An Article by Henry C Year 12 Performing Arts Scholar
At the start of this academic year, the new ENCORE Scholarship Programme for Drama and Performing Arts Scholars was launched with a welcome breakfast for our Scholars. The programme has been created to give students access to specialist opportunities, industry insight and experiences designed to support their development as young performers and creatives.
As part of ENCORE: In Our Own Words, our Scholars will share their experiences of the programme, offering an insight into the sessions and opportunities from their perspective.
Here, Henry reflects on the first official ENCORE session, led by AKS alumnus Oliver Akers.
The Mastering the Monologue ENCORE session was an enjoyable and useful experience. After an introduction from Oliver Akers, we were each allocated an individual monologue, which we will perform at the Scholars’ Showcase in November. I was given Jim’s monologue from The Prodigal Son by John Patrick Shanley. We then had the opportunity to work on our monologues with Oliver individually directing into our work providing detailed feedback. It was particularly interesting to have someone who had been in the same school as us return and share what he had learnt from his own experiences. Oliver has since gained experience performing and training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, so it was useful to hear his advice and gain a different perspective.
One of the main things Oliver taught us was to think about the different questions behind a monologue: where, when, why, who and how. I had not really thought about all of these things in that much detail before. It made me realise that performing a monologue is not just about learning the words and saying them with emotion. You need to understand who your character is, where they are, what has happened before the scene and why they are saying what they are saying. This helps to make the performance feel much more believable and authentic.
Oliver also introduced us to a technique called “walking the lines", where with each new thought the character has you have to walk in a new direction. This helped me to think about the words physically rather than just mentally. We also explored movement and voice, and how small changes in pace, tone or where you look can completely change the meaning of a line. I found this especially useful because sometimes I can focus too much on remembering the words and forget about actually performing them.
Thank you very much to Oliver for a brilliant session!
Save the Date! The Scholars’ Showcase will take place across multiple sittings on 19 November 2026, giving our Drama and Performing Arts Scholars the opportunity to perform their monologues and share their work with an audience. We hope to see you there!