Holding Attention During Transition

[J Pearce]

I used to do lots of monologue evenings, and we never went to black. If it was a quick actor change we'd choose a contrasting state to the previous and have a slowish fade to cushion the transition. If a piece of furniture needed to be added/removed we'd go to a saturated colour toplight or backlight wash, with crew in vision or the actor placing the item.

 

Don't fall into the trap of every monologue being DSC, moving them around the stage (with appropriate proxemics for the piece undertaken) will break them up whilst maintaining focus far better than a blackout.

 

Make every piece different - lighting, blocking, furniture, sound, give them all a different vibe - this will help.

 

Any formulaic like a blackout, or a whiteout, or a backlight wash, or a music sting, used every transition will get dull very quickly. Keep changing it!

[alistermorton]

Do any of the monologues happen to be delivered by an evil wizard? :)

 

splutter...

 

 

On cix, which didn't have embdded graphics, just text) we used to use C|N>K for that .

 

(coffee piped through nose redirects to keyboard).

 

Don't fall into the trap of every monologue being DSC, moving them around the stage (with appropriate proxemics for the piece undertaken) will break them up whilst maintaining focus far better than a blackout.

 

I was going to say use all the stage not just DSC, and possibly rostra too.

 

 

 

[iains]

Don't know if it's too late to reply, but I did a show where we used a newscaster board hung on a false prosc just to put some gags for the audience to watch during some scene changes in blackouts, they always got a laugh programming took a bit of time but well worth the effort