Julia’s+thoughts+on+theatre+and+the+role+of+an+actress+in+it


 * Julia’s thoughts on theatre and the role of an actress in it. **

** __The theatre __ **** was the only place for Julia where she could distract her mind and she had been always thinking of it __as the only reality__. **

//“…Julia was thankful that it would soon be time to go down to the theatre and so put an end for a while to the misery of that long day; when she got back she would take a sleeping-draught again and so get some hours of forgetfulness. She had a notion that in a few days the worst of her pain would be over; the important thing was to get through them as best she could. She must distract her mind.” //**(ch.22, p.216) **

//“Once again the theatre was her only refuge. By an ironic chance the great scene of the play in which she was then acting, the scene to which the play owed its success, showed the parting of two lovers. It was true that they parted from a sense of duty; and Julia, in the play, sacrificed her love, her hopes of happiness, all that she held dear, to an ideal of uprightness. It was a scene that had appealed to her from the beginning…” // ** (ch.22, p219.) **

**Julia was strongly convinced that she was still __an irreplaceable actress__. It should be noticed through her thoughts: ** // “You’re right there, my girl, dead right. I bet I could play you off the stage when I was seventy.” //** (ch.20, p. 199) **

**Julia had often let her thoughts wander about her abilities __as an actress__: **

//“I wonder if I'm too old to play Hamlet. Siddons and Sarah Bernhardt played him. I've got better legs than any of the men I've seen in the part. I'll ask Charles what he thinks. Of course there's that bloody blank verse. Stupid of him not to write it in prose. Of course I might do it in French at the Francaise. God, what a stunt that would be.” // (** ch.27, p.269) **

<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 14.2pt;">**<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">While talking with her son Roger, Julia wasn’t quite agree with his statements that she didn’t know the difference between truth and make-believe. She had her own opinion about __the world of reality and the theatre:__ **

<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 14.2pt;">//<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">“…You see, what you don't understand is that acting isn't nature; it's art, and art is something you create. Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty.” //<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> ** (ch.27, p.271) **

<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 14.2pt;">**<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">She also wasn’t pleased with Roger accusing her of not having __her own personality:__ **

<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 14.2pt;">//<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">“I never set out to be a raving beauty, but the one thing no one has ever denied me is personality. It's absurd to pretend that because I can play a hundred different parts in a hundred different ways I haven't got an individuality of my own. I can do that because I'm a bloody good actress.” //<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> ** (ch.28, p.275) **

**<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> At the very end of the novel Julia is satisfied with her own success and her revenge to Tom. She draw the outline of __the life itself, of love, of theatre and the role of actors in it:__ **

//<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> “What is love beside steak and onions?… It was an amusing experience” //

<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 14.2pt;">//<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' But there's the illusion, through that archway; it's we, the actors, who are the reality. That's the answer to Roger. They are our raw material. We are the meaning of their lives. We take their silly little emotions and turn them into art, out of them we create beauty, and their significance is that they form the audience we must have to fulfil ourselves. They are the instruments on which we play, and what is an instrument without somebody to play on it?” //

<span style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 14.2pt;">//<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">“Roger says we don't exist. Why, it's only we who do exist. They are the shadows and we give them substance. We are the symbols of all this confused, aimless struggling that they call life, and it's only the symbol which is real. They say acting is only make-believe. That make-believe is the only reality.” //<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> ** (ch.29, p.299) **