Acting

Demystifying the monologue: Finding your character

Katie Mitchell

“Building an imaginary world for the actors to inhabit using ingredients from real life and circumstance suggested by the text itself”

What clues does the text give us about who they are and where they are?

WHERE?

• Where are they?
• Are they in a place where they feel comfortable?
• Make a conscious decision:
  • Alter how you stand
  • How u breathe
  • Whether you’re leaving
  • Body language – stops you from fidgeting
  • Make sure movements are necessary - don’t put yourself into it, it’s your character
• Do they know the place?
• Is it new?
• Have they seen this room before?
  • If not, this helps with eye-line - will they be looking around?
  • How comfortable are they in the space?
  • This helps movement in the scene
• Don’t fight against the environment you’re in
• Settle in the room

WHAT?

• What’s just happened immediately before we see them?
• Do they know what’s next? - gives a more rounded characterisation
• Read the piece - understand the character
• Do they let words hang? – Where are they from?
• What’s the energy on - where are they about to go?
• What do they want out of this?
• What do they expect to happen?
• Is it realistic? - changes the way that they’re talking or to whoever they’re speaking to

HOW?

• How do they choose to express themselves?
• Are they very gesticulating?
• Do they ask questions?
• Do my expressions suit my character?
• Are they direct?
• Do they change tactics?
• Are they manipulative? – This is important
• What tactics are they employing?
• Is the pace Fricative?
• Do they choose to keep their hand by their sides?
• Do they evoke a reaction? (through how they speak or relate to the other person)
• Are they needling them for answers?
• Do they want a response? - How do they do that?
• What’s the tempo?
• Anecdote - decide for which line
• Are they professional?
• Do they have a slower pace of thinking or breathing?

WHO?

• Who are they?
• What’s their truth?
• How they feel
• What do we know has already happened?
• Are they in control?
• How do they express, move and speak?
• Choice of words - measured, running out of ideas
• Who are they speaking to?
• Is it a soliloquy?
• Are they working it out for themselves?
• Changes how we move, breathe & speak
• Creating idiosyncrasies for ourselves

WHY?

• Why now?
• What’s changed?
• Why are they speaking?
• What has happened that’s led them to speak?
• What hasn’t been said before?
• Have they chosen a place?
• How have they chosen these words?
• Do they know what they’re about to say? Or has something snapped, what’s changed? - does it pour out uncontrollably
• Is it manipulative? Should we share a burden?
• Why this piece?

Why have you chosen this? Relate it to who you are.

This helps to get over a hurdle and revisit to show how far you’ve come

Creative Character Work Tips!

• Warmups are IMPORTANT
• Meditation/physical exercise
• Understand what the script is about
• Does it relate to your circumstance or past?

Preparation is key …

• Learning lines:
  • Use colours that match the scene
  • Progressing lines

Character research …

• Watching people
• YouTube videos
• Movies
• Theatre
  • Copy across what they do
• Reenact each other
• Embrace own uniqueness

Objectives and actions:

• Who am I?
• What do I want?
• What do you want in this scene?

Objective …

• Is there something you want
  • Be clear about this in a scene.
  • Remind yourself - What’s their intention?
• Example:
  • Objective - “I want to kiss you”
  • Action - flirt, seduce or comfort.

Action …

• Transitive verbs - doing words
• Generally, conflict
• Protagonist that wants something
• Antagonised to stop someone from getting it - creates tension
• Important to take/have action - we are always trying to do something to someone
• Argument - prove something
• Happy - entertain someone maybe
• “I” and “you” fill in something as a transitive verb
  • For example: Happy emotion - “ I ENTERTAIN you”
  • This brings clarity into the scene.

Changing characters

• Physical embodiment
• Physical with gestures, voice and accents

Movement

• Body language is around 70% of communication
• We communicate more with our bodies and energy than we do with our words

TV - you’ve got a whole realistic, live background, filming in a location

Stage - a bit more expressive, larger than life; we must protect more, but ends of words

• Get breath from your stomach, from Sternum/stomach expands diaphragm and travel up so you can project – semi-supine position before every show
• Projects safely with more volume
• Everyone needs to see our intentions and actions through movement
• Work with animal studies that have different energies
  • Kids (Dog)- higher pitch voice, physicality is quite small,  run around, make quick gestures so move around more
  • Dad (Gorilla) - slow pace in their movements, tiger-like presence, very authoritative, kind of tall and strong and upbeat
• Does it read on stage?
• Clear on your diction, the audience needs to understand the ends of sentences
• Make sure energy doesn’t dip
• If there’s a short scene, we can sometimes just tend to shout as if it’s an argument and raise the volume – it’s better to increase the pitch rather than the volume because pitch gives nuance, plays with the tone of the pitch and pace, emphasise words
• Put a line after the end of thought - this shows the character has a new thought
  • Potentially play a new action on this next thought
  • Play the next line a different way
  • Keeps work varied and nuanced

Rehearsal process

• Finding your character
• It’s okay to be nervous!!!
• Being nervous is a good thing and it shows that you care about your work
• You want to do a good job
• Important to be compassionate in the rehearsal room- be kind to your peers
• Try new things
• It’s vulnerable to be creative and expressive but this helps you step outside the box
• Try not to worry in the rehearsal room – it doesn’t matter if you look like an idiot or are too big with gestures or overplaying it – it’s a part of the creative process
• It’s always better to overplay and be larger than life
• There will be times when you’ll be like “ooh that doesn’t work” but at least I tried it
• Rehearsal rooms are a space to get things wrong
  • Try new objectives
  • New actions
  • New physicality
  • Be bigger and listen to the director - then there will be a middle-ground
  • This is where the character comes to life in a truthful way
• Do not judge anyone

Allow your peers to truly express themselves