Do it in One-One-Thousand

As actors, our jobs can effectively be boiled down to that of a means of conveyance, such as words on a page. Actors are a medium through which playwrights talk to an audience and therefore it is up to us to decide how the messages are communicated. We can all agree that how we communicate with the audience is important, which is why so many actors struggle with things like the pacing of a scene and pauses. We’ll discuss pacing in detail another day, but for now I wanted to hit on the idea of beats and pauses and a general rule of thumb for so many actors who hesitate to pause . . . hesitate to pause. That just doesn’t sound right, does it?

So often on stage we feel as if we’re bartering for an audience’s attention. We feel that if we don’t rocket our tale along at break-neck speed then the audience will get bored. Then we hit a particularly juicy bit and we want to steal back some of that time so that we can fully express ourselves to the audience. Once again the actor finds himself caught in between understandability and speed. So what can we do during those moments when we feel we desperately need to slow down so that we, and the audience, can fully savior a certain moment?

The answer is: do it in one. Everything onstage can be done in one beat, unless it’s something particularly juicy. The understandability of the play will be greatly helped if you make sure to do everything, play with a prop, sit down, stand up, gesture, etc. in one beat; that is, one-one thousand. You don’t have to rush through scenes in the hopes of not boring an audience, because remember that there is a point at which you can go too fast and you go from being boring to being unintelligible. So a nice steady clip is to do it in one beat.

Now like I said, there are some moments when you just want to take your time and clarify for yourself and for the audience what is happening. Times when you want to let your silence sink into the audience in the hopes that it can tell the story better than words in this moment. What do you do in these times when one-one thousand just isn’t enough? The specifics are up to you, but the rule of thumb is not to exceed three beats; one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand. Go over three beats and the audience begins to wonder if you’ve forgotten your line. It seems that the magic number for ridding them of their willing suspension of disbelief is four. Bring it in under four and you can keep them hanging on every word.

It also bears pointing out that a three beat pause should be used very sparingly. Let’s be honest, in any given play there are probably only two moments that warrant such a long pause. So be aware as you search through your script that there is a limit to how often you should pause, especially for that long. You should always use silences that long as rarely as you can. I know that as actors we love those pregnant pauses when we can feel the entire audience hanging on us, waiting for us to speak again, but there’s only so many times you can do it before the audience grows tired of it and it cheapens the moment. Pauses to an audience are like diamonds to the market; the more of them there are, the less they’re worth.

Don’t be afraid to pause onstage, because there’s nothing that can ruin a moment more than speaking before you should. Take your long pauses with gusto and never feel as if you’re trading for them. They are yours to take, so be strong with them. Remember that pauses are emphasis, nothing more, so only emphasize what’s important, even the short pauses add up over time. So get out there and don’t speak for long periods of time! But do so proudly! And only for three beats.

Oh yeah . . . and Sin Boldly! But you can do that for more than three beats.

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