Cet Enfant

We had our grand production of scenes en français, including a monologue from "Cet Enfant" divided into three parts. I had only 12 lines, so I was able to memorize and practice them and get pretty comfortable with it. My co-actresses had very large parts -- pretty daunting -- so they ended up reading their lines, which was fine. It was all a bit weird at first, but eventually I could see it was really cool... each of us took on a different aspect of the character's personality, bringing (potentially) a different slant to the piece.

It's a rather disturbing monologue, a pregnant woman revealing her grand plans for how her child will transform her life. She will suddenly be able to look herself in the mirror, be able to get out of bed every morning, and find purpose and meaning in her life -- as well as a decent job. She gloats over how her success and the happiness of her little family (her and the child, no hint of the father in this) will constitute the ultimate revenge on her mother.

"Elle en crevera, et alors la je serais vraiment heureuse." -- It took me a long time to figure out how to read that line, but I finally nailed it. Not like a cartoonish villain, but luxuriating over the word "heureuse" with genuine pleasure at the prospect of being genuinely happy ... and no awareness of the evil lurking in a happiness so dependent on her mother's devastation and destruction.

We were the 8th scene in the lineup (out of about 20) and so that gave me plenty of time to get nervous before we went on. My arm was shaking during the first part of the monologue, and I made a few mistakes, but I was able to cover for them (the author's elliptical, looping style helped a lot in this regard), and I was in control for my remaining sections.

Surprisingly, someone asked me afterward if I were French! "Bien sûr que non!" I replied, with spirit. But it still felt good. It's amazing what I can do in parrot mode -- I really shone in my Phonetics class last semester -- the trick is learning to think on my feet.