Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Training comes through in audition

Hey everyone, This is from Dennis, and he talks about how our work with the Three Energies and the Six Revelations of Speech kicked in for him:


The beginning of this week I attended an Equity call for a theater company that wanted a contemporary monologue of any sort. What I've realized over recent years is that unless it is a classical play about half the auditions have been giving sides at auditions. Since that seems to be the case I've let my contemporary monologues either go forgotten or gather dust. I decided that I would go with a monologue that I began using almost 26 years ago and haven't used in over 10 years because it seemed to fit the project.
Once I rattled it off to make sure it was all there I began taking moments in my days leading up to it just reacquainting myself with it. This is one that is special to me so it really is in my bones. Vocally I always delivered it in the same manner and it never seems stale or forced to me. I even have a lot of the (psychologically) gestures planned ever since I performed the piece in the full play.
When I entered the room and began the monologue all of a sudden the training we've been doing kicked in almost by surprise. I began finding "dramatic" and how it went into "thoughtful" at the beginning. Then the "blue wave" kicked in with one of my gestures shooting the beam of blue out my hand as my usual gesture went over my head in the middle of the speech with the "epic / direct effective" . The next sections I felt the "retreating to one's own ground" go into antipathy to end with "lyric/ thoughtful".
While all this is happening I felt a bit disembodied and began hearing the words coming out of mouth. They came out in a totally brand new way. A way I have never heard myself say that monologue before. I would even say that the feeling stayed with me a little after I exited the room.
Since this character, a preacher, is a bit on the poetic side to begin with, I guess I was immediately able to relate the work we've done to this piece. Regardless of what the auditor may have thought or the final result of that audition it certainly left me with quite a lot to think about. All of it good.


Thanks for letting us know about this Dennis,  wishing you all similar experiences as we look for applications of the training as they surprise us in our work!