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【完形填空】Cloze: The Silent Performer
Nadia was a mime who performed only on street corners, and her ability to control her face could (1) a crowd of strangers.
She had no interest in feminism or politics; her art was silent, and she preferred to (2) it that way.
Then a local survey about cultural life in the old quarter arrived, and the results were hard to (3).
Only one in five respondents had seen a live performance that year, and the (4) reason was distance.
The nearest theatre was four kilometres away, and for anyone without a car, that gap was enough to (5) them.
An official told her, "You cannot prohibit art by law, but you can let a whole district go hungry."
He explained that the money was (6) with residency, so she had to live inside the boundary to be eligible.
Nadia was a constituent of that district and lived in a small flat above a teahouse, so she began to think about how to (7) her practice.
She wanted to innovate and to deploy her skills in a form that could travel, so she started to sketch a plan.
Her plan was simple: she would walk the neighbourhood, street by street, and study how people actually lived.
She wanted to (8) herself with the diversity of the place—the livestock in one yard, the transplanted trees in another, the new shops near the station.
Then she would perform each small scene back to the people who had given it to her, with the ultimate aim of (9) art into daily routine.
Several things happened at once: a young woman who ran a small shop offered to help, and she had (10) from the older residents.
"Your idea is preferable to another statue," she said, "but you must handle the money issues; I can only contribute time."
So Nadia invested in a secondhand telegraph line and a portable speaker, and she fused the old silent style with new techniques.
The combination was odd, but it worked, and her performance had a new dimension: she could intensify a mood with a single glance or suppress a laugh with a mime of a bad meal.
By autumn, her project had culminated in a fifteen-minute show that could be executed in any courtyard, and various neighbours came, multiplying the crowd.
Some watched from a shelter by the road, and a few brought children; the spectacle was small but regular, and the regularity itself became a kind of theatre.
One evening, a man who had lost his sight asked her a question: "Your show reminds me of something—not the images, the pauses."
Nadia thought about this; she had always assumed that her work was primarily visual, but now she saw that the silence was the real strand.
Her success did not arrive automatically—there were days when the audience was three people and a dog—but the project grew apace, and other districts began to ask her to come.
She had become a small institution, and the word spread quietly, without a single poster.
In the end, the woman who had refused to speak in public now represented a whole quarter; she had found a way to make her art accessible, and that was enough.
Choices
(1) A. ignore B. fascinate C. bore D. confuse
(2) A. make B. keep C. leave D. take
(3) A. digest B. swallow C. taste D. smell
(4) A. occasional B. predominant C. minor D. rare
(5) A. encourage B. deter C. persuade D. attract
(6) A. separated B. mixed C. entangled D. combined
(7) A. limit B. extend C. reduce D. narrow
(8) A. acquaint B. familiarise C. accustom D. adapt
(9) A. isolation B. assimilation C. division D. separation
(10) A. rejection B. criticism C. patronage D. ignorance