What about the "beats"? Znork

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Think of a beat more as a "freeze." It's a short, charged moment when the breathing stops.

Archive 7-10-2002

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Yes, and that goes directly for Sarah's dialogues. On the one hand there is the topic of love, but on the other it is about the absence of love. Also, the later the play, the more you find an absence of speech, space, character, form and "plot". That's where the magic comes from. The words she writes speak about the absence of what they present.

Archive 9-3-2002

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Your right they do mean a lead in to something else, a beat is longer than a pause. The basic sue would be to change the subject. Though the silences do ahve a lot of significance. Someone once said that good play writing is not about what you do with dialogue but what yuo do in it's absence...

Archive 9-3-2002

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I agree with you on "Crave", but I don't think they simply work as structure of the dialogue. They seem to mark something different, like a next step, or a new context. If they only would mean some kind of pause, then why did Sarah not write a "pause". She uses a lot of pauses, longer pauses, and silences. Thats for structuring the plot, or the behaviour of the characters, to mark important moments during dialogue. But the beats... they seem different... more important.

Archive 9-3-2002

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 beat in a play is a pause during dialogue. They are important as it is the writers way of telling the performers how long this is.

The beats in Kanes work are very important as they set up the structure of the dialogue. 'Crave' which is very musical the "beats" are very important to the texture of the play.

I'm acctually never sure which time signiture beats are in, and sometimes you have to work out if the play is Legato or Alegro, or moves between the two.

Archive 9-3-2002

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During reading Sarah's plays, I always stumbled over the various "beats". If I haven't missed one, they are these:

Blasted: - A beat, then Ian climbs into the grave.

Pheadra: - A beat, just after Hippolitus mentions to Phaedra that he had sex with her daughter. She then slaps him

Crave: - A beat, when M mentions the name "David" to B for the first time. Another one after their very short dialogue. (a frame for the dialogue?)

- Four beats during the "Yes/No"-Dialogue and the short screams following it.

- A beat between C's "Waves sob like a Pulse" and B's "Here I am, once again, here I am (...) "

- A beat between "Forget", spoken by all, and B's "Rape me"

- A beat between B's "Kill me" and A's "Free-Falling", which introduces the last replies in the play.

I am sure, the mark crucial points in the plays, especially the beats in "Crave", but I don't know what to make of them exactly. They don't seem to have a particular meaning, it's more a function, which shifts the characters and/or the play in some kind of new direction/context.

What are your thoughts on them?

Archive 8-3-2002