Showing the mechanism to move the hand gracefully. The piano wire pulls against elastic on the other side. Simple, controlled, very pleasing. Something so satisfying about carving the insde to fit the mechanism tightly and neatly into it. Reassuring to know it looks like that in there. And everything works better too.
What is leading? How do you lead with the bum? With the feet? With the head? And what is directing? Directing is telling someone to do something. "Go over there", "come over here", "climb through the window", "sit before you say this line", "try shouting that line", "do it as if you were a cat", "how about singing it..." etc etc. It can be subtle or it can be psychological or it can be physical. It may be controlling, it may be micro nuanced, it may be vague. Direction comes from outside of the play. From another world. In rehearsal usually. Leading on the other hand is something that people do in life. They are suggestions made by someone in the same world. In the story. In the play. In lif
...not after them. It's obvious if you think about it. You can't pause after something really because then it isn't a pause - it's an end. The only thing that makes a pause a pause is the line that follows it. Pauses go wrong in performance when it becomes waiting. A pause needs to be full. So what are we doing in a pause? We are thinking what to say, looking for the word, wishing we were somewhere else, trying to figure out what to say, looking for meaning, hoping to be rescued, trying to control the conversation, wishing we were dead etc etc fill in as you wish. A trick for you: pause on the in-breath. Pause full of inspiration. On the out-breath the life goes out of the the moment. Pause