Within the last 15 years I have performed many text-heavy monologues for theatre. I love it, and equally I am fed up with it, because what is theatre without the support and energy from your fellow actors? Though what I very quickly found with monologue work is, it is indeed a collaboration with the audiences instead. So, on nights when the audience don’t give you energy back, it’s hard to keep the gist up, at the same time, it’s so rewarding on wonderful evenings in the intimate sphere, where eye contact and directness with the audiences is essential, and their full attention, engagement, and encouragement blooming in the space for an hour and 15minutes.
All these monologues I have done, has been with and for playwright and theatre director Ulla Koppel and her Verdens Mindste Teater (The World’s Smallest Theatre) in Copenhagen. We met and started working together on A Confiscated Life – Hélène Berr 1942-44, based on the newly found diary of the lovely young woman Hélène Berr, who lived in Paris during the occupation. A Monologue for Survival, where I played Eva crazy and confused with baked potatoes in her moving cardboard box mess. And Nightflier, that I also wrote and produced for a newly opened Cold-War Bunker in the Kings Garden.
We did Hinsides (Beyond) based on the Danish writer Helga Johansen’s autobiographical novel, on being a woman psychiatric patient and opium eater in the 1880s in Copenhagen. And Merian, about real-life German artist and nature scientist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). Then we did The Wedding-Magazine, where a newlywed bride Lilly escapes her husband’s violence. Afterwards in My Life with Dostoevsky I played Anna Dostoevskaya based on her diaries and descriptions of meeting and marrying Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I will in the autumn of 2024 perform two new theatre monologues, premiering in October Nobel prize winner Herta Müller’s The Appointment (I dag havde jeg helst ikke mødt mig selv) on a day in the life of a factory worker during Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime, she’s been summoned, and premiering in November I Am Anastasia (Jeg er Anastasia) based on the stories and mystery of Anna Anderson’s claim to be Anastasia, this story is brilliantly bizarre. It will be wonderful to dive into both scripts, characters’ and their worlds. Both plays are directed by Ulla Koppel. So, I am back into learning two new full plays: a 17-pages long and a 26-pages long scripts during the coming summer months. Normally it takes me 1-2hours a day for around 1½ to 3 months to learn a long monologue script by heart, so, it’s time to get started!
