Monologues and Speeches

The monologue is often considered as a one-directional outpouring of words, emotion and action, but this is entirely incorrect.

Consider when you speak a monologue in life, it’s always tosomeone: a person present, a person who isn’t present (physically, geographically, dead), a deity, a group, yourself! That’s right, even when you speak to yourself, you engage with yourself in order to get you to do something and it’s easy to forget that when you’re asked to do a monologue to listeners that you can’t see.

Whenever I teach monologue work, I always ask ‘Who are they talking to?’, many times – the answer comes back – THE AUDIENCE. Oh!? I say. So the character knows they’re in aplay!. No. Of course not comes the reply. Precisely. But you do need to decide who it is that you meant to be speaking to, because it changes HOW you deliver the monologue.

The trouble will calling it a ‘speech’ (although that’s an acceptable phrase of course) is that we don’t think of speeches as something that needs to physical and emotionally impact on people. But then consider many of Obama’s pre-election speeches, they’re precisely designed to move a specific group of people towards unity, strength and change, perhaps consider Churchill during the Second World War, bolstering the British morale and proclaiming ‘We Shall Never Surrender!’ Hitler on the other side of the channel was doing the same thing with speeches, unifying a depressed German people, bringing them together, giving them a sense of National pride, and then hopelessly leading them to self-slaughter on a pathway of genocide.

Whether you call it a speech or a monologue, you must aim to do something TO someone when you speak the words. And of course, it’s so much more than just the words, it’s the actions that exist beneath the word, they true intent which aims to steer the emotional direction of the listener. Remember, identify who you’re talking to and what it is that you’re character is attempting to get them to do. That’s the first step to nailing a monologue.