Unit 10: Self Reflection Blog 1 (Acting)

      1:1 With Justin.

My choice for my contemporary monologue is 'Born Bad' a play written by debby tucker green ( a playwright I have previously studied in Unit 8). Because I studied and performed this monologue for unit 8 last year, doing the monologue this year means that I will be able to see my progression in my acting skills and with the new knowledge of how to successfully execute a monologue; I will be able to strengthen my monologue and explore new ways to approach it by putting my scene in to different scenarios and embodying various emotions.

In preparation for an Arts Ed mock audition, I was given a chance to work with my acting lecturer Justin to help me with my monologue. This was good for me because Justin was my primary teacher for unit 8, so he already knew what my monologue was about and saw the steps I took to get my monologue to the level it is at now. Justin immediately challenged me by advising me to try performing my monologue whilst smiling and laughing. My monologue is very angry and volatile, its about an emotionally damaged daughter who is lashing out at her mother for not protecting her from her abusive father growing up. I listened to Justin and implemented this into my monologue, I gave myself an eyeline where I imagined my mother would be standing or sitting and tried it. Because I changed the emotion, I felt that I needed to change my blocking as well. This further adapted my monologue because my body was reflecting the emotion I was portraying and by doing so it encouraged me because I believed myself and It gave me the stimulus to just go for it. Justin would sometimes stop me in the flow of things just to help me maybe articulate my words better or try something in a different way, I'd listen and implement it into my work. For example there's a line where I say "What, Bitch got summink to say?" At first I found it hard to make this feel natural because I had to act like I heard my mother say something which would provoke my response. So Justin helped me go through this and showed me the different ways I could deliver this line and how I could take my time before I say it. What I had to understand was that my character was highly frustrated with her mother because she was pouring out all her built up and emotions and barely getting any response from her mother let alone regret. She was trying to challenge her mother by saying this because she wanted to provoke her mother,she wanted her mother to give her something because she didn't want her mother to win.