Melodramatic acting was taught through apprenticeships. Prospective actors began in non-speaking roles, watching more experienced actors and trying to copy them. Once a actor entered a “line of business” (hero, villain, low comic), they would stay in that type of role for their whole career. They would also have had instruction from a local dance master in dancing as well as “polite carriage, entering and leaving a room, proper bows and courtesies, and forms of introduction”. They may also have had elocutionary training. A few general rules of melodramatic acting:

All motions and gestures were dramatic and exaggerated. There was no neutral stance, one foot would always be weighted, arms moving from the shoulder and not the elbow, and the head held at an angle. Dramatic moments were underscored with big movements like windmill arms, foot stamping, eye rolling and sudden starts.

Actors worked to hit “points”, specific high points of speeches (comedic or dramatic) which actors worked to achieve applause at. If a speech elicited a lot of applause, it might be encored three or four more times. Applause, whistling, foot stomping and throwing flowers were all possible audience responses.

Entrances and exits were geared towards attracting attention. The actor entered confidently and stood directly in front of the footlight before speaking. Generally actors would not move and speak at the same time.

Gestures were categorised by character type. Good characters showed curve, grace and beauty in their motions. Bad characters were sharp and angular. Serious moments merited slow movements, comic ones fast.

Take a look at these excerpts from an 1889 book of melodramatic poses for actors!

MORROCHESI’S ACTING EXERCISES

The 19th-century actor Antonio Morrochesi believed that there was a mimed corresponding to every word in a performance. Morrochesi was one of the few people to write a handbook for actors. He gave instructions for how actors should play various emotions and psychological states, such as love, jealousy, rage,; passion and insanity. Often an actor would use these gestures without even thinking. The following examples are from Morrochesi's book on acting.

Rage

Take off your hat, put it on, press it down in place, throw it on the ground, pick it up and tear it to pieces. Stride up and down restlessly: sometimes in a straight line, sometimes turning sharply. Every now and then run your hands through your hair. Unbutton your shirt and pause for a moment here and there. Bang your fist on the furniture. Turn chairs upside down. Smash vases and crockery. Bang your fist against the back of your neck. Open and close doors. Throw yourself into a chair, bounce up and down on it, and then jump to your feet.

Pride

Set one arm crossways over the breast; the other resting with the back of hand on the hip and the elbow thrust forward. Hold your head high.

Approaching performance in melodrama

Acting in melodrama is very different to other theatrical styles and forms, a good melodrama requires the following:

· Exaggeration. This acting style requires strong facial expressions, large movements and gestures, and clear and well-projected delivery of lines. Melodrama actors concentrated more on showing emotions rather than feeling them. The actor also overemphasised words or syllables they thought essential to their character.

· Audience interaction. Actors encourage audience interaction by improvising lines and telling topical jokes and would help the audience to boo or hiss at the villain.

· Asides. An aside is where any character speaks directly to the audience to reveal a thought or plan that is kept secret from the rest of the other characters. The actor’s delivery of the aside should instil a feeling of secrecy and draw the audiences focus away from the other action and onto their ‘secret’.

Tableaux

In a melodramatic play, a tableau was a frozen moment with actors composed in specific positions, often accompanied by dramatic music. These stage pictures actually carried important information for the audience about the action of the play. One common tableau was the “moment of recognition”. Think of a modern day cartoon “double-take” – a glance, looking away, followed by a second, longer glance. There’s your “moment of recognition”!

This suspended pause gave the audience a moment to catch up to the plot and to realise that something important was happening. This could be a discovery – in the “moment of recognition”, it’s a discovery of a person, but there could also be a pause at the discovery of an important object or an idea.

A tableau could also demonstrate a change in feeling. Holding the body still forces attention on the subtleties of the face, so a lover gazing at his adored or the quiet rage of a villain is that much more noticeable for the audience.

Tableaux were most frequently used at the end of acts. This was both practical – in case you haven’t followed what’s going on entirely, here’s a picture that sums it up – and artistic. The entire principle of melodrama is that there are certain emotions that words cannot or should not try to sum up. Melodrama hinges around the use of the body and dramatic elements of spectacle to represent these moments of deep human emotion. Though it is hard for us to understand as a construct today, melodramatic audiences would have found these tableaux not only helpful in understanding the basic plot of a piece, but also as intense, moving pieces of art.