Auditions (6) - Contemporary monologue performance

In this lesson, we only had time to perform one of our monologues. As I had worked on my classical monologue a little bit in the previous lesson, I decided to use my contemporary monologue from "Assassins". We ran this lesson like a serious audition. We all performed our monologues to a panel of two (our teacher and an ex-student) and the rest of the class. Before I started my monologue, I was asked questions about my character (such as their name, age, situation, and what had happened prior to this monologue).

Feedback given for my first attempt:

• "Clear understanding of the piece and the context"
  
  • I managed to answer all of their questions about my character as I had done a lot of research
• "You need to work on eye contact with the audience"
  
  • I tried to perform my monologue too much, as opposed to making my character more believable and natural. I wasn't really sure who my character was talking to, as I couldn't find any information on it.  However, after this attempt, I made a decision that my character is talking to a counsellor in prison. This may not be the case, but I decided on this so I could then focus on one person and use my eye contact better.
• "Vary your tone of voice throughout"
  
  • As my character is high on marijuana, I was focussing on my characterisation, and forgot about my tone of voice. I kept my voice quite low and smooth to show that I was high. However, I realised after this attempt, that I could still vary my tone, even if I am supposed to be high.
• "You need to hook the audience from the first line"
  
  • I managed to hook the audience a few lines in and hold their attention, but it is extremely important to hook the audience from the first line, as judges / casting directors would make up their mind from the very start.

Feedback given for my second attempt: 

• "Good eye contact"
  
  • By deciding on who I was talking to, I managed to have better eye contact, and thus made my piece more engaging.
• "Less drawn out words - Change the pace"
  
  • I managed to vary my tone more this time, but I didn't really concentrate on the pace at which I spoke. I kind of said everything with the same sort of rhythm.
• "Use pauses effectively"
  
  • I paused in appropriate places to add depth, but to make these pauses more meaningful and more natural, I should have made them longer. By doing this, I could have shown the audience that I was thinking during these pauses, as my character would be reliving this event in her head, as opposed to reciting lines.
• "Needs an energy injection"
  
  • As I was trying to portray the fact that my character is high, I sounded and acted a little bit too laid back. Instead, I should have focused more on making my piece engaging. The fact that I didn't vary my pace enough didn't help.

Unfortunately, we didn't get time to perform the monologues again. This was a shame, as after my second attempt, I went through my monologue and annotated it thoroughly (pictured below). I practiced it a few times, with all the feedback in mind. Also, whilst practising, I managed to learn it off by heart (although we were told that we didn't have to know it off by heart for our performance in class). This is definitely my favourite monologue I have done so far as, although I struggle with accents, I really enjoyed the challenge of having to do one. I also think it is a really interesting piece and I find the character fun to play, as she is so different to me.