Performance

We performed our monologues for the GIN conference. I didn’t get to perform mine, but I was still able to watch others perform.
Though it was last minute planned because of lack of rehearsal, every single monologue went amazing. Some people didn’t even have to present a monologue, but they just had to say one line. That was extremely effective because all the quotes were chosen for a specific reason, in other words, none of the quotes were random.
The people presenting their monologues all had a great performance. Not only because of the artistic part, they all acted amazing and represented their characters very accurately, but also the monologues themselves. The audience could tell they had put a lot of time into the writing, and it truly paid off. The acting was dramatic, but not over the top. They projected the voice and spoke clearly, which is a big issue every time I go to a play; there’s always an actor that’s barely audible to the audience.
I also had some friends from my old school in Bolivia come for GIN, and they also thought the performance was amazing. Not only that but I could also hear comments from the people sitting right behind me give their opinions. This was a very effective performance, and though I wasn’t really part of it, I did learn a lot by watching my peers.

Rough Draft Presentation

My monologue rough draft performance went horrible. Not because
I didn’t know how to perform it, because it’s a matter of knowing my character
to know what she feels and be able to portray her. Since I wrote my character, I
know how she feels. The reason why it didn’t work out is because I got nervous.
Speaking in front of people has always been one of my weaknesses, and since I’m
in drama, it’s one I’ll have to fix soon. During the presentation I decided
that sitting on the floor would portray the character’s weakness and would make
the begging more powerful and real. I also decided that putting my hair down
would make her look messy, adding to the visual part of the presentation. Up to
that everything was good. When it came to actually talking the monologue, I don’t
know what to do with my hands, or what my voice should sound like. I don’t know
how I’m supposed to stare at the public. All this is because I get nervous when
speaking, as I said before; stage fright. And as I said, it’s something I have
to overcome specially through practice.

Edited monologue

People judge me, every day, every moment, whenever they see me. Something about my hair… maybe that it hasn’t been washed in….. Something about my face, my eyes, my mouth. Something about how I smell… I haven’t been in water since days, weeks, months? People are afraid of me. They stare at me, sometimes they glare but I don’t blame them. When mothers see me, they take their child’s hand and cross the street. Get as far away from me as they can. But they don’t know I won’t hurt them. There is no point anymore. I lost everything when I lost my husband. I lost everyone. I had a husband. I had a child, a family, and I’ll never see any of that again. My husband left, my son’s been taken from me. I have no one. I have a home that’s not really a home. There’s nothing in there. I had a car but I had to give it away. I’m alone now. I don’t hurt anyone. I can’t hurt anyone because I can barely walk. So then why are they so mean to me? Why won’t they give me my medicine? I can’t hurt anyone! They hate me. I hate me! I don’t want to see myself and the only way to prevent from seeing myself is with my medicine. But they don’t want me to have it! They say it’s bad. They say I’m killing myself. I know I am, I know I’m dying! But what do I want to live for?! I live to drink. If I don’t drink, why do I live? I need a drink.

Research on monologues, my monologe and GIN

What it is: Monologues are speeches made by a character on stage alone. They can be part of a play or they can be a monologue about a certain theme (GIN).
A dramatic monologue has to express feelings through acting as wells as through words. It should include a climax, and therefore there has to be some building up of tension.
Must haves of dramatic monologues:
1. A very well defined character= for the audience to follow, they must be able to identify with the character. To do this, the author has to know everything about the character, even if the author isn’t going to include all these attributes in the monologue.
2. Build up of tension= the monologue must have a climax, so it has to build up to it.
3. Risk taking= dramatic monologues should have some degree of controversy to make it more interesting for the audience.
4. Negative aspect of character= this adds to the tension and the risk taking factor.
5. First person= as I said before, the audience must be able to relate to the character, therefore by using first person, the monologue is a lot more personal.
My monologue
People judge me, every day, every moment, whenever they see me. Something about my hair… maybe that it hasn’t been washed in…..something about my face, my eyes, my mouth. Something about how I smell… I haven’t been in water since days, weeks, moths? But that’s not the worse smell. People are afraid of me. They stare at me funny, but I don’t blame them. When mothers see me, they take their child’s hand and cross the street. Get as far away from me as they can. But they don’t know I won’t hurt them. There is really no point. I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost everyone. I had a husband. I had a child. I’ll never see any of them again. My husband left, my son’s been taken from me. I have no one. I have a home that’s not really a home. There’s nothing in there. I had a car but I had to give it away. I’m alone now. I don’t hurt anyone. I can’t hurt anyone because I can barely walk. So then why are they so mean to me? Why won’t they give me my medicine? I can’t hurt anyone! They hate me. I hate myself! I can’t see myself and the only way to prevent from seeing myself is with my medicine. But they don’t want me to have it! They say it’s bad. They say I’m killing myself. I know I am, I know I’m dying! But what do I want to live for?! I live to drink. If I don’t drink, what is my reason for living? I need a drink.
GIN:
My monologue is based on global issue #16, illegal drugs. The character in my monologue is an addict who has lost everything due to her addiction. The audience gets a hint that the reason why she got hooked was because she lost her husband. The monologue has a lot to do with prejudice. The character says that people judge her every day because of what she looks, because of what she’s become, not taking on count what made her become that. There is not much about the character herself because throughout the monologue she just talks about her feelings, and how her primary reason for survival is the drugs they’re trying to take away from her. This was deliberately done because the audience isn’t supposed to know that much from her. This reinforces the idea that they don’t know her, but she’s still being judged. There’s a lot more to her than her addictions. My monologue still needs a lot of editing, but the main idea is there, and therefore I decided to not re-write a monologue for gin, but instead edit the one I have.

Improve

We did some improvisation exercises in class which turned out to be even harder that what I expected. It’s easy to say “listen to each other” “accept, accept, accept,” “respond” “build on each other’s ideas” but to do it is a whole different thing. I think the main problem with us is that there’s no trust between us. What I mean is, there’s times in which I do have ideas, I do have something in mind that I can say, but I’m just too nervous to share them with the class, because I don’t know how they’ll respond to that. Also, I’ve noticed it’s way harder to come up with something when it’s you doing the improvisation. For example, when I see other groups improvising, and they get to a point they don’t know what to do, and their group members can’t come up with something, it’s easy for a member from the audience to think of something, but not for the group members, who have to come up with something. This is probably because of the pressure on them because not only are they trying to make it work, but they’re also trying to come up with something new that others have not done, and they’re also trying to come up with something funny to do. A class member said something last time which I think it makes a lot of sense: if you’re trying to make your audience laugh, you’ll bore them, if your intentions are to keep the dialogue going, they’ll crack up. The reason for this is that if you’re trying to make the audience laugh, you take too much time thinking about what to do or what to say, and eventually they get bored, but if you just keep the dialogue going on, eventually it starts being funny because the audience can see the actors successfully building up on each other’s ideas. Still as I said, I can analyze the whole exercise and see what I’m doing wrong, but doing it right is easier said than done.