Auditions (2) - "A Doll's House"

In this lesson we got into pairs and performed our monologues to each other a few times. I went with Rob and watched him perform "Killing Chuck" from "Unbearable Hotness" by Gabriel Davis. I performed my monologue from "A Doll's House". We gave each other feedback, focussing on our voices - this included notes on intonation, use of pitch and use of pauses, timing and use of breath. On the right are the notes I gave to Rob's different readings. His feedback to me mentioned that he liked my use of pauses and how I varied my tone throughout. He said he also liked how I didn't get stick to one emotion; I fluctuated between being confused, being angry and being depressed.

After a couple of read-throughs, we swapped monologues and performed them to our partner how we thought they should be performed. When Rob performed my monologue to me, I made the following notes:

• I like how calm he began the piece. Suggests Nora has understood this fact.
• Good use of pauses. Paused in places I didn't think of pausing in. Gave the audience more time to take everything in. Doesn't feel rushed. 
• Really articulated the plosive sound "t" to show the character's anger.

After reflecting on what we liked the other person doing, we highlighted what words we wanted to stress/emphasise on our scripts (yellow) and marked where we wanted to pause (orange). I found this exercise really useful as it forced me to think about every sentence, and every clause of every sentence, very carefully and what the meanings were. For example, originally I stressed the verb "thought" in the second sentence - this was to show that Torvald in fact didn't love Nora. However, I now stress the word "be" as it is suggesting that there was no real love, and instead was a concept and a convenience.

We performed our monologues again to our partners and got more feedback. Rob said that by adding the pauses and emphasising certain words, the piece was given more depth and more meaning. We then performed our monologues to the rest of the class. To make this more like an audition, we first performed them how we had rehearsed them, and then we were given direction and had to perform them again with the new direction. I performed my monologue three times in all:

1. How I had rehearsed: I was given similar feedback to what Rob had given me. However, I was told to perform it again but, this time, I had to be more natural and "not perform it".
2. Acting for screen: The first time I performed it, it would have worked for a stage production, but this time I had to imagine having a camera being close in my face, so therefore would be less dramatic. By doing this, my character was more believable and the emotions I was trying
   to convey were more convincing. 
3. In a restaurant: This time I had to perform the monologue as if Charlie were my husband (who the monologue is directed to), and we were in a restaurant together, and I didn't want people around us to hear / notice our argument. When I performed it this time, I moved my chair closer to Charlie, leaned in towards him when I spoke and kept glancing from side to side to make sure no one was listening. I also spoke in a rushed whisper - I spoke quicker to show my urgency to get what I have to say across; I spoke a lot quieter too to show that I didn't want anyone to hear. I think this scenario made the audience even more sympathetic towards my character as, not only is she being courageous, discussing a difficult issue and standing up for herself at last, but she is having to do this in a public place, but has no choice too.