What does Pause mean?
Pause is a deliberate moment of stillness and silence within a performance — a beat in which the actor stops speaking or moving, allowing the emotional weight of what has just been said or done to resonate before the scene continues. A well-placed pause is one of the most powerful tools available to a performer, creating space for the audience to feel rather than just hear the scene. Pauses are distinct from forgetting a line or losing focus — they are intentional, active moments in which the character is processing, deciding, or experiencing something internally.
Example:After delivering the difficult news, the child actor held a pause — five full seconds of stillness in which her character absorbed what she had just said — before the other actor responded. The pause made the scene.
Example: The director’s note was simply ‘trust the pause’ — the actor was rushing past the most emotionally powerful moment in the scene by filling the silence too quickly, not allowing the audience time to sit with what had just happened.
Did you know?
Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, was so famous for his use of silence and pause that the term ‘Pinteresque pause’ entered the English language to describe a loaded, uncomfortable silence between characters. Pinter distinguished carefully between a ‘pause’ (a moment of transition or thought) and a ‘silence’ (a deeper break in communication that signals something more fundamental has shifted between the characters).
You can also find “Pause” and related terms in this category: Becoming an Actor.
