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I found it interesting in Spencer’s tackling of the subject of direct address, monologues, and soliloquies that there is a moment where we are presented with the belief that the subtle variations between each could very well define what constitutes a play. The example I would point to is the mention of David Hare’s delivery of the monologue in Via Dolorosa, and the question of whether it is a play or not. As Spencer states, “Hare all but says” it may not be one “as he walks on stage” (pg. 263). Furthermore, I would say that a big takeaway from this section of Spencer’s text is that if a monologue, or perhaps soliloquy, is to work with the piece in the most effective way then it shouldn’t be forced speech; the character should almost seem to be spontaneously filled with a need to find solution to or express emotion towards a conflict in my opinion. I would propose that The Janitor does a great job of exemplifying, our central character Sam finds himself compelled to piece together his monologue. So, what is the purpose, the goal or action being taken, I say Sam is attempting to simultaneously sort out his own thoughts on his experiences and impart his knowledge onto the youth (as the name of the conference would imply). Yes, he is alone and his words might be falling on deaf ears in the literal context of the play, but once the audience comes into play, once you realize that those in their seats who may find themselves engrossed in his words are the true “National Conference on Youth” well then, therein lies the magic of theater.
ReplyDeleteJoaquin Castillo Jr
In reading Spencer’s chapter Thirteen: Exposition, and watching “The Janitor” by Lane and Shengold. I can say that it is a Soliloquy which is defines in Spencer’s book as “a speech in a drama in which a character alone or as if alone, discloses innermost thought” (Spencer, 259). ‘The Janitor’ begins just with the character sweeping up a conference room, and he reads a sign “National Conference on Youth.” He then stands in the podium and begins to address the audience which will be there later. So, in fact he is alone and starts to disclose his innermost thoughts. “[…] it’s that sweetness that we’re all victims of that sweetness and its youth.” His speech might have been even better than that of what the true speakers could have been after all he is 56 years old so he knows a thing or two about youth doesn’t he? Spencer explains how soliloquies are rare and in “The Janitor” we see a great example of one. I found the ending of the play even more touching then most might have, where another character comes in a angrily tells him to keep sweeping for there is a conference later on, and all ‘the janitor’ replies is “Yes sir Mr. Collins, yes sir” being treated as nothing when he might be even more savvy than most.
ReplyDelete-Christina Velasquez
After reading the Janitor by August Wilson, and Spencer’s guidance about Direct address,monologue, and soliloquy’s in plays. I have got a better understanding about how a character can tell their inner most personal thoughts, while still being able to entertain the audience.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion long stretches of dialogue with little to no action can be a bit intimidating to write, since every playwright would like to entertain their audience. But personally, the idea of having a character just stand there and do nothing but speak their mind, might seem a bit dull in some cases. Thankfully, my apprehension quickly subsided as I started to read “The janitor” by August Wilson. The “Janitor” has the main character Sam directly address the audience as he gives his life advice to an “empty” ballroom. The way Sam speaks not only engages the audience, but keeps his most personal opinions, and thoughts open to the public without having to have anyone else interact with him to get such information.
I may possibly consider writing my play in a direct address fashion now due to the way “the Janitor” was structured, and how well Sam delivers his speech to the “empty ballroom”. I don’t think it will be easy, but it will surely be interesting to write.
-Kathleen m. Salinas
Monologues and Soliloquies
ReplyDeleteI read The Janitor by Wilson then from Spencer's then Wilson again. If you've read or seen Fences you'll know that Wilson is amazing at monologues and The Janitor is a short and evident example of that. In theory I'm not a fan of monologues or soliloquies. They are very much a play staple. Not all plays have them, but when you think of them plays come to mind. Recently they've been used for exposition and people don't enjoy a lot of talking in their entrainment. If written well and delivered by an actor who knows what they are saying they can be effective. Are they necessary? Not for everyone. I'm not sure that I'll ever purposefully write a soliloquy, unless my character feels they need to speak to themselves to figure something out. The Janitor was sweetly melancholic and resonant. He says what he feels and doesn't beat around the bush in expressing his thoughts and I appreciate that greatly. Monologues fit more cinematically than soliloquies. The audience is more willing to suspend they're belief for a play than a movie. In a play a character talking to themselves for two or more minutes is acceptable. That might be why I would prefer to write a monologue than a soliloquy. In real life we ourselves could talk about our favorite topics for a good while with others but I doubt any of us stand alone somewhere talking out loud to ourselves (unless we're trying to memorize something).
Jasmin Grimaldo
Spencer's view of exposition is one that is contrary to what many people believe. Common train of thought from playwrights of his experience seem ask "How can I get all the exposition over with?" with Spencer replying that exposition is a tool that must be carefully used and then proceeds to use the analogy of a child and sweets. Enough to be enjoyed but not so much that the child (or in this case the audience) gets sick of it. Spencer provides another example about a character of his having a wart on his buttocks. While this information might find a proper place in trivia it would be unnecessary to mention it in the play if it is out of context. "The Janitor" is an example of a exposition, not a soliloquy (as a soliloquy is the character speaking to themselves) but a speech before an imaginary audience, in this case, us. The janitor is later interrupted by his employer but not after the janitor has given us his viewpoints on youth. Overall exposition is a critical asset in a play and its manipulations can determine whether the play can hold or lose an audiences' attention.
ReplyDeleteEutimio Longoria
I like how the Spencer reading over direct address (monologues) and soliloquy is related to "The Janitor". The Spencer reading discusses the differences between both, in a monologue a character is addressing the audience. While in a soliloquy the character is expressing their innermost thoughts anonymously. In the play "The Janitor", the reader is warned of the illiteracy of the janitor and it is used throughout the play. The janitor, Sam tries to act wise, due to his age pretends he knows things. By the end of the play, the reader finds out that Sam was speaking to the audience, a fake one, not an actual audience. Mr. Collins then asks Sam to get back to work. Sam was performing a monologue towards the audience, kind of like practicing for a speech. Throughout the play you see how the janitor speaks, and it further adds to his character being alive. In the reading over Spencer he uses examples of how Shakespeare has dabbled with soliloquy and monologues. In other words, basically breaking the fourth wall. An example of a soliloquy is from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, where he recites the famous lines… “to be or not to be”. Hamlet is talking to Yorick a skeleton skull and not addressing the audience.
ReplyDeleteDanny Olivarez
I appreciate the nuance that Spencer notes in the differences between different types of monologues, the direct address, and the soliloquy as they are often conflated. The example of using the Janitor works well to illustrate the effectiveness and what a direct address monologue is.
ReplyDeleteAs Spencer says, “the audience becomes Mr. Gabrielli. It has unwittingly, with no warning, been thrust in the center of the play.” So too does the audience become the Janitor's “audience” when he makes his speech. It highlights part of what makes plays unique from other mediums.
The main takeaway I got from this chapter was examining what exposition is and showing that everything in a play is exposition.
“A play is a visible, audible manifestation of the action. It uses action to transmit information. The action doesn't transmit anything but information. So it follows that plays are nothing but information – or exposition – all the time.”
I like it because once you learn this you start to realize there are different ways to see and present information. You start to examine more than just the words being said by a character; it's how they're saying them, how do they sit/stand, do they do anything with their body etc.
-Rafael Avila
I would like to start off by saying that I so adore Spencer's take on monologues as well as soliloquies; it's divine. "Playwright who insist on writing vast sections of their plays in the form of monologue to the audience often find the audience wondering why they didn't visit the bookstore instead of the box office." I can name numerous encounters that I have have had with a situation like this. The section "im talking to you" on page 258&259 define soliloquies to be "perhaps the least understood and, these days, the least used." It is also defined to be "a speech in a drama in which a character, alone or as if alone, discloses innermost thoughts." Now the difference there is between this and monologue is that monologues are conversations with two more more people involved. Within monologue there is a delivery of conversation and speech to another person. Soliloquies we read can be singular. We see this in Wilson's: "The Janitor"... Sam is a janitor who is not able to read, he encounters a sign as he is working and is able to determine a few words from it: "national conference of youth." The word "youth" seems to turn on a switch in his mind as he begins to deliver a speech to if there were an audience there to here him out, which there isn't. It seems that Sam looks back at his life with regrets. Auto reflecting himself and feeling how he could've changed his past while thinking how different his current like would be. He describes youth to have been a part of his life filled with heedless news, innocence, identification, and reflection. A phase in his life where he had no worries. I believe that the delivery of his speech leaves us with the understanding that although our adolescent years may be a "rather simple" time of our lives since we rely mostly on those who care for us and also because of how far we see our future to be. The janitors words of wisdom really provoke in us the understanding how significant and essential that it is to establish a foundation that encourages us to work hard for the rest of our lives in order to be successful and have hopes of a decent future and elder life. This character really describes our youth to be a very short phase, however precisely because it is the "phase" that we must take advantage of and study in order to reach our aspirations to be able to do great things in our lives and live with no regrets.
ReplyDelete-Andrea Castaneda
I learned about the differences between soliloquies, direct addresses and monologues. I learned a lot! I attempted at one point, a couple of years back, to write a play, well I wrote a script. The script was about a girl in the 17th or 18th century, I don’t remember, who wanted to escape her life of forced marriage for statues and money. She escapes with a servant whom she’s in love with. This servant is a woman like she. I have to say though I felt very sad with the ending of “The Janitor” he’s an older man who has lived his life and has realized things, that we young people haven’t realized. He talks about the present moment and how you have to live everyday enjoying everything. He talks about us being someone at this moment yet who we are now we will not be forever. Our experiences shape us. I am not who I was when I was 20, even 3 years into the future I’m different, imagine a whole life? He has so much to teach and he just gets cut off because he’s no one important, just a janitor who cleans for people like Mr.Collins. I always made it a point to say hello to janitors or lunch ladies when I was in high school. Even now, I still do this; they have much to say and much to teach us.
ReplyDeleteAlejandra Rodriguez
In the reading Spencer first states the difference between direct address, monologues, and soliloquies. In the past I believed that monologues could be a person telling a story and expressing his/her thoughts, but as Spencer stated they are different. I personally did drama in high school and I competed in UIL in for prose and we had to make a monologue from any novel and even combine different books together with a common theme and perform the monologue. I found it interesting that the monologue needs to have an audience. In the back of my mind, I knew that but in acting we call it breaking the fourth wall which is speaking directly to the audience. I find that tool especially in monologues or even farse plays very fun to act and write. In the YouTube video entitled "Janitor" I found very interesting. I really liked the Biblical allusion and how no matter what occupation a person may have does not disqualify the from having a voice.
ReplyDelete-Joy Perez
I enjoyed how Spencer broke down what the basic types of monologues are there. I had heard of soliloquies before but really wasn’t sure exactly what they were. I knew they were in essence speeches but didn’t know they had place in theater. A soliloquy “is delivered to oneself-the character is ‘alone or as if alone’” (Spencer P259) It was a really interesting idea to me, without any prior knowledge I had assumed monologues could be done in this same vein but it is helpful to know there is a difference. In this day and age it might seem difficult to write a soliloquy considering that it might be hard to write a speech where the character is directing it to themselves. Still it might be fun to try. The two monologues Spencer discussed were also an enlightening. Seamless monologues seem simple in the idea that the speaker is addressing someone in order to articulate something that they felt needed it. The way it is structured is that it falls in the context of the rest of the play but still holds up on its own. The direct address monologue was an interesting case, and from my understanding the monologue we read “The Janitor” by August Wilson was probably in this style. In these monologues, the speaker is addressing anyone in particular similar to the soliloquy but in essence they are addressing the audience though indirectly. I think “The Janitor” was very much like this because in it the eponymous janitor is speaking to an imaginary crowd but the in a sense that crowd is/becomes the audience though not directly addressed. Great info provided in these readings, I am looking forward to how this will play in our class.
ReplyDelete-Mark A Peña
In the passage, I found it unique that not only the usage of a monologue can give exposition to a character and a conflict they’re facing, but it can also bridge the gap between the play and the audience. For example, Spencer gives about two pages dedicated to explaining direct-address monologues. From what I can take from it, these variations are a monologue but it’s aimed toward the audience or chorus. So, unlike the seamless monologues, the character isn’t speaking to anyone on stage, but they indeed are still referring to someone.
ReplyDeleteOn page 262, he asks the question of how can we create a conflict if there are no characters to provide it. He then annotates, “The key is using the audience as though they were a character or a group of characters”. This is the bridge that connects the audience to the play. Objectively speaking, this is one of the distinguishing features that plays bring to the audience, compared to written literature in which they aren’t necessarily part of the story’s cast. To further explain this concept, he gives the example of David Mamet’s The Sermon, in which the minister delivers a sermon to his congregation. In this example, I can visualize the audience transitions to someone watching a play, to a cast of members who are not a part of the world that they were once watching. It’s almost like the theater and its seats are cut-off from the real world. As a result, for the duration of the play, we are engulfed into the fictional setting. As I am typing this, I am beginning to realize that maybe this is why Spencer does not find monologues that don’t address the audience as effective. The reason is due to the instance that the audience stays stagnant, and they aren’t engaged.
In regards to The Janitor, it somewhat reminded me of the film, Good Will Hunting. In both works, the central characters are janitors, yet they possess tremendous amounts of potential and mental prowess. In this case, Sam, is described and portrayed with the literacy of a janitor, and this is done well since there is a presence of figurative language with the usage of biblical allusions and the river. Although he has this profound knowledge and clear message of making correct usage of your time, his 56 years on this Earth is diminished due to his profession.
Patricio Hernandez (P.J.)
This week’s reading from The Playwright’s Guidebook showed the subtle yet powerful differences between monologues, soliloquies and direct addresses. The inclusion of said terms is crucial to the development of a play. For example, in The Janitor we are able to make sense of who the janitor is and can almost vividly imagine what he would be like and how he would feel about a variety of things. It is interesting to note that when the play mentioned is dissected, the terms discussed would all be fitting while at the same time not completely define the direction of the play. The play could easily be introduced as a monologue since our main character is speaking to another character. However, in my opinion an imaginary character is not much of a character at all. Therefore, I would suggest that the short play for this lesson to be geared more towards a soliloquy and not a monologue. As for Sam, our protagonist, I would like to assume that the use of an imaginary audience allows him to better understand who he is as well as for him to “disclose innermost thoughts” and show the audience a side of himself that is tucked neatly away when his train of thought is disrupted by Mr. Collin’s urge to finish cleaning.
ReplyDeleteMaria Romero
To anyone who's having trouble finding "Writing Monologues" (like I did), that's not the actual name of the reading. Go to Chapter Thirteen: Exposition and read the section titled I'm Talking To You.
ReplyDeleteI liked how Spencer broke down the differences between direct address, monologue, and soliloquies and included names of works that showcase how they have been executed. Spencer's definitions and notes of the terms were helpful, especially when he suggests "if you're having trouble writing a soliloquy consider finding an action for it to help solve your problem." I often get stuck when writing dialogue, so I think this to be a great piece of advice to keep in mind.
"The Janitor" was a good example of a monologue. I really liked how Wilson was able to describe Sam's characteristics without being so forward about it. For instance, when Sam reads the sign hanging across the ballroom, Wilson uses short breaks in between Sam's words to show that Sam has trouble reading - rather than simply telling us that he does. Then when Sam speaks, we "hear" his Southern dialect and find out that he is a religious man with the biblical references that he makes in his speech about not letting time pass you by with nothing to show for it.
Karla Olvera
Isaac J McCoy
ReplyDeleteI did not realize Sam was black until his last line from the word "yessuh". I thought that was a good tool for the play, that the playwright didn't give his opinion of who the janitor was until the end of the play which allows the audience to project their imagination on the character of Sam. I like that one of Sam's lines depicts perfectly how he views himself "I am not what I am". I feel that this accurately shows, in his imagination, that he is acknowledging that he is a janitor and not the speaker which he is pretending to be, not the one who people look to for inspiration or learning; but just the guy who cleans up around the place, a fly on the wall. It shows how he sees himself in society and not just in the room and it makes me feel injustice rather than see it. In a single line, Sam encompasses the entire play. I hope I can write a line for my play which does the same, ties it all together.
I enjoyed watching The Janitor and hearing his account on the sweetness of youth. After reading Spencer's words on monologues and soliloquies I definitely understand them better. I have always had trouble writing monologues, truly they are rather intimidating to write because they can become somewhat boring if not written carefully or correctly. Because the janitor was written in a direct address fashion I have become more interested in writing my play in that manner. The reason why I enjoyed watching it was because I felt as though the janitor was talking to us as the audience, and really that is what a direct address is, and it just feels much closer and personal than a monologue would. I feel as though getting as close and personal to your audience as possible and making them actually feel something is the most effective way to write a play. After all that's what we're writing for… to create a story that will affect our reader long after they leave the theater or watch your play. Creating a personal bond between your character (who is addressing the audience) and the audience is a task that requires intricate detail and care. My goal is to reach the audience and make them feel what my character is thinking and feeling.
ReplyDelete-Starleen Rendon
Before reading this section, I considered myself to be pretty familiar with the different types of “exposition”, as Spencer calls them, but I never concerned myself too much with how effective they were in practice because I never really needed to write a play, nor have I seen too many to think about it. The seamless monologue is the most appealing to me as it seems the most natural to occur, and I’m somewhat saddened that the last example he gives about the direct address monologue is the method I thought to employ with my character. It’s true that it’s not logical for a character to be speaking to “no one” for no apparent reason, but the reality of the situation wasn’t the most important thing to me at the time. However, I think if I changed the direct address monologue I have now so that my character were speaking to someone in the audience because they’re a part of the scene or if I changed it to a soliloquy all together, it would be much improved. Thinking about how Sam is actually facing the audience and speaking to them as he imagined, and seeing how his fantasy is abruptly stopped is the only thing giving the scene it’s emotional impact impact; without the direct address, the words may have fallen flat, so this reading gave me a lot to consider.
ReplyDelete-Mayanin Rosa