Monologues 12/9/16

Lesson date: 12/9/16
Monologues

Over the summer we were asked to prepare a monologue and in today's lesson we had to perform them to the rest of the class. We chose a partner in which we would both evaluate each others performances - talking about the strengths and weaknesses in characterisation, tone of voice, pace of speaking and movement/body language.
My monologue was from a comic called 'Batman; The Killing Joke' written by Alan Moore; the character is The Joker. The monologue is about how The Joker knows he is crazy and he embraces it however he doesn't know why Batman isn't crazy like him because Joker believes they are very similar in the sense that they both had a 'bad day', and he says how 'it only takes one bad day' to drive someone crazy. He is trying to get Batman to realise that the world is a dark 'joke' and he is just as crazy as he is. This is the monologue:
"So... I see you received the free ticket I sent you. I'm glad. I did so want you to be here. You see it doesn't matter if you catch me and send me back to the asylum... Gordon's been driven mad. I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to World War Three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last World War? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?"

For this character, I took inspiration from four actors have played The Joker previously: Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill and Jared Leto. However, I did not want to copy how the this character has been portrayed so famously by the likes of Ledger and Nicholson; so based around my inspiration, I created my own version of The Joker whilst also incorporating a mix between all four actors' portrayals of the character.
Personally, I think my monologue went very well; I remembered it all and I felt very comfortable saying it because I feel I can somewhat relate to it. I was told by Joe (my partner) that my pace of speaking was appropriate for what was being said and I gave off the emotions I intended to give off. I kept a creepy and engaging tone throughout and my dynamics within my voice increased as I proceeded through the monologue - this was to show that crazy psychopaths can't remain calm. My movement was the same as my dynamics, they started very little, and they got bigger, faster and more definite as I went on. My main area of improvement was to try and make more eye contact with he audience and come right to their faces to show that The Joker isn't scared of anyone or anything, and to make people feel uncomfortable but engaged at the same time.
Based on our feedback, we selected a small section of our monologue and rehearsed/worked on it with our partners focussing on our feedback. We then performed this back to the class.
From today's lesson I learnt how to keep obvious eye contact with the audience and keep them engaged but also feel uncomfortable as well. My research helped me understand more about the character and his intentions.