Today we created a movement piece from our monologue. At first I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do but Anthony said something about maybe performing a task, like baking a cake or something like that. So I decided instead of a task to use an object. I think I mentioned a while ago that my character should be a girl Edgar Allen Poe. So I thought about what young women were like in his time. For the most part they were educated at home, taught more how to run a house than anything else, but they were taught to read, and they would have time for reflection and study. I decided first that she is probably very smart, but very socially bound and she knows that. I wanted this monologue, which is actually a poem, which is a very private communication between the writer and the subject (so private Poe didn't even include the name of the subject in the title) to have a sense that she's tired of holding back how she feels about this guy but she's quite embarrassed about it because it's not socially acceptable and she's very afraid he'll reject her. Her journey is that at first she's very shy about it she tries to avoid his reaction a little, maybe every now and then she gets carried away and then gets embarrassed and pulls back and by the end she doesn't care any more and risks it all. So I thought at first I could have her play with a handkerchief and sort of enact her feelings on it. So I started with the handkerchief and then I thought, maybe the handkerchief could change with the journey too. So I start out playing with a little handkerchief, unfolding it, wiping my face with it, toying with it, wringing it, then as it goes along it gets bigger and changes shape until at the end it's a big blanket spread out for both of us (me as the character and my other) to sit on. I found this really helpful in finding the builds, the little climaxes and falling actions in the whole piece, because I was sort of tied to this piece of invisible cloth, I had to include it in almost everything I did, so I had to find a way to include it which in a weird way informed a lot of my choices. Like at one point I was wringing it and I turned away, and I thought, I've got to show him this cloth, I've got to use this cloth to show him what he means to me. So I had to turn around and I had to move the cloth with the words, which created a build. Plus I was trying to use the action words in the text, and there were a lot (motionless, shivering, arisen, murmur, hangs, speak) so I had to use the cloth to show those things.
I was definitely thinking about how this was going to look and how this would express my character to someone watching it, but I don't think that harmed it much, because every now and then I thought, "Would she really do that?" and I'd think "That's not the emotion I was conveying before, but is this a better choice." It forced me to think about how I was conveying her. It was also really helpful to picture someone actually watching me turning this hanky into a blanket, and that really helped to motivate the embarrassment because I would get carried away playing with it and then think, "oh, he's still watching, this must look silly to him, I better pull it back." Anywho, I'm really excited about this piece and I'm gonna try and find some ways to provoke myself with it more.
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