Day 103: Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare (BBC 1982 film adaptation)

I'm revisiting Cymbeline as the date for my Shakespeare Certificate exam approaches, since my monologue is one of Imogen's speeches. I was hoping to see if someone else's approach to the lines might help me get over the block I've been experiencing - Sod's Law being all-knowing, the entire speech was omitted from this particular version. It did give me an interesting perspective on the character though (played by a very young Helen Mirrin) as almost entirely opposite to how I initially read her. I suspect part of the difference comes from the style of the production - the whole thing felt very melodramatically Shakespeare, rather than the naturalistic approach that seems to be more common in recent play adaptations. But more specifically, Imogen looked a lot less like the wayward heir type on screen as on paper, less angry and stubborn and more hurt and broken.

This has led me to think more about the character type I see in Imogen based on my reading, and I think possibly looking up the "Kate/Bob" episodes of Blackadder might be closer to what I had been hoping to do. It's all valuable research though - seeing it done in a way I hadn't considered and that doesn't feel right for me still means engaging and understanding why it doesn't fit. (I should add, I'm not saying it's a bad performance or even the wrong decision for the production, it's just different and not how I want to do it, and I'm in a position to make that decision for myself.)

Day 49: Saturday is Skills Day is BACK!

..and this time, it's rehearsing a monologue. Oh yes.

I have finally got some information out of Edinburgh Acting School as to what would be required to audition for the adult Performance class, and was told "a monologue of your choice". No indication of length, period etc but I figured it should be something I can refine and reuse for degree course auditions next year. Since I had already started looking through Cymbeline for material, I've chosen one of Imogen's speeches and started working on it.

I was sent a set of ten questions by an actor friend which act as a starting point to get into the head of the character, particularly for single speech/scene settings. I've gone through the list and found that as much as I felt that I liked Imogen as a character to start with, I have a lot more in common than I first thought, or at least have found a way to interpret how she's got to where she is in a way that's familiar (albeit on a different scale) to my own experience. I've also started to realise that there's a huge amount of conflicting emotion going on, and a lot of head-chatter, for Imogen during this particular section, and it's also the only time during the entire play that she doesn't directly have somoene looking out for her. That's a pretty scary position and one she clearly doesn't really want to admit scares her. She comments at one point in the speech that "Plenty and Peace breeds cowards: hardness ever of hardiness is mother"... as a way to psych herself up to explore a potentially scary and/or dangerous cave, but her demeanour and actions through the whole play show the reverse of this. She fancies herself as independent, even a little rebellious, but always with a safety net knowing she'll never really have to face "hardness". Her self-assured "hardiness", which is there from the outset, starts to crack just a little in the absence of that "peace and plenty". She complains about the conditions she's now found herself in, blames everyone she can think of for being lost and alone, and eventually spends 10 lines trying to get up the courage to explore the cave.