.:Monologue:.
We began todays lesson drawing a scene of how our stage might look if we were to modernize our play and a separate drawing of what the stage would look like if we were to keep our play traditional. I think I will modernize mine, I have to make some decisions about the implied others that will be there, as I have quite a lot of people on stage whilst I am speaking.
Next, Mrs. Anketell went through how to say our monologue with each of us individually. This really helped me to understand Portia’s character and the rhythm and the pronunciation of my monologue. It took me a while to pronounce everything properly, as I had to add pauses where I thought they were appropriate. So I spent a good 20 minutes adding and subtracting pauses here and there.
Mrs. Anketell then got us to walk around the room saying our monologue. This was helpful as it made me realize what I needed to work on, such as my projection of my voice. My teacher made me stand on the stage and try and project my voice to the back of the room, usually this isn’t so hard for me to do but today it was :/ Also, this helped me realize that I was speaking much too fast for anyone to understand me. This particular monologue appears to need a lot of pauses to emphasize the point I am trying to make about mercy.
Also, I unfortunately found out that I have to be a man, again :/ as Portia is dressed as a lawyer in order to plead her case for Antonio in court. Oh well!
Also, I’m currently watching The Merchant of Venice on dvd. It’s interesting to watch the scene transitions and scene set ups in this particular version, and it is also very interesting to analyze the characters and see how they differ to what I interpreted when reading the play.
I had to write a rationale for why I want to make my play modern:
Through making the play modern, I am hoping to be able to create the same certain themes as was in the traditional play. I also wish to try to make my character, Portia, modern yet still having the same characteristics as she did in the original play. Also I would just like to see how different I can make the play whilst still leaving certain characteristics of it the same as the original. So, I really just want to challenge myself to create a new, modernized version of The Merchant of Venice.
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