crane one's neck

There are few paragraphs devoted to an immigrant's natural propensity toward "homesickness, loneliness and despair," the debilitating feelings that crushed many members of my parents' immigrant generation, but lots of talk about craning one's neck toward Eternity.

Craning one's neck, a theatergoer can see, high overhead, Mr. Foreman's signature - string as long as a trapeze -but the director does not call it into action, and the audience is transfixed by what occurs onstage.