One Flew Over Audition and Preparation

Candidate Declaration - I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself. 


In preparation for my audition to get into One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I bought the book made by National Theatre, which inside had 75 different types of monologues for any kind of audition.  I read through the entire book, taking notes of all the monologues that interest me that I believed could show my skills in acting, as well as looking at the tips and suggestions in the book that would improve and refine the monologue I chose.  After I read each monologue, I chose on a scene from 2:18 Underground, which is spoken by Neil, who talks about his experience running a business with his wife, noting how it changed him making him more "ruthless", eventually getting so wrapped up in his work he could not play football with his son.  This inadvertently killed his wife and son as he told them to go to the park, but take the car when they wanted to just walk. 

I chose this monologue as I believed it showed my range and my ability to play a more emotional character as up until now, I haven’t really played an emotional character, mainly playing comedic and exaggerated roles such as Nibs in Peter Pan, or Omar in Aladdin.  To learn this monologue, I sat alone at my desk, splitting the monologue into sentences as it helped me learn into quicker.  Once I learnt it off by heart, I performed it to myself into a mirror to see now I could use my physicality to show my emotions during the piece, as well as timed it to make sure the pauses I took weren’t too long and didn’t take away the effectiveness of the speech.  Furthermore, I performed it in front of a friend so they could give me feedback on the piece, where they suggested changing the tone of my voice in certain places and putting my head in my hands when I break down, repeating that I told them to take the car.  Before my audition, I filled out my actors CV to give to Kelly so she knew my qualifications and basic facts about myself.  On the CV it listed what I'd performed in, who I played and my different skills.

During the audition, I successfully performed the monologue better than I had before, and believe I held the audience captive and left them wanting to know more about the character of Neil.  However, I would change the amount of the pauses I took during the monologue and also made some shorter, as they may have slowed the tension of the character revealing and coming to grips with him being the reason for the for his families death.




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