The Theatrefolk Weblog

Today’s Movie Monologue Monday takes a look at Kirk Douglas’ speech in Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory.

There is no shortage of movie monologues that take place in a courtroom. This, in my opinion, is among the finest.

Douglas plays Colonel Dax, a French commander whose soldiers are on trial for refusing to take part in a suicide mission. The trial is unjust. Everybody knows it’s unjust, and yet it continues. Douglas

Douglas does the opposite of what you would expect from a grand courtroom speech. Rather than building to a climax, he starts strong and gets quieter and quieter, drawing you to him. By the end you’re hanging on every word he’s saying.

I love his physicality in the piece. He stands and walks like an aged soldier, his back ever-straight, his head ever-held high. And Kubrick’s direction keeps the camera low, making Douglas look larger-than-life.

I’m thrilled to announce that we’re continuing to expand our free resources page. We’ve added seven new activity sheets, all about Romeo and Juliet. Five are under the Romeo and Juliet heading and two are under the Monologue Performance Tips heading.

These are all extracted from our recent three-part newsletter on Romeo and Juliet (Part One, Part Two, Part Three). There are even more free resources contained within the newsletters themselves, so check them out as well.

The free resources added to the Monologue Performance Tips section include a monologue performance activity. Also included is a Monologue Assessment Rubric that isn’t necessarily tied to Shakespeare. It can be used for any monologue activity.

Enjoy!

This is a great classroom exercise to not only have fun with Shakespeare but to also see how well students can re-frame which ever Shakespeare play they are studying.

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.

Awhile a go I adjudicated a festival that involved a lot of student writers and directors. It was awesome to see their work and to talk to them about how they wanted to present their work. I love hearing the “why” of a show. Why certain choices were made with a production. An interesting dilemma that occurred multiple times was that there was a difference between what an actor, a writer or a director intended to put on stage and what they actually presented.

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?

Episode Forty-One: Time to Gel

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Show Notes

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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?

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Movie Monologue Monday: Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory

New Free Resources Added!

Shakespeare Exercise: In space, no one can hear you meep.