This Monday lesson, we looked at the prologue/chorus speech at the beginning of the play. As I have been given the part of the prologue and main chorus member, I get to learn this gigantic monologue. It's a good thing that we've gone over it a little bit before Christmas break because I can go home and study it over the next few weeks. I've also recorded this monologue to start listening to it in my free time and whilst I'm doing other homework.
Whilst I've been receiving direction on my voice mainly, the rest of the cast has been working together to create some physical sequences to act out what I'm saying. Although I'm not a part of these sequences, I have to be aware of them because I have to pause sometimes to make sure that they're in position before I continue with the monologue.
Here's what we've come up with today:
I think that it's really effective to have the sequences going on in the background of my monologue but I feel that I somehow need to make my "character", who is quite plain, more dynamic and involved. Not exactly sure how I will do this, but I think that the more I acknowledge metatheatre -or suspend the audiences' disbelief, yet still entice them into the story, the more interesting my monologue will become. I did a little more research on metadrama, in my spare time, just to understand it a bit further, because it's part of my character's job to acknowledge this fact -that we are performers in a play.
https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/engl3270/327.meta.html says:
"Metatheatre" is a convenient name for the quality or force in a play which challenges theatre's claim to be simply realistic -- to be nothing but a mirror in which we view the actions and sufferings of characters like ourselves, suspending our disbelief in their reality. Metatheatre begins by sharpening our awareness of the unlikeness of life to dramatic art; it may end by making us aware of life's uncanny likeness to art or illusion. By calling attention to the strangeness, artificiality, illusoriness, or arbitrariness -- in short, the theatricality -- of the life we live, it marks those frames and boundaries that conventional dramatic realism would hide.
Basically, it's saying that metatheatre is even closer to realism than conventional realism because it acknowledges that what we are taking part in is actually a play and not real life. That's what I've come to love about metatheatre, because it just seems so real compared to the play itself, even though, in reality, it is just a part of the play. It's slightly disconcerting to think about but once you get it into your head, it seems easier to understand. I think that in acknowledging that the play is a play more by emphasising words like "play" and "cast" in my speech may help it to be more entertaining and add a level of depth that the audience may have noticed, but in me making it more obvious, would actually consider.
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