There is almost no phenomenon more powerful in a performance, than that of silence. Silence is unexpected. There is so little real silence in life, generally, that silence can be shocking when it happens. In a work of performance art, where words, music, sound is the normal state of affairs, silence can be overwhelming.
An “incorrect” or accidental silence, such as when an actor can’t recall a line of dialogue, can be devastating, embarrassing for actor and audience alike. I once worked with a famous actor, who was performing Hamlet on a nightly basis. Every night, he would get to the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, he would put in (intentionally, one assumes) a longer and longer pause between the words “To be…”, and the words “Or not to be”. One night, this very self-indulgent pause hit 28 seconds! Try that right now. Get a watch with a second hand. Say “To be…”, and then fill silence with some sort of emotion or interesting thought or SOMETHING, for God’s sake…for 28 seconds. The audience did more than squirm, and I’m certain many of them whispered “Or not to be, you idiot”. I know everyone backstage did.
This was not an accidental silence, but a foolishly intended silence. Let’s understand something about silence and acting, something very important. A silence in a performance MUST BE EARNED. You are asking your audience to bear up with your silence, to assume that something is happening inside the character which prevents dialogue, something deep and profound, or something so funny he can’t bring himself to speak for fear of embarrassment. Silences should never be accidental, they should always be actor’s choices. No silence will work if the audience does not understand the reason behind the silence. No silence will work if the audience DISAGREES with that silence! You must earn their understanding and approval for that moment of silence, or skip it. The audience must feel that the selected silence is inevitable and necessary, whatever it’s mood and motivation.
Works of theatre or film which employ many silences for “dramatic effect” are deadly boring as a rule, and you know it. This is self-indulgent garbage, the actor, writer and director enjoying emotional excess at the audience’s expense. Don’t fall victim to this. Any number of silences may be possible, if you bring the audience along with you, into the heart of that silence. But NOT ANY NUMBER OF SILENCES ARE DESIRABLE! Too much silence can not only bore, but as is the case with too much of anything, too much silence can dissipate the power of silence itself. It becomes a round of “Oh no! he’s thinking again!”, for your audience. It demonstrates a serious lack of discretion on the part of the director and actor to so indulge.
Accordingly, you will want to select your moments of silence. When can silence be used to most powerfully move an audience? That’s what you want to know. Most silences happen for one (or a combination) of three reasons:
-The character needs time to think or feel his way up to the next line
of dialogue or action.
-The creation of a moment of comedy or dramatic power.
-For emphasis, to accent something as important, to underline it for the
audience.
And don’t assume that silence itself can’t be used to create laughter. One of the funniest scenes ever takes place in the film Victor/Victoria, where Blake Edwards shows us a restaurant with cockroaches loose in the food, from outside the building, looking in silently through a picture window. All is calm, then, suddenly, everyone erupts in panic as the insects are discovered, but we hear nothing. We only see the comic devastation. Another such scene can be found at the ends of Mike Nichol’s The Graduate, when the hero and heroine enter a totally silent bus. Funny and telling.
In our line of work, one controls the audience with a flow of sound and emotion and ideas. Silence comes out of the blue, and is one of our greatest tools, being unexpected. Use it wisely.
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EXERCISE: Take a scene with your character from a play with a character you can play. Look it carefully over. Then, run it with a partner at least five times, putting in a silence everywhere you can. use “pregnant pauses”, thoughtful excursions. Don’t worry that the silence is ridiculously excessive. Don’t concern yourself that the scene is three times longer than it should be. Just get the feel for a proper use of silence to allow the character a moment to think before speaking or acting, to create drama or comedy, or for emphasis.
Next, select ONE spot in the scene which, based on this last experiment, seems to support silence well. Do the scene several times, just placing and using that one silence, until you can do so effectively.
Next, select a different spot in the scene which can support a silence, and run the scene with only that one silence, until you can do it effectively.
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