WILDe - Members' Content

Matilda the Musical - Lost in Adaptation

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:54:00 +0000

For my first article as our local musical fanatic, I wanted to showcase one of my personal favourites and explain how and why it works, by comparing Matilda the Musical on stage with the recent 2022 movie musical adaptation. This will be a spoiler-free review, going over some of the adaptation choices, regarding adaptation for intended audiences, and one of the biggest flaws that snuck in during the adaptation process.

Who is it for?

The original book by Roald Dahl was intended for kids, to see a little girl who loves reading, overcomes difficult situations, and wants things to be just. Putting her in a very unjust environment that gets resolved by the end, through compassion and a little smart problem-solving (and telekinesis). By this point, so many adults grew up on it, or at least the 1996 movie with Danny DeVito, that it’s become a staple even outside of those who read the book.

The stage musical adapted the book freshly, picking scenes that are iconic and mixing it with commentary on how kids are often treated, while creating a genuinely impactful story about child self-empowerment and adults still having to deal with difficult situations that can make them feel small. The vibes are immaculate and Matilda’s family, the Wormwoods, are ridiculous enough to bring a brighter atmosphere and add some adult humour, to balance out the frankly terrifying headmistress, the Trunchbull. A colourful and fun performance with a beautiful set, that can make kids and adults laugh and cry, which makes it a perfect family experience.

Then there is the movie musical. I don’t enjoy bashing things, and it did do some things well, like the singers being pretty decent, or some of the imagery during the song Quiet or Revolting Children, but oh does the adaptation struggle with who it is for. Opening with the words “To change the world it needs a little genius” is already a choice (TM), but I guess you can whittle the idea down from compassion and community to one special person fixing it all, even if it weakens the story’s moral. They cut essentially all of the adult commentary and jokes, reduced the Wormwood’s screentime and plot that added a lot of needed light-heartedness to balance out the school storyline, and weakened the connection between Matilda and her teacher Miss Honey by cutting a good chunk of her story. It feels like they wanted to make this a children’s movie and forgot what children are halfway through, making Matilda a hero protagonist with superpowers, rather than a little girl who is clever and can levitate a glass of water or some chalk. It’s a fine movie on its own, but you are missing so much, and it is a pretty poor adaptation.

I had to pause at certain points during the movie and just take in how the framing, combined with Netflix lighting, sometimes makes Matilda feel like a horror movie monster, with an exchange about the Trunchbull going verbatim

“I'm not scared of her!”
“You should be. She's dangerous.”
”So am I.”

Girl, you are five years old.

The Plot Thinnens

Let's first have a moment of silence for the characters we lost: Matilda’s brother and Mrs Wormwood’s part Italian dance partner Rudolpho. Admittedly Matilda’s brother in the stage version doesn’t add very much other than vague comic relief that gets uncomfortable when you realize that the joke is that he is portrayed as mentally disabled. I cannot fathom what led to this choice in the musical, and while getting rid of him gets rid of the unfunny joke, it does also take away from the Wormwood family dynamic. Matilda’s mom having a very loud hobby in dancing, while Matilda prefers the quiet, was a great way to show the differences between the family members when they aren’t actively interacting, especially when contrasted with Matilda’s favourite teacher, Miss Honey, visiting the same library as her.

Both of these got cut for the movie, and it made me wonder what else they cut.

The answer is: Lots of things! But this is where I run into constraints regarding spoilers. I don’t want you sitting here having me compare things you might not even know, so I’ll stick to some basic examples for now and promise that the same thing happens all over the place.

Using some early scenes that were famously in the older versions, Matilda messing with hair oil and putting glue in a hat, were both responses to things that Mr Wormwood did on stage in the musical. He’s a liar, boasting that everyone trusts people with good hair, so she ruined his hair for him, making the outside match the inside, mixing chemicals that were explicitly meant to be kept out of reach of children. That direct line from point A to B was missing, just like Matilda putting glue in his hat was a response to him telling her to glue a book to hers originally. It was robbed of context in the adaptation.

And that, my friends, is the key issue I have with the scripting of the adaptation. They kept all the big moments (important to specifically Matilda, other character moments often got cut completely), but it feels like they didn’t even know why the moments happened in the first place. The basic rules of setup and follow-through were thoroughly ignored. Chekhov would be disappointed.

There were only so many things I could say about this adaptation without ever touching on spoilers, and that 100% includes the music. So now go and listen to the stage musical, or look it up somewhere (TM) and get ready for a full spoiler music analysis in part two!

(Editor note: Part 2 of this article, with spoilers included, will come out soon!)

Written by Nic Treczoks, a dedicated Writing Committee member!

You can find Nic on Instagram: @nic_has_a_nac

Ibsen's First Steps

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 12:22:00 +0000

God was born small and crawling. Legendary Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, the second most performed playwright of all time after Shakespeare, went through at least 5 messy, derivative plays before he made something remotely worth considering. Or, at least that’s how the Great Narrative goes.

“Love’s Comedy,” Ibsen’s 8th play, is where the real fun starts. It’s the story of two guys who pursue two girls, one each. Falk and Lind, chasing Svanhild (named after a princess of legend) and Anna, respectively. Lind and Anna settle, all holy. Falk and Svanhild’s tryst unfolds differently. Falk’s a poet, an activist and… he’s looking for a muse. Svanhild marvels at his artistry a little, measures herself up. Measures him up, too. No, she tells Falk, I won’t be your muse, you can do your writing thing on your own. It’s liberation, really, abandoning the historic archetype relegation mechanism of all those artist types that wouldn’t just objectify you, they’d Generalize you, Mythify you, mutilate your personhood for the sake of metaphor. Enter: rich business guy. He tells Falk and Svanhild: your love will not last. The pair talk, really talk.

And decide he’s right. Crazy in love and utterly rational. Svanhild’s future is comfortable and miserable, by painstakingly conscious choice. Falk’s future is all about being out on his own, probably still doing his thing, pen and ink and tears and paper.

“Love’s Comedy” is widely considered to be Ibsen’s first real masterpiece. After it came “the Pretenders” (ignore that one), and then what is in my opinion the GOAT sequence of published plays. “A Doll’s House,” “Ghosts,” “Enemy of the People,” “Wild Duck,” “Romersholm,” “Hedda Gabler”. They’re all there.

So what was the darling protofeminist playwright’s deal before this historic run? Did he suck? Was “Love’s Comedy” a monumental pivot, a Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” moment?

When I started reading Ibsen’s stuff in order, it was from purely a completist impulse. I like diversity in my reading diet; I read, besides for fun, to expand my worldview and challenge my tastes. One day it hit me that maybe I was unfocused. Maybe I needed to really immerse myself in one particular author. Ibsen’s early works ended up serving both purposes. They gave me more focused insight into the Norwegian’s obsessions and quirks. They also proved challenging and taste-expanding.

It isn’t easy reading clunkily translated 19th century verse. It takes some time getting into a setting of 16th century Norway and its geopolitical conflict with Denmark. Most of Ibsen’s early plays are exactly like that – historical dramas with plots of nobles, feasts and poison. These are odd (in lieu of what I’d usually be reading; in terms of early 19th century play thematics they were probably not odd at all, maybe even crushingly standard) lyrical tragedies, more akin to awkward attempts at greek epics than the nuanced psychological drama of the later plays.

There’s some things Ibsen shed as he grew more refined. One striking element is a blatant Norwegian nationalism. In “Lady Inger,” he even tweaks historical events to stoke that anti-Denmark, pro-Norway sentiment. Norway comes out of the big battles stewing in the background of Lady Inger’s conflicted solitude as the noble, warrior force fighting the evil Danes and Swedes. It’s weirdly black and white. I think it’s sometimes alright to use less nuanced framing in campaigning for independence, and maybe that was his goal here. What’s even weirder, though, is that it just makes things up to play up the nationalism. It would have been alright if it was a wholly fabricated conflict, or perhaps if the setting was more fictionalized, but here Ibsen takes a real historical timeline (the Scandinavian Kalmar Union and the last attempts to maintain Norwegian independence within it) and changes its sequencing and choreography. A bit of alternate history that isn’t telegraphed or contextualized; in other words, historical revisionism.

It’s actually “Love’s Comedy”, again, that marks his first public reexamination of the straight nationalism of his early work. In edits to the text, he changed some words that were explicitly Norwegian to make the work more accessible to a Danish audience. This sparked a lot of hate from the more hardcore Norwegian nationalists that believed in the sacred purity of an essential Norwegian language.

Another thing he let go was verse. This he stayed with for longer, though, and his last verse play ended up being Peer Gynt, which is also coincidentally a thematic examination of various kinds of Norwegian nationalism. A lot of his early plays are in verse, and some are in prose, with random stanzas thrown in for no apparent reason.

“Love’s comedy” is in verse, and so is “Peer Gynt”. Verse seems to work for him in a few cases. Still, a more careful but unbounded approach to form is partly what makes Ibsen’s later plays so fantastic.

It’s not like he completely pivoted, though. Some of the cool things he does in his later plays are in the earlier ones too. Most notably, his obsession with strong women. In “Lady Inger”, the eponymous Lady Inger is deeply isolated as a noblewoman, simultaneously ostracized and pulling all the weight in a markedly patriarchal society. That theme of the isolation and confinement of women under patriarchy would go on to be reinterpreted in some of his best plays – “A Doll’s House,” a real classic, and “Hedda Gabbler,” that just got a lesbian movie adaptation starring Tessa Thompson as Hedda Gabler herself.

So what makes the later plays so much better? Nuance, for one. Critically facing his own nationalism and examining it in his plays. Writing as public therapy. Rearrangement, for another. His obsessions with patriarchy, class conflict, activist identity, heavy-handed symbolism, muses – these were all there in the earlier plays, it’s just that through revision, reconfiguration, playing with order and weight, he found how to make what was on his mind as impactful as possible on the page.

Reading Henrik Ibsen’s early work was sort of inspirational. And not because the plays were so interesting and idea-sowing. It’s precisely because they’re kind of stilted and obvious, these first awkward fruits of an undeniable tree, that they give me a sort of license to just play around. To feel what I’m interested in and create a silly, needlessly grandiose story out of it.

Written by Yan Nesterenko, a dedicated Writing Committee member!

You can find Yan on Instagram: @n_strenkyn

The Chameleon Lab, Revealed!

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 11:33:00 +0000

WILDe has been buzzing with activity this season, but one project has been quietly taking shape away from the spotlight. The Chameleon Lab — WILDe's crew dedicated to building a play from a limited script — has been deep in its creative process, and until now, the wider WILDe community hasn't heard a word about what's been brewing. That changes today. We sat down with co-directors Gyula Szijjarto and Timothé Mathelin to pull back the curtain on their latest experimental creation.

Q: What attracted you to directing a piece where the play is still evolving during rehearsal?

Timothé: Funny story is I actually took part in the first edition of the Chameleon Lab two years ago, back in 2023. Gyula here and Sofiya Petrova were directing it back then. I absolutely loved the concept of developing theatre skills, creating a bond with the cast, and putting up something all together at the end. It really brings a different sense of achievement. I liked it so much that I'm co-directing it now haha. What's dear to me is that the concept we use in the Chameleon Lab is going back to the roots of WILDe. That's how things used to be in our first years and where we come from as an association. I find it fulfilling to be honouring that.

Gyula: It is the only way I have ever directed actually. In my first year in WILDe I was about to direct one of the main productions where I already implemented this approach, if only Covid-19 wouldn't have cut the year in half... When I was on the board I kept experimenting with such projects, until finally 2-3 years ago I came up with the concept of the Chameleon Lab and together with Sofiya implemented its first version. Why I'm so keen on this approach? It is how I learned theater and acting as a form of self-expression and performing arts. The goal of amateur theater in my eyes is to realize something about ourselves and/or the world together in a group, actors directors alike, and form this message which is truly ours into a performance of any kind. The director is an enabler, coach, guide in this process to form a common vision instead of implementing their own.

Q: How do you balance giving actors freedom to shape the script while still guiding the overall vision of the Chameleon Lab?

Timothé: What we did is we first organised a film screening and all watched it together. Then, Gyula and I divided it into different scenes and shared the plan with the cast. Now that they know the plot and the characters, we're letting them come up with how the scenes unfold and how they want to portray the characters. We're here to guide them in their process of building the scenes and bring more detail, but everyone knows the overall plan, and the ideas we've seen so far are already wonderful!

Gyula: We — Timothé and me — come up with the overarching structure/timeline of the play. Run this by the actors. Then once the context is clear, the actors actually provide all of the initial input. Once they brought us their first take/edition of a scene, we respect that input and collaboratively try to bring out the most of it.

Q: How are changes to the Chameleon Lab currently being captured and decided during rehearsals?

Timothé: Regarding changes compared to the original source material, Gyula and I first discussed what our vision was for the overall narrative so we both had a common agreement, and then we shared it with the cast. We also really value their opinion so we had a long talk about the overall vision and now we're all in sync! For smaller details, we just discuss it with them as they're building the scenes.

Gyula: I think we have a common understanding usually of what needs to be done. Then an actor comes, out of nowhere, with something brilliant and/or impressive, and it just becomes part of the play.

Q: What kind of rehearsal environment are you creating so actors feel comfortable taking creative risks?

Timothé: First of all, getting to know each other. It's much harder to let go with strangers in the room. That's why we start out with a lot of fun theatre games, and gradually build into exercises and useful practice. It's also important to foster a positive atmosphere, and we do that by being encouraging and supportive. It's difficult to completely let go as an actor, and I'm so proud to see the cast manage it every time.

Gyula: We find it very important that everyone knows each other, is treated with equal attention, and feels heard because they are listened to. In the first part of the project, before we even start talking about a play, we provide trainings on different disciplines of theater so that everyone gets roughly on the same page. We play plenty of theater games where actors can collaborate, experiment, go crazy... And we also never start a rehearsal before having heard from everyone in some detail what is going on with them personally.

Q: At this stage of the process, what has surprised you most about how the play is developing with the actors?

Timothé: Honestly, how easy going it is. As I said earlier, there's a wonderful chemistry, and that makes the process so pleasant and easy. Everybody is onboard and always excited to come to rehearsals. As a director, that's one of the most rewarding sentiments.

Gyula: It has been a very rewarding experience to direct the Chameleon Lab every year because so many talented people who never acted before were able to surprise an entire audience by the end with some unexpected virtuoso performances. This is just as true this year as it was before. I think my jaw drops at least once at every rehearsal when yet another actor surprises us with their interpretation of a casual exercise. We're already so proud of them, I cannot wait to see the end product!

One thing is clear: whatever is taking shape in those rehearsal rooms is something special. A cast of performers growing bolder with every session, two directors who believe in the magic of collective creation, and a play that is still writing itself — the Chameleon Lab's latest production is shaping up to be one not to miss. Stay tuned.

Written by Anna Galtsova, a Writing Committee member and a legendary veteran of WILDe!

You can find Anna on Instagram: @gal.tsova

You’ve been cast as a side character. Here are 3 tips to make your few minutes on-stage count.

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:10:00 +0000

If you are the type of person who did not receive enough attention from their parents in childhood and are now desperately seeking that attention in the spotlight, then you are probably familiar with this type of frustration.

You wanted to be the star of the show. To have the most stage time. To be the main face on the promo poster.

But alas… after hours of tireless audition prep, and wishful thinking…

You got cast as a side role instead.

Your dreams are crushed. Your rejection sensitivity is triggered. Your frustration is real.

Now you think to yourself, “Am I doomed to play an insignificant part that no one remembers… again?”

If you are this type of person and this does sound familiar to you, first of all, please seek help. The stage will not heal your parent issues, I guarantee you that.

Now.

Jokes aside, yes, it is a common desire among theatre enthusiasts to want to be the most prominent person in the spotlight and to receive the loudest applause.

As a result, many actors have developed a false misconception that the only roles that matter are the main ones.

Not only because side characters have objectively less stage time, but also because it feels like there just aren’t enough opportunities to do something exciting with a small role.

But worry not, because with this blog, I aim to prove you wrong ;)

Humor me this…

What would it be like to have a “Lion King” without Timon and Pumba?

A “Beauty and the Beast” without Lumière and Mrs. Potts?

A “Shrek 2” without Puss in Boots?

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Though seemingly insignificant, once you remove a side character, the story is suddenly void of… spark.

While yes, you can, in theory, have “The Lion King” without Timon and Pumba, and the plot would still work (ish?), I imagine your gut reaction to even assuming such a thing is “Hell no! Bring the goofy boys back!”

Interesting, isn’t it?

It’s almost like side characters can and do fulfill an extremely important role in a story. Bringing emotional depth and carrying important plot beats.

Contrary to what you may expect from a theatre person like myself, I actually LOVE playing side characters.

Why?

Not only is it less rehearsal time and fewer lines to learn (though admittedly, those are bonuses).

But because I believe it’s always fun as an actor to take the few minutes of the stage time you have and to come up with a creative way to utilize them.

We already know the main character will be great and memorable due to the amount of time they have to develop their story.

But how can you do the same with a side character?

In this blog, I will share with you the three tips that will, in my opinion, help you maximize the potential of your small role and make your side-character-acting a fulfilling experience.

I will support each step with examples of side characters I have acted as in WILDe Theatre. And may have won a few awards for.

So, without further ado, here are the three tips.

Tip 1 - Understand your purpose in the story

When developing the role you’ve been cast as, I encourage you to first and foremost think more deeply about your character’s purpose in the story.

There is always a reason the author created side characters, and I can assure you none of them are placed in the story “just cuz”.

Otherwise, why would they be there in the first place?

Think about it.

What theme(s) does your character represent? What narrative values do they contradict or support?

Is it to serve as an antithesis to the main character and\or to challenge their ideology?

Is it to bring a comic relief to an otherwise very dark story?

Or is it, perhaps, to highlight a certain characteristic of the world the story takes place in?

Even if you are only on-stage for a few minutes, I encourage you to treat your character as a fully fleshed-out individual with a complete backstory, a moral compass and a goal.

Example

Take Maya Wolfsheim - the character I acted as back in “The Great Gatsby the Musical”.

Up until the moment we meet Maya Wolfsheim, our understanding of the world of Gatsby is simple - it’s a world of wealth, abundance and lavish, champagne-soaked galas where everyone is rich, successful and seemingly happy.

Gatsby himself represents that dashing side of New York—his endless success stories, his well-connected network of wealthy businessmen and celebrities, his massive mansion, hell, even his amber car all point to the fact that our main character lives in a utopia of sorts.

But then… In comes Maya Wolfsheim.

A dangerous criminal who wears human teeth as jewellery and has single-handedly overturned the World Series baseball. A woman who stands behind Gatsby’s success.

It is only when we meet Maya Wolfsheim that we realize - Gatsby’s world is a facade.

A fake utopia that was built on crime, corruption and, perhaps even murder.

Maya appears on-stage for only a few minutes, yet her presence looms. Like the judging eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. Like a threatening reminder, that at any moment that beautiful facade of Jay’s successful life may fall apart like a card house.

With all of this in mind, Maya’s role in the story becomes clear - to showcase a different, darker, but also a true side to the world of Gatsby.

Maya isn’t just an evil-looking femme fatale who had that one funny interaction with Nick at Speakeasy.

She is a representation of lies and corruption that serve as the foundation of Gatsby’s fake world.

After realizing this, everything I did for Maya Wolfsheim’s character made sense and served this single purpose.

She wore a red dress because red is the color of danger - a warning and a reminder that Gatsby’s world is fragile and may fall apart (foreshadowing the end of the story).

She acts seductively but has an evil demeanor because that is what Gatsby’s world is - beautiful on the outside, corrupt on the inside.

She is heartless because Gatsby’s real world is void of love and care (nobody showed up to Gatsby's funeral when he died…).

Her musical number looked like an uncanny puppet show / a spider web because that is how the world of Gatsby works - you sell your soul to crime to gain access to wealth, but you pay a grand price of being trapped in servitude to a cold, unloving system.

And that’s how we turned a small character with less than 3 full scenes in the entire show into a fully fleshed out persona with a concrete image and a meaningful goal in the story.

The rest is cosmetics ;)

Now the next question is, how do we make the complex purpose of a side character clear to the audience in just a few minutes of stage time?

Tip 2 - Define your characters’ “archetype” and keep it simple

You have seen them in basically any story ever written.

Character archetypes.

A simple, comprehensible set of characteristics assigned to a single person.

A gentle giant who seems threatening on the outside but is actually very kind.

An incompetent ruler who holds a position of power but is yet to learn to use it.

A wise magician who guides the hero's journey.

You probably already have a few examples in your mind for each of those archetypes:

Shrek as the gentle giant.

Joffrey Baratheon as the incompetent ruler.

Gandalf as the wise magician.

Archetypes in stories exist for a reason. They are easy, recognizable patterns of behaviours or symbolic figures that are familiar to humans across cultures.

Because character archetypes are so well-known and repetitive, once an archetype is introduced, it becomes very easy for the audience to set expectations for the said character’s personality and behaviour.

We meet a giant who seems shy - we expect to witness his journey to discovering himself while being challenged by his grotesque appearance.

We come across a stubborn, bratty prince - we are thrilled to see what lessons he will learn to eventually grow into a wise, responsible ruler.

We get introduced to an old, friendly magician - we expect to hear some words of advice and showcases of wisdom.

So… how does all of this tie back to building your side character?

I believe when you only have a few minutes to tell a full story, archetypes can be a great way to showcase a very complex persona with just a few recognizable characteristics.

Sometimes even with the most basic stylistic choices and a few lines of dialogue you can establish very concrete archetypes, setting predictable expectations for the audience to follow.

Now, does that mean your side character should be void of complexity and only follow a cliche “stereotype” to be memorable?

Absolutely not.

I’m not saying “make your character fit perfectly into a strict, limited category”.

What I am saying is, try to think of ways to make your role’s motives and values as simple and as comprehensible as possible from the get-go, and let the rest of the decisions you make about this character fit that single image.

If your side character’s archetype is simple, it is a no-brainer for the audience to cheer for them when their values are endorsed and to be shocked when their values are challenged (or the other way round if it’s an antagonistic character), thus leaving a lasting impression in the show...

Example

Back in Romeo and Juliet the musical, I played a small character whom most people will barely remember from the original play scripts - Paris Capulet.

And yet I must admit it was probably one of the most entertaining roles I have ever played.

So what made Paris Capulette special from the character archetype perspective?

As discussed earlier, I started by defining my character’s role in the story, which was pretty obvious - to serve as the antithesis to both Tybalt (a man who genuinely loved Juliet but never saw her for who she really was) and Romeo (someone who not only loved Juliet but made her feel seen and understood).

Paris also “loved” Juliet, but his love, in contrast to Tybalt’s or Romeo's, was never centred around her, but rather around his own ego.

Everything he did “for her” was in truth for a selfish reason. To boost his status. To show his rich friends that he got the most beautiful girl. Perhaps even to win some adoration from Juliet’s mother ;)

With that in mind, Paris’s character archetype drew itself - a selfish spoiled man who always gets what he wants and severely overestimates his own greatness.

A “rich frat boy”, if you may. Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast” type of character.

All I needed to do next was to make it immediately clear to the audience who I was as a character.

Wear a suit and a perfectly slicked man bun and walk into a scene with a bottle of Sauvignon to show that I am a pretentious rich man.

(Imagine if, instead, I walked on-stage with a can of beer and untidy clothing… It would have made a completely different first impression, wouldn’t it?)

Flirt with literally everyone, including Juliet’s mom and the audience to show how laughably highly I think of myself.

Kiss Juliet’s hand in a practiced, exaggerated manner to show how all of this is just a performance to Paris, not a genuine act of affection.

And there we have it. In just 3 minutes of on-stage time, we plant a very specific image in the audience’s mind. A spoiled rich asshole who wants to win the main character’s heart but is destined to fail due to his arrogance.

Later on, when the audience sees Paris “lose” Juliet to Romeo, it is easy for them to laugh at my character’s pathetic downfall and to enjoy seeing him get “punished” for his selfishness.

A very simple character image with a very simple motive resulting in a hilarious and memorable sub-plot within a larger story.

Creating an archetype for Paris helped me set immediate, predictable expectations for the role without the need to go through a multiple-scene-long character-building journey.

And I invite you to do the same for your role, should you be blessed with a chance to make the most out of your few minutes of stage time.

Speaking of which, what exactly CAN you do to make your side character shine?

Tip 3 - Get creative and make a SHOW

Ok, this section has become a bit too philosophical now that I have written it, but I hope it still brings the point across.

Regardless of the type of production you participate in, I believe your sole job as performer is to create a show that leaves an impression.

It doesn’t matter if you are the main character or a dancer number five. Every person in a production serves a greater purpose - to effectively deliver the main message of the story, and to invoke emotions within the audience.

Be it to disgust them, to make them laugh, to make them feel hopeful, or sad, or philosophical, or impressed by how much can be done with the make-believe magic of the stage.

Actors are storytellers. And so are you.

Theatre is a place where things that aren’t feasible in the normal world suddenly become “real”.

A place where people collectively agree to close their eyes on the laws of physics and “accuracy” of what’s happening before their eyes and to simply let themselves enjoy the story.

For just two and a half hours, you and your cast mates are able to bring imaginary characters to life, to build a world that doesn’t exist, and to make magic possible.

And even if your role in this collective hallucination act is small, the moment you set your foot on-stage you gain the power to make literally anything real.

So, go make it happen!

The creative potential of the stage is endless. You don’t need hyper-realistic equipment to make the audience believe you are on the moon if you act like you are wearing a space suit.

You don’t need to buy special effect kits to make people think you have magic powers if you move your body through space like you are casting a spell.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t let yourself be limited to what’s written on the script.

Get creative. Use what you and your theatre already has. Brainstorm ideas with your directors and cast mates. Ask for help from the people who have the skills you need to make something happen (WILDe Theatre is very rich in talent, I remind you!)

A crazy interpretive dance to deliver an emotion of your character - why not?

A dramatic, heartbreaking monologue to reveal your character’s big secret - why not?

An oddly specific item for your costume to bring a bit of humor to your character - why not?

Hell, a swordfighting duel between you and your rival - Why. The hell. Not?

(Obviously, please consider the limits of the production as well as the budget and the safety rules, but you get what I mean.)

And finally, the most important thing of all (and this has already been said multiple times in the other authors’ pieces written in this blog series, but I will say it again) - have fun!

The energy of an actor is very contagious.

If you love your character, so will the audience.

If you are enthusiastic about the ideas you are bringing on-stage, your cast mates will be too.

If you are enjoying the small role you were given and are giving it all the love and care it deserves, the people WILL feel it.

If you had made a decision to bring yourself to theatre, it means you already have dreams, aspirations and a creative potential waiting to be freed.

I am not here to tell you what to do with your character or how to make a good show, because you already know how.

And at the end of the day, big or small, it is your character.

Your chance to shine.

Your story to tell…

In sum

If you wish to make the most out of your short time on-stage as a side character, start by clearly defining your role in the story:

The values you represent
Your relation to the world and the other characters
The message your role needs to deliver

Once your purpose in the story becomes clear, think of the most simple and identifiable way you can bring your characters’ personality across in relation to that purpose.

What “archetype” do you fit in?
What tools can you use to clearly showcase your motivations and values? (Think mannerisms, costume design, behavioral choices, props, etc.)

And finally, don’t be afraid to get creative. Think of interesting ways you can bring across your characters’ unique personality, values and beliefs. A dance? A song? A unique prop? An intense dialogue or a monologue? A fight? Use the magic of the stage to make a memorable show!

Remember, you only have a few minutes.

So, why not make those minutes count? ;)

Written by Juliana Boboshko, a veteran of WILDe, actress and a member of 4th and 5th Boards!

You can find Juliana on Instagram: @jules_the_sparrow

A Room in a House - How to "Build" a Character

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:01:00 +0000

You, my dear actor, are a designer. After many arduous competitions with other incredible constructors and architects, you have been chosen to decorate a beautiful room in a house.

The foundations of the house are already there. The blueprints of the building were drawn centuries ago by the most famous builders of their time. Everyone knows what the house is supposed to look like, in theory. It has been copied again and again all over the world, with the same white walls and pointed roofs. On the outside, there are dozens of replicas of the exact same house.

On the inside, there is a common understanding of where each room is supposed to be: the kitchen is on the left, next to the living room. The bathroom is connected to the main suite. There is a garden outside the house that reaches out to the street, where you can say hello to those passing by.

However, each room can be decorated in its own original way. How you choose to decorate is up to you. But how do you do that, exactly? You have been given an empty box, and it is your job to fill it and present it in a way that feels uniform with the rest of the house. So how can you make this room truly yours?

The first thing you need to know is what the room is for. What is the purpose of the room? What's the reason it was put there?

To answer that, it's important to know what kind of house is being built: A modern apartment? A cottage in the woods? A Victorian manor? Your "guests" need to be able to tell this just by the interior design, so that's what you'll need to focus on when choosing your furniture.

It always helps to do research into the setting. This is not just about the inside of the house — the time and location where things take place, the political issues of the time, the kinds of clothing worn — but also the house's history. Who created the blueprints? Most writers — oops, sorry, "architects" — bring in messages and conflicts from their own life into their creations, so it's vital to understand what lessons or themes they wanted to present at the start.

When you're focusing on one room, try to summarize its purpose in one sentence: the kitchen is where you eat, the bedroom is where you sleep, the basement is where you hide the secrets. Each room has a meaning, both for the guests and for the house itself, and this helps give you a straightforward direction for what you're here to do.

If you're decorating the living room, you have a big task! This is the first thing that guests will see. First impressions are very important. It sets up the shape of the house, connecting to each and every other room. This is your main space, the lead, where guests will spend most of their time — so it needs to show the house's purpose immediately. Sometimes, there's a monologue printed on the wall or an "I want" song playing on the radio that spells it out plainly for you. Regardless, the designer still has to know what these goals are, and the house's structure follows along the pursuit of those goals.

Remember: your room has to be interesting, not beautiful. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad, evil or saintly, logical or insane. Every home has its eccentricities. Sometimes there's a broken antenna on the old TV, but that's still a part of the house. It needs to be there at that specific angle for the signal to work. You don't have to clean it or fix it. As long as it's possible to peek through the window into someone's life, people will be curious to walk in. Open your doors. Let guests see into every dusty nook and cranny: especially the ones that aren't so pleasant.

On top of all this, there is a very important question that people forget to ask themselves:

Why?

You know the living room has a sofa, a carpet, a coffee table, a shelf, and a TV. That's fine — anyone can shove the cheapest furniture they find at IKEA in a reasonable arrangement and call that a living room. However, if you really want to take up space, create something genuinely appealing that people will actually call home, you have to ask what those things are trying to achieve.

You need a coffee table because you need an easy place to put things down. That's straightforward enough — but maybe, you know that there was once a fight in the living room. The coffee table might've once been made out of glass, but now it has been changed to a harder wood to keep people safe. Maybe there are still fragments of that fight embedded in the floorboards, that you scrub and broom but they never go away. Do you want to seem simplistic, contained, and keep to minimalistic decorations? If so, you put a basic white vase right in the middle of the table — but it's left empty, because you've never received a bouquet from a friend before. Or maybe you want to appear gentle and caring, placing a little crocheted runner with embroidered blue flowers? Those flowers could be forget-me-nots, so guests never forget what actually happened to the original glass table.

You must see the same types of little choices in your own house. You surely have a charger you always keep next to the couch because one time someone needed it and it's now a permanent fixture; a slight stain on your bedsheets because your best friend spilled wine on it and you were never able to wash it off; a lightbulb that went out and you spent months trying to find the replacement but never could. It's not the best, or healthiest, decision to replicate your room exactly, but it always helps to take some inspiration from your own experiences to have ideas.

There is so much you can do with a simple space just by asking yourself what caused things to be the way that they are. When guests only catch one small glimpse, they don't need to have the complete story of someone's life, but they at least need to understand why the room is there, and why it's decorated the way it is. As the designer, you get to decide what parts of the story you want to show. You create the meaning behind every decision.

But importantly, a room does not exist on its own. Even the most amazingly decorated living room is useless if it has no hallways to connect to. You have to ask yourself: how does your room relate to the rest of the house?

What do you give to the neighboring rooms? Perhaps your space brings warmth from the fireplace, perhaps you complete each other like a bedroom and a walk-in closet. Perhaps it offers rest after a long journey through the house, or perhaps it disrupts the calm and forces guests to rethink what they’ve seen so far. Maybe colors bleed through the doorways, or noise might echo through the walls. In many ways, every room both shapes and is shaped by the ones around it.

Contrast and parallel are both important to consider. Some rooms are built to complement one another: the warm kitchen next to the lively dining room, the quiet study tucked away near the library. What do they offer each other, at the end of the day? What they agree on, what they learn from each other, and what they represent? Still, it's important to know what makes them different — what makes them distinct from each other? If they are too similar, you might as well take down the walls and turn them into just one larger room. If they are separate, there must be reasons why. What makes them separate?

Other rooms are deliberately placed to oppose each other, but even extremes still have things in common. The attic is upstairs with the most important family memories, open to a gorgeous sunroof. The basement is dark, shadowed, and grimy, left behind with pipes and rats. Despite being on the literal opposing side of the house, they are fundamentally similar — they both are dusty. They see the house changing while they stay stagnant, left forgotten behind closed, trapped doors.

Look closer, and you may find similarities hidden beneath the surface: perhaps both rooms serve the same purpose in different ways, or perhaps they were designed by the same hand, reflecting the same fears or hopes. There's still a lot they hold inside that is functionally the same, even if architects act upon them differently.

Some rooms transform dramatically as the house ages. The nursery becomes a bedroom, the workshop becomes an office, and the kitchen gets updated with a brand new fridge. These rooms undergo renovations to help reach those overarching goals. As a designer, it's important to ask yourself where the room starts when the house's doors are first opened, and how it changes as the guests go through it. Furniture moves, walls are repainted, and windows are opened that were once shut tight. How do you want the room to end up, and in what state is it in after the guests have left?

Other rooms remain mostly the same. Their role is not to change, but to give the rest of the house context. A stable room can act as a reference point — a place that shows how much everything else has shifted. Even without transforming or going through an arc, it can influence the transformation of the spaces around it. It serves its purpose, and that's never a bad thing.

Sometimes you're not tasked with decorating the living room, or the kitchen, or the evil basement. Sometimes you're just a storage closet. That's okay! It's just as important as any other room, and all these guidelines still apply. The house was built to include that storage closet for a reason. If you know those reasons well, you can still do the same kind of work. Even if the guests are with you for less time, they'll notice if you put effort into making it a very impactful and interconnected storage closet.

At the end of the day, the house does not belong to the designers alone. It belongs to the people who walk through it, the construction company, the team that set the land, the people who bought the paint, and the engineers who fixed the pipes.

You are not building the entire house. You are not even defining the walls that surround you. But within the small box you have been given, your decisions can give a very different impression of the house as a whole. Think about who passes through your door, what they bring, and what they should take away with them when they leave.

So ask yourself these questions, be creative, and put on a show. Most importantly of all, have fun! People will notice, and they'll have fun with you! Nobody will remember old blueprints or any nitpicky little flaws — they'll remember the rooms that felt alive.

Written by Ana Clara Martins, a dedicated Writing & Marketing Committee member!

You can find Ana Clara on Instagram: @anaa.logy

Theatre in Late-Stage Capitalism

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:58:00 +0000

‘Late-Stage Capitalism’ is one of those phrases that gets thrown around constantly to describe our day to day life. Many people believe that Late-Stage Capitalism is just something that is used as a joke, satire on the world we live in. Sadly for us, we are by definition living in a world of Late-Stage Capitalism.

By definition, Late-Stage Capitalism is characterized by extreme inequality, unchecked corporate power, financialization and monetization of everyday life. Gas prices, cigarettes, food, water. All these things are slowly rising in prices, while everyday people struggle left and right to find jobs that are able to sustain themselves in times like this.

Naturally, in a world where the average person spends one-third of their life at work (totalling around 90.000 hours over a lifetime) most people turn to the Entertainment sector. A place where we can forget our lives, our wages and our troubles. Movies, Shows, Art, Museums, Games, and of course, Theater.

It surely comes as no surprise, seeing as it’s right in the title. Today I’ll be writing about Theater in Late-Stage Capitalism.

Unlike film, streaming or other digital media, theater resists easy scaling. It can’t be mass-produced, optimized by an algorithm or consumed passively. It requires bodies like you or me in a room, time spent together, and a willingness to participate in something that will one day never be shown again. In an economic system obsessed with efficiency and profit, theater can seem almost irrational.

And yet, theater persists.

Perhaps that existence is the point.

Community Stages, Independent Companies and the experimental productions continue to appear in cities and towns around the world. Powered not by profit, but by collaboration. A diverse group of people coming together for one common cause; Entertainment.

Sure, you could be an actor, or a singer. But somehow through all the shallow feelings that modern day film and tv gives you, somehow Theater continues to feel raw, trailblazing and new.

Content vs. Art

Still despite this diversion from our lives, Capitalism is slowly worming its way into Theater. Writers and Directors on Broadway are pushed to produce marketable shows, ones without risk and with plenty of bait to draw in as much money as possible.

Plays and Musicals are redone and rehashed until every last bit of them can be milked out for profit. And beyond all of that, Theater has to compete with Streaming Services and other forms of Digital Media.

Corporations desperately try to turn theater from what it is today into large profit margins. The question is whether Theaters are resisting this transformation.

Corporate Sponsorship and Artistic Freedom

Slowly and surely, especially after Covid, Theaters have given in to corporate sponsorship, relinquishing their creative independence to stay afloat. But with money comes more risk than just lack of artistic freedom, it also comes with corporate influence, censorship and blatant advertising, ruining the safe spaces that Theater lovers once called home.

Original and groundbreaking plays and musicals are now replaced with more of the same, as Corporations clearly prefer money over spectacle and truly impressive entertainment. It doesn’t matter to them whether the corporations if the people actually enjoyed what they saw, so long as they’re making money they don’t have to change a thing.

Yet through all these issues Theater still persists. But why is that?

Why Theater Still Exists

Even though Theaters all over the world experience similar issues like Censorship, Lack of Funding and Lack of Freedom, Plenty of local and smaller theater groups fight for what’s right in a broken society.

Through all of this, Theater resists. Live storytelling, empathy and true cultural resistance, that’s why Theater still lives to this day. And we’re lucky, because of we keep on this course, one day nothing will be original anymore.

So What Can We Do?

If Theater is struggling under the pressures of modern systems, it’s easy to feel like the problem is too big for any individual to influence. But Theater has always depended on something that large industries often overlook: a community that cares enough to show up.

Support Theater doesn’t always mean large donations or industrial funding. Often, it’s much simpler than that.

Buy a ticket when you can, bring a friend who hasn’t seen a play before, take a chance on a show you know nothing about. Live performance only exists when people decide it’s worth being in a room for.

For those who are part of theater communities, support can take other forms. Volunteer your time. Help build sets and design props, usher audiences, design posters or spread the word about upcoming productions. Small participations keep local theater ecosystems alive.

And perhaps most importantly, talk about it. In a culture dominated by screen and streaming, theater survives through conversation and community. Every recommendation, every post-show discussion and every moment of shared excitement about a performance helps create an audience that theater needs.

Theater has always been a fragile art form. It requires lots of time, effort and a bunch of people willing to believe in a story together. In a world increasingly built for convenience and profit, that might be exactly why it still matters.

Written by Joy Roelandschap, a dedicated Writing Committee member.

The Comedy of Being Human: Interview with Directors

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 12:42:00 +0000

For the first time in forever, WILDe is giving up its classic winter play concept for a split bill: three short plays for the price of one! This March 2026 (not technically winter, but let’s not dwell on that), we present The Comedy of Being Human: an evening of three short plays by world-renowned American playwrights David Ives and Christopher Durang.

Through wildly different stories, this comedy-filled night explores familiar questions: what does it mean to be human? How do we love, dream, and occasionally lose complete control?

The programme brings together three delightfully contrasting comedies. Mere Mortals offers a soulful construction-worker confessional, Soap Opera tells the lightly unhinged story of someone falling in love with a washing machine, and The Actor’s Nightmare delivers an absurdist tale of an accountant suddenly thrust into a leading role.

We sat down with the directors of Soap Opera and The Actor’s Nightmare, who generously took time out of their busy schedules to share more about the rehearsal process - and why you definitely shouldn’t miss this show.

SOAP OPERA

Placed in the middle of the program, Soap Opera is certainly not the average show.

Written by world-renowned playwright David Ives, Soap Opera is a story about love: a very special kind of love. When a washing machine repairman falls for the machine he’s meant to fix, an absurd yet heartfelt romance unfolds. This show is perfect for anyone who has ever had a love-hate relationship with doing laundry, despised the typical stepsister trope or simply enjoyed playing Date Everything (if the play evokes a certain feeling in you, you should definitely check it out).

El, the director putting together the rowdy romance, is sharing a few words about what it’s like directing such a kooky show, with a no doubt even more kooky cast.

Q: How is Soap Opera going from a director's POV?

El, director: It is going fine! We are currently in the state of taking care of production stuff. We are a bit short on time, but we are handling it! From a director’s point of view, it’s been going really well. My actors understand the directions well, there are people in the cast I can rely on, they are very involved and they seem like they are enjoying the process. It was also a little chiller than other productions, because we have rehearsals only once a week. So yeah, it’s been going well!

Q: What was the most rewarding moment in the production process?

El: Probably seeing it come together and seeing my actors understanding the point of the play and finding some things I didn’t notice. We had a discussion where we sat down and looked through the script, and we talked about what the actors found funny, what their favorite moment of the script was, how they understood their characters and hypotheticals of how the characters would behave in different settings. It was really nice to see that they get the play in the same way I do, and sometimes even find new moments that I didn’t see before!

Q: What is your overall rehearsal process like from first read-through to now?

El: It started with reading the script and doing a couple exercises. Then, we were running the script scene by scene, mostly based on the combination of actors. For example, we ran some scenes with one set of characters, but not with the other. As the process kept going, we brought them together, and now we’re just basically doing the overall runs of the script. We went off-script after the Christmas break, so now we have a finished product!

Q: To address the appliance in the room... How are you dealing with the washing machine from a production POV?

El: The washing machine is currently being made by Pavani in WDKA! We were planning to make it out of wood, but then things happened, and we can’t do that anymore. So now we are making it out of cardboard! It will be painted over, and might be a little unstable, but we are really hopeful that it’s going to work out. The issue is that there is supposed to be someone inside the washing machine, so that is a little more difficult… but we are gonna deal with it!

Q: What do you hope the audience takes away from experiencing Soap Opera?

El: Soap Opera is a very funny play, so my main expectation is for the audience to laugh a lot! There are a lot of jokes and different tools in the script: some wordplay, some references, some very blunt acting choices - so I really hope that they will laugh at not just the script, but also at the way we act it out. At the same time, I hope it brings out some sweet experiences, because the main point of the play is to not chase perfection, but notice the beauty in the mundane. I hope this gets through to the audience!

THE ACTOR’S NIGHTMARE

The Actor's Nightmare is the final of the 3 plays you will see during performance.

Written by world-renowned playwright Cristopher Durang, The Actor’s Nightmare is a bizarre and surreal comedy about the struggles of acting. The unhinged triplet of the set, it’s delivering on the worst fears of a theatre kid (failing on stage) and of a normal functioning member of society (being on stage in the first place).

We sat down with the powerhouse duo that stepped in at the last minute to steer the wheel. Lucas & Sinem, a dynamic director pair, share a little bit of what makes The Actor’s Nightmare so nightmarish.

Q: What emotions and themes can we expect from The Actor's Nightmare?

Lucas, co-director: The Actor's Nightmare is a comedy first and foremost, of course. It is very, very funny, it is humorous, but it is also very surreal. It is a very strange play, at times even a little unsettling, especially towards the end, but it is a comedy first!

Sinem, co-director: The Actor's Nightmare reminds us, in a fun and familiar way, of the mixed feelings of surprise and fear that come with being in an unfamiliar place - a feeling almost everyone has experienced at least once.

Q: Give us a quick idea of your rehearsal planning & process. How did it start, and how's it going?

Lucas: The rehearsal process is a little bit messy, just because I came onto the project very late. As you may know, they lost a director midway through and didn’t really have a lot of stuff done yet, so I stepped in as a sort of emergency because those problems needed to be solved very quickly. Right now it’s going a lot better than I first expected, but I do also feel a little more rushed than the other directors of the plays!

Q: As an actor, how do you feel about the show and what it has to say?

Lucas: I do like how The Actor’s Nightmare manages to pick out and make fun of certain stereotypes and cliches within acting & theatre in general. I also enjoy that, at least to me, it doesn’t have a much deeper meaning than that! It is much more focused on doing this and being funny, and doesn’t have a super deep secondary meaning.

Sinem: Regarding the show time, first of all, personally, I'm excited because it's the first English-language play I've been involved in directing, and because I'm working with such a young and dedicated team. As for the team, despite their busy schedules, everyone is doing their best to make the show a success.

Q: What are your actors like? How is the cast approaching their roles?

Lucas: The actors are doing a very good job! They are responding to feedback very well, and especially for how quickly we had to get into this, I think they are doing very well! It is a very difficult play to act in, just because of how surreal it is at times, especially for the main character, George. It is a very special type of role that you definitely need a lot of talent for, and not something easy to play!

Sinem: Although the actors sometimes feel tired and low on energy due to their busy schedules, I think they do their best to focus on their roles, and they are very supportive of us even in the costume and creative processes, eagerly asking questions and adding their own creativity to approach their roles. The lines sometimes scare them because they have other active roles, but I think they will overcome that :)

Q: Are you ready for showtime? :)

Lucas: We aren’t ready for showtime just yet*. There are still some things that production has to get us, there are still a couple of lines to fully memorize and some bits and pieces to make right. But on our current timeline, I’m pretty confident that we will be very ready once the date rolls around, and we are very excited for it!

*Ed. note: this interview was taken on 16.02.2026 - the cast is definitely adding the finishing touches by now!

Sinem: Ahhh, you can never really feel completely ready for the show :) And that's perhaps the most magical and exciting part of it ;) I can only say that we'll be close to feeling ready when a few small details fall into place :) We'll all see together on the night of the show. But before each performance, we really won't feel ready until it's over :)

The clock is ticking, and the seating capacity is dwindling fast! So don’t delay and purchase your ticket now:

https://studiumgenerale.stager.co/shop/wilde

And we will see you soon, beautiful and human life stories in tow, in Erasmus Pavilion!

Written by Anna Galtsova, a dedicated Writing Committee member!

You can find Anna on Instagram: @gal.tsova

Let's Review: Monologues

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:25:00 +0000

Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene. These are the first words of possibly the most well-known piece of theatre in history: Romeo & Juliet. The narrator, who only appears twice in the play, takes a moment to set the stage, uninterrupted and without anything else to distract the audience from what they’re saying. In other words, the narrator performs a monologue. Monologues are a staple of theatre and, although to a lesser extent, film. A staple we love to quote and one we often use as a key source of characterization study when reviewing pre-established scripts. It’s an invaluable resource when writing for stage or screen and possibly one of the most entry-friendly ways into writing dramatically.

Today, we'll take a look at the Monologue: what they are and what they do, how we can go about writing one, and finally, why and when they work. Thank you for reading, now Let's Review.

I. You’ve Got Me Monologuing – Or a non-official typology

Although not completely one to one, monologues can be categorized in a few key types:

1. As a form of narration, which we will call Expositionary Monologues. These are often delivered directly to the audience and help establish the world or setting in which the piece will operate. Some examples include the opening narration of Romeo & Juliet, as well as narration by Galadriel opening the first Lord of the Rings movie. A common trope for Expositionary Monologues is prophecy, which allows a writer to quickly get a reader up to date not just on what is happening, but also what will happen over the course of the story.

2. As a form of philosophizing or self-reflecting, which we will call Verbalizing Monologues. These are delivered by a character to themselves and often reflect the inner thoughts of the character, helping to relate to their point of view or actions without having to dramatize it into a multi-actor scene. This type of monologuing is most often found in works written for stage. The equivalent tool in film comes out in camera-work, showing a level of detailed facial expressions that are hard to capture when working with a physical stage. Examples of Verbalizing Monologues are found in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” monologue, helping understand the mental anguish he is in and his struggles between action and inaction, and McBeth’s “Is this a dagger” monologue, showing the start of his paranoia and regret over his betrayal.

3. As a form of positioning the character in relation to others, which we will call a Statement Monologue. While the first two types are most often delivered with a character alone, the Statement Monologue is almost exclusively performed by a character in relation to others. The most widely known trope is that of a ‘villain monologue’, where the antagonist of a story proudly explains their plans and how they despise the protagonist of the story, helping to create clear relationships between different characters. Dramatic examples include Shylock’s “If you prick me, do I not bleed” monologue from the Merchant of Venice, where Shylock decreases the distance between the antisemitic citizens of Venice and its Jewish population, or the “You can’t handle the truth” speech delivered in the movie A Few Good Men, clearly setting up the differences between Daniel and Colonel Jessup.

4. As a form of persuading or motivating others, which we will call a Rallying Monologue. Where most of the other subtypes may not often be used in film, the Rallying monologue is the exception. Usually performed by the main protagonist, we see examples in movies like Independence Day, many fantasy and science-fiction movies like Lord of the Rings and Dune and in television series like the West Wing. The key element of the Rallying Monologue as opposed to a Statement Monologue is that while a Statement monologue serves to outline who characters are in relation to one another, the Rallying Monologue goes further to try and change the belief or action of another character to that of the protagonist.

5. As a form of direct audience address, which we will call a Directed Monologue. The literary term for this is an ‘Apostrophe’ and is distinct from narration because the characters remain within the story, as opposed to looking at it and narrating it from the outside. Fleabag makes extensive use of this by acknowledging the fact that the story is being told to the audience as a participant in the story, which is its key differentiator from the Verbalizing Monologue. Another example of this is the explainer-type Directed monologue, usually found at the end of detective stories or whodunits and delivered by the main character, helping the audience to understand and ‘solve’ the mystery.

From these broad subtypes, a few key questions seem to emerge:

- Who is the character speaking to?

- What is the purpose of the monologue?

- Is what is being said objectively true (Narration, Verbalizing) or subjective (Statement, Directed, Rallying)?

- Is the character aware of who they’re monologuing to?

With these in mind, we can begin to design our own Monologue.

II. Or not to be, that is the question – Or the mechanics of writing a monologue

There are a few things we need to engage with a monologue. First, monologues depend on the context of the play (and the context in which they were written) to resonate. Second, a monologue has to deliver some kind of message. Third, monologues are directed to a certain audience and finally, they are delivered by a character. Together, we can refer to these elements as CMAC and depend on them as we begin to build our monologue.

Context is the most broad and usually determined by the script you choose or write. We can define context as ‘the entire set of facts and circumstances around the action happening on stage/screen’. This can be as expansive as early 19^th century France (Les Miserables), Middle Earth in the Third Age (Lord of the Rings) or 1940s Europe (Saving Private Ryan) or as small as a living room over the course of a day (Carnage) or a piece of garden (A Bug’s Life). A quick structure to get to context is by naming a place and a time. After deciding on a context, we can populate it by adding detail. What defines your context? What important elements belong to it? What kind of struggles were happening at the time? What kind of victories? Where are we? What cultural elements will impact or shape our context?

If you want to write a monologue yourself, quickly sketch out 3-5 Contexts. For each of the contexts, answer the following questions:

1. What cultural elements or factors are present? Which one(s) is/are dominant?

2. What does life look like for someone within your context?

3. How is your life different from the lives of people within your context?

After establishing a context, we have to determine the Message. The message is a clear statement that describes what the monologue is about. It can be as simple as “The monologue describes someone’s day” or “The monologue is about dealing with grief.” This will become your guiding line throughout writing the monologue. Whenever you ask yourself what comes next, you refer back to the message statement and connect whatever you are writing to that. A general rule of thumb is that a monologue can have multiple messages, but never more than one at the same time. A monologue like Romeo’s goes from “I am in love with her” to “We can’t be together” to “I have to find a way”. This guides the audience through a line of thinking that a singular “I love her” would not have captured. For directors, this is referred to as the ‘through line of action’ (Stanislavski, Meisner).

For your monologue, determine whether there is one or multiple messages. Write each of them down in a one-sentence statement on different pieces of paper. Which order should the messages take? Determine the order and label them with a number.

Audience seems simple at first but determines a lot regarding how a monologue is structured. The audience at the start of a play may only know a surface-level amount about the story or may not know anything at all. Characters within the story should know the context of the play (or at least those they would realistically have access to. From our earlier typology, we can broadly say a monologue can be directed at Self, a different Character (or characters) or the Watching Audience. When making this determination, think about what your audience knows at the beginning of the monologue and what they should know by the end. Also keep in mind that although the Watching Audience may not be the targeted audience of the monologue, they will be the ones experiencing it in the end. Hiding information from the Watching Audience will create a risk that they may miss it. That is okay. Make sure that this is a conscious decision when writing the monologue and be aware of the risk.

For your monologue, determine your audience. Write down what they know before and after the monologue and how this changes how they feel or think about the character. For each message, write down 2-5 key points you want to bring across to the viewing audience. What risks do you see? What opportunities arise from this specific choice of audience?

Finally, we get to Character. By this point, you will have an idea of the context of your monologue, what you want to say and who you want to say it to. Character determines how you deliver the monologue. Characters, on the most abstract level, are a walking ‘mini-context’ of thoughts and ideas, both about themselves and the world around them. By determining how your character works, you will understand how your monologue should be delivered. This includes the conscious (how does the character think) and unconscious (how does the character feel) parts, as well as the visible (what language do they use, how do they talk).

For your monologue, we start by sketching out a character:

1. In a few lines, describe the character’s context (how does it differ from the context we established at the start?) What does it mean to be this character in this context?

2. In a few words, describe how the character talks (short, eloquent, clipped, upbeat, cheerful, dour, angry, mischievous, lisping, stuttering, verbose, dry).

3. For each of your messages, determine the following:

a. Does your character know what the message means?

b. How does your character want other people to look at them?

c. How does your character think of/look at themselves?

d. What does your character think of the Audience?

4. For all of the above, determine with each Message and Key-point how this interacts with your character. Does it scare them? Are they happy about it? Do they want to hide it? Do they want to be proud of it?

If you followed along with the practical exercises, what you have now is a clearly defined context, a planned outline of messages and key points in a chronological order, a clearly defined recipient / audience of the monologue and an outline of the character that is supposed to perform it. All that is left to do is to write the monologue itself.

III. Everyone can cook – Or what makes your monologues work

Armed with the above outline and with a clear idea where our monologue fits in the typology, we can begin writing it. Ultimately, what makes the text of a monologue work and stick with the audience is highly subjective and differs from writer to writer. However, there are some key guiderails to help you make your monologue flow.

- A monologue is personal. Whether delivered full of facts or incoherently and straight from the heart, it will forever change how we view the character. It reveals what might be hidden or it clearly shows that the character is hiding something. The point is not to solely deliver a speech or debate. These can be done in many other places outside of film and theatre. Where our craft differs is the fact that we add a layer of emotionality to what is said.

- A monologue is spoken. A great practice for writing monologues is to speak it out loud as you finish (parts of) it. You will immediately hear where lines need to be adjusted and what does or does not sound good to you.

- A monologue is heard. Going together with the former, it helps to deliver your monologue to someone you know to see whether they understand what it is you’re trying to say and how you’re trying to say it. If follow along and engage, chances are your audience can too.

- A monologue is fleeting. Unlike written works or recorded speeches, dramatic monologues exist only for so long as they take to be performed. This means that whatever messages you want to share, it should be possible to follow them even if the audience cannot review what is being said. Limit the amounts of simile and metaphor to one or two striking elements and add extra emphasis on the personal elements, which will stick much longer than recollection of the actual text.

- Finally, a monologue is rehearsed/planned. This is important. Sitting down and writing a monologue means thinking about and feeling out everything we have reviewed so far. It is different from the impromptu speech or improv theater because we intentionally create our narrative and give ourselves time to prepare it. Relying solely on improvisation and a very rough sketch can yield tremendous results, but will ultimately not allow you to repeat it reliably.

Before we finish: There are books on writing that strongly encourage you to simplify your messages to something everyone can understand. This does not mean that you should dumb down your message or intended idea because your audience won’t understand. Film and Theatre as a medium are sometimes not meant to be understood or even enjoyed by everyone. This is especially true for monologues that exist as individual pieces. By treating our audience with respect and viewing them as complex individuals with their own perceptions and ideas, we encourage them to interact and engage with our writing. This is the core of dramatic craft and ultimately what differentiates passable writing from truly unique and exciting monologues.

IV. So this is Monologues? – Or the thing in review.

Today, we have reviewed monologues: what they are, how they are structured and what makes them work. If you followed along with our exercises, you made a clear outline and, based on our writing takeaways, have possibly even finished a full monologue! You now have a working, basic understanding of what it takes to write one and in doing so, have thought about how to perform it or direct someone else performing it. If you’re not quite ready yet, keep going and finish the project. It need not be long, even a page is enough to say you’ve written a monologue.

Read it, show it to someone and/or start the next one.

If we approach theatre as a craft that takes some time and practice to get used to, you’ll see that you begin to improve very quickly. Repeat the exercises and write a few short or mid-length monologues before going into a long one. Read publicly available monologue collections and apply our review to them to be able to take what makes them work and add the tricks to your toolbox.

If you are excited to share your work, please send it to wilde.eur@gmail.com. If you want, we can provide feedback or help you overcome a challenge.

Until then and see you next time where we add an extra dimension for Let’s Review: Dialogue

Written by Thomas van Eijl, a dedicated member of the Writing Committee and a veteran of WILDe

You can find Thomas on Instagram: @thomas_the_dutchman

3 things that make a screenwriter - and 3 things that break one

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 10:08:00 +0000

Will you become a screenwriter?

At the end of the day, that’s the honest question.

First off, let’s get the deets out of the way: you will probably never become a famous screenwriter, and you will probably struggle to sell a seven-figure script. That’s just statistics - no hard feelings.

That’s not what this question is about.

Will you become a screenwriter: will you trade your soul for sitting in front of Final Draft, writing 2 words an hour, then slamming your laptop, then getting a coffee, then pacing around the room for that perfect twist, then lurching back to your work in a frantic attempt to write down your next brilliant idea - and more importantly, will you be able to do this for days, for months, for years, for hundreds of scripts?

I must preface this list by saying I’m still not sure which side of the fence I fall on. I’ve definitely written a lot of scripts, and that mass definitely had its flaws. I sat in front of my own plan today, and I could not write a word - not even the 2 words an hour I so haughtily wrote about earlier. It made me afraid, and it made me curious.

What makes someone write - and what makes one stop writing?

I hope to answer that question for myself and anyone that is wondering. So, in the best Buzzfeed tradition, let’s think through 3 things that make a scriptwriter - and 3 things that break one - together.

Make 1: watching movies

I know, I know. To be a screenwriter, you have to watch movies. Shocker.

Still, you’d be surprised how many people that want to be screenwriters don’t actually watch a lot of films. I say this somewhat vulnerably as someone who regularly stops watching for months - and has to make a conscious effort to pull myself out and watch something for Pete’s sake. (Shoutout to my sister, an insane movie nerd, who drags me into movie theaters and puts on films I want to watch. Her mind terrifies me and I could never be her. Thanks Nastya.)

There is another group: people that restrict themselves completely arbitrarily. “I won’t watch it if it was made after 1990”, “I won’t watch it if it’s black and white”, “I won’t watch it if it’s under 60% on Rotten Tomatoes”.

You need to consume fast food to be a chef. You need to know Picasso to be a painter. Sometimes, you need to see animal guts daily if you want to be a vet.

Sometimes, you just aren’t a movie aficionado. That’s okay too. After all, there are a scary number of movie classics I haven’t watched, and I will one day catch up with that list.

But if film, by choice or by need, is something you must get into, you need to watch film.

How do I get there?

Start with the classics. Don’t fall into my trap and watch the oldies that everyone talks about. If you don’t see why they’re iconic, at least you form your own opinion;
Fall in love with its versatility. Citizen Kane, The Room and Avatar are all movies. Good or bad, funny or scary, pretty or real - they’re all films. Isn’t that cool?
Don’t be ashamed to be kind to yourself. Maybe, as you watch on, you will discover that this is not for you. And that’s okay!

Break 1: not seeing your movie and story

Not in some beautiful poetic sense. Can you actually see what you’re writing about? That’s often the deciding call.

For the longest time, I was convinced I had aphantasia. After all, the apple test landed me between a 4 and a 5 on a good day, and I still cannot picture anything actually moving in my mind’s eye. With training (Reddit helps *shudder*), I was able to inch that to a 3-4 rating, and I’m glad I did.

This doesn’t matter too much when you write fiction books, but screenplays are strictly visual. There’s no way around it. (Sorry, first person POVs, you’ll stay confined to novels.)

Simply put, if you can’t see it and you can’t hear it - it has no room in a script and will only serve to waste the real estate of your work. You have 120 minutes max to make your point, and while you might cherish what your characters are thinking or feeling, if your client, director or industry worker can’t put it on a screen, it’s a lost cause.

As you can imagine, not knowing exactly how each moment looks in a scene, how the audience sees the woes of your characters, and what the audience is perceiving, not just seeing, hurts your point pretty badly.

How do I fix this?

Write a whole script without any dialogue. Words are a crutch for your inner voice - so tell it to shut up and pass the mic to your mind’s eye.
Watch movies intentionally. Observe, take visual notes, shamelessly steal tricks from the gurus. Ask yourself - why did this old white man point the camera that way?
Daydream. Put your laptop down and let your 15-year-old self dream. My hot take: this is a valid and necessary part of writing, especially of a script.

Make 2: falling deeply in love with your story

A “good" story is subjective. You may doubt your screenplay is any good, but for someone else, it can be their saving grace that pulls them out of misery. I loved Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (before JKR became who she is now, just saying); to others, it was a bunch of nonsense, and they made sure to tell me about it.

Often, the key to being a good (screen)writer is simply that - being able to love your script, your story and your characters.

This ‘make’ is the bread and butter of how we writers live.

Your passion relies on being deeply infatuated with every crevice of your screenplay, understanding exactly what place in your heart your story occupies, and why it draws you to wake up, pick up a laptop and keep on writing. That passion is contagious - and is often the immediate hook to make what you do truly a good work.

If your heart is not on fire for the story that you’re trying to tell, if you don’t want to shout your key message from the rooftops, if you aren’t just slightly crazy about your blorbos and your plot beats - then sorry to say, your well will be dry very soon.

We writers are fundamentally lovers. In a very messed up way, we love our own minds.

How do I get there?

Indulge yourself. Pick a storyline that has happened to you, a character that represents a dear friend, or a lore detail that represents something only you know.
Praise yourself very casually. The little thumbs-ups you give yourself along the way boost your confidence by a lot. Wrote a nice page or two? Tell yourself ‘good job’!
Don’t hesitate to kill your darlings. It’s different if screenwriting is your income, but if you have the luxury of writing for yourself, don’t start if you don’t believe in an idea.

Break 2: being too smart

To all the people who think they are extremely smart and cool and sexy and fabulous - chapeau, but you, too, can suck sometimes, actually.

The average audience member is tired and doesn’t want to think. That’s not cynical commentary on the state of the world, that’s the reality of the bodies we live in. Most people don’t actually want to think even more when their brain is already being too loud. That’s how we got TikTok to take off.

Your story must be simple, and that is an essential need.

Now, what about the arthouse and the indie and the conceptual? Yes, it still pays to be simple, sharp and direct about the premise, or people will yawn themselves out of the theatre. (And notice how so many people do avoid the above for this very reason.)

In Save the Cat, Blake Snyder posits that if you can’t summarize your idea in 1 sentence, studios won’t give it the time of day. Blake Snyder’s concern with money above all is a thought for another day, but in this instance, I agree: your story must resonate with everyone, be full of raw, understandable feelings, and deliver on them in a punchy way.

Often, the smartasses of the world don’t have the heart to do this.

How do I fix this?

Run a simple checklist. Is your idea clearly understood by everyone? Do you know why they feel that way? Do you see them staying for the whole 90-120 minutes?
Summarize the movies that became icons in 10 words max. Ordinary farmboy rebels and stomps a dictator. Yep, I can see why millennial teenagers loved Star Wars;
Feel your own feelings, deeply. You’d be surprised how much more profound and relatable your stories get once you stop intellectualizing and cry for yourself.

Make 3: locking in

Screenwriting is a lot less fun than people think. A lot of your time is spent forcing yourself to write just a little bit. Yes, without a podcast to muddle your brain with words. Yes, without a YouTube short to rot your brain further. Yes, without a girl treat to keep you going (okay, maybe that one’s alright sometimes).

At the end of the day, all you can do is write - and that’s actually pretty frustrating.

Sometimes, you will fail to even open that damn project file. Sometimes, the world will seem like it’s out to get you and your creation. Sometimes, your dopamine rush wears off and you just don’t see the point anymore.

And yet, you must keep writing.

Your idea is probably awesome, but nobody is going to read it until it’s done, and chasing the next sparkling butterfly is what kills your work the fastest. Screenwriting is often seen as this passionate, driven, inspired hobby. Most of the time, it’s plain boring discipline.

Being comfortable with being lazy, stupid or depressed - and writing anyway. That’s often what makes or breaks a script.

If this process isn’t done, who’s going to care about your great concept of an idea?

How do I get there?

Remember your key message. If you don’t burn to tell the world something, you’ll run out of gas. What made you write this in the first place? Hold on to that;
Use a calendar! Scripts, fundamentally, are a boring numbers game. X pages by Y date - that’s the formula, and it’s much more trusty than chasing a vibe;
Rest, a lot, and don’t be a dick to yourself about it, but write at least something every single damn day. Sometimes, all it will be is 1 line, and that’s ok.

Break 3: going by the vibes

You are in love and you know how to write - great! Perhaps you can even attract your audience’s attention, impart some knowledge upon them, or inspire them.

Turns out, once your big writer pants are on, you might discover you don’t know how to write.

For my part, I was convinced for quite some time that I understood how storytelling works. After all, I could finish a story, and people liked it. When I started writing for others, though, I quickly realized there is much more for me to learn than what I could do without deep study. What do you tell the person you’re writing for when they come back with “the pace just feels kind of off”? When they “just hate how this guy sounds”? When “idk, I don’t really feel the narrative” is your only feedback piece?

You try to learn. A lot.

There are a lot of ways to do so. Story structures (Hero’s Journey, Save the Cat, the story circle, etc.), numerous books on (screen)writing (Syd Field’s ”Screenplay”, Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with A Thousand Faces”, Stephen King’s “On Writing”), countless podcasts (not really a podcast kind of gal, but someone out there must be) - a lot of variety exists for you, and it’s a mandatory step to writing quality and knowing how you did it.

How do I fix it?

Research what you would like to do, then dive deeply into that genre, that trope, that audience. Research what the best in the field use, then pick up that theory;
Consume a lot of media. Movies are a must, we already established that, but even reading, playing video games or listening to music exposes you to stories;
Be humble. You’re not too good to study. You’re not too advanced for the basics. You aren’t a prodigy that can succeed without understanding how you did all that.

Well, that’s the list.

If anyone ever finishes this all the way through, I’m in your corner. Every writer worth their chops must go through a crisis sometimes, and if that’s where you are at, consider this a badge of honor and a ‘you made it’ moment.

Will we become screenwriters? Dude, I don’t know. But I’m here for the ride, and until my engine dies, I will continue the drive.

Now, if you’ve made it this far, can you maybe message me? I’m stuck writing a scene about washing blood from white hair.

Written by Anna Galtsova, a dedicated Writing Committee member!

You can find Anna on Instagram: @gal.tsova

Speak it like Beckett

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 09:34:00 +0000

December 17th.

Today I have lost the ability to speak to people. I opened my mouth but I could not find the words. Nothing was adequate.

My father made me an omelette. I could not thank him. Our eyes passed each other by and waved while my mouth kept twitching. At one point I opened wide, teeth out, silent. Dad laughed and brought me another chunk of the yellow-black, overdone slop. I could not eat it but finished it anyway. “Hhmphg,” I grunted. Dad turned to me and asked: “It was that good, huh?” Another grunt. Nothing was adequate.

I went up to the tree that grew through the middle of the living room. Maybe, at least, I could get myself to say something here, address it to the branches. Somebody had left a massive softcover copy of Samuel Beckett’s Collected works floored blunt on the roots. I saw it and I finally, for the first time that long morning, knew what to say. “Samuel Beckett’s collected works,” I told the tree. The tree said nothing. Maybe it was just that sort of day, and my family’s deranged living symbol had also lost its ability to speak. Who else?

I picked up the book. It was surprisingly light. Light meant smart and quick and easy. This Beckett would teach me how to speak again.

I went back to face my father. My vocal chords redirected all the formed sounds back into my lungs. U-turn cop-out. Nothing was adequate.

My middle part of the day was spent on the park bench peering at the Beckett pages through a polka-dot scarf.

December 18th.

It’s been a week or maybe a month and a week since I have lost my ability to speak. Beckett’s helping.

In the morning, the woman at the grocery store, with her usual look of profound pity, asked me if I wanted a plastic bag. I thought of the usual pictures of dead leather-shelled turtles. “It was a little child that fell out of the carriage, Ma’am,” I told her. “Oh god, oh god oh god, what happened?” She said, pitying me or maybe the little girl. I left the store carrying the milk, carrots and bananas I had bought cradled precariously in my hands.

The middle part of my day was spent on the park bench helping the wind flip the pages of Beckett’s collected works.

December 19th.

Yesterday I lost my ability to speak.

Beckett teaches that one does not have to speak. I can be A, or perhaps B, from the Act Without Words II.

My father made me an omelette today. It was burnt and smelled of pinched needles. I sat down on the chair and demonstratively crossed my legs. In my shirt pocket I found a carrot and a banana. I put the banana back in my pocket and chewed on the carrot. It tasted like metal. It had soaked in the stench of the room. The message I wanted to communicate to my Dad was this: it is alright, I do not need the omelette, you can sit down and relax and not work so hard. My father frowned and pushed the omelette towards me. I kept chewing the carrot. Snap and crunch.

“Yes I know, it’s a little burnt, but you have to eat… you haven’t been yourself,” Dad crooned.

After a while, he reluctantly shuffled the plate back away from me. His eyes searched mine. His mouth opened to speak, but stopped short. His hands threw the plate vigorously onto the floor, where it smashed against the roots. The tree would be happy; the tree would feed, burnt or not.

Beckett’s words twirled and pranced around in my skull.

Nothing was adequate. Tomorrow I would have known what to say.

I spent the middle of the day periodically wiping fallen leaves and dust off Beckett’s collected words.

December 20th.

I woke up some time ago and found I could not speak. This did not last very long. After months of studying Beckett I am able to speak like him without quoting him directly. The key is to imagine the person I am talking to is not really there, and the words I am saying are addressed to Beckett, while He is testing me on the adequacy of my interpretation of his collected works.

Several times people have gotten up in a fury over my conversation.

“Nobody talks like that,” they say, lips taut. But I know somebody talks like that. And I know, as well (and this is something He teaches) that words and patterns create universes, and sooner or later the power of my unique form will convince my co-conversationalists that there is a world beyond “everybody”, a specific place where how I speak is the law of things. Speech and motion and their repetition are what makes life, and saying that my speech does not correspond to reality is to simply be outdated. As I speak, I update what is possible and what is real. In this I follow Beckett and his collected works. His characters never spoke “realistically”, instead they birthed patterns of words, and words make logic and logic builds an understanding of the world.

I spent the middle part of my day peeling bananas and throwing the peels down to feed the park grass. I did some reading too.

December 21st

Beckett teaches that my father is not my father, but a father. He is also a signifier, or a variable. A,B,C, maybe D or X or 23 or Dad. He is a signifier who has attributes and lines. One of those attributes is that today he has made me an omelette. Another is that he, along with Beckett, will die tomorrow. 22nd of December, Beckett’s death day. I don’t feel much connection to him. Or my father for that matter. Like his characters, I now feel like I have nothing to do with anyone else. I am adequate for nobody.

The worlds I have spoken into existence have all disappeared the very next second. I am increasingly certain, however, that most ideas are best explained by well placed picture words. A couple words that do not try to explain but let you feel the presence of the things described, invoked; this is how you plant the seeds of ideas. Beckett may have had something to do with that thought.

The middle part of my day was spent wondering where the later parts of my days go.

22.12.

Here I note, in some attempt to calm my scurrying thoughts, the case of the matter. I found this diary just now, the evening of the 22nd of December, in my room, on my bedside table. It does not belong to me.

My own father has been dead for 7 years. I have not read a page of Samuel Beckett in my life. Maybe I have seen Waiting for Godot staged in a park some summer, but I’m not sure -- that may have been me imagining someone’s retelling of that event. Whatever. What disturbs me more is this, on my table. Whoever wrote this is definitely not me, so how did it get here? We bear one similarity, me and this time-addled author. We both have a tree growing through the middle of our living room. The parallels end there. I will ask around, then try to forget. But right now, there is such silence. I feel like my breath has been vacuumed out of me. I am starting to think the earth might be uninhabited.

Written by Yan Nesterenko, a dedicated Writing Committee member!

You can find Yan on Instagram: @n_strenkyn