generally three to five run-throughs at which the director feels his company is ready to be criticized by “outsiders” . A large or small audience of friends may be invited to the last two of the run-throughs. They serve to diminish the actors’ tension before the out-of-town tryout. They may also instruct the actors where laughs may be expected or warn the company of undesirable audience reactions.
16 Still, these run-throughs are not without their pitfalls; the threat stems from the expert as well as inexpert advice of relative strangers. The chief emphasis in the talk one hears after these run-throughs is on guessing the play’ s probable success or failure an utterly futile practice.
17 A play on the stage is the most elusive of phenomena. After more than thirty years of professional experience, the writer is quite frank to admit never to have been certain of the success or failure of a play in production. Any professional who claims even a 50 percent degree of infallibility is deluding either himself or others. The script may seem unpromising. The preview audiences may seem unpromising, the preview audiences may react coldly, yet the play may turn out to be a solid hit.
18 A play on the stage is not only different in nature from its point of origin in the script, but it is never exactly the same from one rehearsal or performance to another. Most plays at the tenth day of rehearsal are miserably dull. A set that look “great” may be causing a short circuit in the proceedings a fact that only the most trained observer may notice.
19 A fine actor who later will give a brilliant performance sometimes develops rather haltingly at rehearsal (or vice versa) . The theater building itself (when too large or small) may modify the impact of a play. A nervous seizure (or “freeze” ) on the part: of a star on opening night may mortally influence the quality of a production particularly a comedy thoroughly enjoyed out of town.
20 The final rehearsals with settings, lights, costumes, makeup, sound effects occupy four days before the out-of- town opening. They are often tumultuous and frightening, for the addition of any new element to a rehearsal (even a change of locale) always upsets it somewhat. Though actors have seen models and sketches of the sets at rehearsals, and have tried on their various costumes in the costumer’ s workshop, it takes several days (at least) to adjust to them on the stage.
21 Rehearsals for four hours a day continue out of town. They are especially useful for the revision of text and the necessary work attendant upon theat. This time is also valuable for bringing characterizations to maturity and for polishing scenes which may still be rough in execution or shallow in content.
22 The out-of-town tryout period is a weird island of time. The world at large has ceased to exist for everyone connected with the production. The atmosphere is intoxicating in both the happy and the forbidding sense of the word. If there is to be trouble scandalous disagreements, rancorous episodes here is where it is most likely to occur. Everyone acts as if it were zero hour, not alone for the play, but for survival.
23 Yet there is joy in creation even as there must be pain. If rehearsals are conducted as many are with love and mutual regard on all sides, a wonderful sense of community grows in a theater troupe that is hard to match in any other collective enterprise elsewhere.