In Search of Silence

Nothing in the theatre has any meaning "before" or "after". Meaning is "now". An audience comes to the theatre for one reason only, which is to live a certain experience and an experience can only take place at the moment when it is experienced. When this is truly the case, the silence in a theatre changes its density and in every form of theatre, in all different traditions and all the different types of theatre all over the world you can see exactly the same phenomenon. An audience is composed of people whose minds are whirling — as they watch the event, sometimes this audience is touched — again we do not really know what "touched" means, except that it is a phenomenon. At first, the audience isn't touched — why should it be ? Then all of a sudden, something touches everyone. At the moment that they are touched an exact phenomenon occurs. What has been up till then individual experiences becomes shared, unified. At the moment when the mass of people becomes one, there is one silence and that silence you can taste on the tongue. It's a different silence from the ordinary silence that is there at the beginning of the performance and it is a silence that can, according to the quality that is lived by the actor, become an experience that is of another quality for the audience, one which each person recognises. This shared recognition expresses itself through the increasing density of the same silence.

--Peter Brook

When I was young, there were few around that were my age. I think the closest kid my age was three miles away. During the summers I had a lot of time to myself. We didn't have cable, and I had seen every videotape we had so many times I could rewatch them in my head simply by closing my eyes. I couldn't go to the library without my parents driving me. I was constantly surrounded by silence. To fill that I'd make up epic stories, taking what toys I could find that fit the bill, and imagining the rest. If the weather was bad, I could fill an entire day in my room imagining stories. If it was nice, I could do the same in the woods at my grandparents farm.

It was a different place and time so an eight year old could spend hours alone in a forest, without worrying adults. Once I missed a meal. They got worried then. They came out of the house screaming for me to make sure I was okay. I was, I had packed a lunch for my adventure that day, supplemented by the raspberries, strawberries and melons I was good for the day, until dark at least. A dark forest is a very different thing for a boy on his own. Much of my childhood was spent battling silence.

There is a silence we speak of in theatre. A living communal silence Brook describes above. It doesn't always happen, but once you experience it, you're hooked. We like to think that it only is possible in a darkened theatre, but that is not the case. I've experienced it in other areas of my life as well. A living silence is indeed one of the strongest forces pulling me in my theatrical quest.

Long before I experienced it in theatre, I knew it well. I had felt that same silence numerous times not on stages, but on fields. The zone is the current buzz word, I believe--thought when I was younger, I had never heard the term, or any way to describe the experience. There are brief moments in sports where I felt the same silence. It is just as difficult to descibe in athletics as in theatre. If you haven't every experienced it, I don't know if you can understand it. The only books I ever found that came close to an explanation were on particle physics and superstring theory, though they look at subatomic particles and not people.

Taking a handoff, going through the hole, lowering your shoulder into a linebacker, only to feel your shoulder raise up and the linebacker is not there. There is nothing in front of you but sixty yards of green grass, and in that instant you know you will not be stopped. You knew it the second you touched the ball, once the crowd disappeared and silence took the place of cheering.

At bat in the bottom of the last inning down two runs with two men on base. The pitcher hangs a curve ball over the middle of the plate and the ball slows down as you swing. The moment you make contact there is that same silence. And you know without ever watching the ball leave the field the game is over. I was inconsistent at times, my attention would wander and I'd make a mental error here and there. Truth be told I did not work as hard as I should have, or there would have been far more moments like that.

It wasn't until I was done as an athlete I felt the other side of it. The same silence in a crowd knowing someone has momentarily achieved greatness. Knowing the second the play has started it will be something special.

The first time I felt that same feeling, the living silence in a theatre, I was hooked. It took a bit to learn the difference between a play and a beat; a crowd and an audience; a quarter or inning and an act. I never thought of sports and athletics as some separate entity, with no crossover appeal.

In the midst of last weeks Value discussion this came up in the comments over at The Next Stage. It's a good read. I asked Simon, why anyone would go to a hockey game. Loaded question to ask a Canadian--though I already knew the answer. Growing up in Michigan, where 75,000 people will watch a college hockey game outdoors, there is a lot of hockey in the winters.

The us vs. them we talk about is no greater in my experience than that between the arts and athletics. Held over feelings from high schools where arbitrarily lines are drawn between jocks and nerds carry through to the way we speak of audiences vs. crowds.

We can learn a lot from why people watch sports. Simon's answer to my question was:

Oh man Tony, for a Canadian that’s easy to answer. You get them into the arena for the hot girls and beer (or good looking hockey players and beer, depending on their proclivities), and they stay for the speed and power. I’ve seen a lot of pro sports live and none of them can match the unbridled ferocity of our national sport (okay, our national sport is actually lacrosse here, but everyone thinks it’s hockey). It’s 300 times more impressive rinkside than it is on TV, and it’s impossible not to be impressed by the grace and skill of players at a pro level no matter what country you’re from, because these guys have been playing it every day of their life.

As I said over there, many of the same adjectives can apply to both, especially some of our finer byob theatres, when they are at their best; though, an awful team has just as hard of a time attracting people as awful shows do--the big leagues spend a lot of money attracting people, just as Broadway does. People can watch sports on tv, the same as watching stories on tv. But when a team is winning people flock back, even after decades of disappointment bordering on abuse.

The main reason people go to watch sporting events is they know they'll have a good time. If they know nothing about the sport, they go with others, knowing they will have a good time. It doesn't always happen that way. Our parks, fields and stadiums are far more often filled with disappointments. Just as our theatres are.

Sports offers a loose guarantee of a good time, but on the right day a stadium full of fans hope they may feel that living silence, though they may have a different name for it, watching greatness.

How does theatre compare?