Patrice Pavis reflects on the relation between the actor, the text, and the sub-text, after a work demonstration by Julia Varley entitled The Echo of Silence, which took place in Saintes (France) in 1991, in the context of a series of meetings organised by Jean-Marie Pradier (“Emotions and Complexity”). A fertile discussion with Varley and other scholars too (Ruffini, Taviani, Risum) led to a broader analysis on the issues of text, subtext, score and subscore. The article was published for the first time in the journal Degrès (97-98-99, 1999, e1-15).