Over the past two days, I have had individual rehearsals with all the actors with a monologue. I began with Lewis.
I've noticed that Lewis often paraphrases the lines and has trouble with words and phrases such as 'find neither hide nor hair of her'. I decided that I would go through the whole monologue with him, unlearning some of the lines he had learned incorrectly and replacing it with the proper wording. I did this in small sections and did other activities inbetween so it wouldn't become boring and tedious. These activities included asking him to tell me the story of 'The Little Jesus' in his own words and performing the monologue to ensure that he had taken on all he had learned. Another thing I did was help improve his timing on some sections, such as: "And so she was sent off by the state to live in the forest, with some...abusive foster parents...........Who hadn't informed the state that they were abusive, on the form." I felt that I needed to help him insert pauses in sections like that to improve its comic value. All these exercises were helpful as the next day, I noticed that he had almost completely relearned the script without any stuttering or hesitation.
The next day, I did exactly the same exercises with Conor as he too was paraphrasing. He is already very good at using pauses for dramatic and comedic effect, so I thought that time would be better used relearning the script. I will see in the next rehearsal if Conor has taken it all in.
Finally, I worked with Eleanor. I did the same exercises as I did with the others, but we were finished so quickly as she already knew the speech perfectly word for word. So I decided to go through the speech with her a few times, helping her slow it down instead of rush it, and help her find points where dialogue could be slowed down even more. We then practiced her physicality for 'The Little Jesus' to try and make it larger more obvious and more caricature. She has got a lot better at it in recent weeks, but I believe she can improve even more.
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