We started our classical monologues with Alice Barclay, after meeting us and getting to know us a little

bit she pulled 3 Shakespeare monologues for us each to pick one from. We worked with all 3 at first by
walking around the room and reading them out loud. Already this allowed us to naturally bring the
character to life without really realizing. Alice explained to us that it's very easy to over act Shakespeare
and far too easy to overthink. Shakespeare works best when you can act it naturally as the words
already hold so much power in scene that if you properly theatre act alongside it becomes cringy and
hard to watch. I ended up picking a monologue from twelfth night by “Viola”, i just found the extract full
of different emotions and had points when it was sincere but also points when it was comedic which i
really liked. Alice explained to us that you need to find a rhythm while speaking Shakespeare otherwise
it becomes stiff and hard to follow as i beleive a key part of understanding Shakespeare is the way you
say and act it. So when choosing a monologue i also looked for a pattern or rhythm in the words that i
could work with. The curiosity and the depth of different emotions in Violas monologue just drew me in.
Once i had decided, id bring a copy of it in some form around with me and whenever having a free
chance i would read through it allowing my brain to become familiar with the words and naturally
develop a flow. Personally, i wasn't the biggest fan of Shakespeare but I've never struggled with it which
allowed me to understand the character and context on a deeper level. To understand Viola's feelings i
did a fair amount of research on the story of twelth night and tried to see from her perspective. Always
on edge because you are living a lie, still grieving your twin, previous life and everything you lost on top
of finding yourself in a love triangle that risks exposing everything you are doing to survive. Trying to
comprehend that thought process and wave of emotions that she must have been feeling means picking
apart the whole monologue and annotating each detail. However, one thing i picked up on is how Viola
always has hope that the situation will get better, she is constantly persevering which you can tell
throughout the story and the extract. While doing our contemporary monologues we were also working
on a shakeslam at the chapel arts. In this i was working on an extract from Macbeth where the 3 witches
tell him his future which ultimately in my opinion changed his fate. By studying two plays by
shakespeare it allowed me to fully focus on the subject, language and why he writes like he does, it
allowed me to compare and find similarities while understanding more about his reasoning behind the
worlds he creates. Overall, i feel more comfortable with preforming and reading shakespeare than i did
before, while also having a better grasp on his logic, style and pattern.