GIRLS AND BOYS

"Girls and Boys", a play by Dennis Kelly

She starts talking about how she met her husband and what was going on in her life before she met her husband. Going wild, drinking, using drugs, having numerous sexual partners. However, when everything seemed to be too much, she decided to stop- gave up her job, took her money and went to traveling in Europe. Then in Italy, while in the queue to board an Easy Jet flight she meets the man who will be her husband a few years later.

...Why meeting him changed her life completely?

When I started to work on my monologue, I chose this part of the play- the very first three pages. At this point, the audience does not know what will happen to the main unnamed character. I found the beginning of the play very funny. I felt devastated when I learned what happened to the character I played.

This play is a Solo Performance play. The main character is a working-class woman in her 30s. She talks about her daughter and her son and narrates to the audience a bit of her life story: where she was in her 20s, what she was doing, the crazy 20s life she had, how she decided to travel around Europe and how she met her husband. She goes into when she met her husband, describes their first years together and how they eventually got married. She further goes into how as a young professional she started dominating her job until eventually owning her own company. 

At intervals she recalls moments with her children while they are at home: when her daughter and her son are playing or fighting, and she is putting peace in between. Other times she recalls how when they asked her to play, she would ‘minute’ the playing time because she is tired from working and the chores of the house. Everything seems quite common; many people could possibly identify with her life. She then tells the audience what happened with her children and what happened after that.

WORKING ON MY CHARACTER UNNAMED WOMAN: MY PROCESS

I had a strong connection with my character as we were both a similar age and working-class mothers.

My first approach was to play it as ‘a solo woman performance,’ like a stand-up performance. That was how I perceived this scene when I first read it. A typical monologue with a woman talking about her husband in not the best terms and telling past experiences that could embarrass herself in front of others. I found this part of the play very funny, and I wanted to play a contrasting character from the one I played for my duologue performance.

One obstacle as an actor that I found with my monologue was the ending of it.  

As this play is a Solo Performance play, I perceived it as a whole unit and cutting it at any point of the play meant losing much of its full meaning.

It was helpful to action the script. It helped me to see with more clarity the actions behind some lines and some blocks of the script.

I did a research study about my character with the given facts that appeared in the play: Age, sex, occupation, country where my character lived, civic status.

I used the Stanislavski’s technique ‘The Six Fundamental Questions’:

‘Who?’ Unnamed working-class mother in her 30s who has suffered a terrible traumatic experience.

‘When?’ Sometime after the incident.

‘Where?‘ In front of others. This question was particularly difficult to answer. At first, I saw myself in front of an audience doing a stand up. The more I worked and dug into the character, my audience changed from a public to a single person (a friend, somebody who suffered a similar experience) to a group of people who suffered a similar experience.

‘Why?’ It was difficult to answer this question. I looked at this part of the play first and I understood I said this because I wanted to be excused from meeting my husband and what happened later. I wanted to get sympathy from those that were listening to me and understand I was just like them at that age.

When answering this question looking at the whole play, my answer to ‘Why?’ changes: Because talking about them and remembering how everything was before that happened, brought me back to the person who I was before and who had a life, a normal and common life with two children she sometimes forgot to dedicate them too much time because she was too busy working, doing her chores at home, and dealing with other thousand different things.

‘For what reason?’ It took me an exceptionally long time to answer this question, and it was not until the very end of the process that I could give an answer to this question. Because I wanted to heal and help others to avoid a similar situation happening to them.

‘How?’ I am just speaking from my heart, without hiding anything, honestly opening to those who are listening to me, bearing my soul to them. Sometimes sitting, sometimes standing close to those to whom I am speaking to.

My feelings were saying to keep it small, to keep it minimal, quiet, private, even sometimes quite emotionless. But I was suggested to make it bigger at some points of the monologue, to speak louder. It was difficult for me. I did not want to decide. I did not want to think about which way I was going to go as that would imply not performing from my instincts.

And then the ‘Magic if’ of Stanislavski appeared: I could not put me in the same situation of the character because I did not have that experience, but I used another image to put me in a similar mindset: I used the unexpected loss of my uncle and the feeling of losing someone with words still to be said. The random image of the last time you saw that person who meant so much to you.

When I went that way, tears would naturally flow but I was determined not to push tears into my eyes during my final performance.

After conducting some research about people who have suffered a traumatic experience in similar terms, I decided I needed a prop to catalyze my inner thoughts. I took my son’s small toy car.

Repeatedly spinning the wheel of the toy car was bringing me to the sadness and despair state of mind. Before my performance, I wanted to be prepared, to get into the mindset of my character so I began to spin the wheel of the toy car, and to my surprise, I started to quietly cry behind the audience. I felt I did not want to go anywhere but instead I wanted to stay there alone with my thoughts. It felt a bit forced to go to the stage and that is why, for the first time ever, I forgot part of my first line, and I caught my thought noticing it, but I continued the same. My mind was in between two places, the now ‘performing’ and the past ‘missing the line,’ once again I missed part of my script and I jumped over the second section of the script.

This experience was interesting as an actor: First, because I caught my mind wandering and by acknowledging I was not fully present in the performance. And secondly, because I continued from my instincts, trusting I knew my lines and I knew the scene and I understood the character and it felt as I was the character and the pain of the character was shown, the instability of the character was shown.  And that was not a meditated decision. It happened on the spot.

It was only just before my final performance that I decided to have a chair in the middle of the stage, and I would approach the stage walking from behind where the audience was sitting. I wanted with that symbolic entrance to erase the barrier between the audience and me. I was inspired by Jerzy Grotowski and his approach to what he called ‘The Poor Theatre.’

‘An actor should be both in control and out of control at the same time’

- Stephen Wangh, An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski

Some footage of these preparations before the final performance can be found here.

My final performance can be found here.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chekov, Michael. To the Actor on the technique of acting. London. Routledge, 2002

Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a poor theatre. Methuen Drama, 1968

Kelly, Dennis. Girls and Boys. Oberon Books, 2018

Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on acting. A Vintage Original. New York, 1987

Merlin, Bella. The complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books. London, 2007

Wangh, Stephen. An Acrobat on the Heart: a physical approach to acting inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski. A Vintage Original. New York, 2020

* This is a project for my MA Acting for Stage and Screen at UEL, London (2021)

** Original image to create my main image is from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girls-Boys-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/1786823144https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girls-Boys-Oberon-Modern-Plays/dp/1786823144