Part 7 - Sharing - PHILADELPHIA YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS

Monologues are meant to be Performed!

At this point, you have a final draft of your monologue. CONGRATULATIONS! This is excellent news! You’ve worked incredibly hard to get to this point!

Now you have your final draft… here are instructions on how to have your monologue read so you can hear it out loud!

Performance Time!
Audience Feedback

When it comes to sharing your work, the ideal, of course, is to have people all in the same room, actors and audience alike. This is what’s so great about theatre: it brings people physically together and allows us to all share the same energy

However, as you know, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic at the moment, and it’s dangerous--or impossible or even illegal--for us to gather physically, so you can consider setting up a virtual monologue reading online!

You probably know about these by now, but there are two incredibly popular and easy virtual meeting platforms that are getting a lot of use these days:

Zoom Meetings

This platform is free to sign up, and can host meetings for small or large groups. However, the free version can only host meetings for 40 minutes at a time before it logs you off and makes you start a new meeting. The interface is beautiful and easy to use, and the audio and video quality (in my experience) is generally pretty good. It does require you to make a free account, just click "SIGN UP, ITS FREE" in the upper-right hand corner of the homepage to get started.

Google Hangouts

What’s so great about this platform is that you probably already have a google account, either through school or your own life, or possibly both. It’s also free to use, meetings have no time limit, and it’s pretty easy to navigate. I find the platform slightly less intuitive, but it’s still fairly easy to set up and share a video meeting.

Bonus: Install this Chrome extension to enable Grid View!

Remember, when inviting people to a virtual reading, it’s important that you invite three categories of people:

Actor

You should try, if possible, to find a friend or family member to read your monologue as the speaker. This person doesn’t have to be a lot like the actual speaker, just someone you trust to read your words out loud.

Stage Direction Reader

This person is not a narrator, however, they are a person you choose specifically to read your stage directions out loud. In a real performance of a monologue, the audience doesn’t get to hear stage directions. However, in a reading, it’s traditional to have someone read them out loud.

Audience

These are the people, family or friends or anyone else, who you want to watch and listen to your monologue. Remind them to mute themselves unless you want to hear their responses live in the moment. I suggest having them write down notes with any responses they have during the reading, and then having them email their notes to you afterwards.

You also have the option of having a talk-back in the moment right after your reading in which audience members could respond directly to your work right after seeing and hearing it.

Move to the "Audience Feedback" tab for tips on Audience Response!