Whilst I was waiting to go into the audition, I decided to follow the same exercises as I did for the previous monologues because they were very vocal and shakespeare is also very vocal which benefited me to help me open my mouth. This is because I knew some words in my monologue were very hard to pronounce after one another, for example "Banished the new made bridegroom" I kept finding difficult to get out whilst I was rehearsing which was why I used the exercises.
As I entered the audition room, the panel asked me to tell them about the play and who I was playing. I told them parts of the Romeo and Juliet story however throughout it I was specifying certain parts that would relate to my character. For example when Juliet approaches Friar, instead of just saying that I decided to add on what Friar was feeling at the time and he feels that it is his duty to help her. A benefit of doing this for me is that it helped me get into the character whilst talking instead of taking time to do it, this showed to the panel that I had a great understanding of context and my character.
I then started to perform my monologue, I decided to get into the Priest like persona that the Friar would have and therefore decided to hold my hands to my chest and keep myself very centred whilst talking to the Duke. When my monologue was at its most emotional climax, I decided to drop down to my knees and talking about Romeo and Juliet who were dead on the floor as if I was mourning their death, however this quickly changed when I began to put blame on Capulet, I quickly rose to my feet and rushed across the stage towards this character, but then slowly I came back to that calm persona and gave the impression to the panel that the Friar can't blame him for his own fault. This was effective because it was very realistic to what would happen after a tragedy like this, they would feel very remorseful however also decide to blame others.
After I finished the audition, I was asked a series of questions by the panel about my monologue. The first question they asked was "How did you prepare for the monologue?", the main answer I replied with was that my main challenge was the language barrier, I knew that this was the main challenge because it was very different to how I speak in everyday live, therefore I told them that a technique I used was Iambic Pentameter, I used this to help me get the tempo of my performance and getting every other syllable to put emphasis on certain words. This was effective for me because it helped me get a true understanding of the piece and also what Shakespeares message was.
After this I was then asked to perform my monologue in a different style, the panel asked if I could perform my piece in a Melodramatic way. This was a big challenge for me because a Priest would stereotypically not be exaggerated etc therefore I had to find a way to do it realistically. The way I performed my piece was that I threw my arms about a lot and I become more energetic when moving around the stage. However doing this I found it very hard to keep in that persona and not over exaggerate parts but also not exaggerate parts, for example when bits of true emotion I didn't want to be very energetic when sad, therefore I needed to find a way around this.
Overall I feel that my audition process was successful because the feedback I received was very good in terms of a believable character and the emotions/facial expressions that I was portraying. However the Melodramatic part of my audition I felt was difficult and was my main flaw in my piece, therefore in future I would work on the melodramatic version more just to get the emotion right.
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