WRITING MONOLOGUES
LL3 Performance TextsSection B Producing Texts for
Performance
2 performance texts (500 words each)+ An evaluation on ONE (500words)
One text MUST BE transcribed
LO:TO UNDERSTAND THE CONVENTIONS OF MONOLOGUE
WRITING
The performance pieces are marked out of
15 for AO4
The Evaluation is marked out of 10 for AO2
THE MARKING
The relevant assessment objectives for this section of the A2 internal assessment
expect candidates to: demonstrate expertise and creativity in using language appropriately for a variety
of purposes and audiences, drawing on insights from linguistic and literary studies
(AO4); demonstrate detailed critical
understanding in analysing the ways in which structure, form and language shape meanings in a range of spoken and written
texts (AO2).
THE AOS
Speeches, monologues and movie voice-overs were all popular again this year. Some excellent work had also
been done on nature documentaries and this is a genre which works particularly well as the ‘voice’ is
very clear. In the best work there was a clear sense of audience and purpose which enabled candidates to write in an appropriate register. Providing a brief contextualisation for each performance piece is undoubtedly best practice. This detail clearly
establishes the audience and purpose for the piece and demonstrates the candidate’s awareness of the
genre.
THE EXAMINER SAYS….
Candidates need to show awareness of the form they have selected e.g. stage directions should appear in monologues. Candidates should provide two distinctly different original pieces i.e. it is inadvisable to include two speeches unless they are markedly different in audience and purpose. ‘Spontaneous’ texts need to include some non-fluency features e.g. fillers, repairs, voiced pauses, etc. Provide a key for the markers used in the transcribed piece.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO REMEMBER?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrCDNsUQYb4&feature=related
WATCH THIS CLIP FROM THE WEIRBY CONOR MCPHERSON
This monologue features an elderly woman, who lives alone.She has help from a woman who comes in and looks after her during the day.The monologue starts as she has just fallenover whilst trying to clean.
A CREAM CRACKER UNDER THE SETTEE
ALAN BENNET
TALKING HEADSA LADY OF LETTERS
BY ALAN BENNET
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD1MW-nyhxg
BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE SERIOUS
BOB NEWHART
The thing about monologue is that it's immediate. It happens now. It happens here. And it is literally "im-mediate", in that there is ostensibly
no mediation: nothing intervening between the character and the audience. That's why, in certain magical theatrical circumstances, it can seem to fill the world. Everyone can think of a moment in a great play when attention zooms in on a single character telling a story - and the
audience simply stops breathing. It happened memorably in Conor McPherson's The Weir, for example, as each of the characters told their tale; and it's a famous reward at the end of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman
Cometh. In Pinter's The Caretaker, with its pivotal speech from Aston about electro-convulsive therapy, it provides one of the best moments of western theatre: "He showed me a pile of papers, and he said that I'd got something, some complaint. He said ... he just said that, you see. You've got ... this thing. That's your complaint. And we've decided, he said, that in your interests there's only one course we can take [...] he said, we're
going to do something to your brain."
COMMENTS BY LYNNE TRUSS
They are bloody hard to do, by the way. Getting inside your characters' heads and manipulating their lives from within requires a muscular imagination, to say the least. It's like
Being John Malkovich, but thankfully without all that exaggerated stooping. I've now tried monologues with twists as well as ones that are more concerned with
exposition. I've tried light ones and deeper ones; redemptive and non-redemptive. It's astonishing how many
things you have to think about. You must continually ask yourself, "How far does this person know what's going on?
Do I know, either?" Bennett said his talking-head people "don't quite know what they are saying, and are telling a
story to the meaning of which they are not entirely privy". Typical of him to make that sound easy, too.
AND SHE SAYS….
Step 1: Think of a character and a situationStep 2: Invent a backstoryStep 3: Consider your setting and design a stage for performanceStep 4: Start to draft out your monologue
BUT OVER TO YOU….
SOME STAGE DESIGNS TO CONSIDER