How to Act a Monologue Part 2

In Monday’s blog we looked at starting off on working on a monologue. We talked about who we were talking to and how we were talking to them. We also introduced amonologue from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and asked you to read it and answer some simple questions that would help you turn the ideas on the page into actable actions.

Let’s look at the questions we asked and some useful answers.

What is Sonya’s Dramatic Action in the monologue? Sonya is telling her uncle that they must carry their burden to the grave, and that only in death will they find liberation and rest.

When I use the word ‘tell’, I am not using it in the simple sense. I am saying that if I sum up what she is telling him, that’s what she is doing to him. Telling her uncle that they have to grin and bear it, for in death they will find liberation. 

To reduce it further, she is telling him that if their life is miserable, they will find salvation in death. Or good things will come to them if they wait. It seems to have strongly religious overtones of salvation coming with death.

Why? What does she want Uncle Vanya to do?

Why is she doing that? Because she wants him to have hope in something. They know that their life has been instantly and irrevocably affected by Serebryakov’s decision to sell the house, they know that their life will never be full of fun and love and all the sweet things that people dream of, but she wants to persuade him to hold onto the hope that this struggle, the misery of this earthly existence is worth it, that their life will have great meaning in death.

Sonya wants Vanya to hold on to hope.

What’s the obstacle to her achieving that?

Vanya has lost hope. He has slogged his guts out to keep the estate of his dear dead sister, and now her unbearable, pompous, myopic widower husband is going to sell it from under them. His world has crumbled around him and he has given in.

What’s her Task in the Scene?

What kind of Task do I use in this scene? Something that helps overcome that obstacle. To Get Someone to Put their Faith in Me. A task is just a mindset. Come into the scene like you need them to put their faith in what you are saying. Start from the position that they are not putting their faith it.

The next step is to find a parallel between what Sonya is doing and what you are going to do.  Let’s first establish all the elements that affect Sonya’s behaviour that we can create a parallel to:

Relationship Type: - Uncle – Or Family Member – Dear Friend

Environment:  In private in a family home

Stakes:  If she cannot bring Vanya back to some hope, there is a lot to lose for him, but more she will lose her dear companion in this miserable existence of theirs.

Task:  To get someone to put their faith in me – not like ‘trust me’ but put faith in what I am telling you – in the case of the scene that everything happens for a reason.

Obstacle:  The other person has given up hope.

The next step is for you to create a Daydream in which you use these behaviour shaping factors to imagine what doing that task is like to you.  By paralleling these factors, we ensure that we remain true to the nature of the writer’s scene. We derive our behaviour for the scene from those factors that influence the character’s behaviour in the scene.

Create an imaginary situation in which you are in private with a family member and they’ve completely given up hope and you’re trying to get them to put their faith in you that everything happens for a reason.

Example: It’s as-if one of my family members has recently split with her husband and I’m asking them to have faith in me when I say that things happen for a reason and she will be happy again.

This helps you to get into the zone for a Preparation Exercise which will be the next blog.