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.