Sessions

Olga wanted us to take some of our classical monologues and look at the words and over physicalize them to get more of a feel for what the words mean. I chose the monologue of Emilia from Othello. I never showed it too the class but I feel like it loosened me up a bit because I personally do not understand most of the words in classical monologues because it's obviously not my language so sometimes I read it and think I have read it in a completely different context than what it was written in.

One of our class members showed his one, it came out really funny where he was over acting the words but hearing him doing it that time made me understand it more because he physicalized it so well with the words that it actually made sense for me to listen to and watch. It was also more fun to watch, I find it really hard to get into classical plays as it is not something I usually go for and listen to myself as I haven't grown up with it being my natural language even though of course that was the language used back in the day.

Contrasting Monologues

Olga gave me a monologue to look at for contemporary, but when I spoke to Ella she mentioned that I use it for contrasting instead. This particular monologue is from the play 'A Doll's house'.

A Doll's House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.

The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint." Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity."

In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most performed play for that year. UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.

Olga told me to particularly look at a monologue from the character 'Nora'. 

And I found this:

Nora:
It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you—

I mean that I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you--or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which--I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.

When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman--just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.

You neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to. As soon as your fear was over--and it was not fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you--when the whole thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened.

Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile. Torvald--it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children--. Oh! I can't bear to think of it! I could tear myself into little bits!

'In this definitive scene, the naïve yet often contriving Nora has a startling epiphany. She once believed that her husband was a proverbial knight in shining armor, and that she was an equally devoted wife.

Through a series of emotionally draining events, she realizes that their relationship and their feelings were more make believe than real.

In this monologue from Henrik Ibsen’s play, she opens up to her husband with stunning frankness as she realizes that she has been living in "A Doll’s House."'

Below, are videos posted on youtube of the play "A doll's house" performed by the students at The Balhaven University.

And there is also an audiobook of the play available on YouTube:

VALERIE'S MONOLOGUE FROM THE WEIR

On 28th December I decided to read the monologue hand out that Olga gave me which is from the play called 'The Weir' by Connor McPherson in 1977. It was first produced at the Royal Court theatre upstairs in London on the 4th July 1997.

Plot Summary:

Source from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weir

The play opens in a rural Irish pub with Brendan, the publican and Jack, a car mechanic and garage owner. These two begin to discuss their respective days and are soon joined by Jim. The three then discuss Valerie, a pretty young woman from Dublin who has just rented an old house in the area.

Finbar, a businessman, arrives with Valerie, and the play revolves around reminiscence and the kind of banter which only comes about amongst men who have a shared upbringing. After a few drinks, the group begin telling stories with a supernatural slant, related to their own experience or those of others in the area, and which arise out of the popular preoccupations of Irish folklore: ghosts, fairies and mysterious happenings.

After each man (with the exception of Brendan) has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin. Valerie's story is melancholy and undoubtedly true, with a ghostly twist which echoes the earlier tales, and shocks the men who become softer, kinder, and more real. There is the hint that the story may lead to salvation and, eventually, a happy ending for two of the characters.
Finbar and Jim leave, and in the last part of the play, Jack's final monologue is a story of personal loss which, he comments, is at least not a ghostly tale but in some ways is nonetheless about a haunting.

The play is as much about lack of close relationships and missed connections as it is about anything else. The weir of the title is the name of the pub, named for a hydroelectric dam on a nearby waterway that is mentioned only in passing as Finbar describes the local attractions to Valerie. It anticipates and symbolises the flow of the stories into and around each other, and how they have all collected together in one place to be recounted together.

Reading the monologue myself:

Before I knew anything about the play I read the monologue out loud, whilst reading it, I noticed slang and it was slang that was used in an Irish accent. So after reading the monologue I decided to read up about it to find out that Valerie does indeed have an Irish accent. So I went on to YouTube and typed the play in to find loads of results including other people doing Valerie's monologue. This one girl I watched read it a lot different than I did but she also had the Irish accent and she did it very well. I watched another girl and she used her natural American accent but she was more reading it out rather than acting it in my opinion.

I thought I wouldn't like this monologue but turns out after reading it, I have grown an interest too it.

I like this monologue because:

• I like the way Valerie speaks
• The story telling in the monologue is interesting
• It's a sad story

I don't like this monologue because:

• I cannot do a fluent Irish accent
• I am worried doing it in an English accent would not make sense
• It is very long, I would have to find a good cut off point

Valerie's character is from Dublin and she is in her thirties.