Video: Movement Tips for Monologues

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Monologues are important to any acting career. Get tips for moving around during a monologue in this free video clip from a professional theater director.

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Video Transcript

This is Dr. Charles Grimes. I'm speaking on behalf of Expert Village about analyzing a text and beginning to rehearse your monologue. Actors often wonder how much movement is appropriate when you're giving an audition in the form of a monologue. It's a legitimate concern because if you're doing the speech for a play, the director will tell you what your blocking is, on what phrases to turn, how far to move upstage or downstage, who you're talking to. In a monologue audition, you have to do this for yourself. My general theory is too much movement will be cheesy and look fake and insincere. The director knows you're up there by yourself. There's no one else to talk to or to move to. Don't move very much. You may find yourself perfectly capable of standing in one place for the entire monologue, and just staying there. Giving the whole monologue rooted to the ground. And you can certainly move the rest of your body as you know how to do as an actor. But you don't have to move at all. That's there as a baseline. Some monologue books will tell you you should have at least two crosses in your monologue. So at any two points you should move three or four steps this way, and then back again on the next sentence. That's all up to you, but I think it's liable to be distracting. And, if it is movement that just appears to be there for the sake of it, it's going to read as very distracting and it will make you look amateurish. So, to start looking at a good answer to the question, how much movement? A good answer: None is perfectly fine.

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Movement Tips for Monologues

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