Director's Notes

I found it helpful to practice performing my monologues today because I was given some feedback which will enable me to make final tweaks to the pieces before assessment.

• be louder for Agnes monologue particularly
• lead up and action when Valerie mentions her hair
• so that the 3 characters contrast more, make sure Emilia is more of a strong, feisty wise character

Practical Session #4 | Classmates Feedback

I spent this practical session today with Jess and Amy showing each other our three monologues each so that we could prepare for our performances and practice being watched and under a bit more pressure than on our own. They suggested that I could be even louder at certain moments to show a range. I then realised that when being louder it almost forces the emotions to be exaggerated which just presents a better more watchable performance overall so I will aim to focus on projection.

I also realised that adding sporadic changes in tones of voice for Valerie's monologue will not only show a range of tones but its a good way to show vulnerability, feistiness, despair, sadness, reflection etc. all in one monologue.

Practical Session #3 | Emilia Classical Monologue

Because Beth and I were doing the same classical monologue we decided to go through our lines and make sure we knew them well enough. We wanted to be at a stage where we could quickly say them without consciously trying to remember so we did a few exercises;

• saying the whole monologue over and over as quickly as we could
• saying it with alternate lines each, then swapping whilst trying to keep the rhythm

I feel this really helped me and we also talked about some of the definitions and inflections of the words;

• we clarified how we would pronounce "is't" through the principles of iambic pentameter we had learnt
• we discussed how we would apply inflection to "it is so too" aswell as other lines
• The beginning few lines were listed as different points so we wanted to both show this

Valerie Monologue

Because my classical monologue had a more assured and collected character, I wanted to contrast that with Valerie's character. I wanted to alter my tone of voice throughout to show range whilst being frantic throughout the whole piece.

One quite obvious change of tone and emotion happen early on in the monologue as Valerie goes from angrily shouting 'throws nothing my way except his fat hard hands in bed at night' to contemplating more and becoming more despairing as she mentions her hair.

I also wanted her to seem disgusted and ashamed when describing how she has to borrow money and lots of these emotions will depend on me creating mannerisms, nuances and small expressions which show a very naturalistic style for the monologue, as the play Road intended to be.

Drama School Research- Vocalization

Recently I researched some drama schools and came across a student profile on CSSD's website. Central had recently posted Student Profiles of their current students which I've linked here.

https://www.cssd.ac.uk/course/acting-ba

The female actors' profiles I found particularly helpful and insightful as to the real power and talent these students have over their voice and through their recordings that are posted on the page I realized how diverse these actors need to be for this standard of training. Of course, these particular students have been trained for three years so will be of a very high standard by now but it made me want to alter how I've been approaching my vocalization in this unit. Although I have decided not to apply and audition for drama schools straight away this year, I intend to over the next couple of years. therefore I want to take the time I have to really practice and prepare my audition monologues to the best of my ability, and if I am going to do certain things for my auditions it makes sense to try to do them now for this unit's assessment pieces too.

I was so impressed by the way the females in particular completely altered their voice which had such an impact of the character and tone of the monologues they had recorded and posted in the sound-cloud clips. I noticed Serena Jennings and Edith Poor had exceptional ability to shift a character  using just their vocalization.

All the females' classical monologues made it clear to me the level of articulation and how I want to improve my ability to have an RP accent over the next year in preparation.

From this research, I aim to intensify the RP and tone of my classical monologue as Emilia so that I can adapt to it, as that is a monologue I would consider for my actual auditions.

Character Development on Agnes

After the exercise on character objectives I decided to really consider the scene that Agnes' monologue is in and re-read that to find inspiration for how I portray that. I think that observing the tone of Agnes' dialogue just before and after the monologue I've highlighted can help me depict the true objective of her in this moment.

Agnes' speech before the monologue is a direct example of her innocence and child-like quality which is shown throughout the play as well. It also shows how she has her own theories and when she outwardly speaks about them she isn't speculating, she truly believes in what she is saying without needing to convince other people so much. I think I can apply this to the way she describes the Lady in my monologue and the child-like tone she would have is something I want to experiment with in my portrayal, vocally.

Practical Session #2 | Class Exercise: Finding Character's Objective

12.01.15

In today's lesson we did an exercise which helped me a lot to learn about the intentions and motivations that my character would have at the moment of the monologue.

The four things about my character that I picked for the 1st part of the exercise were;

• She loves her Mother unconditionally
• God, Jesus and her religion is the most important thing to her
• She has never seen ant TV, film or read a book other than the Bible
• She is very sure of herself

Her objective in the monologue is to explain what she sees that nobody else can.

In the 2nd part of the exercise we explored an improvisation in which I portrayed quite an awkward, uncomfortable and difficult character which we coupled up for. Beth and I noticed that both of our characters mention the death of a loved one in our monologues so we thought we could set this short scene in a grieving support group which  would also set the form of the conversation.

In that we both found it a bit challenging to come up with a rough idea of the dialogue but also found it rewarding having to accurately portray our characters' personalities in that scenario.

 After that Beth and I discussed a lot about our characters' real motivation and objective could be in the moment of our monologue as well as what they could be overall in the whole play itself. Here are some ideas I had for Agnes' character:

• Does she find comfort in this woman so want to confide? (who's essentially an outsider from the nunnery who Agnes may feel less judged by)
• Is Anges confessing to get attention?
• Does she want her visions to stop so seeking help?