Beats

Today was a pretty... interesting work day for me. In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was having a ton of trouble memorizing the exact words of my monologue, and how it made me kind of angry. As a result, today Luke called me into his office and asked if I was using the memorization technique he gave me. I said it didn't work. He said I didn't try it. And I agree with him after the fact, I really didn't. I tried it once, and I gave up when I didn't have it completely memorized the first time.

So, after this Luke gave me a play and he told me to find a female monologue in it, and then go photocopy it and come back to him when I'm done. So, I did photocopy it, and bring it back.

To be honest, I don't actually remember the name or author of the play, and I don't actually know what the full play is about. But all he said I really needed was the monologue, so I just decided to take the monologue and go. When I brought it back to him, he told me to read through it once and on the back write down what the monologue is about, and then bring it back to him.

Then, he told me to read it really fast to him, just do a quick read through. No acting, no worrying about memorization, just reading through it really fast. Then he took the monologue from me and told me to recite it to him. I could not do it for the life of me. I didn't even know the first line, and I tried to get out of the situation. Luke told me that I did not have to know the lines AT ALL, to just take the context of the monologue and recite whatever comes to mind. Luke gave me an example, and I tried to relay it back to him. Though it was not as great is his quick thinking, it was better than I expected to do.

Then it was almost like a cycle. We did it a few more times, just quick read throughs and then reciting it. And then Luke and I separated the monologue into beats, and defined what each of the beats had in it. For example, this particular monologue had 4 beats. Beat 1 was a sense of begging, and being trapped. Beat 2 was explaining a sort of a domino effect. Beat 3 was defending, and making both characters screwed. And Beat 4 was ordering and administering the plan.

Once I had those beats in my head, it was easier to really act the scene, and memorize it a little better, still using the same technique of "quick read through, then cite the monologue through ad-libing." I started memorizing some names, and some lines, and overall the story still made sense. My acting also loosened up, and I became more free with the emotions of the piece rather than the words. It was a totally totally different experience for me.

I'm really starting to memorize this piece, and when I went home today I couldn't help but start using the technique a little on my other monologue and it's kind of working.

So while interesting and different, overall I feel as if it was a pretty successful day for me!