Tempo & Rhythm

Tempo
If you listen in the New York theatre you will very commonly hear actor after actor take the tempo of his speech from the speech that has just been spoken. And so it happens sometimes that for a whole scene the tempo of all the speeches have about the same measure. I doubt if the average producer ever thinks one way or the other about the subject.

But the vitality behind dramatic art makes it necessarily true that every part has in itself its general tempo, its time-pattern; and the same is true of every single speech. What is true of visual design is true for the ear also: that every section of the play is a time-centre in itself, to which surrounding parts are related; all these centres in their turn are related to larger centres and so on.

A study of tempo by our actors would help mend two of the worst faults on our stage, monotony and lack of speed. And the achievement of more variety and speed would help to clear away the idly imitative, the realistic clutter now so much in the way of the art of theatre. And finally a study of tempo leads to better diction, to more flexible characterization, and to a sharper impress of the dramatic pattern involved.

Rhythm

Art is a process of expressing one part of life in terms of another. An architect expresses the life of his dreams and ideas in terms of his life with visual solid forms. A singer may pour into sound his erotic experience. For this reason it is true that art is not art at all except in so far as it is alive. The characteristic of the living is that it never is at rest but is a perpetual rhythm of change. A moment approaches its most complete establishment, it arrives, but even as it arrives it is breaking down into what comes after. Save for this rhythm toward and from itself, it would be dead; it is alive only in this relative life. The same holds true of all movement on stage; all of it derives from an unbroken rhythm of the actor's thought, and is alive only within a rhythm of the body that from the actor's entrance to his exit is continuous.

Stark Young, Theatre Practice