Acting Pet Peeve
You know how, in a play or a film or a television show or even a commercial, two characters will be talking and one of them will interrupt the other? Of course you do, I mean, obviously.

But you know how almost everyone always delivers the interrupted line as if the character knew zie was about to be interrupted?

God damn, does that ever drive me up the wall. So. Irritating.

This was a concept I understood in the sixth grade. In my--whatever the fuck, Reading or Language Arts or who knows what the fuck they were calling it--class, one day, the class was reading a play? Like you do. Which in the sixth grade is ridiculously annoying anyway because instead of picking people to read each character's part--can't do that, not everybody would get to read! because of course it's too much trouble to keep track of who read last time and pick the next people on the list--you go by the order of the desks in the row, or alphabetically if your teacher is particularly sadistic, whatever.

And so this afternoon we were reading--get this--it was an episode of the X-Files, which we had, like, a portion of, or something, in our little textbooks that we were reading out of. And when it came to my turn, the character (and I am damned if I know which character it was) was supposed to be interrupted at the end of the line, as described above.

I had seen that this would be my line, you know, well in advance, and I was excited about it because I, little nerd-Wolf with the little nerd-Wolf spectacles and the officious manner and the enormously baggy clothing for no good reason, I was going to do it properly.

And so I pushed my spectacles up my little nerd nose and I delivered the line the way I felt--and, truth to tell, still feel--all such lines should be delivered: I determined in my own head what the character would have gone on to say if not interrupted and was fully prepared to continue on until actually interrupted by my classmate, so that it would not sound like the character had just intended to say (this is in no way the line I was reading, because of course I don't remember it) "I think we should stop at the rest area and."

This approach really only works if the student who is reading the line after yours understands the concept of actually following along with their book.

And if you know me in person, you've probably already guessed what happened next.

You're not wrong. I did indeed turn around and lecture my unfortunate classmate about how zie was supposed to have interrupted me and it was not my responsibility to indicate that it was time for said interruption with an expectant silence, and that zie would have known zie was supposed to interrupt me if zie had been reading along in hir book as we had been instructed to do, and that I was not about to compromise my artistic principles (I did not use those words, but that was the gist) just because zie was lazy (I did not actually call hir lazy; sixth grade was a time in my life when I was adept at strongly implying insulting things about my classmates without actually spelling them out).

I would do it again if I had it to do over. Because like 95% of people do this incorrectly and it is my number one pet peeve in any kind of acting at all. And I love him, but you know who does this? Nicholas Brendon. The example that sticks in my mind is the part in "Once More With Feeling" where Xander and Anya are talking over each other to try to convince Giles that something super extra needs to be done about the singing thing. This is not actually an interruption line so much as the character is just supposed to trail off, but the same concept applies. "Blah blah blah blah and." Gah. I just. Gah. So. Annoying.

And the thing is. The thing is. This is really, when you get right down to it, this is a direction issue. If your actors are delivering their interrupted or trailed-off lines this way and you don't teach them better, that is on you. Unless your actors just will not listen to you, in which case that becomes their fault, but I think if everybody involved had to audition and/or is receiving a paycheck, and they can't take direction, you fire them.

This does not apply to the time in ninth grade when I had half an hour to prepare a scene from Romeo and Juliet and my actors just sort of stared at me, wide-eyed--there was nothing behind those eyes--nodding gently as if in a faint breeze, and then proceeded to do exactly as they pleased which turned out to be exactly everything I had just spent ten minutes patiently explaining to them why they should not do. That. Was not my fault. That was me being assigned to the slacker group--again--so I could do all the work and yank their grades up out of the abyss. This is not actually an effective teaching method. The slackers get an A they didn't earn and the "gifted and talented" kid (or whatever they're calling it these days) does not actually teach them how to do whatever project, not having the time to be dealing with that while trying to do a three-person project all on her own. Which she can do, especially if she enjoys it, but which she will resent and which will only teach her that for the rest of her life, if she lives up to her potential, that potential will be used to reward idiots who sit on their asses and stare at the wall in hopes that someone like her will come along to fix their grades so they don't have to ever learn anything or do anything for themselves, ever, ever, ever, in their entire lives.

Which, when you come to think about it, is actually a pretty applicable life lesson. This is exactly the way "the real world" works.

But it also steadily beats out of you any enthusiasm you might have had for any area of academic study whatsoever, because you learn to associate all of it with drudgery and other people taking credit for your awesomeness, which, if you happen to have undiagnosed ADD, only discourages your brain from hyperfocusing on the superfun awesome school stuff you used to really enjoy, causing you to suck more and more in all your subjects even though you understand everything perfectly.