Hello everyone - I have been away in the USA for a couple of weeks, followed by a longer than expected recovery from jetlag, hence the radio silence over here. Apologies!
Before I went away we had a brilliant Zoom meet up where we discussed brilliant plays for medal exams (and also the question of timing of the knowledge answers, which I’m going to write about in a separate post).
Here is everything we came up with!
Plays written before 1800:
First of all, please make careful note of the following pre-1800 plays which now have extracts in Acting Anthology vol 5. Make sure that if you choose any of these for medal exams that you do not overlap any text with the anthology extracts:
Edward II, Marlowe (Grade 1 solo)
King Henry V, Shakespeare (Grade 2 solo)
Hamlet, Shakespeare (Grade 2 duo)
Dido Queen of Carthage, Marlowe (Grade 3 solo)
The Old Bachelor, Congreve (Grade 3 solo)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare (Grade 3 duo)
Women Beware Women, Middleton (Grade 4 Solo)
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare (Grade 4 Solo)
Doctor Faustus, Marlowe (Grade 4 Duo)
The Tempest, Shakespeare (Grade 4 Duo)
Women of Troy, Euripides (Grade 5 Solo)
Duchess of Malfi, Webster (Grade 5 Duo)
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare (Grade 5 Duo)
(On the other hand, plays from Anthology volume 4 are now acceptable to use at medal exams e.g. Julius Caesar extract from Grade 5 Duologue)
Shakespeare:
At The Playing Space we generally work in small groups and we want our students to do different monologues from the same play, so we’ve always gone for plays that have a good selection of both male and female monologues. This has become easier now that they’ve reduced the lower end of the time limit for this period to 2 minutes!
Our favourites that fit these requirements are:
Midsummer Night’s Dream – see this previous post for four excellent monologues
Othello
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
Winter’s Tale
Richard III
I’ve always struggled finding long-enough monologues from Much Ado About Nothing but these were recommended:
when Beatrice comes into the party “I’ll never take a man”
Benedick being gulled “This can be no trick”
I’ve just read Beatrice’s great speech that includes “I would eat his heart in the marketplace”, and it just hit the two minute mark, with some effective pauses (!), so will be adding this to our repertoire.
Others have said that they also find plenty of suitable material from Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth. Also Henry VI Part 1 has some good Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc) monologues. And of course there are lots of fabulous monologues in Hamlet, and there’s no reason our girls can’t play this role. We’ve had female students perform as Titus Andronicus in the past and they loved it! Playing male characters won’t suit every female student, but for many of them it is empowering. Once more unto the breach…
Greek Tragedy:
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