My class had our Monologue Midterms yesterday. Besides being nervous as heck, I thought I did okay ONCE I was on stage and got past the first 15 seconds of my piece. What was cool was that there’s maybe 30-35 students in the class and one-by-one, we bared our page-written souls. It was a good time shared by all.
Even though the experience of sharing my work is a blur, what I loved most was the workshopping of our material before we portrayed our characters on stage. So, here are a couple overall notes I took:
- Find the throughline of what the character is trying to say.
- Look at the point of attack.
- Decide how long you take to hold on to the tension. Too long where it gets tedious or boring.
- Look for a place in your monologue where you can fall into the moment.
- Don’t get caught up in the generalities (it, that, etc.) What are you referring to when you use these indicators?
- Look for points of non-specificity, pin-point it, and say it.
- Give a specific situation and who they are talking to and why.
- Are there any moments where you can pause to give more subtext?
- Exposition can work as it is attached to an action.
- Keep track of where your safe space is. Is it too much to where you personally have to step back?
- Focus on the moment… in the immediate now!
- Who are you talking to and why?
- Why is this an immediate moment? Why did you select this specific time to have a monologue?
- What is the discovery of today and why does the character need to talk about it?
- Write into the active moment.
So, those were just a few of the notes I took down. Overall, I’m not as afraid of monologues as I once was. And it’s a very good thing, especially when writing for the stage. TV/Film is a different topic… unless it’s for Breaking Bad or that one speech by Lennie James in the “Clear” episode of The Walking Dead. AMAZING!!!