Structural Plan, Monologue Project

I’ve been visited by the muse. This is how I have structured my show. 

Imagine …. You’re going to a monologue festival. You’re in your seat and it’s getting close to show time. Five minutes before the show is to start, a person from the Festival comes downstage centre, quiets the audience, and says, 

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Monologue Festival. We’re about to begin. But before we do, I’d like to make a surprise and counter-intuitive announcement: Could you all please take out your phones. Please, everyone who has a phone, take it out, and if there are people around you who don’t have access to a phone, please let them share your screen with you. What matters is what you hear, more than what you see. I want you to go to YouTube. (Pause.) Okay, everyone on YouTube? Okay, here’s the address of a very short film. 

A sign is made visible or projected that says:  Scene One: YouTube: https://youtu.be/CfnP1Ejd2r4  

This is the video they will see.

Holding the sign, or while the projection is visible, (s)he continues:

The movie that you see there, it’s a minute long, is an essential prelude to one of the monologues that you will see tonight.”

Then (s)he leaves.

After a few minutes the lights go out and the show begins.

Then, somewhere in the line-up of the Festival, I will do my monologue (scene two) and at the end of my monologue, I, or someone, will hold up a sign, or the sign will be projected that says:

Scene Three: YouTube: https://youtu.be/F0G_xS_xzgU

This is the video they will see.

This use of video adds an interactive element to the show. It’s now a mini-mini three-scene play. The pre-show announcement will get people talking and thinking about my bit before the show starts. It’s vital that the audience know how bad my speech can be. The knowledge gives the fluency in my monologue more power. 

My speech switch has four speech speeds. (How’s that for a sentence. I wrote my first tongue twister, and a tongue twister written by a man with a severe speech disorder.) Mute. Bad Stutter. Slight stutter. Fluent. Those are my various speeds. The video captures bad stutter.

I’m really stoked now. 

When I submitted my first script, I felt I didn’t deserve to be included because it wasn’t theatrical, and it’s a theatre festival. So, when they accepted me, in our video chat I told them that, and that’s what I’d be working on for version number two. I think I’ve done that in spades with this video and interactive structure.

My script is good, and I’m happy with it. The confidence I have in the script, with the videos, will help me with the delivery.  These are words from my script:

I worked in theatre, and failed at acting,

But I got good at audience attracting

By being me on stage, and telling stories

Telling truths and allegories…

Making people laugh and cry

Making my friends wonder why

A man who's shy

Liked oratory.

The question at the end, softened by a sincere message of gratitude, makes a point about the experience of my community. (And gives me street cred in the stuttering community.)