Week #2: The Sounds of Silence (corny, I know)
This week we did two class activities concerning silence. In one, we worked on the development of tension, in the other we focused on a major status change. What did silence teach you as directors? What did it teach you as actors? You may take this entry down any path you pick, or follow another line of conversation altogether. Enjoy!
My grandmother once told me, "You cannot not communicate." So my first job as an actor in both scenes was to distinguish silence from wordlessness. And as an Irishwoman with the Gift of Gab, the two are often synonymous. But having to work with wordlessness made every facial expression and every gesture VERY significant. More than it usually is. I'm a mimer when I talk. If you tie my hands behind my back I can't words. I was expecting to have trouble expressing myself but it wasn't really that difficult. The difficulty for me was taking the moments of wordlessness and making them loud and full of communication. Without becoming a cartoon.
ReplyDeleteAs I said in my last blog response, I come from a musical theater background which is larger than life and somewhat cartoony in the face. One of my challenges was making sure over-emotion didn't defeat the purpose of the exercise. I don't know how well I did. XD
The differentiation between wordlessness and silence is very interesting here! What your grandmother said was very wise...even if she was specifically talking about YOU! If anything, the point she makes is heightened even further on the stage, where even small movements are read for significance by the audience.
ReplyDeleteI was only there on Wednesday, but silence as an actor was an interesting experience. Not being able to communicate through words forced Austin and i to communicate through action and expression. It was challenging because there were times where i really wanted to speak but couldn't. Watching others' scenes was interesting to watch as well. Being able to understand what the the actors/ director were trying to convey without speaking was refreshing to watch. Action can be just as or more important than words.
ReplyDeleteWe often focus so heavily on the text when rehearsing that we forget how powerful well executed movements can be throughout the course of a performance. Text is undoubtedly important, but the silent exercises can help to illustrate the importance of details.
DeleteFor both days I only acted. The silent scenes were interesting to act in because we couldn't rely on words to convey our emotions or move the story in anyway, we had to use gestures and facial expressions to get across whatever message we were trying to convey. It was also important in this case for the director to have a clear vision and understand how to communicate it to their actors. It was a fun experience and really helped me expand my knowledge of non-verbal communication.
ReplyDeleteExcellent observation concerning the importance of the director's vision. Of course the exercises can be somewhat artificial because the director has to play the role of Playwright and Director when putting one of these classroom scenes together.
DeleteAs a director i felt like it was kind of hard to get the expression and the feeling out of some of the actors. Also i felt like i had to push the actors more and i didn't want to seem like i was bossy so it was kind of hard. This was the first time i have ever directed a scene. As an actor i felt like i need to use my facial expressions a lot and my body language to get the audience to read the story i was trying to tell them. So if i would of looked happy and was skipping then no one would of got that i was in danger and i was just just to get through the area alive. This was a very fun activity to do in class.
ReplyDeleteI'd like for you to explain some of this a little more fully. I'm getting some of what you are saying, but not making full connections.
DeleteI enjoyed this exercise, both as an actor and as a director. I think the lack of a text and having to come up with a score on the fly, really forced the actors and directors to work closer together. As an actor in the scene I found myself really trying to get inside my director's head and understand how she saw my character. I'm a very collaborative person when it comes to acting, scenes, theatre, anything really. I think throwing out ideas is a good thing to a point, but after a while, I feel like I might seem a little pushy. What people don't realize is, I am excessively ADD and I will be on ten or more trains of thought at a time. I filter most of the ideas out but if I think any of them might work, I toss them out for the group, so I don't have to keep thinking about them. Subsequently, this also makes me a hard person to follow as a director. I tend to jump around a lot with my ideas and they sometimes only make sense to me. When I would put myself into my actors' shoes I would often think "WTF is he saying? Look at the gun, then at her, then back to the gun, then back to him? This guy has no idea what he's talking about!" I found it difficult to put into words the motivation behind every movement. For me the eyes are everything. If you look someone in the eyes you know what they are feeling even if their body language is completely opposite. I think adding in all of those "look here, then here, then heres", really helped to add tension to the scene, as well as fill the silence with physical noise. I was lucky enough to have actors who were patient with me and understood what I was trying to convey with a look with out having to explain it completely. They just got it, and I thank them for that. Overall I did really enjoy this activity and all of the interesting things that people did with it. Very thought provoking!
ReplyDeleteYou've got a nice self analysis in here. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is always a great place to start.
DeleteAs an actor, I find silence is more spontaneous. With a script nothing changes, everything is set in stone and the story is expected to stay the same night after night of performances. However with silence nothing is set in stone. I found that none of my actions were the same each run through. Yes the director, can make sure that the story flows correctly, however the timing is never the same each time the actors perform.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are responding to the improvisational nature of the exercise as much as the silence. Timing is always a major issue of concern in acting and directing, and a hard one to master.
DeleteSpeaking from an acting standpoint, with which I'm most familiar, I could get a really good look or at least idea about how much STUFF is in a moment. Silence demands for every action to be motivated, so the actors are compelled to not necessarily embellish, but to establish their connection to the scene even more. The act requires smart decision-making. It's difficult work but ultimately can lead to a really powerful and compelling result.
ReplyDeleteDirectors really have their work cut out for them when working with a completely silent project. They're the ones who have the say-so on the blocking, the idea, the world--everything. Trying to stage my scene in particular was actually pretty exhausting because at least 500 things were leaping from one part of my brain to the next. There was so much to cover and juggle. I tried so hard to not allow any of the blocking to take the place of text, because then I realized the silence becomes pointless. The task was just difficult.
It's not easy, and you're right. The motivated silence is the biggest key to success. It isn't easy, but really you all did very well!
DeleteWhat I really found difficult, and I think others really found trouble with was motivating the silence. How does the scene get forwarded with no words and how do you get the audience to care about the story with no words? I think silence is really the groundwork for all scenes though. I think body language and thought often times are more important than the text. If you can strip away the text of a scene and you can still tell a clear and compelling story, the director has done his job and you have promising theatre. I thought this exercise was a great beginning to our semester of directing. As actors though, I felt like the exercise made us make all our moments believable and honest so that the silence did not feel unnatural. The director has to be in charge of the scene though, and if the director doesn't justify the silence to the actor, you hit a bit of conflict. Trying to act and justify something that the director can't justify themselves is really difficult and kind of frustrating as an actor. Keeping all of this in mind as a director will help benefit us as the class moves forward.
ReplyDeleteGreat discovery to make! Don't ask your performers to make leaps that you can't make yourself. I'm paraphrasing a bit, but this is an interesting idea to discuss.
DeleteSilence conveys more information than words ever could. In everyday life, we forget to recognize just how much information we subconsciously gather from the bodies of others. Silent exercises are always extremely beneficial to actors. It reminds us to not overact physically. And that in many cases, less is more. As directors, it shows you just how specific you need to be in your visions and choices. One little detail that slips your attention can be very seriously misconstrued by the audience.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you pulled out the importance of specificity. As I watched, I kept coming back to the ideas of specificity and motivation again and again.
DeleteThis is not my first time working within the parameters of silence. I never realized when I was acting in silent piece, how much added pressure is put on the director. When a play is silent the director then becomes responsible for the entirety of the piece. The movements and blocking become the text, so if the playwright was not very specific on those points, the story is left entirely up to the directors.
ReplyDeleteWhen directing this very short silent piece I found it very difficult to keep my line of thought in the right order. I had to decide every gesture and movement based on the whole story I was trying to tell. I have never had to think about how much a small movement can change the piece all together. Silence it seems is sometimes far more difficult then words.
Right! Good observation. The silence removes focus from any sort of a playwright figure and really places some of that focus on the director.
DeleteSilence can be a tricky thing to work with. As an audience member, when the stage is silent I am really drawn in and watching everything the actor is doing and really reading their actions. As an actor knowing that every little movement is more noticeable to the audience, I want to make sure that all of my actions are motivated. Acting in silence makes me much more aware of my body and figuring out what to do in order to achieve what I want rather than how to say it. I think this can be tricky for directors as well because they can't rely on the lines to convey messages. I think silent exercises and scenes are a good thing for both actors and directors to participate in because it really emphasizes honest and motivated work.
ReplyDeleteRight. Lines are great, but sometimes we rely on them too much in communicating a piece to the audience. The silent scenes help to remind and call us back to some of our most basic skills.
DeleteSilence is such a tricky thing. It can be used in such beautiful ways, but it cannot stand on its own. It needs some action to go along with it, or else the silence needs to be broken. The exercises taught me that emotions are difficult to convey, and that every audience is going to see something differently if you leave it open ended. Some might see a facial expression as scared, whereas others see it as sad. A slight change, but it can make a huge difference in the character's motivations and how the audience feels about them. This is probably the reason most theatre has lines. It is so much easier to communicate emotion by words.
ReplyDeleteSilence, like anything else, must be used precisely. A well place pause in a scene can make all the difference, but if the pause takes too long, or is too short, the scene could potentially be ruined. Just like any other element of theatre, silence must be used effectively.
When we worked with silence, I felt like there was something that was missing from the work. Not the words, because those are unnecessary to tell a story. I'm talking about the idea that there were no words and therefore the actors had nothing to fall back on. When you have a scene with words, the structure of the scene is at least somewhat already laid out. When there are no words, you must start and finish with only the conceptual idea and the bodies onstage.
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