just something I wrote late at night for an audition. Alone by Robert Salamon Sorrow...pane...sadness, all gathered around me. I am coursed to forever swim alone in the wast sea that is life. The four walls that surround me begin to close. the world is forever smaller... I am trapped. Trapped and realizing what a fool I have been to not see the trough that lies beyond these walls. Friends, family and love. For these are the things we search for in life; the answers to all our question. But the trick is to realize it and to wand it more than anything else. Now nothing can turn me back from the path that I have chosen; a path of loneliness. I sit and wait...as pity for my own 'being' creeps into my soul like the deep shadows in the night. And hope for redemption.

I don't know if this is part of your journal, or a start at developing a character, but the first question I have (as a reader) is why this person is choosing to be so miserable. This is someone who seems profoundly depressed, but I don't really know why they feel that way (one is rarely abandoned by everyone they know unless they are imprisoned and isolated, by nature or other people or by choice...if by choice, why). It's too vague for me to identify with as a reader, though certainly I understand in general those painful feelings because I have suffered depression myself. Feelings are real. I understand that feeling this alone is as real as actually being that isolated. I would, however, want (in a prose piece) some movement either into the emotion or out of it. Poetry is different...it is often a snatching of emotion with no beginning or end.

Just some technical points:

• pane should be pain
• wast is either vast or waste (I'm not sure which)
• There should be a capital letter for the t in the sentence "the world is forever smaller."
• question should be questions (the answers to all our questions)
• wand should be want
• There is no reason to put quotes around "being" ... there is nothing special or unusual about the use of the word in that sentence that causes a need to set it aside.

Neither here nor there, but what I have always been curious about is the auditon process. I can't imagine having a job where you have to interview time after time. It seems as if you are in a profession that is rich with writing possibilities because so many of us are so curious about it.

I hope that, if this is truly about your own experience, that you are out of the darkness now. It is not good for anyone to stay stuck in one gear of emotion. We were given the gift of being able to experience many feelings. When one stays too long in one place, it is a signal the one needs to do something about it. I can't suggest what for you, or for your character. But I've been where this person in your writing has been, and I know how important it is to move on.

I wish you well. I really do. Take care.

Robert:
As a fellow actor, you might want to reconsider the heaviness of the piece. When Casting Directors ask for a "dramatic monologue", they don't want maudlin. Your piece, while possibly heartfelt and sincere, will drag down the energy in the room .

Energize the CD. Anger them. Enchant them.
But don't depress them.

garblesnix

Message edited on: 09/20/2005 19:01