Monologue - Goodbye Charles

My monologue is called ‘Goodbye Charles’ is set in a contemporary style in order to make it relatable. It is about a woman called Jill, who is not very trusting of her husband, Charles, as he vanishes. At the point in the play that my monologue takes place they are currently getting a divorce, well until Jill decides to eat the divorce papers. The play uses dark comedy when discussing serious topic of getting divorced, which makes the awkward situations easier to watch because it removes the seriousness. At the end of the play, it is found that she didn't eat the divorce papers but she ended up signing it. This reflects on contemporary times and how easily people lie and divorce their significant other. It also reflects that even though Charles left in the middle of the night and come back for a divorce, Jill still forgave him because she loved him. Statistically in 40%- 50% of people get divorced and I think that this shows it is a very relatable topic because of how frequent it is in society.


I developed my character by using Le Coques 7 states of tension. One of the exercises I did was to walk around the room and continued to act out the 7 states from the Jelly fish to curious to melodramatic and so on.  By doing this I was able to see how we react normally as ourselves and it was helpful because we then were able to perform this as our characters to see where they were on the scale. My character throughout these exercises stays fairly neutral because I think that even though she is feeling a lot of different emotions at the end of it what actually comes out is more of a wittiness rather than angry. "so lets use logic here: If A we never had a serious marriage then B we can't have a serious divorce" with this line I thought about the ways Jill could say this and I resulted to the fact that I think she would say this line with a sarcastic tone as she is trying to be smart and I feel like she is trying to show that she does but doesn't care. This is because she doesn't want to loose Charles but she is unhappy about the situation so instead of resulting to angry she is being more of a digging sarcastic commenter about the situation as if its her way to cope with the divorce. To give this tone across I purposely chose to add in pauses to the sentences like after 'A' and 'B' too give more of a dominance to it showing she knows what she's saying and she is being sarcastic and by pausing and putting emphasis on these words it shows the fact she's trying to dig these points in to get her own way which at first comes across as slightly immature.


I feel that Jill is a calm character, who shows signs of passive aggression, so I’d like to say her words with a sarcastic tone, in order to portray that passive aggression. I also think that it should be spoken as if you can tell she is thinking about the past as she talks therefore I think that by changing the pace of how fast she talks will give this effect. Like when she is talking about Paul writing her all these love sonnets I am going to change the past and make it faster to show the fact that she already has these facts revised and she remembers them for in a situation like this. I think that Jill is being neutral I feel like when Jill is overthinking and rambling, I would like to pace on the stage, to show lack of control of her emotions. It also shows how the situation deeply effects her however because of previous events she cant take the situation seriously as she though. I will also use a lot of hand gestures to add to her sarcasm when she is talking. I feel that by tilting my head and rolling my eyes at Charles, will show the audience that I am annoyed and find the whole situation seriously.

supportive written evidence document

How is the initial material being researched and developed at significant stages during the process of creating drama?

Firstly we started going through what topic we were going to use for our stimulus and what groups we were going to be in. Eventually Sam, Jenny, Lara, Molly and me decided that we wanted to do 'riots' for our stimulus and it will follow the theme of ‘Media VS Reality’. We got this idea from the documentary that we watched when we were researching riots. This documentary is from the London riots in 2011 (Our Crime). Additionally we have looked at images and newspaper reports to see what the media thought of the situation and how it was all represented so that we had a good knowledge of every view point. By doing this research we were able to block out our piece and start developing ideas in our performance and how the themes are going to intertwine with our stimulus. Our creative piece of drama will follow the events of five friends during the riots. We will be looking at their view points and how they are represented. “The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way”- definition of ‘Representation’. We got the idea of using representation through the media because there was a girl in the documentary ‘Our Crime’ who took some shoes and then she left them outside of the shop and the media portrayed her as a thief when this wasn’t the case. She picked them up and walked out with them in case anyone tried to attack her so she could throw the shoes at them. We saw CCTV of this footage and you can see that as soon as she leaves the shop she immediately drops the shoes which backs up her point of attempting to use them as a safety precaution, however the media and police did not see it this way and she spent time in prison. Our first scene will be using physical theatre. Our second scene will be showing the media and our third scene will follow the five friends perspectives. The fourth block of our piece will lead into a plot twist  involving my character and then our final block is the same as the beginning therefore the audience gets the gratification of knowing that they now understand the scene. 

How effectively are you personally exploring and developing you roles?

I think that we are all exploring our roles very experimentally as we workshopped our pieces and continuously changed them. I think that the best way we did this was the animal exercise we did. Therefore we discussed in the group what animal we think our characters would be. Mine was a wolf because my character has a group of friends like a pack, can be very calm but snaps and can loose their temper and they become very dominant to the situation later on in our piece which we said can reflect the fact that even though wolves are usually in packs they still defend themselves on their own a bit like a lone wolf. What when then did was picked a scene from our piece (the first cafe scene) and acted it out as if we were the animals with no speaking. This way we were able to look at movement clearly for example Lara's character was portrayed as a raccoon so when Lara went to play her character as a waitress the way that Lara chose to move was like a raccoon which actually really helped with characterisation because of the body movements and postures for example the hand gestures and the way things were picked up etc. What I focused on was posture and reactions, I chose to sit up straight and look around the room and at the other characters to react to them and continuously keeping an eye on everyone and what they were doing. By doing this I think that we were all able to see a different side to our characters and it enabled us to see some of the best ways to move as our characters using proxemics, levels, body language, gestures and facial expressions. Additionally I did a lot of Stanislavski's 'Magic If' technique and I thought about how I would feel in these circumstances that my character was in. I also thought about other ways I could play the scenes, for example should she be angry and firm and clear with her words or should she be yelling and loosing it. Eventually after practicing as a group we thought it would add more tension and reality if she gets really worked up to the point of storming out of the cafe.



How did you and your group explore the possibilities of form, structure and performance style?

We decided as your play was based on real events we wanted to make it very serious therefore we decided to take a Stanislavski approach to our piece. By doing this we were able to use Stanislavski, who is a practitioner, theory of 'magic if' which is where you as an actor put yourself in the characters shoes and really try to imagine what they are feeling and thinking by being as real and true to the character as possible. Therefore because we wanted it to be serious we found that this was the best approach for it. Throughout the piece as we developed our characters we all changed the way we performed based on each other and using the 'Magic If' because we understood them more and more as time went on so we were able to get the real emotions out of them that fitted the character and how they would react. Additionally because our stimulus was based on true events we wanted to make it so that it like this so that the audience can connect to it because it wasn't that long ago and therefore they can relate to it as it is a recent event and our target audience is more than likely to remember this because of how it was quite literally front page news for days on end and the media were obsessed with the riots as they made so many reports on incidents. However even though we wanted to take a serious approach to this we decided that we should add in some physical theatre and still images to our piece and I think the reason we were influenced by this was by the animal exercise we did. I think this because this enabled us to see how well movement can portray the same effect for a scene and sometimes even make it better and enable an audience to get what they need within a montage of movement. Therefore we used for one scene where they are in the hospital tapping for a clock noise and to show how they have been waiting for hours and hours. In these scenes, my character was not in them but the group used facial expressions and hand gestures to show how they were feeling at the time like putting their hands over their faces etc. We decided because the media is very constructed that we would make it so that our opening scenes were actually the end scene because that is the most impacting therefore in the case of the media they would have chosen this to be broadcast first before telling the whole story.


How did the work of established and recognised theatre practitioners, and/or the work of live theatre, influence the way in which your devised response developed?

We used our practitioners to give a serious tone to our piece, we did this with the use of Stanislavski's 'magic if' and we were able to create a serious and realistic tone to our devised piece. However even though our approach was serious we had diverse scenes to include laughter within the audience because it becomes more natural and realistic. We did this in scenes for example when Molly and Jenny are on the phone, to add in comedic feel to it we decided to have Jenny still thinking she was on the phone when she had cut it off beforehand. Additionally using physical theatre with this it enabled us as a group to understand how we were going to portray the media and how we wanted to show the construction of it all. This is because the media construct things in the way they want you to see them so through our research of programs like 'Our Crime' we were able to see the rate that time changes within media. Therefore we used our montage with the rate of time changing to show construction just like the media do. Therefore by watching our research and making linking it into physical theatre they influenced the way we chose to layout our devised piece.  This is because how we were going to construct it so that it was in a non-linear/yet slightly chronological order by having the beginning and the end the same but having the storyline in the middle running in a completely chronological order. However like the media time passes and only the key events stay that take place over the time of the riots. This also influenced how we were going to perform our devised piece by continuously developing the way our characters acted through work shops and through the way that they interacted with each other.


How successfully did your final performance communicate your aims and intentions for the piece to your audience?


I think that it worked very effectively because I feel like as a group we really developed the storyline to make it strong so the storyline in itself I think personally really helped us carry the piece smoothly to get across our message to our audience. Our message was strong and it was the idea that the media vs reality. The reason it was the media vs reality is because as a society we are highly influenced by the media and quite a lot of people believe everything that they read and entrust the media even though the media can be highly inaccurate. I think that another one of our messages was that people can change depending on what happens to them and sometimes this can cause issues however though the friendships of the group we tried to show that change isn't always bad and that there is still people that care. The media can influence us to do pretty much anything to downloading apps and buying products and even disliking people we don't actually know anything about. Therefore from our research of 'Our Crime' we thought it would be effective to have a character who thinks they know what they are doing and its for the best however the media still constructs the reality and broadcasts and documents it differently. This is why I think that our final and overall message was that you shouldn't always believe everything you see first time.



How effectively did the social, cultural, historical/political context of the piece communicate to your audience?

I think the our performance was effective in the fact that within the social, cultural, historical/political context, throughout our characters we made it relatable to our target audience. We did this by using diverse characteristics with diverse jobs and personalities etc so we were able to give our audience common ground to link to the characters. We wore modern clothing so that we would fit in the right era and spoke in our normal accents instead of something like a stereotypical 1950's Californian waitress to fit the accurate time period. That way there was something for everyone or a certain thing that they would do in their own lives by how they behave. For example wether it was like Sam's character, joking around and throwing things at his friends or wether it was like Molly's character with her sarcasm. The riots took place in 2011 therefore most of our audience would have been early teenagers therefore they would still remember an event like this happening as it was 4-5 years ago therefore its still very relevant and recent and people may even remember headlines and stories from the 2011 riots. To make our piece more surreal we added in scenes where their where specific dates in which the riots were actually happening. We added in these scenes during the news reports giving exposition to what is happening. After researching into the riots we found that a common thing was peoples issues with their jobs. This was because they were getting broken into and especially in small businesses with no stock means they can not pay their workers. Therefore our audience might be able to relate to this because either an older sibling, parent or uncle etc could have been effected in this way and the can relate to this because its close to home. I think that because this was a big event people are able to highly relate and as it was so recent they probably know someone who actually was first handedly effected by this.