Development of Waking up by Dario Fo and Franca Rame

Vocal Skills

The main factor of this monolgue is the switching from being in the scene with the husband and adressing the audience directly. To this affect when I am in the scene I project my voice mainly towards the chair which is where the husband would be sitting. When I'm talking to the audience I project my voice out to the audience to show that I am talking to them as in a monologue. I have pauses inbetween the changes so that it is clear that I have finished my line in the scene before changing. I did this because it was feedback to me by my piers that the character switching from addressing the audience to re-enacting the scene was confusing for the audience to watch. The tone I use when in the argument scene is very shap and agresive with a quick pace to contrast with a very calm and slightly sarcastic tone when adressing the audience. She is calm and witty to the audience so that those lines are more conversational to relate and form a friendly relationship with the audience. However during a moment in the scene when talking intimatly about how they as a couple should communicate and to be happy, she lowers the tone and speeks slowly as this is their slightly touching moment in the argument which creates a more 3D effect to the character. When she talks to the audience at the end about the argument getting caotic the pace of the words quickens and gets louder to build to the breaking point when she leaves Luigi. During the argument she repeats "me" when making a point of how much work she does and how little Luigi does. All of the "me"'s are empasised and I change "me,me,me" to "me,me,bloody me" to give it even greater emphasis and it is also inkeeping with the working class persition of the character. For a line in the monolgue my character impersonates her husband and as she see's him as a slob I dicided that he would have a bit of a slang accent and I also lowered the pitch of my voice to stereo typically show that I was playing a guy for comic effect.

Physical Skills

The movement during the argument is orientated around a chair which represents where the husband is seated. When I performed this to Sian the feedback I received was that I was looking at the actual chair and my eye line didn't match an imagined person sitting in the chair. I then asked a fellow drama student, Taran (I thought it was important that the measurement was based on a male) to sit in the chair and I noted that his eyes can about a foot above the chair. It took a lot of practice to stop myself looking at the chair and to make sure that I imagined a person sitting on the chair instead. This was only improved through practice and to break the habit. When my character addresses the audience directly I decided that to create a firm contrast my head and shoulders should be turned to face the audience. On feedback I found out that when I spoke to the audience after doing an impression of Luigi my manor isms were still manly. Manly in more detail is that my shoulders were slumped and my legs were apart with a very strong stance. After this I then worked on coming out of the impression and be lighter on my feet and upright straight away and for the rest of the monologue. To show that the character was very strong and confident she would hold herself very upright and to be very expressive and open with her gestures. Her movements are over exaggerative for humor when she is taking the mikky out of  footballers when she runs across the stage pretending to kick a ball and blow a whistle. The facial expressions are still quite subtle so that the character is realistic to the audience as the it is the characters actions that are funny and not her character.