Distribution of pauses on the interpretation of actors

Abstract

Introduction: The literature about the work with the voice of actors in the theater focuses the research on organic issues involved in the vocal process as “misuse” or “vocal abuse”. To a lesser amount, there are studies that highlight issues of interpretation and expressive resources, as well as others that highlight the linguistic resources of interpretation. This work shows a linguistic feature – the pause – and its collaboration for the theatrical interpretation. Objective: to verify the extent to which similarities and differences occur between the points judged as occurrence of pauses in interpretations of a theatrical text. Method: Subjects of this study were four theater actors, who played individually a same theatrical text. Later, a group of ten judges judged the points where pauses occurred. Based on a criterion of 70% agreement between judges, were searched similarities and differences between the points judged as pause of each recording. Results: the four subjects showed different amounts of pause in the stretch in common that they interpreted: S1= ten occurrences; S2= 14 occurrences; S3= 6 occurrences; and S4= 9 occurrences. In this inter-subject variation, five points of pause in common were detected. Conclusion: we have seen, then, that this variability (featuring subjectivity in interpretation) is built inside given possibilities, with lesser or greater flexibility, by the structure of the theatrical text.