Applying linguistics to theatre production processes: the strategic use of silence during technical rehearsals

While emerging scholars in applied linguistics are beginning to widen the scope of the field to include live and performing arts – for example, methods of creative inquiry (McKay and Bradley, 2016; Bradley and Harvey, 2019) and the impact of university theatre societies on international students (Ghosh, 2019) – the intricate processes of theatre making that occur during technical rehearsals remain elusive. As a freelance lighting designer for theatre and opera, the articulation of these processes is something I have been exploring throughout previous research (Zezulka, 2019a, 2019b and 2019c). While these studies have focused specifically on spoken dialogue, here I wish to begin to question the role that silence plays in multimodal discourse between lighting professionals at work, touching on the ways in which power, hierarchy and agency are enacted throughout the intense working environment of the technical rehearsal