As part of my upcoming role as Shakespeare, I have a looong soliloquy that opens the show.

Monologues can be fun but a challenge in that you're responsible for your own acting as well as what your (invisible) partner gives back. I was listening to an interview with Christine Lahti and she was expressing similar thoughts about monologues.

She said they are, "very challenging. I'm one of, I'm the kind of actor who is only as good as my fellow actor. I really depend on what they're giving me. I am so locked into them, moment to moment, which is the Sandy Meisner kind of technique that I completely embrace. So to be alone up there and to have to imagine the responses from whoever I'm talking to... to have to imagine responses is a 100,000 times more difficult than being able to look into someone's eye and get a response."

As an example of how much easier a monologue is when performed to another person, Lahti mentioned a memorable scene in Running on Empty that I remember as being quite wonderful. The film stars Lahti, Judd Hirsch, and a brilliant River Phoenix.

In the movie, many years earlier, Lahti's and Hirsch's characters took part in the bombing of a napalm plant that accidentally killed a janitor. They have been on the run for years and their children have known no other life. Phoenix is a music prodigy and secretly auditioned for a prestigious college and was accepted.

Lahti meets briefly with her stoic father (Steven Hill) in a restaurant to ask him to take Phoenix in so that he can follow his dream. During the tense conversation, she finally and tearfully apologizes to her dad and begs for his help. He sits emotionless but, as she rushes to leave, his tears and sadness flood out of him.

Of the monologue, Lahti said, "I remember people saying, 'Oh my God, you were phenomenal.' And truly, Steven Hill, what he gave me, is the reason I'm good in that scene. Truly. That's my perception of that scene, which I think is a great scene... He might say the same thing but, for me, it was what he gave me."

To listen to the whole interview, you can go here.