Posts with the label monologue
Showing posts with label monologue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monologue. Show all posts
Friday, 16 March 2018
Female Parts: Shorts, Hoxton Hall | Review
Female Parts: Shorts
Hoxton Hall
Reviewed on Thursday 15th March 2018 by Nicola Louise
★★★★
Female Parts: Shorts tells the story of three very different women through their three very different monologues. A Woman Alone, An Immigrant and A Mother, each one battling their own series of events and demons.
The show opens in a living room, clothes hanging on the wall and baby things over tables and floor; the Women Alone busts into the living room singing and dancing her heart out, it’s not until she notices that a new neighbour has moved in that she starts talking. The Women Alone, played by Gehane Strehler, starts to describe her life as this happy fairy tale, it isn’t until we get further into the story that we realise appearances are not all they’re cracked up to be.
Strehler delivers a fantastic performance as a hard done by woman having to live her life according to her husband. The emotions she displays in this hour monologue pull you into the story wondering what her next move is.
The next monologue is from The Mother played by Rebecca Saire, a woman who just found out her son’s a terrorist. She asks the audience, ‘what would you do?’ You could see the pain in her eyes, as she asked herself: ‘why me?’ ‘what did I do?’. Saire takes you on a journey of love, hatred, and disgust in this 40-minute monologue and I wager a bet that you don’t come out of there questioning the way you look at terrorists and their families.
Saire talks us through a dream she had, being the mother of a terrorist and takes us through her experience. She’s able to add in other characters, completely different to herself and give them lives of their own.
The last performance was The Immigrant portrayed by Clare Perkins, a west indies woman whose dream was always something bigger than what her family had for her back home. She came to London, got an engineering degree, came home and got a job at the UWI (University of West Indies), got married and had a child.
The conversation was aimed towards the Imperial College London graduating class of 2018 where her daughter sat. Perkins spoke about the injustice of her going up into space, how, if she were a man, no paper would ever dare question her role as a parent, papers up and down the country were labelling her as the mother who abandoned her child. Perkins delivers an emotional speech of truth and realisation when she starts to address her daughter and it was refreshing to see that she knew she was more than just a mother … she was an astronaut.
Female Parts: Shorts is a moving and outstanding look at the highs and lows women go through and deserves to be seen.
Female Parts: Shorts is playing at Hoxton Hall until the 31st March 2018.
photo credit: Sharron Wallace
Wednesday, 4 October 2017
In Conversation With... Natasha Langridge | In Memory of Leaves | Interview
Following on from Memoirs of a Tree, Natasha Langridge returns with, In Memory of Leaves. This monologue describes Natasha’s experience living in a block of flats on the Portobello Road council estate, which is being torn down by developers, and how all of her surroundings and green spaces are rapidly changing. The monologue also explores her work in Calais with the Occupy movement and the sadness people feel when they have to say goodbye to "home".
Did you grow up writing or was there something or someone which inspired you to write?
I’ve always written but I never showed anyone until after I’d started acting. I loved interpreting other writers work but I found that I had something to say too so I took my courage and showed my own work to other writer friends who, luckily, encouraged me to get it out there.
As well as writing, you perform and direct. How do you juggle each string to your bow and how do you smoothly transition from one to another?
I’ve got a very nice hat for each job and I look forward to wearing each one. I’m not sure I do anything smoothly except drinking wine.
Have you got any other quirky, hidden passions you’d like to pursue?
I went on a sailing trip recently. On an old Thames Sailing Barge .The main mast was 70ft high. I watched the mate climb the rigging. I helped unfurl the sail. I learnt how to tie a bowline knot. I helped steer the ship. I watched the moon rise up over the sea. I quite fancy being a pirate.
What’s your writing setup like? Do you have a certain playlist or drink you always have with you?
My vape. I move around to different places in my flat with my laptop. Or I sit on the floor with huge amounts of scrunched up paper strewn around me. Writing is terrifying. Like walking a tightrope.
In Memory of Leaves is extremely personal, did you feel a sense of pressure putting such an important story out into the world?
I felt a sense of compulsion. I’d just seen a beautiful park beneath my window massacred and felt I had to write about it and then shout about it. I am bearing witness to the ‘regeneration’ of my estate and of London and I have to tell its story-or my part in that story.
What’s the number one message you want people to take away from the show?
Live. From your heart. Speak out against injustice. We are living in a world run by psychopaths. We are living in a society based on a psychopathic model. Do whatever you can to protect love, all life and community.
Finally, what’s your number one piece of advice for anyone hoping to get into the performing industry, be it writing, performing, directing or anything else?
Do it. Don’t wait for anyone else. Or for the phone to ring. Get some good training and make your own work.
Thank you Natasha for taking the time to do this interview. In Memory of Leaves is being performed on a wide beam barge across three London locations. More information can be found at: https://goo.gl/QEXSrf
Interview by Olivia Mitchell, Editor
Thank you Natasha for taking the time to do this interview. In Memory of Leaves is being performed on a wide beam barge across three London locations. More information can be found at: https://goo.gl/QEXSrf
Interview by Olivia Mitchell, Editor
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