CHAPTER 21

Session Eleven

In this session: • Running the monologues • Checking word definitions • Transitions • Breaking the attitude habit • Next assignment

Coach: Today we’ll run our monologues and see how your application of skills is coming along. As you know, this usually takes the complete session. So we all want to stay involved, even when we’re not the one speaking. Everybody take one skill to listen for—scansion, which we’ll break into two parts; stresses and irregular feet, like trochees and feminine endings; phrasing and caesuras; breathing; end-of-line-support; antithesis, word meanings that seem unclear; and speech structure. Each of you take one skill to listen for. (They do.) Do we have an order for the presentations? (The actors work out an order.) The person going first has no skill yet, but takes the skill of the person who follows next. Everyone have his or her texts? (Everyone finds the texts of the monologues.) Okay, let’s do them, and everyone establish your breathing before you begin. Relax and breathe.

The actors run their monologues in this order: Kristin, doing Isabella in Measure for Measure, shows good growth; Emily’s Viola from Twelfth Night is coming very nicely; Amber does Kate from The Taming of the Shrew and is growing effectively; Bridgett offers Julia from The Two Gentlemen of Verona with only small growth; Bride’s Lady Macbeth is satisfactory and nearly complete; Jerrod’s Othello shows only small growth; Alex, offering Prince Hal from Henry IV, Part 1, has solid growth; and Maggie’s Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is very successful. Alicia and Ryan are absent and have missed this opportunity. The actors listening give their notes and I check on a few word definitions. We discover a little laziness. But most have looked up their words.

Coach: Some of you, as we noted, are really handling the skills well and are ready to move on. You still have imagery to add, but you can already start working on a delivery of the speech that allows the skills to be automatic—in other words, not obvious. Start working on being real, which is hard to do when you’re concentrating on skills. But it’s time to start moving on. Remember always that these skills are for the actor’s preparation for rehearsal. They are for learning what the language is doing. Once you have that, forget the skills, so to speak, and start concentrating on being natural. If you know how to handle the line, which is where the skills come in, you can then trust yourself to use them automatically, and concentrate on being real in the given situation. Now we’re getting to interpretation and character, which is where we want to go.

Regarding the notes in general: Those of you taking the time to breathe deeply are displaying wonderful, rich voices. You know how much I like you to breathe through your mouth, and breathe deeply. There are many coaches, voice teachers, and singing coaches who want you to breathe entirely through your nose. You can fill your lungs much faster if you breathe through the mouth, and some days your nose is plugged and you still have to breathe, and you may very well have a performance that day.

Those who are phrasing correctly are never rushing, which is very good. Most of us are having transition problems, probably because we haven’t worked much on that, so remind me to get to it. What do I mean by “transition”?

Emily: Ideas are changing, so you have to do something different.

Coach: Keep going—you’re on the right track.

Alex: Like in a sonnet, if the first four lines are a setup, but the fifth line changes the idea, we have to do something vocally to help the audience hear the change.

Coach: Good. And notice in these speeches how transitions occur after every few lines. At those moments, you have to help me hear the change. We’ll work on that.

I’m concerned that some of you don’t really know your plays. Maybe you’ve only read an act or two. Well, you’re wasting your time. It’s hard to memorize lines when you don’t understand what you’re saying. And if you stumble over the lines, it’s impossible to phrase correctly. You must know how your speech fits into the action of the entire play—what is gained by the speech, and what is lost if the speech is cut. You absolutely have to know what you’re saying. Next time I’ll ask a few questions about each play.

Those who insist on adding an attitude to the speech—an early character choice like anger or irony, etc.—will soon be falling behind if they don’t break that habit. Don’t you want to enter rehearsals with an open mind and see what the other actors are giving you before you make those kinds of decisions? I think so.

Good work today. Next time, chapter 9, analysis. “Something wicked this way comes.” See you then.