Filling the silence

This post is some of my thoughts on filling the pauses, especially the one before Skye's line "The Angel of Silence has passed over us."

On Friday all of the actors had a Viewpoints class with Catherine Moore. We did an exercise where we investigated a painting in an art book, and then had an open viewpoints session with music supplied by Catherine. Our assignment focused on trying to look at the picture and translate what we saw into our Viewpoints vocabulary. It was a very informative class. We created a piece of theatre as an ensemble. We did this by LISTENING to each other and trying to play off of each other. If someone had an idea, everyone was open to building on it.

This is the kind of environment we have to bring to this ensemble scene. Even though we all have our own intentions... they have to be found in the other people on stage. The silences only work when what we're discovering something new in the other people on stage. If you want to see people standing around in silence not reacting to each other... go to a museum. The silences are where HUGE discoveries happen. Something Matt said to me in class was something my silence could be filled with is the discovery that Nina is enthralled with Trigorin.

I hope this is something we can all work together on... cause when we all find it together... it feels like acting.
And acting feels good...

Peter