Monologues 101

This past week, we worked mostly on correcting and improving all of the scenes from act 1, plus the first scene from act 2. We've also been working on production, as the we've purchased make-up, props and light filters. On the other hand, i've also worked mainly on Rama's monologue in scene 6, which was my main task for the past days.

When i first began working on the monologue, by writting it, i had the main idea and the purpose of it, but i had no idea what to say! I felt completely blocked, and it was hard to put my ideas into words, and most importantly, it was hard to let translate the characters feelings. I wrote several lines a few times, but none of them seemed to fit what we were trying to express, which was the idea of Rama being lost and weak, and asking for the gods to help him. Sometimes the monologue seemed a bit too disrespectful to the gods, which is completely out of place. Other times, some of the lines didn't really make sense, or weren't connected to our story. But the worst was when some lines simply sounded too cheesy, or too weird (spanish is weird, english is better...). I felt really frustrated, and it took me a while to construct the monologue and the scene itself.
Now writting the monologue was the simple part, acting it was the worst. At first, we staged the monologue as pretty straight forward; Rama speaking and then kneeling before the gods. The problem is, i didn't like it, there really was no movement whatsoever, and it didn't feel Kathakali enough. I felt like were weren't exploring the psicology of the monologue enough, and i was dissapointed. That's were the hardwork came in... We remade the entire monolgue (keeping the lines), and added a lot of mudras and acrobatics. In total i was using at least 30 mudras!
It really took me a lot of time to remember the sequence plus the words plus the mudras, and it was really hard. The first time i did it, i finnished exhausted, i could barely breathe or walk (my legs ache...). I guess now i can truly acknowledge how incredibly difficult and exhausting Kathakali is. Previously, i had done a lot of acrobatics, but not in a long sequence.
Learning lines is one thing, learing a sequence of actions is another, and learning a mudras sequence is another. But learning them altogether, that is an entirely different story. I feel very frustrated when i forget a line, or a movement, or even a mudra, because i'm trying to concentrate on doing it right, and bringing the three elements together, that i sometimes forget what comes next. I really need to work on it, and i think this challenge is good to push me even further.

I now know how screenwriters feel. I think that now that i've written from scratch a scene, with the monologue, i can certainly say i know how much work screenwritting is. In theatre, these guys have to write entire plays, whereas i only wrote one scene. Still i guess it was a great thing to experience what is like from the other side, instead of just learing the lines and acting. I think it gave me a new insight into the theatre making process. When we adapted the play, we never wrote any script, we worked within a structure and improvisations, so it was completely new for me to write. I think this is the moment were english literature class comes in handy, because i employed all of the knowledge i had on poetry and plays to construct a rich dialogue (or as rich as a Form V kid can), and give actual meaning and power to the words.
One key thing i've come to realize is that, the collective creation process is present always. I never really thought about it, but even the writters of play go through this process, because for example, the production team helped to correct some of the lines that sounded odd, and the base ideas to construct the script where brainstormed by the entire team. Now, concerning the staging of the monologue part, even though as an actor i proposed the first part of the sequence, it was Siu the one who helped implement the mudras, and the rest of the team to implement the acrobatics and other movement sequences. By the end, it was all of us the ones who shaped the entire monologue, not only me as the writer and the actor. Which has led me to wonder about how this works in real life with actual plays (like Broadway and stuff), because there are many scenes or even entire plays composed of monologues or single actor stagings, and more than one person helps to develop everything. It also happens when creating characters, for example; Gonzalo told me that it was the entire cast and a few extra helpers the one who helped Patricia Barreto with her Piaf accent and to enact her monologues and songs.
There is one thing that i have definitely improved in, and that is the intonation. I always follow the same rythm when delivering long lines, and thus monologues. But i think that the use of acrobatics and mudras have helped me to give different intonations to the lines so they fit the movements and mudras. I think that all elements on their own are very difficult to improve, because they never work alone. So when we put every element together, it all becomes magnificent.
I've also been wondering a lot about our own approach to kathakali, and i think this is as close as we have actually come to the tradition. We always use mudras in the scenes, but it's always a few, in this case we are using more than 30, and we're using them to tell the story and Rama's feelings. In Kathakali, the mudras supposedly tell the entire stories, and this is what we are doing. Also, the fact that we are implementing a lot of acrobatics and kalaripayattu movements puts us even closer to the tradition. But this is only one scene, so how can we improve the other scenes of the play to make them closer to the tradition? Should we implement more mudras, or even acrobatics? Should we dance more? If so, how will we be able to learn the choreagraphies in such a short time? Should we sing, and who would sing?