{"id":13625,"date":"2011-03-01T18:00:11","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T23:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2011\/03\/01\/13625.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:58:35","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:58:35","slug":"sixteen-lines-sixth-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2011\/03\/01\/sixteen-lines-sixth-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Sixteen Lines: Sixth Line"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now. My character had just coerced the Governmental Authority to repeat Stumbling block?<\/i>, allowing further explanation:\n

A substantial number of my flock believe this child, Pearl, to be of demonic origin, and that it would be better for Hester Prynne, the child, and our community of faith that the child be removed from her mother’s care.<\/blockquote>\n

Nearly-Legendary Director was talking to me about this line last night during rehearsal, pointing out the tremendous contrasts available to me. My flock: for<\/i>. The child, Pearl: against<\/i>. Demonic origin: very against<\/i>. Better: for<\/i>. Then, a ladder up the triple, as being better and better before plunging down in pitch to child: against<\/i>. Removed: for<\/i>. Her mother’s care: against<\/i>.\n

What my character is really against is disorder, and (in his interpretation) (or, rather, my interpretation of his interpretation) any possibility of the Woman being seen to be happy or even not-entirely-miserable is a temptation to disorder amongst the populace. Further, children are inherently prone to disorder, and this child seems to be particularly irreverent and willful. The clergy cannot be soft or lenient in these matters or there will be chaos.\n

Not you, Chaos.\n

Anyway, the suggestion that the Child be removed into foster care has two obvious benefits: (A) it will make the Woman unhappy, and (secondly) it will make the child unhappy. It’s a win-win!\n

In this line, by the way, I turn to include the Man (who I know only as a somewhat soft-hearted clergyman prone to misguided compassion) as I suggest that my advice is best for the Woman and the Child, before capping the triple with the community of faith<\/i> delivered directly to the Governmental Authority, who is responsible for it.\n

I will add another note about line reading… one of the tricky things about, well, about acting, I suppose, at least in the naturalistic style that is most common and popular in our culture, is that the character must act as if he is thinking up the words as he goes along. Yet doing so is not the best way to tell the story that must be told. If an actor pauses as long as a person really would pause who had no idea what was coming next, the audience would fret. Even if they didn’t notice it, they would fret. Even if they didn’t fret at the moment the gap was too long, they would fret when it came to be eleven o’clock and they weren’t on the way home. Thus, the pauses have to be quick. Infinitesimal, really. But still noticeable, still breaking the sentence into thought groups as a person might.\n

Nearly-Legendary Director will interrupt a line like this if it is flowing so smoothly that it doesn’t allow the listener any entrance points. A substantial number of my flock believe—<\/i>believe what?<\/strong>believe the child Pearl to be of—<\/i>to be what?<\/strong>of demonic origin!<\/i> He is saying that the audience should be thinking (tho’ not verbalizing it) those questions at those points in the script. We don’t have time to keep them in suspense, but we have to allow them to think the thought. If they are quick. It’s a tough trick for me—I have written before<\/a> about my tendency to creeping Shatnerism, which leads me to (correctly) mistrust my sense of pacing. I am having a great deal of difficulty with the pacing, but at least I am getting near-legendary directing. Stretch it out, I am being told. Slow it down. But without taking too much time.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger casts K’un, the receptive force. All broken lines. Pauses. Between.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19317,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13625\/revisions\/19317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}