Transitions and Memorization

Today, I worked for two periods on memorization, and I'm honestly super super frustrated to say that I'm getting nowhere in memorizing this monologue. I tried Luke's technique and created a completely different monologue while ad-libing and it really didn't satisfy me. I really wanted to memorize it, and I couldn't, which was odd for me because I'm usually great at memorizing monologues and lines, and for some reason with this monologue I've really been having trouble. Is it because I feel to much with it? I honestly don't know.

So, after getting really really mad about not being able to really memorize, I pulled out another monologue from my folder called "To Gillian on her 27th Birthday" and I literally memorized it in 10 minutes. Same length, and I memorized it in 10 minutes, without breaking it up into beats, or a climax, nothing. Just straight up memorization.

So, I don't really know what to think of this. Did I analyze the other monologue too much? Is that why it made it harder to memorize? Or did this new monologue appeal to me a lot more? I have no idea. I definitely still want to do the other monologue, it's just giving me a harder time than this new one is. So, we'll see what happens.

Also, both monologues that I've been analyzing and memorizing have been sad, dramatic, or angry pieces. They've all been really serious. My original intention for this project was to finish it off with one serious and one comedic. So now I'm on the hunt for a comedic piece to work on as well. I want at least one comedic and one serious (though I'm not sure which serious I'll pick as my final one yet, or maybe I'll even do both).

Today, I also helped a member of my community, Sabrina. She was looking for a new monologue from film and I introduced her to a website I knew about that held a ton of film monologues, and she found a lot of new monologues to work on that she enjoys, so I guess I felt like a pretty helpful community member today.

Overall, today I really started to change everything again, and I'd consider this a transitional day, and tomorrow I want to start working on all of the new things I came up with today.