Theatre Performance - Essay Example

 Theatre Performance Preparing a monologue is difficult for both students and professionals actors. Monologues require an effort, a full understanding of the role, meaning of every word and emotions that should be produced. Alongside with verbal part, there is a performance that needs to be accurate, persuasive, emotional but not exaggerated. Preparing the monologue from “Our Country's Good” I experienced a number of issues that I needed to overcome to achieve my goals and meet performance characteristics mentioned above. In this essay I will discuss how this monologue helped me to recognise my performance weaknesses and overcome them. The first difficulty I faced preparing the monologue was to learn the words by heart. In order to perform well, I needed to know it perfectly not to forget it even when I would be nervous or lost. I had to force myself to learn the text and it took some time to make sure that I would not fail. There were some lines that were the most difficult for me. I missed them many times when I practised alone and with a friend and it made me frustrated because my performance was awful when I stopped and tried to recollect everything. I turned out that learning the text was not the most difficult part of my preparations. I had to perform; accordingly, I needed to focus on emotions, mimics and actions related to my role. Staging was hard because I had to keep everything natural but persuasive. It was complicated to find the right balance between these two options. I did not want to look indifferent on the stage; at the same time, I was afraid that I would exaggerate everything and spoil my role. Moreover, I had to do everything is a set time frame. Performance contained a sequence of actions that had to happen in the right time and place. I could not improvise or change anything. It was stressful at first, but it added a better organisation to my performance. Staging was particularly hard because I performed the role of a man and I had to control my voice all the time not to sound feminine. This required the control of every word I said. Even all exclamations had to be more male. The switch from Harry to Handy Baker was not easy and I spent much time training it. I had a hoarse voice because my vocal cords were not used to such a pressure. Due to this fact I had to make pauses and relax to minimise the effect of my role on my ordinary voice. The issue of confidence came next. I was very nervous when I though about public performance of the monologue. I experienced the fear of failure in public and I could not focus on my role because of it. Even when I practised alone, I could not get rid of the thought that it would be all different when someone would look at me. I had to practice with a mirror to make sure that my face looked good when I performed the monologue. I was also afraid of looking too comic because someone could laugh and I would lose control over everything. I had to learn to calm down in order to cope with my fears. I had never though that public performance would be so hard for me. All issues mentioned above helped me to develop a number of useful skills. Learning the monologue by heart was a great memory training. I was worth training because it was the first time when I was sure that nothing would make me forget the text. This experience helped to understand learning techniques that made it easier to memorise and reproduce the text. For instance, reading out-loud was very helpful to practice and learn separate lines of the text and text as a whole. My performance training helped me to learn how to make spectators believe in my character. I though a lot about my role and tried to keep it persuasive. I had to read a couple of psychology articles to have a greater understanding of gestures and poses that were related to certain feelings. I also worked on my intonation a lot because every tone mattered for my final success. One more necessary skill I learned was how to calm down before the performance. I tried to slow my breathing and it had a calming effect on me. It was quite difficult to control my nervous gestures because I always wanted to keep something in my hands or touched my hair a lot. Hours of trainings helped me to identify those problematic gestures so I could get rid of them. I learned to deal with public and managed my internal fear to fail. Finally, I understood that there was nothing bad in being funny. That though gave me more confidence and I could feel more relaxed when I trained with someone else. I trained to keep calm no matter what was going on around me. I found my inner point of balance and thought about places and people I loved to get comfortable in stressful situations. Generally, these skills are useful for dealing with stress in my life and I happy that I have found what works for me. This monologue was also useful in terms of training my vocal cords. Playing with timbre was challenging but rewarding because I learned to concentrate on the role even when my voice sounded strange. Also I learned to speak without too much pressure on the vocal cords to avoid hoarseness after the performance. It is a useful skill for all public performances when one has to speak loudly. In summary, preparing the monologue turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Learning the text, keeping everything in control and time management were the hardest for me. At the same time, I had to deal with my personal concerns and fears related to public performances and my image. It was a great journey where I could learn myself better and understand how to work on my weaknesses to turn them into my strengths. Also, it was a necessary training before learning bigger and more difficult roles. Read More