Edgar - King Lear

Edgar is the legitimate son and heir of the Duke of Gloucester. He has a half brother/bastard called Edmund who wishes to claim his father's position as Duke to gain power and wealth. Edmund is a bastard and therefore; unlike Edgar, is not a rightful heir. In order to obtain what he wants, he writes a letter in Edgar's name stating that Edgar is planning to murder his father to steal his position and then shows this letter to Gloucester. Gloucester responds with utter surprise and confusion, feeling betrayed by his son who he loved and trusted and sends mercenaries to hunt and capture him, bringing him back to the castle where he will face his punishment; death, for his treason. Edmund then lies to Edgar saying how he is being hunted by the Duke causing Edgar to flee into the woods where the monologue takes place.

Fear
Edgar is on the run. If he gets caught he will die. He's scared and worried about these consequences.

'I heard myself proclaimed... No port is free...'

This line shows his fear as he has heard men shouting his name and he cannot escape Gloucester because there are mercenaries everywhere looking for him. He is stuck in the woods with know where to go. With this information, I decided to experiment with different energy states to find the right energy to accurately portray Edgar's fear. I started of walking around a room at normal pace and then pictured someone walking behind me in the dark but at a reasonable distance that would make me uneasy but not scared for my life yet, walking slightly faster and checking behind my shoulder. I than sped my pace until I was running around the room and pictured myself in a paranoiac scenario which was set in a dark woods where I envisioned voices coming from every direction closing in on me. This really helped increase my heart rate and I felt myself breathing heavily constantly checking my shoulders and rapidly moving my eyes around. I thought this was very powerful energy and slightly to in realistic for my Edgar so I toned it down from a 10/10 to around 8/10. With this emotional energy I had just created, came the ability to remember it and use it during my monologue. In my opinion, I believe doing this exercise helped me instantly remember the energy I need to be in during the first section of the monologue quoted above which will hopefully make my performance much more believable and one that will make my audition hit the right criteria.

Survival
As a human, when being hunted, fear is instinctual. Fear is a chemical that exists to spark the survival instinct in our minds. Edgar is experiencing this in this speech. He is in fear which is now triggering these ideas he is having of how he will escape the hunt and stay alive.

'Whiles I may 'scape, I will preserve myself, and am bethought to take the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury in contempt of man brought near to beast. My face ill grime with filth...'

He is coming up, on the spot, with a plan. As he thinks in the moment, these ideas come to him and he eventually, at the end of the speech, successfully devises this plan of how he will survive;

'That's something yet, Edgar I nothing am'

So, to find this instinctual emotion, I used the exercise used to find fear, and pictured; in this dark wooded scenario of being in danger, salvation in the distance. A way out, a road with traffic, people and light but the only way of getting over to this salvation was to overcome my personal fear of spiders. A dark forest where I can hear voices and the only way out is past some giant river of creepy arachnids. What I experienced next was my first instinctual reaction to surviving, my first idea was to become invisible to the spiders and simply walk among them to escape. In reality this is a very far fetched idea that is only possible in the minds of our imaginations and may seem very naïve. But what I learned from this interesting exploitation of the human mind, was that invisibility is exactly what Edgar is trying to achieve but in a real way. He is becoming invisible by changing his smell, appearance, voice and personality and becoming someone else, a 'poor Tom' which is a homeless beggar. He is hiding in plain view. I believe by understanding that he is coming with a plan on the spot, by understanding the energy and emotions Edgar is experiencing through a simple exercise that exploits my own mind, I have learned how to naturally and convincingly portray someone who is in a survival situation and therefore my audition will hopefully hit all of the right criteria.

My Exterior Vision

Edgar is from a high class and privileged household as he is the son of the Duke of Gloucester appointed by King Lear himself, a position that makes the Duke on of the most powerful men in the country. I have chosen Edgar to be 19 as there is no information that directly tells me his age but he is very naïve being easily manipulated by his brothers evil plan and later on in the play I found that he and his father meet under the disguise of 'poor Tom' under accidental circumstances and yet he does not tell his father that it is him. I have pictured Edgar to be wearing pretty much nothing at all during this scene as I think, during his escape from home, not had time to get changed into any thing. As the speech progresses, I picture him slowly becoming Poor Tom by rubbing dirt on his body, messing his well groomed hair up into knots and cutting his arms with things he has found on the forest floor;

'And with presented nakedness outface the winds and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and president of Bedlam beggars, with roaring voices strike in their numb and mortified bare arms, pins, wooden prick, nails, sprigs of rosemary...'

With this research of how I think he looks I decided to use some actions against some dialog. For the line evidenced above, to symbolise Edgar thinking about cutting his arms up to look like a crazy man, I would gently lead the audience to look at my left arm by moving my right hand over my forearm. Also, at the start of the line I decided to lift my head and arms and body up to the 'sky' so that the audience can understand that Edgar is thinking of how he will survive facing everything that God throws at him. This is evidence that I have used hand movements and types of actions and gestures alongside certain lines to enhance the importance of the story the language is telling.

Reasons for Choosing - link to Central speech list - https://www.cssd.ac.uk/content/audition-speeches-ba-acting-courses

Before my research into classical speeches started, I was delving into every drama school website I planned to audition too to cream as much information possible. To sum my findings up, I need to have prepared two classical speeches from the Jacobean/ Elizabethan era and on contemporary piece after dates which varied from school to school. For one of my classical pieces I chose this speech. Now it didn't come to me in a dream, actually from Central School of Acting's website which contains a large list of male classical monologues that the school would like candidates to use. I found that Edgar's speech was amongst one of the most interesting speeches on the list, and one of which had a pace that I have never acted to before which I thought would be a good way to show my adaptability as an actor.

The speech is a high energy and fast pace speech which I am physically able to do with the help from acting exercises such as stretching and relaxing my bodies tensions. This monologue also challenges my vocal ability in a positive way as I have discovered new things like the stage whisper which appears to the audience as a whisper even though I still have to project loudly out.

To conclude, I believe that with my research into the play and the character, exploring context, characterisation and experimenting and developing everything in rehearsals has added truth and believability to my performance hopefully making it memorable and criteria hitting giving me the highest possible chance of being selected out of the vast amount of candidates. With virtuous practice and direction I do believe I am ready to use this monologue as my audition piece.