Those of you who’ve been plowing through these posts are
probably wondering if I’m ever going to talk about interpreting the text.
You’re also probably wondering why I didn’t tackle interpretation right off the
bat. After all interpreting the words is usually the first thing actors will do
with a new monologue. Well, I’ve got my reasons for waiting until my 27th
post. Here they are.
Most actors don’t have a process for developing a new
monologue. So they gravitate to the one tangible thing they have, the text.
Through reading the text they gain an understanding of the words in terms of
basic meaning in English. However, in doing this they often do not consider the
situation in which the words are being spoken and they don’t evaluate how that
context is going to play in an actual audition.
When you rip a monologue from the overall weave of a play or
screenplay, things change. A great deal of what is present in the original
material is simply not there in the audition environment. It is absolutely
essential that you get a grasp on how these words are going to play without any
of the surrounding support that they would have in an actual production. The
words need to makes sense in the environment in which you will be performing.
The next thing actors do is begin to devise line readings
for each of the lines in the monologue. Quite often these lines reading are
devised based solely on linguistic meaning. Here’s the problem with that. How a
line is said is much more dependant on who you are talking to than it is upon
its linguistic meaning. If the actor devises a line reading based on meaning
and ignores to whom the line is being spoken, the line reading, will be
accurate but it will seem as if the actor is talking to no one. This is deadly
in an audition situation.
Lastly, for a given monologue to achieve its full potential,
the line readings are going to have to evolve throughout development. In fact,
for the monologue to continue to be viable over the long haul, line readings
will have to continuously evolve and will actually be different in each
audition.
Next… Discovering the text
Labels: Interpretation