Chapter 11
JASON
The next afternoon, Jason waited for Marcus to come home from school. He’d spent some time looking through the monologue pieces in preparation. In his opinion, Marcus had chosen well. They were good choices for a kid serious about getting into drama school.
He’d just made himself a cup of tea when he heard Marcus come through the back door, drop his backpack on the bench, and kick off his boots.
“Hey, bud. You ready to get to work?” Jason asked.
“Heck yeah, I am.” Marcus gave him a lopsided grin. “I’m nervous too.”
“Don’t be. I’m just your Uncle Jason.”
“Who happens to be a famous actor.”
“I started just where you are now. Feels like yesterday I was in this very kitchen working on my audition monologues.”
“Which did you do?”
He chuckled. “The famous Hamlet speech, which in hindsight was ridiculous given how young and inexperienced I was.” He recited the opening line, “‘What a piece of work is man.’ And for my contemporary, I did Tom from The Glass Menagerie. Also ridiculous for a kid.”
“They considered that modern?” Marcus asked.
“Very funny.” Jason gestured toward the papers with the monologues Marcus had left for him before he went to school. “I’ve been looking at them. Do you have the play and book with you?”
“Yeah, here.” Marcus dashed to get them from his backpack. “Mr. Dansen had me read them first. I mean, obviously.”
“That’s right. You can’t get the feel for the monologue unless you know the context.”
“You want to start with Hal?”
Marcus nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Do the whole speech without stopping, and then we can talk through any suggestions I have.”
Marcus took a breath, looking down at his feet for a moment, clearly focusing before starting.
He was good. In fact, he was better than Jason had expected him to be.
He sounded conversational, despite the iambic pentameter challenges.
He seemed to understand the pivots in Hal’s speech well—the moment where the soliloquy turned from describing his loser friends to declaring his own secret nobility was done well for someone his age.
His vocal elocution was crisp and his tone resonant.
He’d clearly been working hard on it. And he was talented. No question there.
When he finished, Marcus returned to being a modern teenager. “How bad is it?” Marcus cringed, as if he were about to be smacked hard in the chest.
“That was solid,” Jason said. “You know what you’re saying, which is half the battle with this stuff. I have a few suggestions, though, to make it even crisper.”
Marcus exhaled. “Great. Give it to me.”
Jason couldn’t help but get excited. This work was his happy place. .
“Tell me what you think about Hal,” Jason began.
Marcus sat across from him at the kitchen table. “I like that Hal kind of knows everybody underestimates him.”
Jason pointed at him. “Exactly. That’s the key to the whole thing.” He leaned back in his chair, studying Marcus for a moment before continuing. “Hal’s not confessing here. He’s revealing strategy. Huge difference.”
Marcus glanced down at the page again.
“He’s basically saying, let them think I’m a screwup,” Jason said. “Let them laugh. Then one day I’ll become exactly who they never expected.”
“That’s kind of cool,” Marcus admitted.
“It’s very cool,” Jason said. “But don’t play the result.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t start sounding noble too early.” Jason got up and crossed toward the counter, thinking as he spoke.
“If you play him like a prince from the beginning, the speech dies. The whole point is that, underneath all the joking around, there’s this terrifying level of self-awareness. Which foreshadows what is to come.”
Marcus nodded slowly.
Jason came back to the table and tapped the page lightly. “He’s talking to us. Not the guys he’s out drinking with. Us. The audience. The world.”
Marcus leaned forward. “Right, okay.”
“He’s confiding in us. Saying—don’t worry. I know what you think I am. But wait. Trust me. One day I’ll show you who I really am.” Jason paused. “He’s asking us to keep his secret for a little while.”
Marcus looked back down at the speech. “I didn’t really get that, but yeah, I see it now. That’s actually beyond cool.”
“Agree. And it’s all very vulnerable. Not regal.
Not performative. For one second, he stops managing everybody’s perception of him and lets us see who he is.
The real version of himself, not the persona.
Which is really hard to do in real life, by the way.
Have you ever felt that the person you show the world isn’t really you?
That you’re better than what they think they see? ”
“All the time,” Marcus said. “I mean, until Roan and Reese adopted me, I was basically the kid no one thought twice about, let alone believed in.”
“Okay, right there. That’s the thing to tap into. When you connect it to your own experience, it becomes so compelling, no one can look away.”
Marcus nodded slowly. “Okay. That makes sense.”
“You started the speech like you already knew we believe you. You need to win us over. Convince us.”
Marcus was quiet for a second. “So less confident?”
Jason tilted his head, thinking through how to explain what he meant. “I’d say more exposed. More vulnerable. Like you’re opening up your very soul for everyone to see.”
“Yikes, okay. That’s hard.”
“Not too hard for you. And telling the truth and making people feel something—that’s what matters in art.”
“That seems big.”
Jason laughed. “It is big. Hal’s smart. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
But there’s still risk in letting somebody see the real you.
” Jason shrugged lightly. “Especially when everybody’s so sure about who he is.
One other thing, don’t push the important lines so hard.
Shakespeare already did the work. Let the language do its part.
They don’t call him a genius for no reason.
This is an instance where the actor doesn’t have to make the script better. It’s already perfection.”
“Got it.”
“The other thing is rhythm. Hal’s mind moves fast. One thought leads to the next.”
“Like in real life.”
“Correct. You’ve got natural stillness,” Jason said. “Most young actors perform at people. You clearly feel things very deeply. It shows. And we can pull more of that out of you.”
Marcus looked surprised by that. “We can?”
“We can. Try it again. This time, speak just to me. Show me who you are through Hal.” Jason leaned back in his chair.
Marcus stood up again. The first few lines came out almost exactly the same before he caught himself, pausing, shifting slightly from one foot to the other.
Jason could see the moment Marcus made the decision to go to that deep place he kept hidden from the world.
The teenage mask he wore slipped away, and suddenly Jason was seeing a sweet, damaged kid confessing to the world about who he really is.
The intimacy of it was breathtaking. And heartbreaking.
I know who you think I am but you’re wrong. I’m so much more.
I know, kid. I see it.
When he finished, silence settled over the kitchen for a beat.
“Yep, that’s it.” Jason looked up at Marcus. “You were vulnerable. And I saw you in every word. If an actor lets an audience see the truth—the fears and doubts that live in each of us—we’ll go anywhere with him. If he doesn’t, we’re just watching somebody say words.”
Marcus was quiet.
Jason shrugged lightly. “Letting people see your exposed underbelly is the real work of an actor.”
Marcus nodded slowly.
“Okay. Now Conrad from Ordinary People,” Jason said.
Marcus’s expression shifted. “I’m nervous about this one.”
“It’s a beautiful piece,” Jason said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Jason could sense right away that Marcus was struggling to find the honesty in the piece.
It occurred to him that a book about grief might be too close to home for a kid who’d lost his mother to a drug overdose.
Which, ironically, would make it harder for a teenage boy to perform.
The fear of going to such a dark place might outweigh his desire to be an honest actor.
“Okay, it’s good, but we can make it better,” Jason said. “It’s like with Hal. We have to see the real you coming through the character. Tell me this—why did you choose this particular monologue?”
Marcus shrugged. “Mr. Dansen thought it would be a good one for me. That I could relate.”
“And do you?”
“I guess.” Marcus studied his hands.
“Again, like with Hal, you need to dig deep into your own life and experiences. What does the monologue make you think about?”
Marcus took a second to answer. “My mom.”
“Yes, I can imagine it would.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said softly.
“Tell me about her. What was she like?”
“Before the drugs?”
“Yes, before all that.”
“She was an angel. Sweet and funny but quiet. Like she didn’t want to take up too much space.”
“Give me an example.”
“She’d never come all the way into a room.
Like if we went to a party or a school thing, she always hung out just inside the doorway.
I think that’s why she started with the drugs in the first place.
She never felt comfortable anywhere. Her parents were strict and critical.
From what she told me anyway.” He paused, studying his hands again.
“But I don’t know what that has to do with Conrad. It’s his brother who dies.”
“Loss is loss, I’m afraid. And as painful as it is to think about your mom, it’s what will make this real for you and for the people watching.”
“I don’t know how.”
Actors who’d had easy lives rarely understood characters like Conrad.
They pushed too hard, trying to manufacture anguish instead of simply telling the truth.
Marcus, sadly, had plenty of his own grief to pull from.
The trick was tapping into it. Good actors made it look easy, when it was actually quite difficult to let people see the truth.