I am going to do a different kind of monologue today. This monologue is going to explain my thought process when I write a scene as well as my thought process when I coach an actor to perform it for an audience.
Let's take a look at a dramatic monologue:
Oh but you are so perfect! You take every opportunity to tell me when I am wrong! You think I can't make decisions on my own! That I'm going to somehow end up on the street without daddy there to tell me how I fucked up.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe you don't have life nailed down the way you think you do? I mean, you know what they say about glass houses right?
You sit there every day, judging me. I come to you for help and all I get are those eyes, probing me. Have you ever looked at yourself? Asked yourself...
What the hell am I doing here? I mean, if the only purpose of life is to keep on living. To wake up in the morning, eat, sleep, repeat, then why do it!
Look. Will you do me a favor? Go out with me today. Just trust me, we’ll just, go for a walk or something. Down at the park. Just you and me. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me and hell. Maybe you’ll get a tan.
What do you say? Will you come?
My thoughts on an effective monologue and an effective performance are kind of one in the same. In order to understand a monologue you must understand the audience and how they will react to a given written word once performed.
I think a common mistake by actors is they see a given monologue and they believe that it is one note. I see good actors give an otherwise boring yet thoroughly convincing performance simply because they do not understand that they are not performing for the camera, but instead, the audience. They do not understand the emotional arc and how to manipulate their audience both physically and emotionally.
Now I know what you may be saying. "No shit Sherlock." You say that, yet you may be thinking this is simpler than it is. "Just act good." Please, it's not that simple.
A monologue is supposed to have an emotional arc, whether that arc be a build up to a fall, or a frantic roller-coaster of emotion with many dips and many highs and devastating lows.
Let's walk through an example real quick:
Anger:
Oh but you are so
perfect! You take every opportunity to tell me when I am wrong! You think I
can't make decisions on my own! That I'm going to somehow end up on the street
without daddy there to tell me how I fucked up.
Anger is a powerful emotion. It has impact on you, the person you are angry with, as well as the people around you who are not even involved in the conversation. Ask yourself what happens when you yell at someone. What do they do?
Most back away, reel back. Especially if you catch them off guard. So if you are in the audience, or behind a desk at a casting, and someone makes you reel back, surprised, that's powerful. You make them take notice. You shake them out of the mundane, day to day, one millionth: "I'm so sad, daddy why don't you like me." Monologues they hear every day.
I'm not going to be so bold as to say they don't see anger but when you can command their attention the whole way through by taking them on an emotional journey, then you have done your job. The next stop on the journey is the calming stage. You are coming down off your anger now, because you realize you aren't mad at him. You feel bad for him, but there is still some anger there and you can't just let go of it totally.
Calming:
Did you ever stop to think
that maybe you don't have life nailed down the way you think you do? I mean,
you know what they say about glass houses right?
You sit there every day,
judging me. I come to you for help and all I get are those eyes, probing me.
Have you ever looked at yourself? Asked yourself...
What happens when you whisper? When you speak low. People come forward, they lean in so they can hear what you have to say. You have their attention now only because you started off so explosively. Let's rate our anger on a scale of 1-10. A 1 is slightly irritated. A ten is spitting mad, your face red and crumpled. In the beginning you are at about an 8, a 9 if you are brave but by the time you get to calming, you have slowly brought your anger down to a five. When you get to the end of the calming state, you should be somewhere along the lines of a 3 to a 1.
In transit between these feelings should be a moment of silence. A moment of reflection for your character. Time to think about what you are going to say.
What this moment really is, is time for you to gather your emotion for the next scene. Whether you use the Meisner technique, or you pull your emotions from an event or person in your past, this is your moment to gather it.
Surprise anger:
What the hell am I doing here? I mean, if the only purpose of life is to keep on living. To wake up in the morning, eat, sleep, repeat, then why do it!
So now that our audience is leaning in to hear what we have to say, we hit them in the face with a 6 maybe a 7 if you can get there on the anger scale again. Once again you have them reeling back emotionally from the onslaught you are hitting them with. Once again, you are slowly bringing all of this anger down to the moment of emotional bareness. Here is the finale.
So while you are working your way through the anger scale, tears should be being brought forth. In order to do this, your anger must be about something real. Something or someone from your life that you can associate to this. Once the tears start coming , let them flow. Do not try to control it. Sob if you have to. Many people try to control the emotion. Do not. Allow the emotion to control you.
Your goal is emotional bareness.
Sincerity:
I get sad watching you.
Sitting there, watching the world pass by in fucking…
Emotion has you chocked up, tripping over your words. Look for elipses. They are either lapses in the characters train of thought, or they are tripping themselves up.
Sound bites, on the news,
while the real world is out there happening every day without you. All this time. All this pain. Just avoiding life.
This is the moment of sincerity of emotion. You have about 10 seconds max to transition from anger, to sadness. Preferably with tears. Sadness is equal to anger in a lot of ways. Anger is an expression of hopelessness at times. The hopelessness in this case of watching someone you love waste away. Wasting the potential of life because they feel they are incapable of doing anything worthwhile.
Every point in this scene should be emphasized. Pauses used to gather thoughts and emotions should be inserted to increase the tension. When you pause between thoughts, what does the audience do? They listen, they lean in. They wait, impatient, for the next word. Use that impatience to increase the tension. The question that this peice asks of the viewer is: Will the characters come to understand and accept each other for their flaws... Well, will they? That depends on you. Depends on how you chose to play the next part.
So, for sake of argument, let's say that while you are angry, the sadness should show through. The voice should be calling out in anger, but the face should show the despair you feel over feeling helpless.
What is the audience doing? If we have taken them on this roller-coaster ride, they should be right there with us, wanting to share in our sadness.
At the end of this scene we have a moment to think once again. To wipe our tears, maybe even laugh at ourselves. Look at the mess we've mad of ourselves. We haven't cried like this since we were kids. You take a deep breath and look at the man, wasting away and say:
Hopeful:
Look. Will you do me a favor? Go
out with me today. Just trust me, we’ll just, go for a walk or something. Down
at the park. Just you and me. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me and hell.
Maybe you’ll get a tan.
What do you say? Will you
come?
You have just taken your audience on a journey. Led them through a story that has an end. A complete three act within just a snippet of time. They still have questions. What did the father say? Did they go for their walk? Did they come to understand each other?
These questions are good, it shows they were paying attention.
So what is essential to a good performance? A knowledge of how the audience will react when confronted by a particular sound, volume, or emotional cue. How do you sharpen this knowledge?
That will be a topic for next time.
I hope you enjoyed this entry and that this helped open your mind a little.
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