Mind The Gap

I’ve been to see lots of theatre in recent months. At the same time, revisiting some stuff I’ve previously written about reviewing, adjudication and some Festival feedback which I had provided.
‘Pace’ is an intriguing element of theatre. It is a word which is used a lot in respect of a sentence, a speech, a character or a whole play. Either, having too much of it or not enough. But it’s not just a function of performance. 

Before we get to that stage, it’s also a function of the writing and the structure. 
Some passages feel (read) like they need pace. It should be evident from the writing. 
But what does that mean in practice?

Pace does not equal “speaking more quickly.” OK, there is an element of that but it is far more nuanced. For me, pace is a function of energy; that of the character and what they deliver. Their objective. Their wants and needs. It’s a function of the moment and a script is a sequence of moments. 
We all know that speaking too quickly loses clarity, the story and the audience. When they recover from it, the mental process of filling in the blanks causes them not to attend to what comes next whilst playing catch-up. A vicious tiring cycle which can cause an audience to give up making the effort.

Conversely, I have said ad nauseum that an actor’s seconds are longer than those of an audience. I have often sat rocking in my seat, listening to a delivery which you could drive a bus through the gaps unnecessarily inserted into it. My approach has always been not to write dialogue that needs to be overly analysed or interpreted. Write dialogue which can be performed and communicated. Write dialogue in which the structure, the clarity of the characters and of the moment give the performer all they need to weave their storytelling magic. Pauses don’t add drama, tension, fear, anger, conflict per se. They just add to the running time and subtract from the pace. 

Therefore, I question where/when I engineer them into writing. My objective is to write real life, real conversations, between real people living in real moments. If I get it right, the pace should look after itself.

Another way of thinking about it is “the gaps” in stage dialogue. In a simple/stupid way, those spaces before and after lines. I’ve watched a fair number of actors and directors recently either racing towards them or ambling in their general direction with no sense of what to do when they get there. Equally, what they expect the audience will think or do or react to. That pause, beat, silence, break ... gap. Why did the writer suggest or leave one? Why didn’t they? Does it work? Either way, what are you going to do with it when you get there? What’s your rush to fill it? What’s the reason for allowing it to exist? 
Storytelling is about the whole, not the word count. Whether it’s a marathon or a sprint, the ending is important, but the journey is why we are all there in the room. 

In some pieces, the audience need thinking or reaction/response time. To savour or to be shocked; to laugh or to catch their breath. Humour is constructed to have a payoff. Sometimes from just one line. We need to plan for the gap where the payoff and all these inexplicable elements of storytelling exist. We need to mind the gap. 

Give it the space to exist and the audience the time to savour it. Speaking over a line can be just as much a problem as speaking over the gap. Well-chosen gaps tell the story as much as the words do. They are a function not a foible. We just need to know why they are there, when they are, what to do when we reach them ... and when to leave them behind. 

Because the audience are in them, waiting and hopeful.