MONOLOGUES

Monologues

For this assignment we were asked to research and find 2 monologues one classical (Shakespeare) and a contemporary (modern). I had found a contemporary monologue from one of the plays I had studied already which was "Find me by Owen Wymark" this play is about a family and how they coped with their daughter Verity. The play follows the life of verity from when she was young to how she is now. The girl in the play has a mental health condition and this play presents how her and her family cope with said condition. The play is structured in an episodic manner. I chose this play because it represents the struggles of a family who have a daughter with mental health problems and I really like the way that its structured. The monologue that I chose was about how her brother Mark deals with Verity and how he feels. Mark is Verity's older brother but at that moment in the play he is still very young so I decided to present this character as a child complaining about everything. The monologue is structured in an order that explains how he feels towards Verity; this also shows how he's feeling about his family. I decided to make Mark feel left out by being angry at the audience as speaks, I did this because I wanted to make it seem as if he's bothered by the fact that Verity has his parents’ full attention and he feels annoyed at her which explains why he says what he says. I also made the decision to say Marks lines in a mocking way whenever he repeats what Verity says, this is because it represents how he's childish and he doesn't like Verity that much. For my classical, Shakespearean monologue I wanted to choose something completely different, I decided to go with one of my favourite plays by Shakespeare which was A Midsummer Night's Dream. There are so many reasons why I chose to do this play but one of them was because the genre of the play is comedy which is different compared to Find Me which is serious and a drama. The play Midsummer Night's Dream portrays the themes of love, obsession, jealousy and magic which compared to Find Me is different as one is fiction and the other non-fiction. The monologue that I chose was Bottom’s speech in Act 5 Scene 1, at this point in the play the mechanicals who are part of the three groups within the play are performing as a celebration for the Duke and his new wife Hippolyta, the play within the play is about Pyramus and Thisbe a tragedy drama that instead becomes presented as humorous and hysterical due to the actors (one of them being the character Bottom) performing terribly that even the Hippolyta quotes “ Beshrew my heart but I pity the man”. I decided to choose this monologue because it was different to the character of Mark in Find Me as Bottom is a Middle aged man who make the audience laugh due to his ‘awful and bad’ acting. This gave me ideas on how to perform this, I began my research on the internet watching performances on Bottom’s/Pyramus’ speech. I saw that past actors had performed it drunk, dumb or even just stupidly, so I gathered the information and decided to create my performance as just being over the top and very dramatic which worked effectively as my target to make my audience laugh worked.

Through-out the week we had sessions where we would rehearse the monologue in front of everyone in class so that they would give us feedback on what we did right and what we could improve on. I was sort of afraid of performing because I choose to perform my classical monologue which was Bottom's/Pyramus' Speech from Act 5 Scene 1. I performed as I planned however I got muddled up on some of the words nevertheless it worked in my favour as people thought that it was part of how I planned it, being truthful to myself I knew that I still had to work on my lines and make sure that I knew the speech although confusing myself gave me the idea of jumbling my lines on purpose to show that I'm a horrible actor which is what I was going for and wanted to do. The feedback that I got really helped me out and made me more confident in myself. Everyone said that they understood the piece clearly and that I shouldn't change it as it presented an 'over the top' dramatic and bad actor.
Our assignment was to get the monologue recorded so that's what we did. On the day of recording I was extremely nervous as the person who was going to record us was very professional and I didn't want to mess up in front of him. We took a trip to the Westminster Kingsway college in Soho where we met the camera man. We took in turns recording as there wasn't a lot of space for everyone to be there as an audience. When it was my turn to record I was in the recording room with Daniella and Teigan they made me nervous as I didn't know I had a small audience yet they were very helpful and supportive. As I observed their recordings I saw that they were also nervous and which made me feel better as I wasn't the only one with nerves but we all supported each other and made each other feel better. The difficulty when I had mine recorded was that you couldn't move and you had to look directly at the camera as if it was the audience, this was hard for me as I didn't prepare for it however I performed it as I had to. It took quite a few takes but I still completed my performance.

The end result wasn't as bad as I'd hoped it to be, I observed myself to take notes on what I did well and what I could do to improve further. I thought that I had good eye line, voice and somewhat emotion, but I thought I could improve on posture and stop moving a lot. In addition, I also believed that I should have done a different monologue which was serious like perhaps my contemporary monologue suited this recording better. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTnkOmC0aY&list=PLX1pQEuh-Ydm80rZOSB45GvOvGFZZssfk&index=11&t=0s

PROS & CONS

The Pros and Cons of going to university/drama school

WHY DRAMA SCHOOL

Going to drama school is choice that an actor in training has, it’s a good place for someone how wants to pursue acting as a career. Drama school spends all its time focusing on the one main subject which in this case is drama and acting, it’s the next step for someone to work with other people and learn different techniques and skills that can help them advance into the industry. Drama schools are like universities as they offer you a degree in acting the only difference is that they normally have an independent building and only study drama related pieces. In my opinion I believe that going to drama school is the next step to take as they focus their whole time into it, although there is a lot of work and hours that go into it, I feel that its beneficial ad it really helps you progress and develop yourself into a better actor. In drama school you take the more practical approach, you have the same number of years 3 but they are split into sections. In the first year you start your training, you start learning about the different techniques and skills that can benefit you and can develop you into a better actor, you can also learn about breathing techniques as its especially important for an actor. In the second year you will still be training until you reach the third year. In the third year you will then use all the training that learned from your two years and apply it into full plays that you will be working on throughout the whole year. A good thing about a drama school is that you put on plays in actual theatres and there is a 95% chance that you might get an agent.

There are pros of going to a drama school

· You get the most valuable degree you could ever get in Performing Arts

· You get the best training any actor could get

· Agents that can lead you top paid acting jobs (which you meet when performing in your final year)

· Opportunities to meet professional people that made it in the industry where you can create very good connections that could help you 

However, there are cons to going to drama school

· You get a lot of work to do and your schedule is extremely busy

· You have to be focused on this full time, (you don't have time for part time paid jobs)

· It costs a lot to get very good training

· It may be difficult to even get accepted as thousands and thousands of people apply but only a handful/few get chosen/accepted

There is an advantage of you going into drama school instead of university, you spend about 30-40 hours invested in the subject whereas in university you spend about 18 hours on subjects that focus on acting.

WHY UNIVERSITY 

University has the program of Performing Arts this is broken down into different subjects linked to that are linked to the program. They have something that offers acting or working in theatre same as any drama school would, they provide students with the same degree of a BA after 3 years just like drama schools do, although the difference between the two are that drama schools offer the highest of training and their degree is far more valuable than one that is from a university because it's considered more rigorous. From my knowledge of studying acting in a university I know that its split into different classes and focuses on more specific things than a drama school does. For example, in a drama school you would focus on Acting studies, Voice Studies, Movement studies and speech in your training, universities offer different classes which breaks down those subjects and you have to choose 5 classes from those and focus on them throughout the year, which in my case I would deem to be harder for an actor as they don't get the right amount of training they need.

 There are pros of going to a University

·  Your schedule isn't that busy meaning you have time for other things 

· You can search for acting jobs as you’re not busy

·  It's much easier to get accepted 

However, there are cons to this as well

· The degrees are considered less valuable than ones from a drama school

· You don't have as many opportunities

· You don't have as good a chance of meeting important people from within the industry

· In the final year you might not get as good a chance of getting talent scouts or agents coming to watch you and wanting to represent you

· You pay the same amount as a drama school but don't get the same amount of training as a drama school

· You might have to do some extra training  

In my opinion, I would recommend going to a drama school if you really want to pursue acting as a career and become an actor. It's more effective and gives you the training you need to advance into the performing arts industry. It also opens up so many opportunities for you in the future and gives you an advantage of having a future within theatre/acting.