Double - Auditions for Actors - Blog 7 - 28/09/16

Today we performed our learnt monologues we prepared for this lesson, however we were unable to perform our prepared monologue as we ran out of time. The monologue I decided to learn off by heart ready for this lesson was Eddie's monologue from Fading Joy as I found it very entertaining to perform and when I performed it last lesson, the audience seemed to really enjoy it and suggested that it should be one a should use for my performance.

When I performed it the first time today, I received the following notes:

• Was very samey - last lesson it varied in tone whilst today it seemed quite dull and not quite the same.
• Pauses were too long - this led to the audience losing attention or getting bored.
• Your voice needs to sound younger - where I sounded older, it made my character sound less innocent so the context was lost.

I feel a few of these mistakes were because I was trying to remember the monologue rather than perform it as I found this monologue very difficult to learn.

After my second attempt, these are the notes I received:

• The tone was better - could be a tad more varied.
• Pauses were better length but are they really necessary - although the stage directions say pause, you can choose to ignore this if you'd like if reason is provided.
• The voice was much more childish - this made your character more believable and relatable to audience which is what you need to grab their attention.

I feel so much confident with this monologue now and after the positive reaction from the audience, I am seriously thinking about using this monologue for my assessed performance.

Next lesson, we will, again, learn one monologue off by heart and prepare another. The monologue I will learn off by heart will be Arthur's monologue from An Inspector Calls and the monologue I will have ready will be Mark Rothko's monologue from Red.