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Suggestions to Nail Your Acting Monologues
Acting monologues are some of the most crucial tools beginning actors need to understand to get their first acting jobs, yet numerous entertainers rush through the process of preparing their audition monologues, going straight for the emotion and never making the effort to really understand their monologue before performing it.
Obviously, you have an idea of what a monologue is about even after reading it just when, but the goal is to understand precisely the weight and definition of every word so that what you're saying is easily understood by others who can start thinking with you.
Why is it so crucial?
Since whether you're auditioning for Hollywood acting jobs or carrying out on stage, your audience is only with you if they can follow your thought process. So that has to be your top goal, for them to think with you as you deliver your acting monologue.
If an audience thinks with you, they breathe with you, and as an actor that's where you want to be.
That's when you hold your audience in the palm of your hand. Draw your audience into the story and keep them there, and they will weep, laugh and hold their breath with you.
Some actors can deliver a huge explosion of emotion and leave us as audience members totally unmoved. We might be impressed by their capability to weep on cue or to reach emotional heights, but just enjoying someone feel gets dull very rapidly if they haven't been able to make us care about the story. It's like a former acting coach when said, "When I'm in the theater, I don't care how the actor feels. I want to feel. That's what I pay for.".
One of the most significant mistakes actors make when acting monologues is to try to synthetically keep it fascinating. Too typically the result is the opposite of what was meant. The entertainer turns the acting monologue into a showpiece at the cost of the logic of the words, and the audience stops listening. Obviously, audition monologues need to show variety as much as possible, but if you can get the auditioner to forget about you for a second and just be totally absorbed around the world you produced for them, that's even better.
Really, working on drawing out the definition of your monologues will help you show variety, naturally. That's since the more you find the true definition of the words, the more subtleties you discover that will color your performance organically without getting out of character or arbitrary jumps from one emotion to the next.
Obviously, there are some directors who are truly impressed by actors who can weep on cue and often that is just required for a function. If quick tears are not in your bag of tricks, fixating on turning on the waterworks will only make things worse. But if you just start thinking moment to moment the thoughts of your character, the tears will come, at least in the eyes of your public who truly doesn't care how you feel, as long as you take them for a flight.
Consider the actors you admire and the truly great actors out there. They all have this thing in typical that they always have an inner monologue going on. One of my absolute favorite actors is Denzel Washington. I like to enjoy him act since he'll draw me into the story of any film, even films I wouldn't usually delight in. Why? Since he's never just "carrying out" or reaching out for an emotion ... he's always thinking.
Obviously, truly understanding what you are saying and "thinking the words" is not the end of it. Actors have to work on staying open and vulnerable and use their imagination to produce characters that are special to them. But that initial step of truly digesting the definition of the words is the one we usually skip and take for given, yet one of the most crucial steps to get off to a great start on your acting monologues.
There's lots of methods to work on that initial step, like paraphrasing or utilizing Meisner exercises to truly impart the words to a partner. The Stella Adler Method is also created to draw out the definition in the words of the play and interact it to others.
So if you feel disappointed with your acting monologues or if you've been driving yourself crazy trying to wring tears out of your dramatic pieces, try some of these methods and keep in mind that the mark of a great actor is not necessarily the ability to emote but more the power to take your audience for a flight!
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