Part 2: The planning process of your chosen scene: Contemporary

Contemporary: I chose She, from “Death and Dancing”, written by Claire Dowie.

I was immediately fascinated by this play as the character of She is a bit like a bomb waiting to explode. She’s a strong character, with strong ideas and increasingly swift mood swings. I changed my speech within a week of selecting it as my tutor felt that the speech “There are dark days...” offered more as a monologue than “Okay, go on, push me now...” as my first selection didn’t have many levels, and so there was nowhere for me to take the character. With the new speech I was able to look at the more quiet and fragile side of She and show how that develops into a manic woman. I wanted to perform the speech as if moving through different levels of tension. Starting with neutral and then growing to a more suspenseful/passionate level of tension. Once I had learnt the monologue and started to block it out I began with exploring the voice, the first part of the speech is spoken out to no one specific and I wanted to make it sound like a story and I put emphasis on the “and” to show the cycle that she is describing. I chose to perform the first part of the speech as if she’s feeling a bit lost and holding on to any hope that she can grasp onto. This is dissolves into sarcasm as she paints a picture of how there is always someone to give a helping hand regardless of if they are the kind you need. This then gets taken a step further where she begins to feel belittled by Him and how he can say she’s pathetic just because she’s a female. To show the frustration here I played with louder dynamics to portray this. She is acting ridiculous to show him how ridiculous he is. Comments from my tutor on this piece was how I was stuck to one spot and needed to show more emotion on my face. I began by looking at my movement, I start the piece fidgeting with my hands to create the impression that she is curling in on herself and then gradually opening up as she becomes more confident in what she says. The movements become more farcical as she indicates to the “almighty cock” that He feels give him a holdover She, and so by using arm indications to her lack of cock she is taunting him and his attitudes towards her. Developing movement allowed me to grow more comfortable with the speech and the character and with each rehearsal I was able to really sink into the character, which helped me explore facial expressions. One method was to speak the monologue to a mirror and this allowed me to experiment with sneers and shocked faces at her reactions to He. Another method I used within the process was to write intentions on my script of what she feels at pivotal moments, as well as creating a mind map that explores who She is as a way to help me get into character and understand the motivations that led to this monologue in Act 1. Feedback I received from AUB was to really pinpoint who I’m directing the speech to as it gets lost in my delivery and to really focus in on the intentions of my character as a way to prevent my arms from dropping to my sides consistently.

My annotated script and mind maps I created during development: 

Synopsis of “Death and Dancing”: “She is determined to be anything she wanted to be...” ‘He’ and ‘She’ are caught up in an angry duologue which explores the labels we face in society that constrict everyone – what is/how should a gay/lesbian/straight/man/woman behave? He comes over from America and comes out as gay, he meets She on a night out from his studies at a London University. After a near one night stand a relationship grows and she shows him that you don’t have to be masculine or feminine or wear a costume or a suit. She wears men clothes and encourages him to wear a dress that labels don’t matter. He has always followed the social constricts laid out for him, such as getting a good education and a good job whereas She just wants he to see that social none of that should matter as long as you know what’s important. This story is about two people who go dancing and try to fight the social categories of sexuality that try to pin them down constantly.

Here is a video rehearsal of my monologue: http://youtu.be/vp_9v0yL_f0

Here is the link of my performance of my contemporary: http://youtu.be/6a5qdEjAVBc