Challenges

When performing Shakespeare some challenges occurred during the rehearsal process, this included:

• Communicating the meaning of the text
• working with Shakespearean language
• My interpretation

Monologue Discussion

To develop out rehearsal process we decided to have a brief discussion to the rest of the group. This allowed use to gain a variety of feedback from our group member enabling us to improve our performance technique but also become familiar about discussing the monologues out loud as this is what we will need to do during the real audition.

I firstly discussed why the monologue is appropriate for me:

• I have previously studied Hamlet it a great deal of depth during my GSCE's-This means i am familiar with the characters and story looking at certain themes in the play
• Ophelia is at the centre of the tragedy where she eventually is the consequence of her own death. This allows me to make my own interpretation of Ophelia rising action and her state of emotions in the particular monologue.
• Ophelia is a young character-Very important and appropriate as i suit the physical appearance of the character creating an believable character.
• I feel my own personal emotional response would be stronger doing this character due to my acting style being more featured on playing emotionally charged character. This is due to personal experiences and having the ability to feature emotional charge into my performances

Next i discussed Ophelias character and journey throughout the performance and how my specific monologue should be performed due to the given circumstance.

After the monologue i was given some feedback, this included:

• Introduce the monologue more-After thinking about the given circumstance and realising that there would be great heights of tension after she had just been threatened by hamlet i figured that Ophelia would be in a state of almost panic! This needed to be present and obvious in my monologue. I could involve this by having Ophelia perhaps pacing around more and involving heavy breathing.
• Think about the given circumstances more-To make the performance more realistic i decided that during the monologue Ophelia's father would be present in the room. The given the monologue charge and would change the way it is performed! To help me develop this i performed the monologue with another person acting as the father. This helped me also realise the physical space!
• Expressing emotion-The aim of this monologue i feel that Ophelia is showing realisation. This need to show clarity to the audience so they understand exactly how Ophelia is feeling at the present time! I will portray this by adding subtle pauses and almost stuttering of words. This emphasis the fact that she is overwhelmed and is realising all her emotion to her father.
• Emphasised panic-To highlight this factor i need to place myself in the given circumstances and think about how i would feel
• Emphasised passion-To be a successful performance i feel i need to let the monologue be influenced by my own personal response! This included adding subtle hints of different emotions. Firstly anger, this is important to show Ophelia's desperation for wanting a male to guide her in life. Also adding a hint of unstableness into the monologue would be significant as eventually the play evolves to Ophelia's own death due to madness.

Ophelia's Timeline throughout Hamlet

1.3- Polonius and Laertes tell Ophelia that Hamlet just wants to sleep with her, and that she should break up with him. He's out of her league.

1.3- Ophelia agrees when her father Polonius orders her to stop seeing Hamlet

2.1- Ophelia emotionally tells Polonius about Hamlet showing up all crazy-like in her room. She develops throughout the monologue to realise that her father was right all along about Hamlet.

2.3- In a situation set-up by her father, Ophelia talks to Hamlet for the first time in weeks. He is cold, tells her he didn't love her, and then says, "Get thee to a nunnery." Ophelia thinks hes gone totally mad and is justifiably upset by his behaviour.

3.2- Hamlet sits next to Ophelia during the production of his play and continually makes dirty and insulting jokes directed at her. She tries to keep her cool however tension in increasing.

4.5- Ophelia wanders the stage acting insane, singing explicit songs and yelling incoherent comments at Gertrude and Claudius. When her brother comes in, she responds by throwing around some more flowers.

4.7- Gertrude announces that Ophelia had drowned whilst picking flowers. It was said to be suicide.

Character Profile

Ophelia:
Age- 16 Aprox.

Ophelia is a well known character in the story Hamlet for her journey where her young and naive personality. Ophelia becomes particularly significant throughout Hamlet as she grows to become mad and disturbed due to suffering from grief for her lover Hamlet this emotionally charged story ends in the tragedy of Ophelia being the consequence of her own death which was questioned to be suicide as she downed in the river whilst innocently picking flowers. Ophelia has the potential to become a tragic heroine, instead she crumbles to insanity, becoming merely tragic. Ophelia also plays the role in the portrayal of women at that specific time in history and Shakespeare's attitude towards women! Ophelia is to also show Hamlets warped view of women as callous sexual predator, and the innocence and virtue of women.

Many people have a stereotypical view of the character Ophelia throughout the play but i feel after reading the whole play context and studying the story in depth during my GCSE English that i feel although Ophelia may not be as important character as Hamlet or Gertrude for example but her role is very significant character throughout the play!

My interpretation of Ophelia i hope will show clarity in my performance. I feel she is a complexed character who at such a young age is only destiny to be happy with her true love Hamlet. She initially feels he is the one who can give her guidance through life but my specific monologue shows her realisation where he is not what she initially though he was.

Character Development-Ophelia

When first reviewing the monologue and the historical context of the play as to where to monologue was situated in the play i was faced with some concerns as to the style of acting i would want to portray to the audience regarding Ophelia's physical state whether she would be experience the rising action towards her resulting to madness.

After looking at the whole play context i discovered that this particular section of the plot was during the earlier days where Ophelia was first experiencing Hamlets changing personality which also eventually lead him towards madness as well as herself.

I felt like as an actor i didn't want to portray and almost 'steriotypical' view of Ophelia. This is normally her being concerned as always experiencing madness due to grief of her relationship with hamlet. As an actor i wanted to reinforce my personal response to the character. I feel a deep sadness towards Ophelia as all she needs is a suitable male for her to look up too and give her guidance through life.

My emotional response of Ophelia i hope will be clear in the audition as i want to show an in depth and mainly believable representation of Ophelia for the panel. This will involve her almost discovering the realisation of herself realising that her father was right all along about Hamlet. As her father Polonious is situated next to her in the room throughout the monologue i want to relate to this character and use imagination so therefor this will emphasis a developed believable experience.

After the realisation of how i wanted to perform the character Ophelia i needed to then develop these idea creating an end result of a character which will be bold and striking which the audience  will there for be able to easily not only sympathise but mainly emphasis with her lengthy journey throughout the play where eventually this results in the consequences of her own death.

My Classical Monologue

He took me by the wrist and held me hard;

Then goes he to the length of all his arm,

And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,

He falls to such perusal of my face

As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so.

At last, a little shaking of mine arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,

He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk

And end his being. That done, he lets me go,

And with his head over his shoulder turn'd

He seem'd to find his way without his eyes,

For out o' doors he went without their help

And to the last bended their light on me.

Rehearsal Exercises

We done various rehearsal exercises to help us become familiar with the new Shakespeare monologues. Initially i was worried about performing my first Shakespearean style monologue as i felt like i wouldn't be able to understand the language and the meaning behind the monologue and how the characters was emotionally attached.

As a group we done exercises to help encourage our learning of Shakespeare this included:

Tension and Relaxation:

This exercise we experienced in the previous assignment and there i felt it was beneficial so we decided to apply it to introducing our Shakespeare monologues.

In this exercise we read throughout the monologues to refresh our memories on theme firstly. Next we walked around the room at a neutral pace. As we begun to read the monologues out loud when we came to any punctuation we turned a whole 90 degrees turn. This physicals the tension in our monologues. Therefor where there is more punctuation the more tension and rising action is apparent in this specific part of the monologue.

When doing this exercise i notices that my monologue features a build up to the highest point of tension which is apparent in the middle of the monologue then then end decreases towards the falling action of emotions in the monologue. In my monologue Ophelia is verging on madness as she has just experienced a unplanned meeting with Hamlet who she had in the previous act agreed to her father she would stop seeing Hamlet! This meeting with Hamlet has allowed Ophelia to see that he is not that man she thought he was and he is not capable of taking on the position of being the role model in her life. Women in this era relied of men to guide them in life. Ophelia's has always been her father but her meeting with Hamlet had in forced her of her fathers opinion of Hamlet of being useless and cynical.

Neutral, Melodramatic, Non Verbal:

Another exercise we we done to develop the ideas around the emotions was the perform the monologues out loud and perform them using extreme form of styles. This included firstly performing the monologues as we currently had them, for example in an appropriate way. Next we were to perform the monologue the an over exaggerated melodramatic way. This included overemotional and over dramatic form. The allowed us to experience the heights of emotion in our monologues. Finally we would perform the monologues in a non verbal way using no speech but only using actions relating to the the words. I feel this helped us become aware of the physical space of what will use when performing our monologues.  Also it helped us physically embody the characters we were playing.

Overall i feel the outcome of this specific exercise was very effect and had a beneficial effect on influencing our final performance. I feel that playing our characters to the extremes can help us work towards the final performance as we can apply subtle hints of the different styles to our final classical performance.

Iambic Pentameter

Iambic Pentameter is meter that Shakespeare neatly always used when writing in verse. Most of his plays were written in the form of Iambic Pentameter, except for lower-class characters who speak in prose (dialogue written in prose appears as a block of text, unlike the strict rhythmic patterns of Shakespeare's verse)

Iambic Pentameter has:

• Ten syllables in each line
• Five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables
• The rhythm in each line sound like:

         ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM / ba-BUM

Why is Iambic Pentameter important?

In terms of Shakespeare Iambic Pentameter is highly prominent due to him using to the form to great dexterity.

In my opinion i feel it is highly important in influencing the way the lines are spoken when performing!

It allows the actor to realise which words are specifically stressed and which are unstressed. Therefor the creates a natural emphasis on the words.

Applying this to my monologue:

Applying Iambic Pentameter on my monologue i feel really helped me explore which words needed to be stressed and also it allowed the meaning of the monologue to have clarity.

"He took me by the wrist and held me hard.

Then goes he to the length of all his arm,

And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,

He falls to such perusal of my face

As he would draw it. Long stayed he so.

At last, a little shaking of mine arm

And thrice his head thus waving up and down

He raised a sigh so piteous and profound

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk

And end his being. That done, he lets me go,

And, with his head over his shoulder turned,

He seemed to find his way without his eyes,

For out o'doors he went without their helps,

And to the last bended their light on me."

Introducting Shakespearean Text

Also every actor at some point in there acting career will have to perform a Shakespeare monologue. At first this can seem very daunting as the text of Shakespeare opens up a whole new understanding and meaning but also language of acting. It requires understanding and indeapth research into the era and contextual context in order to portray a successful performance.

To succeed you have to understand whats happening , what your saying and convey that understanding to the audience. In addition you must be able to create a vivid character and dynamic blocking choices. This may appear to be a lot of work for a monologue of 1-2 minutes but the outcome will be appropriate and effective.

The Text

When working on Shakespeare monologues you are going to have to focus on doing some language work. This allows the actor to create an understanding of the text being spoken.

There are some exercises which are effective for enhancing this understanding of the language:

•  Define unfamiliar words- Doing this process allows the actor to understand words in the monologue which initially they may not of understand. The actor needs to identify and define every word in the monologue. Shakespeare uses many words which do not have the same meaning as they do today.
• Translate lines into modern English- Translation is very important when an actor is first introduced to a Shakespearean monologue. This allows you to understand exactly what you are saying and keep the translation in your head as you speak the Shakespearean words! This therefor help you have more of an understanding of the way the words need to be spoken...whether with anger,frustration, sadness, sorrow, joy...

Assignment Scenario

"You are in your second year of Drama School. This term you will be working with a visiting professional director on a classical text, which will either be a Greek or Elizabethan Comedy or Tragedy. You have been asked to prepare an appropriate monologue of no more than two minutes for an audition with the visiting director.

This is your opportunity to demonstrate your performance skills for a challenging text.

You will prepare and rehearse one monologue of now more than two minutes.
You must demonstrate a clear understanding of language and style."