What Happens in a YC Monologue?
Throughout the year, Young Chautauquans will compile their research on their historical character into a 5-15 minute monologue. A typical YC project has 6 parts:
-
Introduction: a few sentences read by someone else to set the stage.
-
Opening: the very beginning, which grabs the audience’s attention.
-
Stories: usually three stories about the character's life.
-
Closing: a few sentences that wrap up your presentation
-
In Character Q&A: students answer questions about their character's life in character.
-
Out of Character Q&A: students answer questions about their character's life after their monologue takes place, or about themselves as scholars.
In a YC performance, scholars will act out scenes from the life of a historical character who inspires and intrigues them.
Between January and April, they will read about the historical character they’ve chosen, write a monologue telling interesting stories from the character’s life, memorize their script, and learn acting techniques to better portray their characters. In May, they will record their final performances after a live Zoom dress rehearsal.
In the monologue scholars will tell their character's story from the character's perspective, using the pronouns I and me rather than he or she. For example, rather than saying "He lived in London for 16 years," they would say “I lived in London for 16 years.”
Most scholars portray their character in the later years of their life, in order to look back on many things that have happened in the character's life over the years and share them with the audience. The introduction will set up when in their life the character is talking, as well the audience they're talking to. They might be a grandmother speaking to her grandchildren, a famous author giving an interview after a long career, or a teacher speaking with his students about the early days of his life.
The performance will be based on facts that actually happened to your character, but while writing their monologue scholars will add evidence-based details to create a compelling performance. As well as researching their character, they will learn about events that happened during their character's time period. To learn this information, books are used alongside quotes, photographs or even video footage of the character. The stories they told in the monologue must be as accurate as possible and based in historical fact, but scholars have the freedom to decide, based on their research, how the character reacted to a situation or what they might have said during an important event. Although direct quotations are useful, the scholars will be writing the majority of their monologue in their own words.
Please watch the examples of Young Chautauqua performances in the Videos & Photo Gallery to see a YC monologue in action!