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A week has passed since
the last time I wrote here. I am
learning to be more organized and to make peace with my agenda which, most of
the time, is not very realistic considering that I plan to do thousands of things
in just 16 hours. Of course, I end up
frustrated and a bit anxious. My father always told me that if I want to be a
good professional, I need to be focused on just one thing and acting is the only
thing I want to improve every day. I practice cold reading every day, I record
myself while I am studying monologues to analyse my accent, if I am pronouncing
the words properly, if everything is clear and to study the rhythm and the tone
of the speeches. And it’s a process full of ups and downs but at the end it’s
very encouraging to compare the first with the last recordings. 
This last week
I’ve been reading some plays trying to explore some good scenes to put them
on tape later on. It takes a lot of research and when we finally find something
and start the rehearsals, we need to be patient; even if deep inside of us we
have a very clear idea of the scene, even if we can hear our internal voice
acting the scene perfectly, I feel that as soon as we open our mouths and bring
those lines to life, things tend to change and we are constantly discovering them
with our partners. Different partners give different impulses which can
completely change the speed, the tone and the musicality of the scene. I just
love it! It’s been a great exercise for me.
Monologues are hard to
find but I think they are absolutely indispensable. A pianist has a repertory
of musical pieces, then an actor must have a repertory of monologues and
scenes... I know that sometimes they can be exhausting to study and retouch but
there’s no way we can run away from them. A few days ago I’ve found an article
by Karen Kohlhaas, a senior teacher at Atlantic Acting School and the author of
the Monologue Audition: A Practical Guide
for Actors. In her article, Karen argues that an actor must have at least 20
monologues prepared under the belt. It can take a long time to prepare such a long list a speeches but it’s
very helpful because all this research work, helps uncover
physical habits, many times unconscious, in the way we perform, it helps in finding ourselves as an actor and detects which kind of speech and character we feel more
comfortable with, and which ones
are the more challenging and hard to work out. You can have a look at the
article here.
At this time I have a list of ten or twelve
speeches on a folder which I carry every day in my hand bag. The time I spend inside the London
underground is amazing to read plays, to listen to the recordings that I have in my phone and to make a
first approach to the speeches, like 'action in text.' Actioning is a fundamental rehearsal technique where
we divide the text in units and we try to find the verb, the action that better
describes each moment. For instance: “Would you like a coffee?” is a question
that could be played in many ways according to the context of the scene and the
character’s objective. The 'action word' is a specific and transitive verb which describes what
your character is actually doing to
another character. Different action words might be: seduce, welcome, dominate, befriend, admire, fear,
disgrace, manipulate and the choice must be determined by the character’s
objective. Actions really speak louder than words and by doing this exercise we
feel more comfortable to talk about the speech and the character. How many
times have we felt the speech and we know it so well as if it’s running
inside our veins but when we have to talk about it, we feel a bit lost? If somebody asks you: how’s your character feeling now,
what is the objective of the monologue, what is the character trying to achieve?
Is there any moment where she changes the objective? When we are doing this
exercise, we become aware of all these questions and how to defend our character.
Lots of love, Lilly
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