Kristi's 1st Month In Review

Greetings!

It's taken me almost a month to write my Month In Review. Sad. I need to get better!

For me, this month has been all about reading. I've been reading books, newspapers, magazines, online articles, pretty much whatever I can get my hands on. I didn't set out to start looking for monologues in unusual places, but that's how it worked out. I've also been getting stuff from friends, (shoutout to Heidi who has thrown all kinds of stuff at me! I love it!) which is amazing and I really hope to use some of it to create some new pieces.

I've had lots of auditions in the past month and I've basically used 3 monologues. I've talked about all three on the blog, but I'll give a little run down of how I'm feeling about them. I'm not sure if any of them will make the final 50, but they are staying in my binder o' monologues to be worked on.

Here we go...

Calm - Adam Gwon
This is the very first piece I talked about on the blog. If you recall, this is the song I was turning into a monologue. It's a hard process, turning a song into a monologue. I set it down a couple weeks ago and haven't picked it up since. I don't want to abandon it all together, but it's been difficult to make it sound natural.

I think that this piece also requires more character work than I've had time to put into it. As I mentioned in one my previous blogs, I started out basically playing "crazy" which is a terrible character choice and gets you nowhere. When I worked on it a little bit more, I discovered more things about her personality and who she is, but nothing really clicked and felt right. It would definitely help if I could see the show and get some idea of the given circumstances, but all I've got to go on right now is what's in the song.

Current verdict: Staying in the binder but...might not make the 50.

Love After Love - Derek Walcott

This is the poem I found, *ahem*, in the front of the book The Time Traveler's Wife. I love this poem. It speaks directly to my heart. It is so relevant for everything I am feeling at this point in my life and I am just completely enamored with it.

What I've discovered I like about doing a poem as your audition piece is that you can totally create the world surrounding the words. There are no given circumstances (usually), there is no character background to consider, there are essentially no rules. If you want to repeat a section, you can repeat section. If you want to play it one way at today's audition and then do a 180 for tomorrow's audition, you can. In a typical monologue, you can make changes to the performance, but you are limited by the things I've mentioned previously (given circumstances, character background, etc).

Too bad I can't do poems for every audition. I could definitely rock that.

Current Verdict: Love it. Definitely going to keep playing and using it for auditions. Will probably make the top 50.

A Passion Play by Pippin Parker

When I first read this 10 minute play, I really really really liked it. I read it again about a week or so later and I still really really really liked it. That being said, I'm struggling to really really really like the monologue I've been using.

I think I need to check out the book that this play came in from the library again and make a copy of it. I have some questions and some things that aren't clicking that I think would be solved by rereading the play and having it handy for reference. I think once I do that, I'll have more a grasp on the piece and things will start to fall into place.

Current Verdict: Definite potential for making the top 50.





There's the first month of Monologue Mania in review. Next month's review will not be nearly as long because....well I haven't been working on much new material. I guess I've still got two weeks left though....better get cracking!

Thanks to all of you for your continued support and encouragement! Please leave us comments! We love comments! You don't have to be a follower of the blog or have a Google account. (Although we encourage you become a follower and get our updates!)

Until next time!
-Kristi