today i'm thinking about how dave malloy inverts the theatre proverb of when emotion becomes to strong for speech you sing; when it becomes too strong for song you dance by having the single moment of spoken dialogue in great comet be the one moment where pierre is too overcome to either sing or dance when he tells natasha that he loves her. like he can't even move he's so struck by the gravity of the emotion he's experiencing and his voice breaks not just because of the emotion in it but because he's trying to express himself in a way that is completely foreign to the world he lives in, that singular declaration of love and the resignation that it cannot yet be brings the whole show to a stop like a breath caught in the throat and then we're back to singing we're back to dancing as if the whole world hasn't been remade on a new axis as if pierre didn't effectively create a new form of communication because the only ones available to him were so full of artifice and spectacle that he had to create something new so he could tell natasha how he feels. it's really such an incredible moment that makes my heart fall out of my ass every time. In This essay I will
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