zozo's monologue and scene

Memorizations sessions 3 and 4

Session 3: Emotions
This exercise was to play the whole thing with the same emotional theme. Which is interesting to me because some readings of the text never occur to you till you try them. And others take on new meanings in new emotional contexts. But here's what I tried:

Sad. Emboldened by my sob story last time, I decided to expand on the sadness. I started out feeling like I was about to retell a very sad memory and ended up crying and getting all choked up. This was a good match for the talk about death but turned into a general despondency when talking about the good things in his life. By the end I felt like Elaine had really hurt my feelings by questioning my motives. Moral: Sadness works for part of it maybe, but not really for the whole thing.

Happy. Smiling while saying, "Just sit there and shut up till I tell you you can go" really takes the bite out of this line. Later on, it also adds a degree of whimsy. And there are a few points you can laugh at--it is a comedy, after all. I hadn't been playing the humor of it at all before, and so this was an interesting change.

Sarcastic. This felt like a man who realized how silly his scheme was to shake up his life by having an affair, who saw how ludicrous his position was and was almost satirizing himself. It also felt at times like it'd make a great drunken rant. That'd be an interesting thing to try.

Session 4: Special Audience
For this I sprang my monologue on Helen, my roommate's unsuspecting girlfriend. I decided not to tell her in advance what would happen, so she was somewhat surprised to find I was trying to "have an affair" with her. The space was smaller, which was a little weird to work with, but doable.

It was a little odd doing it with someone I knew too, since I had based a lot of the relationship with Elaine on the notion that she were someone I didn't really know and was having a fight with. But Helen did know me and she had never heard the monologue before. So there were parts that struck her as a little funny, and she was smiling (stifling laughter, she later told me). At a couple points I tried to play off it. It never occurred to me that the relationship between Barney and Elaine might be a little deeper, and that they might be able to laugh about some things like the Newark hooker. Which is an interesting direction to go I think. And one I'll certainly have to try.

posted by Zozo @ 4:45 PM