Anatomy of a Suicide - Part 21

N2C: Wednesday 10th January 2018 

During N2C time, myself, Bella, and Chipp worked on Anna's monologue in Scene 5 of AOAS. The monologue is about six minutes long and covers a wide range of topics from Anna's life which fill in important things for the audience. For example, it talks about Anna's drug addiction, her relationship with her father, that her mother has died, and how she ended up in the commune. As the monologue is so long, we decided to split it up into sections that included a certain topic and weren't too long so that myself and Bella could learn the monologue easier. By doing this, it made the monologue much easier to tackle and thus far I have learnt my first section and half of the second section. As the monologue is so long, it could get boring easily for the audience which is why Anna's tone must keep changing and not be miserable throughout otherwise the audience may stop watching and turn off, missing vital information about the play.

The lead up to the monologue starts on page 89 of the play. The majority of the lead up to the monologue could be regarded as filler so that the audience can focus largely on Carol's section and somewhat on Bonnie's section. The lead up is mostly Anna considering what to say and how to say it and also her mentioning her childhood and how it was like the commune. This may have been one of the reasons why she wanted to go to the commune because it reminded her of a time when everything was much simpler. However, there is one point before she goes into her monologue when she seems to be, seemingly for the first time, affected by her mother's death. She seems to avoid the concept of it by calling it "something else". This could be the first time where she's fully thought about the death of Carol without being on drugs or consumed by school work.

The first section of the monologue that I chose is her trying to explain what she was like during her drug addiction, especially as she mentions rehab and how she stayed on sofas. When she says she stayed on friends sofas, I think that shows how she was trying to make herself better and stop the addiction as she may have been with people that wouldn't want her on drugs - such as Dan as it is implied that she stayed with him for a while in scene 2. However, when she mentions that she slept on not friends sofas, this could show that she was addicted to drugs again - one such time could be after she had sex with Dan's fifteen year old brother. In this section she also mentions how she wasn't in contact with her father and reveals for the first time to the audience that Carol has died. The tone at the start of this section should begin as light and jokey, somewhat similar to how Anna was to Dan at the beginning - when I first tried to perform this to Chipp, it was noted that Anna should still be jokey and somewhat funny as that is an important part of her personality. As she gets to talking about her mother, Anna's tone should become slightly more serious, especially as she's come to the epiphany that the reason she started taking the drugs was somewhat because of her mother's death.

The second section of the monologue that I chose is Anna overdosing and going to hospital because she had an abscess on her leg. This could be somewhat shocking for the audience to hear as it is somewhat graphic as she mentions the abscess and how little she cared about her condition. The section also shows that she was ready to get help but soon she had withdrawal symptoms so wanted to get out and get her hands on more drugs. There's a part in this section where she seems to be more optimistic when she says she "could turn it into a Good Thing" which could show how much she wanted to be 'rescued' from the state that she was in. This could be what prompts Jamie to get the image of him becoming her hero which is why he becomes so fixated on her.

The third section of the monologue that I chose is when Anna is describing how she had no stability in her life. This could be her talking simply about her drug addiction but could also link to how she must have known about the tension between John and Carol when she was a child - she must have known that Carol was struggling to simply keep going from day to day. I think that Anna may hold some resentment for what Carol did to herself and to John because it broke their family up more than it had done than what it had been when Carol was alive. She may think that Carol chose to mess Anna up in the head by choosing to leave. However, Anna may not be as harsh as me, largely because she would have had a connection towards Carol. The phrase "that if my Mother couldn't - then I must be an almighty piece of shit" suggests that Anna to some extent blames herself for Carol's death. Here, she is suggesting that if she had behaved better as a child or had noticed what was wrong with Carol then she may have been able to save her from her death. In this section there should be a massive change of tone when Anna begins to mention stability because she is beginning to talk about Carol's death and the impact of that on Anna's life which is what the play is largely about so the audience should be allowed to pick up on the mention of the theme within this section.

The fourth section of the monologue that I chose was how Anna got to the commune and therefore answering the question that Jamie had asked her before the monologue had begun. The tone should again change to funny because she has realised that she's completely gone off topic and may be slightly embarrassed. However, as Jamie didn't stop her from her tangent, this shows the first signs that Jamie is infatuated with her. The phrase "I have a Degree - this was not I" suggests that Anna was going to talk about what could have been but immediately stops herself because she doesn't wan to go down that road of self pity. This phrase also shows the audience how clever Anna actually is and that Carol's death messed her up more than they may have initially thought because the grief consumed her which meant she started taking the drugs. When she begins to talk about how she hit on her dad, I could use a sad/angry tone but Chipp suggested that we use a jokey tone again because the image of someone hitting on their dad is somewhat funny. That would mean that the tragic thing that Anna is describing take place in the audience's head making them work and stay focused on what Anna is saying because of her abnormal reactions to what she's been through.

The final section of the monologue that I chose was Anna describing the commune and how similar it is to her childhood. I think that this section should be done slower to show that Anna is calming down because she isn't actually reliving the events again. I spoke about this in a previous AOAS blog.

One thing about the monologue that may be off putting for the audience is that Carol is constantly saying "a baby" throughout the monologue. This may distract the audience's attention and may even distract myself from what I'm saying in the monologue. Also, the sheer length of the monologue is such that some parts may easily be forgotten which may leave out key details for the audience.