Table of Contents
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE ACTORS BOOK OF CLASSICAL MONOLOGUES
STEFAN RUDNICKI was born in Krakow, Poland, and lived in Stockholm, Sweden, and Montreal, Canada, before arriving in the United Stateswhere he was educated principally at Columbia University and the Yale School of Drama.
In addition to having directed more than one hundred and twenty theatrical productions in New York, regional theatre, and abroad (more than a quarter of them classics and fifteen by Shakespeare), he is also an actor, producer, award-winning playwright, photographer, and film and video director.
He has taught at the University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music, New York University, Dartmouth College, and Long Island Universitys C. W. Post Campus, where for six years he chaired the Department of Theatre and Film.
He has been Artistic Director of Skyboat Road Company since 1979, and with his wife, Judith, lives in New York City, developing new media projects, teaching privately, and evolving his Interactive Matrix Process for performers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Will Nixon and Laura Ross of Viking Penguin for their conceptual and editorial contributions respectively ; Ralph Pine of Drama Book Publishers, who published and nurtured the original Classical Monologues series; the translators of the Greek materialin particular Kenneth Cavander and William Arrowsmith, whose work I have performed and staged and admired for many years; my wife, Judith Cummings, who has been involved in every phase of this enterprise and whose commitment to the magic of the spoken word has been a continuing inspiration to me; and finally the actors, all of them, who persist in drawing life from the obscurity of centuries past.
It is to the actors, with their unique ability to compress all history into a single present moment, that this volume is dedicated.
Stefan Rudnicki
New York City, 1988
General Introduction
Preparing a classical monologue need not be the chore or the terror many actors seem to find it. This collection is conceived as a tool for actor and student, a guide to the preparation of classical material without benefit of director, production concept, or acting ensemble.
It is not my intention to provide a substitute for an intelligent reading of the complete text of any play; indeed the actor is urged to see each monologue as much as possible in the context of the role. Neither am I interested in imposing exclusively scholarly interpretations on the material. Rather, I offer a simple interpretive focus for each piece that is addressed to an actors problems exclusively.
I have chosen material that makes dramatic sense even when removed from the plot and thematic support of a full play. Where a speech does not naturally have a beginning, a middle, and an end, I have sometimes interpolated other material to supply the missing component. In other cases, I have taken portions of several speeches (sometimes from different scenes) and devised a composite in order to give an actor something worth wrestling with.
I am also concerned that each monologue have the potential to involve the actor in an active, positive manner with his external surroundings, so I have avoided those pieces that are for the most part introspective in focus or passive in tone.
None of the Shakespeare monologues has received exposure so excessive as to render it tiresomely common, and many of the other selections are unknown outside of a small circle of specialists. Greek drama in particular has long been ignored by actors, and it is my hope that this book will encourage a revival of interest in this valuable resource. I believe that the less familiar an audition speech, the more likely that it will be heard with attention.
The monologues are generally two to three minutes in length. It is better to proceed slowly, rather than racing through to the finish, and it is always wiser to choose a shorter scene than one that is too long. For those pieces that might run over three minutes, I have indicated cuts for briefer versions.
To aid the actor in structuring his work, I have placed beats where there may be natural pauses, decisions, or transitions. These are meant to provide a map of the scene, and are not meant to be followed slavishly. I have tried to indicate a plausible resting place within the first three lines of each scene, to allow the actor a chance to pause, evaluate his opening, and change focus or calm nerves as necessary. The pattern of beats is less consistent in the Greek section, where I have tried to remain as faithful as possible to the punctuation and structure of each translator.
Although I address the reader as actor, I hope that this book will be useful to other theatre professionals and to students in a variety of disciplines as well. I do, however, assume an active involvement with the text.
Acting
It is my assumption that a good actors work is essentially the same whether he is preparing an entire role, a scene for class, or an audition piece, and that this preparation begins with a careful and detailed development of the relationships implicit in the material and in the situation in which the work is to be performed or shown. Each positive choice the actor makes places him in a new relationship to others (imaginary persons, other actors, or audience), his environment (including costumes, props, and the very space he occupies), his own physical being, and the words he is to speak. The more detailed the choices and the fuller the actors involvement, the richer the matrix of relationships becomes. It is that matrix, rather than some vague mental image derived from preconceptions and the imitation of others, that defines characterization at its best.
Most often bypassed by an actor in search of emotional truth is his relationship to his text. In classical material, especially verse, the specifics of that relationship are crucial. I asked a class once why King Lear spoke in verse, and was told that it was because people spoke like that in those days. Perhaps some future generation of students will come to a similar conclusion about why La Bohme was written to be sung.
Verse speech and song are similar in that they are extensions beyond normal forms of experience and expression. Whether the verse derives from heightened emotion, extreme public formality, or some other source, the actor must be prepared to make the text entirely his own, a direct manifestation of his own personal choices.
Classical verse must be rehearsed aloud. The way a word or phrase sounds when spoken, screamed, or whispered may often provide the key to a whole scene. An intensely honest and talented actor I knew, a week before opening as Vendice in The Revengers Tragedy, was on the verge of going to a hypnotist for help in learning his linesa last resort. None of his usual study techniques were of any use until another actor, with considerable classical experience, took him for an evening stroll. After a couple of hours of shouting lines to the moon and tall trees, the problem was solved and Vendice was on his way to a brilliant portrayal. Whether the playwright is Shakespeare or Tourneur, much of the actors work has been done in the writing: it lives in the sounds and rhythms of the words themselves.
Choosing a Monologue
