All this month, we are exploring some essential questions to ask your character when preparing for a monologue audition. Join me this spring to explore monologue prep in more depth at the Acting Foundations and Acting Essentials Workshops. Find your next best monologue at the Actors’ Script Circle. Register today! Space is limited and registration closes two weeks prior to the date of the workshop.
Check out last week’s installment: What Do I Want?
While the character in your monologue will not know how things end, you as the actor need to know how it ends.
Fun Fact: Did you know that JK Rowling told Alan Rickman a little tidbit about Snape’s true allegiance so that he could more accurately portray the character? https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jk-rowling-alan-rickman-snape-secret-always-856698
If you know how it ends, you can make more intelligent acting choices to help build tension, or to help the audience understand the character’s motivations. You can also end your monologue with a strong button.
Knowing the direction you are going, like a map, you can decide which turns you need to make along the way to get there. This creates levels in your monologue, which keeps it from being emotionally monotonous. You don’t want to yell the whole way through your monologue; nor do you want to cry through the whole thing.
If you know what you want – the beginning of the journey – and you know if you get it – the end of your journey – you can see how each thought within the monologue moves you closer to your goal – the path of your journey. It helps you see those emotional levels. That’s why I always coach students to write down the answers to these questions on a copy of the monologue.
You can run a copy of the monologue at about 125% (assuming a typical acting script) to allow enough space to write in the margins and make notations in the lines. Alternatively, you can type out the monologue and format it with wide margins, double spaced.
Does your character seem to be grasping or pleading like a person losing an argument, or do they seem to be gaining the upper hand? Do they give up at some point, only to rebound? Or despair? Plotting these emotional levels within the monologue is important acting work, and it’s also a handy tool for learning your lines.
Do you want help learning how to prepare a monologue? Check out my upcoming workshops for high school actors to prepare for monologue auditions.