Summary Of Annie Sullivan's Swishy Hips

Annie Sullivan has Swishy Hips

For my research assignment I was tasked with first isolating myself from people and performing my monologue while swinging a hula hoop around my arm. Everytime the monologue the stopped, I had to stop my piece. I then did the monologue again completely with the arm. After I completed this i moved the hula hoop to around my hips and torso, and performed the monologue on high and low pitches. Only speaking when the hula-hoop is in motion. I then repeated this process in a public place.

For my monologue, I portrayed Annie Sullivan from the Miracle Worker by William Gibson. In this piece, Annie is trying convince Captain Keller, (Helen Keller’s Father) to allow for a summer of private instruction to help Helen
When performing past monologues I felt my body was just a delivery system for a monologue, but during and after performing with the hula hoop, and the different ranges, I felt the words and physical movements resonate. Because I couldn’t control when the hula-hoop stopped moving, I also couldn’t control when I paused. When rehearsing pieces, I have a tendency to rehearse with pre-determined pauses and in doing so I learn the monologue with the same pauses in the same place. Which makes the monologue feel rehearsed and disingenuous. Like, instead of the moment feeling natural in the world of the character it felt like a moment I rehearsed. When rehearsing with the hula-hoop I was forced to paused in places I normally would not, and found moments that were more poignant because of these new pauses, and because of these new pauses the monologue began to feel new, and I was able to find more moments to highlight and play
This translates itself into my acting because while I do find myself trying to interject my physical body into Annie, because I am not fully mentally connected, I often find myself only moving from elbow down, which causes my movements to look disconnect from my body. By performing the research project, I had to move my arms in in quick, large circles that connected the engaged everything from my fingertips to my ribs. In my same vein, when performing monologues, my movement doesn’t usually doesn’t extend through my torso, and because these movements are not connected to my diaphragm they don’t look connected or natural. By adding the hula-hoop, all of my movements had to come from my torso, and thus all of my movements were connected to the diaphragm and looked more intentional. Annie is a strong, confident and focused woman. She is very sure of what she wants and how she’ll express it. This means she’d have very clear and focused movements. By engaging my torso, I felt more in control of what I was doing and was able to express the way Annie felt in this moment and switch from Bryson’s physical life, to Annie’s physical