what Sheila quoted Minnie as
saying about performing
Via The Sheila Variations
“Genius is the great unknown quantity. Technique supplies a
constant for the problem. Fluency, flexibility, technique,
precision, virtuosity, science – call it what you will. Why
call it anything? Watch Pavlova dance, and there you have it.
She knows her business. She has carried this mastery to such
perfection that there is really no need of watching her at
all. You know it will be all right. One glance at her and you
are sure. On most of our players one keeps an apprehensive
eye, filled with dark suspicions and forebodings – forebodings
based on sad experience. But I told Gabrielle Rejane once that
a performance of hers would no sooner begin than I would feel
perfectly free to go out of the theatre and take a walk. I
knew she could be trusted. It would be all right. There was no
need to stay and watch.”
— Minnie Maddern Fiske, famous American actress of the late
19th and early 20th centuries
Andrew Wood Acting Studio