It must be three

We finally get this monologue project done after we had a super long weekend. To be honest, being a director is a old and new experience to me in this class. I am very happy and excited because we have so many talented and creative students in this semester. By coaching and watching all of their great performances, I have seen things which I ignored or could not completely understand. The first thing I learned is about the line which is the most basic and important thing in a monologue. Another thing I noticed is the pacing and the pauses which make the performance even better.

It must be confusing that I learned about lines because I didn't even do any monologue. However, when I  am watching and coaching others I found out that most of them have problems on transition from one line to another. For example, Cade always forget the line when the hands line is coming. I feel like that he is always worried about the hands line, so he couldn't remember the order of lines. So I suggest that we can memorize important lines with the line before or after. It can help actors to remember the order, and they will be more relax when they're performing. Another example is when Josh messes his pop corn line, and it happened multiple times. I don't think that he doesn't remember the line because he goes smoothly with that line, then I found out that he does that because it is easier for him to say, and it gives the exact meaning. I used to focus on the exact words in script, but I find out that it works better if you can add some personal speaking habits which can make the monologue yours. I am very glad that I watched all of their works, so I can learn the lines. 

Second thing I noticed is that they always go too fast, and they all triedto go slower and slower overtimes. For example, Angel went super fast in her first draft, but I showed her the video of I Have A Dream and Jayden found a music for her. I told Angel how to pause in at some strong line or words to make it even stronger. Another thing I like so much is the dramatic pause; for example, Ryan paused a long time in his first video take. Even though plaguing long time is not good, but when he put a back ground music and emotion changed from one line to another line it was too good to believe that he accidently forgot the line. I'm impressed that Jayden and Ryan came up with perfect musics for their monologue which I have never done before in my past monologues. I have to confess that musics do make the scene looks better and easier to understand the emotion and meaning.

At the last, I want to congrat everyone who has shown us all these great performances, and I hope they all learned, and use them to make next project even better. I will always see my future works from three perspectives which are actors’, directors’ and audiences’. I believe a great performance must be correct by these three different people because a show can not go on without anyone of them.