After thirty or so posts on monologue development, I thought it might be a interesting for readers to actually see what happens in a real world monologue coaching. Luckily, The Green Room Studio, where I teach is well equipped for video production. We decided to go all out with a three-camera setup that would give us the most flexibility in documenting the process. The complete two hour arc of the coaching plays out in 16 short episodes which will appear on this blog over the next several weeks.
The actor being coached is Amy Rapp. She has been actively pursuing a professional career here in Chicago for the past two years. The monologue being used is from the play Etta Jenks by Marlane G. Meyer. Amy is playing the character of Etta. Though the role falls comfortably within Amy's casting range, the coaching will require that she broach into new territory in terms of personal creative development.
In total there were two, 2-hour coaching sessions over a 3-day period. This gave Amy a day between sessions to work on her own. Though we were assuming that the coaching is for a "live" theatre audition it has been staged to accommodate the on camera environment.
The focus of this first episode is on the nonverbal action that needs to occur before Amy says the first line of the monologue.