Monday 22 April 2013

Monologue Exercises

Exercise 1:
We used an exercise in class where we walked around the room reading our monologues aloud and when we got to a punctuation marking such as a full stop or a question mark we had to turn 90 degrees and then carry on. This told us where all the breaks where in the monologue and by doing this it helped us get a better understanding of where the tension was in the piece. For example my Like a Virgin monologue start of with lot of punctuation this is telling me that my character is quite angry and the tension would be high in this part of my monologue.

Exercise 2:
We then had to repeat the same excercise, but this time we had to read the sentence before we walked, picked out one word that stood out to us and then did an action when we got to that word. For example in Star spangled girl when I said 'My cat's tail' I did a gesture of me with my hand on my chest emphasising the 'my' of the sentence. This helped us see what words we should emphasise in our monologues to give us a better understanding of what the character might be feeling.

Exercise 3:
We then all stood in a line and read our monologues aloud. As we walked forward we had to move our bodies up and down depending on the tension at that point in the monologue. so for example in 'like a virgin' it starts of very tense so to show this I started on my tip toes, as the tension fell I got closer to the floor until the end when the tension builds again and I finished on my tip toes. By doinf this it gave me a better understanding of exactly where the tension rose and fell in my monologue and exactly how much tension their was.