I'm so f*ing frustrated. I look at the calendar yesterday, and I realize that the auditions for The Laramie Project, which I was specifically asked to come back and audition for, are this Monday and Tuesday. And I'm still having issues with my monologue. EEEK!
So today, I'm talking with my coach on the phone (Morgana Rae, Charmed Life Coaching, who I got through the same company that does the Millionaire Mind Intensive seminars, and who I am paying for with my credit card and will not be able to continue paying for in two months if I haven't gotten my massage business up and rolling by then--isn't that ironic??--Gotta grow the roots before the fruits.) Anyhow, I'm talking with her about my monologue because she has acted, and been a casting director. In regard to the whole music vs acting issue, she suggested that perhaps I feel a greater mastery of skill with piano than acting, and she's right. I've been playing piano for 18 years off and on, and I've only been taking acting seriously for the last couple of years. She also gave me a lot of new information to use in my monologue, such as the arc of the scene ideally would be different, the emotional qualities would be different, and the character would be different. She also brought up psychological issues my character might have that I hadn't considered. I really liked the way she explained all of this to me, and the monologue as a whole made a lot more sense to me, and would possibly be easier to connect with, but if I were to incorporate everything she told me, I'd have to throw all the homework I've been doing for the last month out the window. Not necessarily the best choice with my audition right around the corner. ARG.
So then, I had asked my cousin to video me performing my monologue, and she had a lot of great suggestions for me as well, especially regarding movement. Most of the time when I'm performing any scene or monologue, I really have no idea what to do with myself physically, and I usually end up feeling like I'm standing or sitting there like a lump on a log. And the first video we took today confirmed that. So my cousin came up with some really good physical movement for me to go through during my monologue. And I'm sitting here feeling like a dork because she's only taken one "Acting for the Non-Actor" class, while I've taken at least 4 years of classes (albeit only beginning-intermediate level), and I'm sitting here wondering how she can know so much more about acting when I've taken so many more classes? (Granted she's been performing as a dancer for the last 6 years.) But why wasn't I taught how to move in my classes?? Or was I just not picking up on what was being taught because there wasn't a whole lot of time devoted to movement?? What ever the reason, I was pissed.
So then I'm attempting to perform the monologue with the suggestions from my coach, and of course it's not coming out very well at all, which is also pissing me off because I know that as an actor, I need to be able to take suggestions and act on them immediately, because that's what happens in film a lot, the director may want you to do it differently than you had planned, and you have to be able to do it. And then we watch the playback, and the little timer shows my monologue is 2 min 20 sec long. The audition for Laramie requires a 1 min monologue. AAARGH!! How could I be so F*ING stupid?? I knew my Blue Window monologue was 2 min long, but I had convinced myself that if I just pushed through it quickly without allowing a lot of pauses etc, it would come out to 1 min. BAH!
And my monologue books have conveniently vanished into the black hole that is the mess in my bedroom.
But just now, I pulled one of my favorite plays off the shelf, The Woolgatherer, and I found a nice short monologue in it, which I timed myself reading, and it comes out to approximately 50 seconds. So at least I don't have to spend any more time searching for a monologue.
Just this whole process has beeen GRRRRRRRRRRRR. And I'm pissed at myself that I now only have 4 days to learn my new monologue, 5 if I decide to be nice to myself and audition on Tuesday night instead of Monday. GRRRRRRRRRRRR.
1 comment:
Hey,
Yes! Acting can be frustrating especially when you mentioned the director changing things to be different than you planned. That reminds me of when I went into the recording studio to record my first original song. I listened to it, and thought "This sounds nothing like the rough draft I sent them", and I spent so much time being depressed and frustrated about it that it took me three trips to the studio to finish the song, and the first two had very little usable vocals. Also, I too have only been taking acting seriously for a couple of years. I've been singing and performing for over 10 years and I did do theatre camp, but they, they babied me if you will. They didn't show me my potential. I had to find it out when I tried out for other plays and got cast and when the acting agent in L.A. told me that he never knew I was blind the whole time I was performing my monologue because of my facial expressions and stuff. But that's cool that you have a coach. I know I really need one, but I don't have money, and most the money I am saving is either going toward recording more songs or entering showcases, but for me, five days is a treat when it comes to preparing monologues, because with every audition I went to, they gave me the monologue the day of the audition and I would have to struggle to memorize it in a very little amount of time, and obviously they don't have it brailled out so I have to memorize it by listening to my mom read it, and I'm not a good audio learner at all, so it's tough. But definitely, a monologue without pauses, for the most part, really wouldn't cut it, because you have to have time to adjust to the different emotions that the character is feeling so rushing it would most likely be noticed by the casting director, so I'm really glad you found a new monologue that is short enough.:-)
Heh, sorry for the life story.:-D
Danielle
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