Character Study's Monologues.

Paul (Left) Danny (Middle) Jade (Right)
Motor-town by Simon Stephens

The contemporary piece I have chosen to perform is "Motor-town" by Simon Stephens, it's a dark look into the life of Danny and is set just after the Iraq war, the way that the script is written is fantastic the only character to be seen all the time throughout the play is Danny, and the other characters such as Lee, Jade and Paul crop up in different scenes, which allows you to concentrate on Danny and understand where the twists in his life lead him to. Now the character I will be playing is Paul, he is by far my favorite character in the play, purely because he is so eccentric that you grow to understand the character more than the others in the play, with the expectation of Danny, Danny goes to Paul in his shop to get his gun fixed, whilst there Danny meets Jade for the first time and also gets a rather random lecture from Paul that stems from, the meaning of life to what he feels the poor are really like.


Paul is a very observational, and a judgmental person you can tell this by looking at lines such as " It's full of fat kids in football shirts, isn't it? Lovely that. I like it round here more, though. I like the views, you understand?" and also "Good man. Good man. Good man. He's a bit of a weird old cunt though, don't you think?". He talks about some very touchy subjects in a vile manner, that at times makes sense, so I think that he is a very angry man who sees no consequence in what he says for instance he says, "You know the real reason why people tell you to adopt the brace position in the event of an emergency on an aeroplane? It's so the impact of the crash on the neck forces the spinal column into the skull and into the brain and kills you immediately. Rather than allowing you to suffer a prolonged and horrible death. That's the reason why, really." 
I also noticed that he comes across very protective of Jade but in a weird way, and maybe to protective of her, "Can I ask you this? Do you ever get that feeling? When you're in, you're in, you're in say a, a, a, a bar or a restaurant or walking down a street, and you see a girl. A teenage girl. You see the nape of her neck. In her school uniform. With her friends. All pigtailed. And you just want to reach out and touch. You ever get that?"But on top of all of this i think that Paul is a caring person, he is polite in his own way as well as understanding of problems, especially when Danny is talking about his wife's death:And he later talks about 9/11, "They don't let you take anything onto planes any more, Danny. Did you know that? Since 9/11. Fucking nothing. Apart from pens, oddly. They should take pens off you. That's what I think. The pen can be a lethal instrument. You can stab somebody in the eye. Push it all the way in. Cripple them at least. Cut into the brain. Leave them brain damaged. It'd be easy, that. I'd leave the end sticking out, wouldn't you?".

PaulWhat happened to your wife, Danny?

DannyShe got killed.

PaulNo.

DannyWe got robbed. She got shot in the chest.

PaulGood God, Danny, that's awful.

DannyYeah.

PaulWhen was this?

DannyA couple of years ago.

PaulDid they catch the fucker?

DannyYeah. He was a soldier. Some squaddie.

PaulFor God's sake. I'm really sorry to hear that. Aren't you, Jade? Aren't you sorry to hear that?

All sections in Speech Marks were taken from "Act 4" of the play Motor-town. 
I used Drama Online to read the script: http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/motortown-iid-14115/do-9781408167373-div-00000022 

Monologues (Blog 1)

The two contemporary monologues I chose to looks at were Liam from Dennis Kelly's "Orphan", and Paul from Simon Stephen's "Motortown" I spent the first lesson exploring the text to grasp a basic idea of what the character was feeling.

Liam from "Orphan" in this scene is showing remorse to the fact he wants to be like Danny, Liam's Sister's husband, he explains how he wishes he was Danny, but it sickens him that he thinks like this. The play first saw the stage at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in the summer of 2009, its the story of Liam, who first arrives on stage covered in blood explaining that he was helping a victim of a stabbing who was lying in the gutters, but this is however a lie. Helen, his sister, is very loyal to her brother and so is torn between between doing the right thing and get him arrested, or protecting him from his own violent crime.

Paul from "Motortown" is explaining what he thinks of the poor in England, whilst fixing Danny's P.99, his pistol, the first time I read it I thought he was angry about what is happening to this country and so comes across very annoyed, however the gruesome fact about the scene is that he talks about everything so casually in such a vile manner. Motortown is an insight into the Iraq war, it is violent, fierce and controversial. Danny has come back from the war "I don't blame the war. I miss it. Its just you come back to this." is what Danny says, and so from this line you find that his view of England must be revolting. The story follows the difficulties he finds coming back to this estranged place that he fought for, with vivid images of violent torture running through his mind.

I had eventually decided to do Motortown, I felt there was more to work with and on, and it would be interesting to look at the character, Paul, in more depth to understand why he thinks this way, is it because of his brother or was it the way he was brought up, which leads me onto say that I feel that this character is very diverse there are many ways to play the scene and I would like to explore them until I find what's best for me.

The Two classical monologues that I have chosen to look at are Benedict from Shakespeare's "A Much Ado About Nothing" and Mercutio from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", with my classical I was looking for a speech that had fluidity to it making it different in the sense the pace would vary throughout.

The monologue extract for Mercutio is taken from act 1 scene 4 of "Romeo and Juliette" in this scene Romeo, Mecutio and Benvolio are wearing masks, on their way to the Capulate feast, yet Romeo is wondering how they are to get into the feast as they are Montogues. Throughout this scene Mercutio is mocking Romeo, by taking Romeo's words of love and twisting them into innuendos, Romeo explains that he had a dream that going to the fest is a bad idea, and this monologue is Mercutio telling Romeo that he has been visited by Queen Mab a fairies who visits your dreams, the speech tails of into bitter words until Romeo steps in to stop it.

Benedict's speech is taken from act 2 scene 3 of "Much Ado About Nothing", this scene looks at Benedict who speaks his thoughts aloud in the garden, whilst his friends plan how they are to trick Beatrice and Benedict to confess their love for one another, Benedict is explaining how love makes men into idiots, he talks about how Claudio could be turned from a good solider into a soft hearted man, and therefore he believes it is unlikely he will be able to love or be loved.

I have chosen to use Benedict's speech for my classical, as there is a significant difference from my contemporary, although you could say this about Mercutio's monologue he still shows bitterness towards something, just like Paul in Motortown. Also Benedict is very unsure about himself he observes and judges others, without realizing he is only judging the fact that he cannot confess his love for Beatrice, Paul, "Motortown" however is very sure of himself and judges other purely for the fact he can making him more confident in how he judges others so freely.

Punk Rock (Blog One)

Punk Rock looks into the school life for 9 Sixth-Former's, who are preparing to take their mock A-levels, whilst they go through the struggles of teenage life.

To look deeper into our characters we created a table with 5 categories, what my character says about themselves, what others say about my character, what my character says about others, facts and stage directions. We then looked through the script and filled in the table in order to find small personality factors about them, for instance William Carlisle is 17, my character, he
talks about others a lot and the things he says are observatory of the things characters say or do, which leads me to believe that he watches everyone very closely, but whenever he talks about him self he lies, and the only truthful things he says are "I'm rubbish me. I'm a waste of space. I'm not even worth the space I take up. I'm not even worth the paper I'm written on. I've got no friends. I've got no imagination. I've got no ideas." This proves that he doubts himself and has low self esteem

Looking deeper into the lines we found that William's home life is "rather ghastly" as he says in the play about Chadwick's home life, you see William lies about his parents death, when actually it is his brother who died as we find out later, but the way William talks about his parents was as if he wished they were, if you think about it a parent losing a child is heartbreaking and having another child to remind them of this could bring out the pain in a variety of ways such as smothering the child, spoiling them rotten to make up for the lost child, or it could be a constant reminder of the fact their child had died and so they don't treat their son kindly, and this is what we believe is happening with William, I also noticed that he has a weird relationship with his teacher Mr Lloyd, and I think that Lloyd is almost a parental figure in his life more than his parents.

William also has a childish side to himself, for instance he asks very personal and awkward question, like a child would because they don't know any better, also in scene two he and Lilly are talking about their lives and its almost as if they have to one up each other, Lilly says her mums a drunk and William reply's by saying his mum is dead, he then ups the anti by saying his dad is dead too, which then leads onto Lilly basically showing William her scars from self harming, which eventually leads onto her showing William how she burns her skin, this in tern is like two children in a school having an argument about who's dads bigger than who's but with more of a darker edge.

William has a lot of suppressed anger, which comes out more through out the play starting in scene two when he talks about the chavs he gets quite violent and malicious about it, i think this is because William doesn't talk to anyone about his problems, you can tell this because whenever he is with Lilly he is open about his life, whether it be lies or not, but when he is around the others he is just trying to fit in, as any young person has done.

I think that his long-term objective is to be accepted into Kings, a college he's applied for, then eventually make it to oxford or Cambridge like he says, his super objective is to be normal to settle down with some kids to be an architect and to own a house, which he says at the end of the play to the therapist, however the through-line that stops him from achieving this, is sadly the fact he kills his "friends."

In my opinion I think that William is ambitious, intelligent, hes very observant of his surrounding
, but on top of all of this he is troubled with anger and no way to express this therefore he is childish, viscous at times and has a very low confidence.