Auditions

My Voice has improved during my time on the course yet there are still numerous things I need to improve and maintain to reach my full vocal potential. I have a naturally low pitched voice and therefore am enable to develop my range, however to achieve this I need to exercise my resonators – strengthening my potentially powerful tone.

I first was in pursuit of a contemporary piece that would present my uncomical talents, something I could sink my teeth into, as prior to this I was renowned for choosing comedic speeches that could perhaps engage the audience and affect them emotionally. For this, I researched the play ‘Goodbye Charles’ by Gabriel Davis as Logan performed a monologue from it last year and had me intrigued; therefore, I searched for any similar monologues and came across ‘The Fact Checker’ and ‘Honey, I’m a Leprechaun’, however only the first one provided the contrast I was in pursuit of something gripping and different.

Therefore, I got started with ‘The Fact Checker’ and realised it had a sort of cliché story, a guy tells a girl how in love with her he is but how impossible it is for them to be together; very similar, I thought to a very memorable scene in the 2003 film ‘Love Actually’. Throughout the film, Andrew Lincoln’s character is very distant from Keira Knightley, who happens to be his best friend’s girlfriend, so it is assumed that he hates her; where in fact he is madly in love with her and goes to her door to tell her on Christmas Eve. However, the only difference being that the character Charles in ‘The Fact Checker’ is confused with his love, stating it never should happen to a person like him and is much more out of control and emotionally unstable.

I wanted to absorb his feelings and radical characteristics and enhance them in performance to indicate how out of control and desperate he is. I performed to Karen and she liked the contrast but said it needed more vulnerability at the end of the monologue, where Charles is close to tears as he finally confesses his raw emotions for this girl. I agreed with this as I had become more emotional in previous rehearsals of it; admittedly I felt I had been discontent with the harsh lighting on-stage and so that had a big effect on my performance. However, she said to press on and bring more to it if I were to perform it again.

Furthermore, I had a struggle finding another suitable monologue for a brief period, so I asked Karen and Sally for some suggestions. I received Zeppo’s opening speech from ‘Pomona’ from Karen and Joe’s discourse of his relationship from Jonathan Harvey’s ‘Babies’, the first I got to work with immediately as it was highly recommended from Karen and once I had a read-over, I thought it very sophisticated and supplied a contrast to my other option thus far. On the other hand, the pace of the piece proved difficult for me as it already included many ‘s’ sounds and I would find myself struggling to deal with my lisp; but this may allow me to control it if I were to rehearse the speech regularly. I moved on to the ‘Babies’ monologue and I instantly took a liking to it, as it really moved me the first time reading through. It focuses on Joe, a mid-twenties teacher who gets drunk at a wake and tells the widow’s brother (who fancies him) openly about his relationship problems; he gets very emotional in his time speaking as he has a deep regret not telling his partner his issues with the way they’ve turned out. He speaks of the way they used to be and how things have taken a sour turn as Woody, his boyfriend, develops a drug problem. Overall, the monologue deals with love, drugs and the complications of a homosexual relationship. I worked on this piece and plan to choose it for my contemporary monologue for drama school; this is because I think the character is unique and loveable and I want to challenge myself to get emotional and do the character justice I think it deserves.

For my classical monologues, I wanted my options not only to differ in style as required, but to speak volumes of my capability. Therefore, I was in pursuit of a challenge and wanted a perhaps well-known speech and ‘turn it on its head’ – so to speak. The first contender was ‘All the world’s a stage’ by Jaques in Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’; initially I was reluctant to take this on due to the large age gap between the character and myself, as Jaques is a middle-aged melancholy philosopher who is always seen ‘disputing the hardships of life’.

In the early stages of developing the monologue, I was paired with Max as we discussed our choice of monologues and why we chose them. Of course, I still had Mum’s Speech from Berkoff’s ‘East’ and my earlier contemporary piece from ‘Goodbye Charles’ and so I was only recently introducing myself to the Shakespeare genre through monologue. Max however was taking monologues from the King Henry and Richard plays, most notably from Henry VI where he speaks of regret of a peace treaty after losing a battle to France and about his proposed bride Margaret. He performed, approaching me as an audience and the Duke of Gloucester and he did so with confidence and was firmly in character however ‘corpsed’ when he forgot his line. Despite this, I assured Max that his performance was at a good standard and suggested that he may want to vary his tone during his performance to Karen otherwise it is at risk of being flat.

I then read my monologue to Max from paper, in attempt to familiarise myself with the speech and the complex language used. Nevertheless, it is one of the easiest to understand in my opinion as it obviously treats on the seven stages of man in the eye of melancholy Jaques, with his pessimistic views very much explained in depth. Jaques outbursts in the play with his speech so I wanted to indicate that in my performance of it; prompting me to throw myself into the audience’s ear and thus prove my vocal range has improved and that I have put my restrictions such as my slight lisp at bay. So, I rehearsed at home frequently and did so with a football as a prop – which I thought a risk at first but it would be worth it if it was effective in performance, that and I also rehearsed without it just in case. I then performed to Karen and some classmates and I had a very positive reception from them, some saying it was ‘borderline genius’ but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, I focused on the criticism Karen had said which involved fading out of the end of sentences; meaning what I was saying was sometimes unclear.

My second choice for a classical speech comes from Shakespeare’s ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ – where the character Launce compares his Mother and Father to his shoes and differentiates them by which has the ‘worser sole’. Launce also likens himself to his dog but goes onto say how menacing his dog is for not feeling human emotions. It was fair to say I loved the concept of this speech, yet I was dedicated to ‘All the world’s a stage’ as it was a very physically demanding monologue, and this was also. Therefore, I decided not to spend to long rehearsing and invested my time in finding something contrasting to my first choice.

Next, I came across another Shakespearian play, Othello, and was intrigued by the main antagonist Iago. Iago is known for his deceit and lack of motives in the play as he is described as ‘pure evil’, ’master of mischief’ and ‘an accurate portrait of a psychopath’, having been portrayed by supreme actors such as Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, Kenneth Branagh and Andy Serkis. However it is the latter, Serkis, that believes Iago is not as evil as others are making him out to be; he explains, “I believe Iago was once a good soldier, a great man’s man to have around, who feels betrayed, gets jealous of his friend, wants to mess it up for him, enjoys causing him pain, makes a choice to channel all of his creative energy into the destruction of this human being, and gets completely addicted to the power he wields over him,’” and relates it to his performance of the character; “I didn’t want to play him as initially malevolent. He’s not the Devil. He’s you or me feeling jealous and not being able to control our feelings.”

I took this into my stride and wanted to bring the same energy that Serkis did into his performance of the character; for this, I felt I needed to ‘tone-down’ the evil and communicate that Iago is a good person who feels that he has been wronged and so becomes overcome with jealousy. The first half of the monologue I had chosen – ‘What’s he that says I play the villain?’- shows aspects of his sarcastic and vicious personality, questioning the audience half-heartedly why Roderigo thinks him so deceitful and treacherous. He then compares these accusations thrown at him to the actions of Satan; then he reveals his true intentions; to turn Othello against Desdemona and get Cassio in trouble in the process – he later states that the death of Cassio is a necessity. This sharp contradiction is my favourite part in the speech as it then provides a challenge for me; I am not used to that sort of dexterity in a monologue as I have not yet performed one like this.

I practised frequently but every time I would find myself struggling with the contrast. Nonetheless, my group were invited to the library to perform extracts from Shakespeare’s plays, providing me the perfect opportunity to get used to execute my chosen monologues in front of a vast audience. Admittedly, I stumbled on a few lines of both ‘All the world’s a stage’ and my Iago monologue as I was nervous to perform in an unusual environment, but it was a good stepping-stone before I am to perform my finished versions to Sally and Karen.