Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.
Today, we hear from:
Lizzie D. Combs, author of "Film Studies 101" (winner of the 2020 Bronze Ear)
I’d originally written an entirely different monologue in response to the “Me & My Masks” prompt. It’s about a bereaved, elderly woman looking back on her life, grappling with the death of her husband under the guise of discussing a lost dog (her “mask”). Close to the festival due date, I read the monologue to my husband. He liked it but challenged the subject matter. I’m decades younger than my character, and I’ve never suffered the kind of loss she’s working through in the piece. It’s a solid monologue I’m proud of, but it isn’t me. I decided to write something new.
At this point, I only had a couple of days until the due date. I remembered a short comedy I’d written in college called “Fat Exes,” which literally talked about masks. In the play, which was produced in a student festival, two narrators speak directly to the audience and critique their “masks,” the socially acceptable things we say but don’t always mean. I was studying the films of Ingmar Bergman at the time I wrote it, and his cynical view of humanity heavily influenced the play. It was well-received but ultimately not a true reflection of my (much more optimistic) beliefs about human nature. I trashed it and haven’t thought about it in years. When writing my submission for “Me & My Masks,” I had the idea: what if I take the themes from “Fat Exes” and rework them so that my character is presenting this philosophy in an academic setting rather than as fact? “Fat Exes” was inspired by Ingmar Bergman but didn’t mention him by name. “Film Studies 101,” the monologue I ended up submitting and performing for “Me & My Masks,” sees a young film student discussing Bergman in class and weaving his ideas into a confession about her own life. While I used “Fat Exes” as a jumping-off point, I only took a few lines from it (the “Wallpaper” tirade); the rest of “Film Studies 101” is a new creation — a mash-up of ideas and influences, old and new.
I remember my college costume crafts professor telling me, “Nothing is precious.” In other words, even if you spend hours on a costume and you’re proud of it, if it isn’t working, don’t be afraid to throw it out. On my journey to write “Film Studies 101,” I’m so glad I threw that first monologue in the trash — and then went back into the trash to dig out an old play I’d abandoned years ago. The cycle is a reminder: Art is a living thing; you never know when a long-sleeping story will wake up and tap you on the shoulder.