Spend an hour a day sitting with your monologue ‘feeling’ it out.
1. Don’t rehearse it aloud. When you rehearse aloud you are nailing your coffin. You’re creating a dead performance. You may get so good at it – it doesn’t matter WHAT happens – you will always do it the same way. It’s fool proof, perfectly done, completely dead performance.
2. Don’t visualize yourself doing the performance – that is another nail in the coffin.
3. Emotional prep. Deepen your ability for a real emotional prep. Deepen your personal connection to the character. Make it real for you. Live through the monologue. Expose a part of yourself you don’t want to expose. Live through something you don’t want to live through.
Use your intelligence to make the right choices for yourself to bring your performance alive.
If you don’t have a strong motivation, objective, need … you will “perform your emotional prep” rather than live through it.
Colleen as Nora must find why Nora is suffering … truly suffering. She must find that suffering in herself and expose it. She must be able to relate to it 100% – otherwise she can’t play that part.
When you speak – you must find the reason for speaking. You cannot be performing a speech. You must find your moment to moment motivation for speaking… and it’s always emotional.. There is an emotional need to speak and it’s related to whom you are speaking.
Watch these two performances.
The first one, the actor has an emotional prep (probably not that strong but she’s delivering everything she has) and is performing it without relating to why she needs to speak. She is involved in her own performance rather than in a relationship.
The 2nd one, the actor has a very strong emotional prep and she has a very strong motivation/objective for speaking. She is fully in relationship with whom she is speaking.
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/