The Power of the Pause

Last night I was lucky enough to see Sir Ian McKellen up close and almost personal; he is currently hosting a week of evenings at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park as part of their fundraising, and spends a couple of hours doing readings, reciting monologues and poetry, and talking about himself and his experiences in the theatre. It was funny, moving, brilliant - and thought-provoking.

Obviously, given the nature of the evening, some of the thoughts were on funding (or lack of it) for the arts in the UK and the wider world. But his ability to recite a familiar poem or speech but influence the understanding of it through what he did *not* say as much as by what he did, was striking.

I should perhaps not be surprised. At the beginning of the last school play I directed, the first character, as part of a rehearsal, stands alone on the stage, waiting for a prompt. The young actress was nervous about standing in silence on the stage for too long; "What if people think I've forgotten the line?" she asked. By remaining calm in her pause on stage, she was able to convince the audience that she was completely in control, even though her character had forgotten the line. The actress was able to make the pause longer and longer as we rehearsed, until by the time of performance, she had the audience in fits of giggles without even speaking a word.

Silence is not always amusing. In the poems and monologues Sir Ian recited last night, the narrator/character was often confronting an unpleasant realisation, and the pause emphasised just how hard a realisation it was. The expression 'a dramatic pause' is well-known for a reason. It also enabled the audience to consider the implications of what they had just heard, before moving on to the next part of the idea.

Pausing in poetry should be readily apparent. A new stanza brings about a pause, quite apart from the caesurae that seem so beloved by the GCSE boards. In a Shakespearean soliloquy, there is more opportunity for the actor to bring their own interpretation via their delivery - the intonation, the pace of each phrase, and the pause. Each emphasises the speech in a different way, and combined, can influence what the audience hears and understands.

As a director, you never want the action on stage to drag, and it is tempting sometimes to stop actors from pausing in case the flow is lost. But it is worth remembering, particularly having seen such a master of the art demonstrate it last night, that a pause can be worth a thousand words.

Catching Up (again)

I seem to spend far too much of my time apologising for not having blogged for a while. I've started various entries, made notes on others, but never quite got round to writing a full-blown entry. So I'm going to stop apologising. It's repetitive and non-productive and I should be writing more interesting things.

Such that today, I'm going to post more of a collection of short-but-sweet views, largely inspired by the news.

Firstly, I was saddened to see that Stephen Sutton has died. Hardly a surprise, but sad nonetheless. It must be (a very) little consolation to his family and loved ones that he achieved so much more in nineteen brief years than many of us manage in our three score and ten. Perhaps he will have inspired a few more people to get off their backsides and do something useful. RIP, young man. You deserved a better shot at life.

Other young people still in the news who also deserve a better shot at life are the girls in Nigeria, held prisoner by the Boko Haram terrorists. I get the impression that the Nigerian authorities were at their wits' end trying to deal with the group, and that in some ways, the mass abduction will turn out to have been a good thing because it will have drawn the rest of the world's attention to what is going on there, getting other countries involved and possibly putting an end to such treatment. I realise that this is a bit like saying the sinking of the Titanic was a good thing because it improved maritime safety; I'm mostly trying to find a silver lining to this particularly dark cloud. Fingers crossed that the girls are freed soon.

At the other end of life (almost), I tried watching a couple of episodes of 'Vicious', starring Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi. Both are fabulous actors and it should have been a joy to watch, but the script is so laboured and unfunny that even its stars struggle to salvage it. I see that voters on IMDB have given it ratings in the low 8s but I can't see myself bothering to watch the second series that is about to start. A real waste of talent.

That's it for this week. If no-one complains, I may make this the style of future blog entries!