The first monologue I found was in the school library. We had been told that sourcing your monologue was a very important part in choosing them. We had been told not to find your monologues in monologue books or off the internet- this is because you won't have read the play and therefore won't have a full feeling off the play and how well you would be able to perform it. Plus as you need to perform a published play getting it off the internet doesn't guarantee that it is.
The monologue I found was from the play 'When You Cure Me' by Jack Thorne. The play is set in Reading over a period of three months (January to March,) in a teenagers bedroom. My character is called Rachel. Her boyfriend Peter and her have been dating for six months and at seventeen they are as happy as can be. However then Rachel gets raped and their relationship is put on hold whilst Rachel recovers. Throughout the play the relationship develops slowly through trust and support. My monologue is Rachel recalling her assault to Peter. It is very emotional, but there is room to control the emotion at times and also let it out. There is many changes between objectives and thoughts that can be worked with and developed. The character is young (17) so is suitable for me to play. When doing our castability a victim was one of my casting notes and I believe that I could play this character well as with time, practice and rehearsal I can master the balance of emotion within the piece.
The second monologue I found was in a book of 4 short plays. The play my monologue is from is called 'Just A Bunch Of Tourists' by Brian Higginson. It is a play about a group of friends who climb a mountain, but due to bad weather they have to take shelter up the mountain. As they have to survive in the wild, egos come out and people start to annoy others and tensions rise. My character is Rowena who is initially quiet, but she has an anger and annoyance that grows. Though at first it is suppressed my monologue is her letting all her anger out. I think I would be good at performing this monologue because similarly to the first it has a lot of emotion that can be controlled with practice. The age of Rowena isn't specified and I couldn't find a copy of the book and therefore this meant this monologue wasn't as preferable as the first.
My third monologue was from the play 'Risk' by John Retallack. Although we were advised not to, I found this monologue from a book of monologues. However from research I found that it was play written and directed by John Retallack. It was performed in association with Company of Angels, YDance and The Tron, Glasgow. The monologue intrigued me as, like all the other monologues, they are about current topics that I can relate to as a young person living in the ever changing times. The monologue is about a girl named Annmarie talking about how she got peered pressured into drinking. I think it is a topic I can understand, not necessarily from personal experience, but through being a young person at a secondary school and having a understanding of the world we live in today. I think I could experiment with different ways to approach it and also through a general understanding I can really connect with the text.
However I chose the monologue from 'When You Cure Me' because I felt I could connect with the character and the emotion and the themes throughout the monologue will be very interesting to experiment with. It will be a lot of work, but I think that the work will produce my best performance.
