About two weeks
ago each student in my acting class was given a monologue to memorize and
perform. Oh I was so excited. I went home the same day and started memorizing
it. My character was Mrs. Benjamin Pantier and the time period was 1860. Mrs.
Pantier is dead, and she is explaining why she killed her husband. She never wanted
to be married to him, he filled her with disgust, and that was a problem
because he was the only man the law and morality permitted her to have the
marital relation with. She claims she killed him because she couldn’t take it
any longer. As the performance day came closer I became more nervous. I practiced each day, but I practiced the most the day before the performance. I was so terribly nervous. Even though I knew my lines my biggest concern was forgetting them in the middle of the performance. The next day when I came to class we first did our regular breathing and relaxing exercises. I volunteered to perform first because knowing myself the nervous would only get worse. I went up in front of the class and sat in the chair. The instructor allowed us to take a minute or two to relax and get in the character. During that time I remembered that Mr. Pentilescu told us the character is believable only when you convince yourself that you are the character and force yourself to feel his or her pain. I took all of the energy I had to do so. I imagined guilt and sadness Mrs. Pantier felt. After about 30 seconds of imagining her pain I started feeling her pain spreading throughout my body and then I started performing.
It was after the performance I realized I wasn’t nervous at all. I concentrated on myself only and for those two minutes I forgot I was in front of 20 other students and Mr. Pentilescu. I am pleased with my performance and I am looking forward to many more. The next one is tomorrow, March 5th.
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