Tension States

To help us as actors not only become familiar with the lines of our monologue but also to help us build understandings in a more indeapth sense we used a few specific exercises to help us develop our learnings and understandings about our monologues we would perform for our auditions.

One of these exercises we done during the rehursal process was "Tension States":

• This exercise requires the actor to read through the monologue to firstly become familiar with the text after a breif warm up
• Next use the full space of the room your are rehursing in by standing at the far end
• Next the actor needs to read through the monolgoue but now thinking more indeapthly about the specific words being spoken and mainly the reasoning behind why the character would be saying these words and finally the emotion the text would be portreyed in
• Now to apply this exercise to tension states the actor will walk across the room reading aloud the monologue but using levels to show the heights of tension.
• For example at low tension the actor will be low to the floor and at the highest tension the actors will be streached as tall as they can be.

This is a very beneficial exercise for the actor to gain a better understanding and knowledge of the monologue but also it allows the words which hold the most tension to be emphasis. However in the final performance maybe not to as much as an overexaggerated way but the actor can use this excerise in moderation to apply small hints of the heights of tension to the monologue performance. Also the exercise helps visualise the tension states even more.



Reading each line then walking across the room using height and levels to show the amount of tension

90 degreese right turns as the end of each sentance to emphasis tension