Notes. Deborah Carlson of Word of Mouth @ A/C Studios: An acting class based on the work of Patsy Rodenburg

Acting: A Serious Discipline and a Craft

Notes on doing monologues:

With all monologues, you "think" yourself into consciousness, you "figure it all out" as you go along. Most -- if not all -- monologues are "insight" based.

Train myself to be "on" the text (see The Actor Speaks, exercise 51, p.176): communicate only with eyes and breath -- no extraneous movements of my head and body: just breath, move nothing else.

Notes on Vanya:

After Elena leaves, his monologue -- don't play the end: he doesn't feel like a fool until he says it.: Be exactly where Vanya is, and that's IN the words, ON the line I'm speaking, and NO WHERE ELSE. My full attention needs to be on where he is right now, NOT on where he's going. Train myself to always work this way.

Most characters, especially Chekhov's, are usually "unhappy," i.e., they're striving for what they're convinced will make them happy, and the mistake I'm making is to put a negative spin on everything they say, i.e., assuming the characters feel unhappy or negative or upset when speaking just about anything. In Vanya's monologue, thinking about Elena, remembering when they meet, imagining how things could have been -- that gives Vanya great pleasure (and he's drunk too) until he realizes what a fool he's been. All stories have a natural arc -- find them.