Final Audition Monologue Link

http://youtu.be/DoY6754xeKM

My last acting blog

I am happy that I chose to take acting as my fall elective for my freshman year. It was so much different than I anticipated it to be but I grew to really enjoy it. I feel like a much better actress from being in this class and being a part of the fall Varsity Player’s production of Peter Pan. One thing that I was not good at before I took this class was taking criticism. I used to be offended easily and I did not listen to it unless I totally agreed with it. But, I became every comfortable with my classmates because they were very supportive of me. I learned to listen to their suggestions and try new things out even if I did not agree with them. I remember for one of my monologues Lisa gave me a suggestion that I did not want to try at first but when I did, it made the monologue a whole lot better.

In this class, I also learned a couple of new acting techniques that I had not used before. One exercise that really stood with me is the acting exercise that Abby taught Alexis and I. We had not memorized our lines yet but we wanted to practice how we wanted to deliver them. Abby taught us a game she had learned at a broadway camp to in which we pushed off a wall every time we wanted to emphasize a word or syllable. This was a very helpful way to learn to emphasize lines and help us learn them. Also, it was a really fun activity.

I think I could’ve done a better job at memorizing my lines. One things that I don’t like is that while I can memorize lines fairly easily, I usually mess up the order of the lines and/or the words. However, I know now that I can use some of the exercises I have learned in acting class to help me memorize my lines quicker and better.

I also feel like this class helped me to prepare for my role as Nibs and Liza in Peter Pan. Many of the acting exercises we used to get in character in acting class I used to help me get in character for playing Nibs and Liza. One thing that I think I improved a lot on was my projection. I was never bad at projecting my voice but it comes much more naturally to me now. In the Black Box, there were no microphones so I needed to project my voice so that everybody could hear me. I think I did a good job at my projection in Peter Pan.

Overall, I am happy that I chose acting to be my fall elective. I made good friends with the people in my acting class. We all have really helped each other improve our acting skills. I look forward to being in more plays and musicals with them. In the last months I have definitely improved as an actor. It's a great feeling and all my friends and family have noticed it and complimented me. I love acting!

Why there is a wine bottle, a knife, and a pill container in Ms Guarino's classroom.

I am very proud of myself so far with my audition piece. I don't watch American Horror Story, but this monologue makes me want to watch the season now. I love Emma Roberts and was really excited to see that she had her own monologue. I really wanted to challenge myself for my final piece in acting. Ever since Alexis' serial killer monologue, I really wanted to perform something like it. Although my monologue is not as scary as Alexis, it is very deep and shows the emotional trauma that one girl has had to go through in her life. I'm very happy that there was an opportunity for me to find my own piece that would show off my strengths and challenge me as well.

Because I love the monologue and have watched it countless times, I memorized the monologue pretty quickly. The only slight problem I have is that I forgot one line (which was actually a pretty important one) while studying it over break which somewhat threw me off order. However, I have solved that problem and am pretty solid with the memorization now. Now, I am working on memorizing the blocking because although I know what I want to do, I sometimes forget the order of everything. I also have not been feeling well lately so it's been hard to practice to the best of my ability.

This has been very challenging for me as an actor, but I am glad I selected this monologue. It is a monologue that I really like so I guess that's why I have really put my best effort into this monologue and remembered the lines so well. The monologue itself is just downright creepy and disturbing which is something I have never acted before. There's a lot of different layers and I feel that each line of the monologue is interpreted in many different ways. One line I particularly like is "Take away my mother, and my asshole father..." because my character kills her father a couple years before the monologue takes place. Although it is an event in the past, she still remembers it vividly. I have tried to emphasize this line by looking at my knife and holding it a little bit tighter.

I was a bit nervous to perform the monologue yesterday because I knew it wasn't going to be anything like anybody expected from me. My voice was raspy from being sick and I was almost positive I was going to have at least one voice crack in the middle of the monologue.  I was shocked to hear all the positive feedback after my monologue. While I knew I gave it a strong  effort, I thought that I may have not been doing as well as I thought I was. After all, this monologue is like nothing I have performed before. I also received some good critiques that I think will make my monologue better. I thought I was going too slow, but many people said slowing it down even more would make the monologue really creepy. I was very happy that people thought it was my best performance so far and that it was a good choice.

I am very excited to perform the first draft of my monologue tomorrow!

In-Class Writing: Dramatic Monologue

1) Who is your character? Briefly describe.

My character is a girl in her late teens named Madison. She is from the television series "American Horror Story" in the first season. I do not watch American Horror Story, so I had to read up about my character. Madison is one of a group of witches who is a very vain, selfish, and mean girl. One day she is killed by another witch who wishes to take her power. Madison is brought back to life, but she is not truly living because she cannot feel anything and is in eternal numbness. All she wants is to go back to her old life and feel again. Madison is played by the actress Emma Roberts.

2) What is the setting of your piece and what is your motivation?

The setting of this scene is in a large, lonely (however, not that creepy) mansion. Madison moves from room to room in this scene (which unfortunately I cannot do) so I plan to have a chair and a table with various objects like a knife, drink, and maybe a fake cigaret that I will use throughout the scene while still moving around the space. There is one motivation in this monologue and one desire of Madison- to feel pain again. She is sick of the numbness of death and wants to be human and feel pain again. However, I am avoiding the supernatural part of this character in this monologue. Instead, I will play this character as a normal human but one that is feeling the numbness of depression and loss instead.

3) What do you imagine for costuming and set?

In this monologue, Madison is dressed simply on a long black dress and black shoes. She does not have much makeup on or any accessories. I think the day I perform my final draft of this monologue, I will wear one of my plain black dresses and black flats to school. I will not do anything special with my hair. For the set, I am still thinking of ways I can get my point across since the monologue is performed while Madison is movin from room to room. I think I would like to have a chair with a table in front of it that includes props of a knife, a fake liquor/poison bottle, and a fake cigarette.

4) What do you imagine for blocking?

For blocking in this scene, I am still planning what I want to do to get my point across. I think I will start off in the chair and interact with the various props as the monologue continues. At the beginning of the monologue, Madison is found smoking so I think I will do that before I start talking. I want to move slow around the table pacing in this monologue. When it comes to the part about drinking, I want to walk back over to the table and pretend to drink all of it. Then, towards the very end I will take the knife and twirl it around and pretend to cut myself.

5) This piece is a very dark and mature piece. It covers depression and a numbness to the world which are not easy subjects. The character I play is also slightly mentally insane, so I feel like this  will be the most challenging thing I have ever performed. However, I really love this monologue and I feel if I give my best effort I can do a good job. Ever since Alexis performed her serial killer monologue I wanted to do something slightly insane like it and I think this is the perfect monologue for me.

Improvisation- Quick and Unexpected Acting

Improv was something I was hoping we would do in this class, so I was very excited when I saw that improv was planned for when we got back from our Thanksgiving break! I have played many improv games before and I really like doing them. I have never performed a true improved skit in front of people, but I would love to do an improv skit one day.

Some of the improv games we did in class on Tuesday were pretty fun, yet challenging. One of my favorite improv games to play is the one (I forget the name of it, sorry) where we stand in two lines and rotate between performing and action and making up a line. I usually have a hard time thinking of a creative action to do, but some crazy one-liner will always come to me pretty quickly. I am not the most creative person, but I think in our improv games I did pretty well in coming up with good reactions and lines. It felt good to make everybody laugh. One of my favorite moments was when I quoted my grandmother in the game and made everybody laugh.

The other improv game we played with the creating a scenario and an objective was much harder to play. While I could come up with scenarios and objectives for my classmates came easily for me, performing it myself was really hard. With the first game we played, the scenes were very short and usually comedic. This game required a lot more thinking and focus. Also, I was laughing a lot throughout the scene as well which is something you don't want to do on stage. While I feel that this was a good improv game to play, it was a bit too challenging and I preferred the first one we played a lot more. It was also much more easy to understand.

Improv is a very challenging part of acting. While some people do it for fun or in troupes, good actors have to be skilled with improv. In case something in the show goes wrong or a line is forgotten, actors have to be quick-witted to say or do something that will make sense to the storyline and keep the conversation going. One things that I learned in class was to never say no while doing improv. It stops the conversation and kills the mood of the scene. I view improv in the way that improv is sort of like surfing in a way that you have to ride the wave in whichever way it takes you, even if it somewhere you don't want to go, to stay afloat. Improv can be very challenging, especially if the person you are acting with does something unexpected. You always have to be focused and thinking about good ways to act and react.

I hope that we can continue to play a couple more improv games if we have the time to before the end of this course, although I am excited to work on my final audition piece which I am planning to be a dramatic monologue.

Dramatic Scene Evaluation and Thoughts

The process of finding a dramatic scene was a long and strenuous one. You would be surprised how hard it is to find a good scene with three women in it that had about the same number of lines! I had originally picked out a scene from Mean Girls with Alexis while Abby was away but during the read through to the class, they did not think the scene would be a right fit for us. We were disappointed because we are both HUGE Mean Girls fans, but I am actually happy that we did not go through with the Mean Girls scene. I do not think it would challenge us as actors. I feel that we would not have designed our own acting but rather copied how it was acted in the movie. We continued to look for scenes, but all we found were missing something that we wanted in our dramatic scene.

Finally, we found a scene that worked for us. Abby had copied and printed it out for us and at first, I was not sure that it would work for us because it seemed like a somewhat poetic scene. However, I quickly discovered that this was a perfect scene that would really require us to channel deep emotion. Also, we all had an equal amount of lines so one actress was not more pronounced than another. The dramatic scene is a collection of accounts from survivors about a plane crash that killed 71 people. However, it is almost like a flashback in the way that we tell the story of the day that a devastating tragedy occurred. The scene is not a pleasant one- it goes into detail about the loss of human lives and how the dead faces haunt them in the present.

We all did many acting exercises to help us get into our character and the dark story in acting class. Abby had a lot of useful strategies to help memorize lines and how to deliver lines. We each had a unique element we added to the scene and while it was hard to figure out how we wanted to block it at first, we worked together and created the scene's blocking and emotion. One of my favorite parts of the scene is the ending in which we each turn out our lanterns and the scene ends in darkness. I liked that we shot the scene in the dark with only a small light on our faces. It made the scene very dramatic and eerie. When we finally performed our scene, we were so happy with the outcome! Our classmates really liked it too and it felt great that after all the struggles, we performed a great scene. I feel that this scene challenged me the most as an actor because of how tragic and depressing the scene is. It was not something I have ever performed before and I feel happy with my final performance.

Unfortunately, I did not get to see the other groups' final cuts of their scenes. I really enjoyed Duncan and Lisa's scene in classes. It reminded me of a scene straight out of an action movie. I think all of us were challenged in our dramatic scenes and it helped us become better actors.

Improv Troupes Assignment

http://youtu.be/2D2F7VUCl10