The Power of the Pause: betweenity

Sometimes it’s not the words themselves but the spaces between them that say the most. In the vignette play betweenity by Lindsay Price students have a chance to explore the beats, pauses and neverending silences in conversation. It sounds easy but are you up to the challenge of the ‘awkward pause’? This is an excellent class project play with parts for everyone at all levels with a great technique exploration. Charlie McMeekin and the drama students at The Sharon Academy in Sharon, VT fine-tuned their techniques and learned that silence can be awkward… and golden.

My student director expanded the concept of the silence between words using a warm-up where we stood in a circle and tried counting to twenty, one person randomly at a time. If two spoke at the same time, we returned to zero. Only when we began to “feel” the silence did we make it to twenty. On performance night at our regional festival, the cast was pretty wound up. Before performing, our warm-up was this same exercise, despite strenuous objections from the cast. It worked to calm them down, however, and focus them. . . and we counted to 20!

Congratulations, Sharon Academy!