And so it begins - Part 2

Hello all! Kristi here. You've heard the basic story from Whitney, so now I'll expand on that.

I have always had trouble with monologues. I think it's the stigma surrounding them. They are bascially your calling card as an actor. You get one 90 second shot in an audition to show what you can do. That's a lot of pressure.

My common practice for monologues is as follows:
-Read a play
-Discover a monologue from said play
-Make a copy of said monologue
-File in a folder labeled "Monologues"
-Two days before an audition, dig through "Monologues" folder in a panic looking for something to use.

.......

As you can tell, this is not the best way to handle a monologue audition.

A few years ago, in one of the aforementioned "panics", I typed "women's monologues" into a Google search to see what came up. Of course, most of what came up junk. But then I stumbled across this gem. It's not a list of monologues, but rather an article about using monologues for an audition.

I'll let you read the article for specifics, but the gist is this. A professor from the Atlantic Acting School in  New York City challenged her students to learn 20 monologues. Analyzed, edited, memorized, blocked; the full boat. At the end of the year, if they could come to her and do the 20 monologues back to back, she would buy them dinner. I thought this sounded like a great challenge. Now flash forward three years and I finally get to do it!

College is great for learning the craft of acting and starting to discover who are you as an actor. However, college can't really prepare you for the "real world" of theatre. In the real world, no one is telling you to read plays, no one makes you go see theatre and you are responsible for directing yourself through the audition process. You find (at least I do) that you become kind of lazy, which leads to panicked auditions and material you feel less than passionate about.

I'm excited to work on this project with Whitney. I think if either one of us were attempting to do it alone, we would fail miserably. Having someone hold you accountable is the best way to get things done!

The next 295 days (why does that sound shorter than it actually is?) will be full of ups and downs and we'll share them with you here. Please feel free to comment on anything we write, email us suggestions and send good thoughts our way.

Being a lazy actor ends today!