Saturday 16 January 2016

Classical Monologue - Romeo and Juliet

I've read the story of Romeo and Juliet many times and watched film adapted versions e.g Baz Luhrmann's and Franco Zefferelli's, which I have enjoyed.
Brief Synopsis-
A boy (Romeo) and a girl (Juliet) fall in love. But they come from families which hate each other, and know they will not be allowed to marry. They are so much in love they marry in secret instead. However, before their wedding night Romeo kills Juliet's cousin in a duel, and in the morning he is forced to leave her. If he ever returns to the city, he will be put to death.
Juliet is then told she must marry Paris, who has been chosen by her parents, who do not know she is already married. She refuses - then agrees because she plans to fake her death and escape to be with Romeo.
She takes a sleeping potion and appears to be dead, so her parents lay her in a tomb. However, Romeo does not know about the plan, visits her grave, finds her 'dead', and kills himself. Juliet finally wakes up, finds Romeo dead, and then kills herself.

I decided to take a look at and try Romeos 'Tis Torture' monologue. Within this monologue Romeo is moaning and whining to Friar Lawrence about how he has been banished but everyone else can still see Juliet. Friar lawrence is telling Romeo to think himself lucky as he only got banished and hasn't been executed. Romeo is acting childish in this speech and is moaning as a typical 17/18 year old teenager would. Thats one reason I chose this audition speech amongst others. I can relate to it more and its the right age for me to play. For example this would be a better choice to do than Egeus' speech as Romeo is my age and I believe has some similar characteristics to me, whereas Egeus is much older and has a daughter therefore his speech wouldn't really suit me and its out of my playing age. I also prefer this monologue to the other classical ones I picked because within this one Romeo's feelings and emotions are full of rage and anger. He is devastated that he will never see the love of his life again. Whereas in other speeches such as Petruchio from 'The Taming Of The Shrew'. This monologue features comedy and cheek and mischief, which I believe would've suited me well but I favour Romeos monologue because I'd prefer to play an angry raging teenager, who has just been banished and will never be able to see his true love again.

No comments:

Post a Comment