The Weekly Miner

Suspicious, Our Dramatic Friends.

Theatrical people have long said that Butte is the best "show" town of its size in the west. Their late experiences are beginning to teach them that its inhabitants are discriminating as well as liberal in their patronage of dramatic entertainments. Many of the theater managers who have brought companies to Montana during the past year seem to labor under a gross misconception of the intelligence and cultivation of western communities. They evidently form their combinations, not with a view to artistic merit, but with an eye to cheapness; and we venture the assertion, that $12 per week is the maximum wages paid for the majority of their "talent." In many of the troupes which played a season in Butte during the past year the leading lady and gentleman are of average dramatic ability, sufficient perhaps, to qualify them to be stock actors or actresses in first-class eastern theatres; but the remaining members of these companies are, as a rule, destitute of attractions or talent of any kind. The men are generally beginners in the Thespian art. They are awkward and ill at ease. They speak their lines like parrots and like parrots have no intelligent conception of what they are talking about. Their knowledge of English grammar and correct pronunciation is also murky. As a rule, it is a positive relief to the exhausted audience, when they shuffle off the stage and the curtain falls. The support is equally fat, stale and unprofitable. Characters which require for their successful portrayal young women with some passion, some brains and some beauty of mind feature, and who withal have musical and cultivated voices for either singing or conversational purposes, are generally depicted by maiden ladies who must have passed the prime of life several centuries ago. These persons are uncomely and for the most part artificial, who tread the stage like automatons, and whose shrill and rasping tones grate into the hearts of the audience in a manner exactly the opposite of what is intended to be. When the inexperienced supers mentioned are required to personate the husbands or lovers of these ancient ladies, the disparity in their ages and deportment becomes so ridiculous to be laughable, and no matter what may be the merits of the piece the execrable manner of its performance is sufficient to condemn it in the estimation of every intelligent audience. Theater managers who bring these traveling circuses to this territory should give evidence of a better understanding of the popular taste than they have so far exhibited, or they may have to leave the territory with empty treasuries, instead of picking up a stake from supernumeraries who hang around the theaters by the hundreds and bringing out here on Chinese wages, let them employ people whose talents are appreciated, who have ability enough to carry their profession in the centres of civilization, and who are capable of giving a performance which would interest and instruct the people. Montana has had a surfeit of palpable dramatic entertainment, and if amusement managers who have visited us with their companies during the past year are unable to give us a better class of faces than we have had, they will find it to their advantage to give the Silver Bow the go-by. On the other hand, Butte offers every inducement to talented combinations, and every decent and worthy enterprise is sure to be most liberally patronized.