Final Monologue- Thursday October 13

I finished my monologue today. It wasn't hard at all because I already had the idea written down and the rough draft done, so the only thing I needed to do is find out in what I wanted to focus and erase everything else that wasn't relevant. Also, I realized while I read the monologue that there were parts that sounded so good and so deep and then suddenly there was a sentence that just cut down that feeling and the deepness so what I did was eliminate those sentences or try saying it different. For example, the part where Christine Collins explains how he measured him and the kid was much shorter than her son, it really didn't sound good the way I said it before so I decided to concise the story by not telling the part where I measured him against the wall of anything, but just say that he was shorter than Walter. I did found that by repeating "I want my son back" it really creates a mood and helps the viewer be able to feel the pain this mother is feeling and the desperation she is feeling as well to get her son back. my job this weekend is to memorize it. This is my monologue:  

My name is Christine Collins. On March 10^th 1928, my son, Walter Collins disappeared. A 5-month investigation led to a boy being found in DeKalb Illinois. They told me and all of you that this boy was my son; he is not my son. When I first saw this boy I knew, but the agent insisted that I was in shock and that my boy had changed in the past 5 months because of the trauma. So I convinced myself that I was in shock. However I then realized he was inches shorter than my son Walter that I measured every month. I went directly to the police, but they weren’t listening to me. They told me that trauma could affect the growth of children and his spine could have shrunk. I didn’t understand why they were lying to me; that boy is not my son. I have given the L.A pd every opportunity to admit their mistake and renew the search for my son; since they refuse to do so it forced me to bring my case public and I hope this will make them open their eyes and bring my son home to me. The department has made a terrible mistake and they have to please help me find my son before its too late. They are wasting time when they could be looking for him. I am here because I want the truth to be known and what this police department has done to me and to my son. But the only thing I care about now is finding him; I beg them to please renew my case and start looking for my son. I can still feel him, please, I beg you, I just want my son back.

I found something in the movie that I thought I HAD to add in my monologue that is when they already won the case against the police department and she already knows about the psychopath that had kidnapped her son which practically meant that Walter was dead. But still, there is a part where the pastor which became a great friend of Christine that helped her a lot to get justice, tells her that she has to let go and she responds by saying: "Not yet; I can still feel him". She could still feel her son, as a mother she felt her son was still alive and she could be right or wrong nobody knows; what we do know is that mothers have a special bond with their kids; they can feel when something is wrong; so I wouldn't be surprised if Walter was still alive. So I decided to end that way: " I can still feel him, please, I beg you, I just want my son back". I felt it was a very deep way to end and the repetition of the sentence: "I just want my son back" through the whole monologue is as well very efficient because it creates an impact to the audience. It helps the audience understand the situation at a greater scale and really feel the sadness this mother was feeling when the police denied to keep looking for her son. Who knows, if they hadn't made a mess and given her another kid and instead had listened to her, maybe Walter could have been saved.

Finally, I decided to eliminate the part where she tells about how she was sent to a psychopathic ward with no evidence because it didn't follow the chronologic order. In the movie, she talks to the press and that is what triggers the police to capture her and get rid of her my taking her to a mental hospital so it didn't make sense and I had to center on one specific idea because having a lot of things made my monologue so disorganized and not impacting at all. So I  decided to make my main idea how the police gave her another kid on purpose and decided to treat her badly and ignore her when she said that kid was not her son.

Something that is going to be very important is how I will perform it which I have already explained in depth in another post. I will have to practice a lot and really understand the character and be able to analyze it in depth to be able to portray her as the weak but strong women Christine Collins really was.