So, finally I have the perfect monologue and I have read the play twice. I know a lot about my character and know her place in the world of the play, so I can start to build. The first thing I do, is read it again. LOL. I can hear some of my students groaning from here. By the time I am done working a monologue, I may have read the play ten times...no lie. More if it is for a scene and lots more if I am directing. But that's a different blog.
This time, when I read the play, I am looking for the Key Facts about my character. What is said about her? I look in the stage descriptions, I look in the dialogue of others and I look in the things that I say myself. I assemble a list of Key Facts that I call the Hot List.
From these, I will pick the three things that I think are the most important. In the first person, (in other words, as the character) I write about each of the key facts. For example, if I choose the fact that my character lives at home with her mother, I would write how it felt to live at home with a parent when you were an adult, I would talk about the annoying habits my mother has, I would mention the way I always feel defensive about coming home late or perhaps after being out all night. Where do these things come from? Inside the script that I have now read three times!
Seems like a lot of writing, doesn't it? But knowing how I feel when I am in character really helps me build a viable monologue.
Now, in Larry Silverberg's workshops, he asks you to bring a newspaper article that you feel incites a strong feeling in you. If I am working with a class, we do this as well, but when I am working on my own I usually skip this part. The premise of the article is for you first to write about it extensively as yourself, then to write again as your character. This is a way of discovering a common ground between yourself and the person you are going to create. It works very well, especially if you are less experienced or having trouble determining how your character thinks. For my personal development, I find that writing about the key facts essentially establishes the same thing.
Once you have found the commonalities, it is easy to start getting under the skin of the character. Like an onion, you have to peel away the layers to get to the core of the who the person inside might be.
Another thing that really works for me, in finding the emotional condition of the character, is working with a partner that hurls a trigger phrase at you. For example, if you are doing a scnee in which you lose your children to a kidnapper, the partner would hurl the words, "You'll never see your children again." And you improvise the inner monologue of that frightened mother. Whenever you seem to be flagging, have the partner give you the phrase again. Repeat this action over and over until you are out of your head and into your heart building the character. It is reminiscent of the Meisner work I have spoken about in other places. You have to stop thinking about response and start acting on impulse--on what is happening now, not in the past or what might happen in the future.
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