This picture is a poster outside Muppet Vision 3D at Disney’s Hollywood studios at Walt Disney World. There’s a lot going on in this poster – it’s a spoof on two different movies – Alien (In space no one can hear you scream) and the Pixar film Wall-E. The poster is pretty much a copy of what the original Wall-E poster looks like, but re-frames it to fit the muppet world of Beaker. I love how they fit in Dr. Bunsen Honeydew!

Exercise: The purpose of this exercise is to take a character from one genre (a Shakespearean play) and re-frame that character by way of a second genre (Science Fiction movie) through the medium of poster design. Both genres should be clear on the poster.

• Choose a Shakespearean character.
• Choose a Science Fiction movie. What sci-fi movie could your Shakespearean character star in?
• Re-frame the title of the Science Fiction movie so that it fits your character. (e.g. Wall-E to Beak-E)
• Create a visual that incorporates elements from both the Shakespeare play and the sci-fi movie.
• Create a tag line for this new movie that helps describe who the Shakespearean character is and what they do in the play.

I never enjoy looking for monologues. It’s sort of like a hunting expedition and I don’t like hunting. And don’t get me started on fishing…

But – big BUT – I love when I actually find a great piece that suits both me and the thing I’m auditioning for. I feel like Livingstone seeing Victoria Falls for the first time.

Here’s some advice on finding the perfect monologue for you.

Monologue Books

Monologue books are a great starting point. Monologues in collections have usually been curated by editors who have gone through dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) of plays to create the collection. And they can be a godsend if you really need something specific in a pinch. But they’re just a tool, not a solution. They’re not the end all and be all.

Lots of people buy monologue books. And it’s very likely that lots of people have the same monologue book that you have. And it’s possible they like the same piece that you do. And I’m not saying that they’re better than you per se, but if they happen to have their audition scheduled before yours, then when you announce what you’re performing there will be a small drop in the room’s barometric pressure as the director thinks to herself, Dang, how many times will I have to watch this same piece today???

But as I say, these books are great starting points. Here’s how to use them…

• Find a piece you like in the book – you identify with a character, the writing appeals to you, etc.
• Buy a copy of that play and read it.
• Look for the monologue from your book. It’s possible that the piece in the book is edited down from a larger monologue. Maybe you can reshape it into a different piece altogether than the one in the book.
• Look for other monologues by the same character. It’s possible they have more than one monologue in the play.
• Look for other monologues in the same play by a different character. Playwrights who write good monologues , ones that aren’t in the monologue book.
• Get other plays by the same author. There are probably well-written monologues in those plays as well.

Visit the Library

Yes, the old-fashioned library. That building with all the books. While a lot of theatrical publishers are starting to put their plays online, there are still thousands of amazing scripts that are only available in book form.

If you’re near a major city, budget a day to spend at their largest library, whichever branch has the best performing arts section.

Just start completely randomly. Grab a couple dozen plays off the shelf and start flipping through them. You’ll begin to get a feel for which playwrights are likely to write monologues that appeal to you, then start focusing on those playwrights.

Editing

Here is the one place in the theatre that I think it’s ok to edit the playwright’s work to suit your needs.

Don’t be shy about cutting together a monologue from a series of smaller speeches.

Don’t be shy about slicing out bits that don’t make sense out of context.

The object of this piece is not a performance. It’s a showcase for you, not the writer. You’re the one auditioning.

When I was auditioning a lot, this is where most of my pieces came from. Since I was the one putting them together, I could be pretty sure that what I was doing was unique.

Consider What You’re Auditioning For

If you’re auditioning for a play, look at pieces by the same author. Or look at pieces in a similar style.

If you’re auditioning for a school, look at the plays they’re doing in their season. Again, look at pieces by the same playwrights and in similar genres.

More often than not, young artists have a clear picture of what they want for a character, what they think about a moment, what they intend. They do spent time thinking about their craft.  They are smart and articulate when they describe what’s going on in side their heads in terms of that character or that moment. But just as often, they are surprised to hear that what I saw on stage did not match what was going on in their heads.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Sometimes it’s difficult for young artists to manifest a thought – to bring the idea of a character into a three dimensional representation. To solve that issue I always tell actor to physicalize their idea. Turn their thoughts into physical action – something tangible.  A physical stance, a gesture, a movement. Ideas and thoughts are hard for an audience grasp.  The way a character moves across the stage is something concrete on which to hang an idea.

So what about what’s going on in a director’s head? How do young directors make sure their intentions are clear in the presentation? Again go for the tangible – make sure there is some kind of physical action that matches each idea. For the director, this could be a blocking pattern, the choice of set and costume, a gesture that shows the relationship between two characters, a specific picture. Think of the pictures that represent the thoughts and words in your head. Visualize your theme, visualize your concept, visualize your interpretation.

Furthermore, get an outside eye to look at the play. This is especially important if you’re taking the production to competition. Don’t get involved with likes or dislikes of the person providing feedback – you really only need the answer to one question:

 “This is my intention. Is my intention clear on stage?”

That’s what you need to know, if what’s on stage matches what’s in your head. And then after that, it’s all up in the air – you can’t determine whether or not an adjudicator is going to like your work but you can make sure an adjudicator sees exactly what you want them to see.

How do you make sure intention and presentation match up? How do you marry internal thought and external production?

Lindsay talks about why artistic ventures need to curb fly-aways. Not that kind of gel! Artistic ventures need time to become the best they can be.

Show Notes

• Practical Technical Theater DVD Series
• Order a free demo DVD
• You Had to Be There Podcast
• Nikki & Sara LIVE Episode Two
• Nikki & Sara LIVE Episode Twelve

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Music credit: ”Ave” by Alex (feat. Morusque) is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

If you could get into your DeLorean and time-travel to the day you started writing this, would you do anything differently?  I think I would have written it faster. I think I would have not doubted myself so much. I just think I would have paid more attention to what my gut was telling me, where to take the story.

There’s a great article over in the Washington Post that asks a number of  playwrights about the process for writing their latest play. How long it took. How many rewrites. What was the most difficult scene.  Favourite Lines. Lines or moments that had to be cut. All of the steps that go into the making, the crafting, the shaping  of a play. It takes longer than you’ll think, than anyone thinks. Because of course all writing is sitting in your garret window with a billowing scarf and a ciggy and that play just magically comes fully formed out of your forehead like a unicorn sliding down a rainbow. That’s how it happens. Right? For everyone?

I’m always most interested in hearing about favourite lines that just had to be cut, either for time, for space, or just because they didn’t fit the piece. You can love a line of dialogue so much but sometimes it just doesn’t fit. The phrase isn’t “Kill your darlings” for nothing.

And because I have the internets at my fingertips, how fascinated was I to learn about the origin of the phrase “Kill your darlings” in a literary context. First coined in 1863 under the perhaps a little more vivid image of “murder your darlings.”  Who knew?

This week’s Movie Monologue Monday is going to look at Ellen Burstyn’s heartbreaking performance in Requiem for a Dream.

The movie follows the parallel and intertwining lives of four substance abusers. Burstyn plays Sara Goldfarb, a widow obsessed with getting on a TV game show. She takes diet pills to fit into her special red dress for the TV show and becomes addicted.

It’s important to note that the great success she refers to at the beginning of the monologue is a lie, a fantasy at best.

I think this is a terrific piece to study. Every phrase, every word has a whole life of meaning behind it. She’s not just saying words, she’s living them in the moment, living the history behind them, and living in the fantasy she’s created for herself.

Pieces like this are why it’s important to fully understand the past life of your character, the events that happened to them in the past. If this information isn’t provided by the author, you need to create it, you need to fill in the blanks. She explores the entirety of her life in this piece.

This month we have an indepth look at the new plays in the Theatrefolk catalogue. From parody to personification to Poe we’ve got it all. Plus, an adaptation lesson plan to do with your class.

Read the whole thing here!

In This Issue

Chemo Girl and Other Plays

We are incredibly proud to publish Chemo Girl and Other Plays. Not only do we respect Christian Kiley as a writer, we love that he trusted us with this particular work. Because not only does Chemo Girl deal with a tough subject that isn’t often seen on stage – teens dealing with cancer – but the play comes from a very personal place. Christian Kiley himself was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last year. He has been in remission since November.

The Long and Winding Road

Backspace and Shuddersome: Tales of Poe are two plays that represent some of the hardest writing experiences I’ve ever had as a professional writer. The road from idea to finished product was incredibly long and twisted. Over two years for the Poe piece. Two whole years. Both plays started out as full-lengths. Now they’re one acts. Titles changed, sections were taken out then put back in. There was a lot of metaphorical burning of pages. Both of these works were in danger of being chucked out of the nearest window. Both these works were in danger of never seeing the light of day.

Adaptation Activity Lesson Plan

To follow up on my discussion of the trials and tribulations of adapting a work from one genre to another, here is an Adaptation Activity Lesson Plan. Students learn techniques to turn Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart into a piece of theatre.

Lord of the Pies

Lord of the Pies by Clint Snyder is a parody of the William Golding classic Lord of the Flies. We get a lot of adaptation and parody pieces based on classic works. I have much respect for the parody form. It takes a great deal of skill to not only take a work in another genre and transform it into a play, but then on top of that to turn the work on its ear. And Lord of the Pies is a wonderful example of parody. It had me giggling from the title right on through to the last word on the last page.

Read more about all of these topics here!

Sometimes the hardest part in getting started is coming up with that first line. Turning a blank page into writing. It’s always going to be easier to turn away from a blank page than to commit to words on the page. So use this exercise to get over that hurdle.

Playwriting Exercise: For the next 10 days write one scene a day. The scene should be one page long. The scene should only have two characters who are in one room, in one location. Go down the list and for each day use the provided first line as the first line of your scene.

1. Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me? 
2. What do you mean “I have to give the ring back?”
3. This is most definitely the result of a curse.
4. Dude, Lara Croft is not your girlfriend.
5. I can fix this, I am determined to fix this.
6. I have something important to tell you.
7. Why are you hiding in the bathroom?
8. Sir, you dropped your wallet.
9. I would do anything for a peanut butter dipped chocolate bar right now.
10. First day of school, first day of hell.

I don’t hate musicals. I grew up on them, I was listening to You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown when I was too young to know what it was about. I have an original album cover for that show framed in my bathroom. I love the way a song in a musical is put together. The emotion that can spring from a character who has no choice to express what they’re going through except through song. Just listen to me talk about the song Skid Row from Little Shop of Horrors on the TFP podcast. My high school years were framed by Sondheim from beginning to end. When I was in high school, they used to show musicals on PBS and since Broadway was at that point a fictional magical place, I was glued to the TV through Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. A couple of years ago I got a freebie CD at some conference – it was a collection of first song  from a bunch of musicals. I love this CD, I love how each one of these songs introduces the world of each particular musical.

Now, I don’t love ALL musicals. Because they have meant so much to my make up as a theatre artist, there might be a smidgen of hate in there when things go awry. There are some musicals that bore me, that confuse me, that I can’t believe actually made it to the stage. I get really, really mad when bad theatre happens, especially a musical because there are so many people involved. Of course no one sets out to make a bad musical. But sometimes I leave a show seething with a boiling rage because it seems impossible that no one, out of all the people involved couldn’t make something half way decent. I have not seen the Spider Man musical but I think based on all the anecdotal evidence it would be a seething rager.

Here is my most hated musical lyric of all time. Mostly because it doesn’t make any sense to me that they couldn’t have thought of something else. Anything else. There had to be someone who thought this was a dumb line. It’s from the opening of Pippin. 

Ok, first line: Join us, leave your fields to flower (ok, that works, that’s nice, good image, very appropriate)

Now. Second line:  Join us, LEAVE YOUR CHEESE TO SOUR. (Really? Really? There are no other words that could have fit in the world of the play that rhyme with flower? Not one word? This is the image you want to leave me with? Sour cheese? I Haaaaaaaaate this line. Ok. I’m done. Really, it’s a burr in my bonnet. Big time.)

And then there are the musicals that just don’t do it for me. Annie after the first two numbers leaves me numb with banality. I can’t actually summon up one song from 25th Putnam Spelling Bee. I’m not a fan of Spring Awakening but that’s actually the book more than the music. I think Cats is boring. And some are just so freaking long. Les Mis -Loves it, but so long. Anything Goes? The first act never ends.

So between the not doing it and the seething rage, I can absolutely understand the negative feelings that some have toward the genre as a whole. The I hate musical people. What do you mean you’re just going to start singing? It’s easy to understand. It really is a love hate thing.

What side of the musical fence do you stand on? Love ‘em or hate ‘em?

• Here’s a list of 10 possible ‘The worst musicals” I wish, wish I had seen Carrie. And I have seen Children of Eden. Not a fan.
• And a question – is it too easy to kick musical theatre?
• The worst musicals based on movies. Ugh, this cross over never seems to work.

But a professional run is very different than doing a one time school run for three nights. It’s eight shows and then another eight shows, and then your day off is spent gathering your energy for the next eight shows, and all those plans you had go right out the window. Every time Craig got a show he would always plan what he would do during the day…..and it hardly ever happened. All of his energy went into having enough energy for the show. That’s something you can’t know till you’re right in the middle of it.

And further, once the thrill of opening has worn away and you’re doing eight shows, and another eight shows, and another eight shows….how do you keep it fresh? How do you do the same show night after night and be alive in each moment?  Keeping your performance consistently engaging is a necessary and vital skill for the professional actor.

I’ve gathered a few posts from professional actors talking about just this skill.  Check them out!

• First we have an NPR story (that you can also listen to)
• From the American Conservatory Theater Blog.
• Advanced Acting Tips.
• A story about how the adventure of acting turns into the job of action.