Nina's Final Speech ('I am a sea-gull')
Two years after fleeing home to become an actress, Nina slips back one stormy night to see Konstantin, the young writer who once loved her. Battered by a failed love affair and a lost child, she is fighting to convince him—and herself—that she has survived and found her calling. She wants to leave with her dignity and her faith intact.
I am so tired.
If I could only rest—rest.
I am a sea-gull—no—no, I am an actress.
He does not believe in the theatre; he used to laugh at my dreams, so that little by little I became down-hearted and ceased to believe in it too.
Then came all the cares of love, the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning.
I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice.
You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting.
I am a sea-gull—no—no, that is not what I meant to say.
Do you remember how you shot a seagull once?
A man chanced to pass that way and destroyed it out of idleness.
That is an idea for a short story, but it is not what I meant to say.
What was I saying?
Oh, yes, the stage.
I have changed now.
Now I am a real actress.
I act with joy, with exaltation, I am intoxicated by it, and feel that I am superb.
I have been walking and walking, and thinking and thinking, ever since I have been here, and I feel the strength of my spirit growing in me every day.
I know now, I understand at last, Constantine, that for us, whether we write or act, it is not the honour and glory of which I have dreamt that is important, it is the strength to endure.
One must know how to bear one's cross, and one must have faith.
I believe, and so do not suffer so much, and when I think of my calling I do not fear life.
How to Play It
Nina is not reminiscing—she is persuading. Play the active need to prove she has endured, and the speech stops being sad and becomes fierce.
The broken repetitions—'I am a sea-gull—no—no, I am an actress'—are the character correcting herself in real time. Let the wrong words escape before she catches them; do not smooth them out.
Find the turn. The first half is exhausted and fragmented; from 'I have changed now' the thought clears and steadies. Let the audience watch her climb out of the wreckage into 'the strength to endure.'
Avoid generalized weeping. The text earns more if she is holding tears back to get the words out than if she drowns in them.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
A monologue is a two-person scene where the other person never speaks. Working it 1-on-1 with a working actor is the fastest way to make it land.