What Have I Done to Myself?

     For my final project, I would like to adapt stories from Wally Lamb’s Couldn’t Keep It To Myself: Testimonies From Our Imprisoned Sisters.  It would be interesting to stage a few of the stories written by the women in prison as monologues similar to Eve Ensler’s work.  While I have not read many of the stories from the book, it would be interesting and entertaining to the audience to use dark humor.  

     Each monologue would be performed by the same person; it would be a one man (or woman) show. This would add to the challenge for me, by focusing all attention on me.  I would not be relying on other actors and this would be my first time performing under these conditions.   This is what inspired me to write about this idea. (Well, that and the fact I wanted to take my performance as the Gods to a whole new level.) This would especially challenge me as I would have little time between monologues.  This would become extremely difficult in transitioning between the women.  The transitions would have to be thought out carefully.  To compare with the Gods, the Gods were supposed to be within one body and thus, the transitions were supposed to be quick and done onstage.  However, playing the women in prison would be much harder as the transitions would need to be done during blackouts.  This means I would have to change personality and character completely in a short amount of time between monologues.  To make the physical differences easier, I would wear a prisoner outfit the whole time.  To show the difference between each of the women, I would change my voice, the tone of the monologue, and my facial expressions and body language. 

     The stage would look simple.  There might be a chair or two and some individual props needed for specific monologues.   However, the main focus would be on the actor delivering the monologues. Without a script, I cannot say for sure how long the scene will take, but I will guess around ten minutes. The setup will most likely go as follows: introduction to audience about what they are about to see,blackout, monologue 1, blackout, monologue 2, blackout, monologue 3, blackout, then some way of concluding the performance. There can be more or less monologues depending on how much time each one will take up.  Therefore, the time and setup will be finalized with a script.

      Specifically for this project, this would be interesting as it is something we have not done in class so far.  Performing a one person show would be a unique experience-certainly one to end the year with.  This seems like the perfect time to experiment as there is no more stress of IB in this class.   We only have a few weeks left and I want to go above and beyond what I have already done. 

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