Monologue Learning

This week, I learned a lot about monologues and what makes a good one. Going into this, I knew very little about monologues and had had almost no experience with them. I believe I did fairly well on the voice part of the monologue, partially because it relates to my home life a little bit. My dad works all the time, and my mom constantly has to ask him multiple times to do something before he actually does it. Since he works from home though, my dad never misses anything, so I feel fortunate in that sense. This week I learned a lot about how to use my body to convey different messages. I learned that the monologue will always look more natural if you are able to use your hands (not hold a paper) and that different monologues call for varying levels of movement, depending on what character personality you are trying to portray. For me, the blocking aspect of it was a bit difficult. I had no idea what would look natural to the audience, so I tried to just move the way I think I would if I were feeling those kinds of emotions (anger, frustration, sadness). I believe that I was overthinking it, and therefore my actions looked staged and unrealistic at times. I greatly enjoyed watching my peers monologues because they both chose very different ones. Caroline’s was a comedy, with a big character that acted as the class clown. Meanwhile, Jenna’s was a more dramatic monologue, and she had a bit more of a timid character with a big thing to tell. Caroline's strength, I believe was using her facial expressions to make the audience laugh. Her weakness at first was that she wasn't moving quite as much as her character called for. That quickly changed as she got more ideas to make the monologue more comedic.
In my opinion, Jenna's strength was with her actions. She conveyed the urgency of the situation and her character’s nervousness through the way she walked and moved. I liked the way that Jenna was pacing around outside the “door” before going in, as well as how she stood up when delivering the gun line. Jenna's weakness was probably in her voice. I feel like she could have changed volume a little more to show how her character’s emotions. Overall, the monologues were really great by the end. I think I need to work on getting over my nerves when it comes to actually performing the monologue, but besides that I feel like I learned and improved a lot from the experience.

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