Moments of Silence in theatre — Page 2

I love the completely silent interaction between Margaret and Snr. Nacarelli after "Let's Walk" in "The Light in the Piazza."

The piano underscoring that comes in after the silence is so gorgeous and matches perfectly with the butterflies Margaret is feeling after he kisses her.

I agree with the moment right after Another Winter in a Summer Town from Grey Gardens, right between the lines "I can't open the damned can!" and "Coming Mother darling" the silence is so intense it roars in your ears!

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The memorable silences for me were definitely, as others have said, the end of the Mendes revival of Cabaret, as well as those two at the end of the Doyle Company: the big pause between Bobby and Joanne, and that huge, charged silence before Raúl sat down at the piano. So, so effective.

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Updated On: 11/9/08 at 10:26 PM

In the Sunday in the Park With George revival, right as the curtain rose for act two, there was a pause that felt 5 minutes long.

You could feel the tension as the actors stood frozen in the tableau.

A NEW BRAIN had about like 3 minutes of silence between "The Music Still Plays On" and "Don't Give In."

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I have to agree with the "Big River" moment. It was stunning.

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The moments when Morgan Freeman forgot his lines in The Country Girl -- the silence was deafening. There were a lot of those moments.

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So, A Director, what shows do you think high schools should do -- there aren't that many shows about teenagers with no adult characters who have more "life experience" than the actors? High School theatre whould be about learning, and no one should go to see a HS performance expecting Broadway!

Updated On: 11/25/08 at 11:12 PM

I second the "Gypsy" moment in the dressing room with Mama Rose and Louise - the other great stirring silent moment is when Herbie decides he has had enough - after Rose cajoles Louise to strip. You could palpably feel his disgust, he had had enough. It was amazing and stunningly silent.
There is a part in "Fiddler on the roof" when Tevya encounters Havila and her Russian Gentile husband at the train station - he walks away from her - it is just too much, leaving Havila to cry for him after he walks away - there is a sweet violin interlude at this point to add dramatic effect, but the audience is transfixed. I love silence when the audience is so moved at the end of a production they don't know what to do, they don't want to start applauding because that signals the end of the experience, the end of the fantasy that brings one back to reality.

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The biggest chill/silence I ever felt in a theater was in the revival of Assassins, when the film of Kennedy being shot is projected over Lee Harvey Oswald. There are a lot of heavy silences in that show, but that one really stuck with me.

The second last scene of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden is breathtalking and the moment of silence that follows seems endless.

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