Auditions (26) - "Look Back in Anger" & "Goodbye Charles"

In the first half of this lesson (02/12/16) I performed my "Look Back in Anger" monologue, but for the second half, I started work on a new monologue.

LBIA (1)
My positive feedback from this monologue was that it was very emotional and believable. However, I was told not to make it too defiant and rooted - although it was believable it doesn't completely work for the monologue. I performed this role in a similar way to how I performed Nora from "A Doll's House", but what I had to remember was that Nora does stand up for herself in the end and leaves, whereas Alison remains with her husband. Although I like this monologue and believe that if I continue my work it could be quite strong, it is still a bit too similar to my classical monologue, as both are very serious. Therefore I got out the "I ate the divorce papers" monologue from "Goodbye Charles".

GC (1)
I hadn't done any research on this monologue and had only read it a couple of times before, so I basically performed this monologue with no preparation. I was told that I could experiment more with this monologue - there are lots of opportunities to show contrasts, thus making the character seem more unpredictable and funnier. Although the monologue is supposed to be funny, I still can add a lot of emotion as the character is deeply hurt as she doesn't want to lose her husband. To show that she is hurt inside and to make it more comedic, I was recommended to try the monologue as if I were a little bit tipsy and smoking a cigarette.

GC (2)
This attempt was a lot more successful than the first. It was better in terms of emotion, as I began to explore the range of emotions that this character can go through. It definitely worked being a bit tipsy and smoking, however, I need to watch how I hold the cigarette - at times I was so focussed on getting the right sort of emotion for each line that I would've burned my fingers if it were a real cigarette I was holding! My next step to working on this monologue will be to annotate it on where I shall take a drag on my cigarette or take a sip of wine, for example. Another priority for me to improve my monologue is to make pauses and use them in certain place.