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Lady Steppes
Own Golden Stairs
The Emotional Stairs)
"The steps of emotion. Each one I tread on
*■ when I have dramatic scene. One — two — three — four — until I reach very top step. Zat iss way to give true performance. Nozing false. Never missing a step— see — to reach the top. Never hurrying."
Six brothers and sisters, and blonde. Short curling flaxen hair. One sister in Riga, another in Serbia, a brother lost in a war, another brother, fifteen, living at home with little mother. All non-professionals. Father dead.
"See? Now in 'Street of Sin' I was, poor stupid woman. I did not sink queeckly. I come in and see what has happen and I do not oonderstand right , away. Then I oonderstand and slowly I go up my steps of emotion. You see?"
Eyes of a saint and a sinner, at will; smile of a charmer, a dominant darling, admittedly temperamental, a tremendous personality, reveling in the joys of life. Baclanova.
"Eef I was playing flapper woman, I would act like flapper woman. I would come in room like flapper woman. I would sit down like flapper woman. I would use my body like flapper woman."
Slim, sturdy, strong, her body — with a strange resiliency, like finely tempered steel, Baclanova must be in her waning twenties.
"When I was sixteen, I wanted to go on stage. Now you must know in Russia it was not thought good for girls to go on stage. But my father he sympathize. And my mother. He always want to do same sing himself only he had not time with violin, paint-brush and factory. My mother always want to act too. My sister say, 'Oh, Olga, you will not use the name Baclanova, will you? Your sisters and brothers would
Both are Baclanova; she is
as much at ease against a
background of squalor as
against one of splendor
be so ashame.' After while, when I succeed, they are all very happy to have same name. So I go, with four hundred others, to Dantchenko at the Moscow Art Theatre and take test." . The Theatre was formed in 1898 by exponents of the new school of dramatic realism. It was there that Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry and lover of Isadora Duncan ; Leon Bakst, Meyerhold and other artists gathered.
A Family of Fifty
"LJe asks you to read somesing, and you do, and then he asks you to recite a poem. Four people were chosen. I was one. Then I work hard. I get twentyfive rubles a month. That is about twelve dollars in your money. Rehearse and rehearse. We are like large family, all the actors and Dantchenko and his aides. Maybe fifty or sixty of us, divided in two sections. One the old school, who were with him when (Continued on page 119)
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