Who are you talking to? Make it very specific, not just “a friend” or “Kate.” Use the script for clues about your relationship and fill in the rest.
What is your objective (goal, intention, “fighting for”)? It must include the other person. What do you want from him or her? Make it specific and bold — go for your dream goal!
When and where is this taking place? Be very specific as it will inform your environment, your body, and much more.
What happened the moment before the monologue begins? What did the other person say or do that compels you to speak the first line (and the rest of your monologue) right now — not two weeks ago, not yesterday, not an hour ago? The moment before is so important. Test it out and fine-tune it until you have chosen something big enough and personal enough to springboard you into the monologue.
Go through the text of your monologue and with a pencil divide the monologue into beats. Look for the major and minor transitions in the text and use your own system to mark them. Do not skip this step or your monologue will likely be on one note.
How are you going to accomplish your objective — achieve your goal? With tactics or actions. These are the things you do to get what you want. When choosing actions or tactics, put them in the form “to verb” the other person. For example: to beg her, to threaten him, to charm her. Go back to your text, think about your objective, and choose an action/tactic for each beat. Test it out, refine it. The text will help you choose. However, be careful not to be so rigid with this process that your monologue loses spontaneity. Over time, you should change your actions if they get stale.
Personalize your monologue. Are there past events, situations, or other characters mentioned in the text? This is one of the most enjoyable parts of the process — let your imagination run wild and fill in the details that are not given in the script (but fall under the given circumstances). Be creative and have fun, but don’t stop until you create specifics that will live in you fully.
Memorize your monologue inside out and upside down. I recommend memorizing by rote — quickly and without emotion or expression so as not to get stuck in a line reading. The idea is to drill the lines so well that you never have to be back in your head thinking about them when you should be out in front of you fighting for your objective from the other person.
Work your monologues with a coach, teacher, director, or fellow actor. Auditioning can be intimidating and what we do when performing alone often changes in the presence of others. You cannot be truly focused on achieving your goal if you are trying to direct yourself at the same time. Work with someone who will be supportive yet honest. No matter where we are in our acting careers, we never stop growing and we all need other people to help guide us.
Acting is a shared experience between performers and audience — even when performing monologues. Remember, you may be auditioning by yourself, but you still have an audience and they’re rooting for you.
WACKY/QUIRKY/ODD
Hot Tub Haggle
By Werner Trieschmann
Bliss: female, early twenties
Comic
Bliss tries to convince an older neighbor, who is selling a hot tub, to run away with her.
BLISS: I’ve seen you before you know you used to come into Put a Steak In It that restaurant where I’m the hostess but I’m trying t’ get out of there because meat is murder and tastes good but moo cows are pretty and I like fish better but you used to come in there with a woman maybe your wife but you don’t anymore and maybe the woman wife is gone … and my real name is Imogene but I’ve changed it to Bliss because of like the karma and it sounds better like Bbbllliiiiisssssss and do ya think you’d want to go with me to some Phish concerts maybe follow them across the country and we could have sex outdoors and recycle and you know whatever … I’ve been told I have an old soul and so I figure I’m at least 300 and I’ve been around a long time since before there were cars and someday I want to live in a tree ’cause that would be so freakin’ awesome you know like oh there’s Bliss the Tree Girl did you know she’s like 300 years old but don’t wander under the tree ’cause she’ll pee on you and I would and wouldn’t that be just awesome …
The Big House
By Barbara Lhota and Ira Brodsky
Elisa: twenty-five years old, a potential guest of The Big House
Comic
Elisa, a sweet girl from Utah and a big fan of reality TV, has submitted an audition video for an upcoming reality TV show that Claire Handal is co-producing. Elisa has been invited in for an interview. During the interview, Elisa bends her sweet personality several ways to try to fit into Claire’s vision. In this monologue, Elisa loses all control, winning her a prime spot on the show.
ELISA: Call security! Security — Smi — Sma — eerity. (Confused, trying to make this work.) Security — Smeerity. Whatever. That’s hard to rhyme. My point is that you aren’t the only one who gets to ask questions. What fears do you have, huh, huh!? How interesting are you? How special?! Is eating perhaps a fear? Does the sensation of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate send shivers up your spine? Ooooooohhoooo. (Jumps out at her.) Fat — ahhh! That’s a crock! Everybody knows that anyone sick enough to create the very different — NOT — Big House reality show is full of neurotic tendencies. Vile, disgusting ideas crowd your head. I see it now. Yes, control, entrapment, jealousy, boxed potatoes, and sweaty men playing basketball all summed up by a perky, patronizing host! I don’t want to be on your stupid, hot-headed, reality rip-off so you can use me until I’m sucked dry and unable to return to my boring, but pleasant existence. I don’t need you, you Hollywood hack, you pursed-lipped, tight buttocks, Prozac-treated ninny! I’m better than you. I’m better than all of you! You can’t handle me, Ms. Handal!! (Beat.) I’ve never done that before. I, I don’t know what … came over me.
Go See
from Occupational Hazards
By Mark McCarthy
Heather: a print model in her late twenties, not stupid, but a little flighty
Comic
A photographer’s studio. Heather, a model in her late twenties or early thirties, enters. She is there for an audition, or “go-see.” She’s late, she’s having a terrible day, but she’s trying to make the best of it and get through it as professionally as she can.
HEATHER: Hi. Sorry I’m late, it’s just that, well I don’t want to bore you with a big long story, but the thing is that I would have been on time if it wasn’t for one of those you know, things. Are we from the waist up? (Sits.) See, I was driving along just as calm as day, trying to decide between the oldies and NPR, thinking to myself, what do you care? It’s half of one, six a dozen of the other, and that theme song from … (Almost cries, soldiers on.) and I just didn’t see that little car. Well, truck actually. Cement truck, now that I think about it. Bright yellow cement truck.
Nice tripod.
Anyway, the policeman, who was very nice and really quite attractive, which wasn’t helping things at all, keeps making me touch my nose and count backwards — at the same time — and then he says something about failure to yield, and I never really understood yielding anyway, and the not-attractive-at-all truck driver keeps saying something about crazy, and I finally just shouted as loud as I could, “Flipper, all right? It was Flipper!”
And the policeman says, “The TV show?” And the truck driver says, “I love that show!” and tries to imitate the cute little noises the dolphin — porpoise? dolphin always made, but it just sounds like gagging, and I finally said, “My cat Flipper is dead.”
And the attractive but stupid policeman doesn’t understand what that has to do with anything.
But the thing is I would have seen the bright yellow cement truck just fine, if it hadn’t been for the (She sings.), “Flipper! Flipper!” Ready?
(She smiles. She cries.)
Why I Want To Be Your Junior Asia Miss
By Lauren D. Yee
Bekki Lee Kim: Female. Early to mid-twenties. A perky, slightly vapid girl who mea
ns well.
Comic
It’s Bekki Lee Kim’s turn to speak at the Junior Asia Miss Pageant. She stands on stage, decked in her finest for the “scholarship competition.”
BEKKI: My name is Bekki Lee Kim and I want to be your next Junior Asia Miss! That’s spelled B-E-K-K-I with an i and two k’s. (Making bad pun.) ’Cause I want to be your next Junior Asia Miss, OK? (Waits for audience laughter — there is none.) All right! Time for the questions. Super! (Looks for questions — finally sees teleprompter.) There they are! All right! “Why do you want to be the next Junior Asia Miss?” Well … umm … I do have a reason … can we get back to that? Wait! (Turns to crib notes on her arm, reads.) Because I believe Asia is a very special place with many people who are also Asian. All right then! “What would you do if you became the next Junior Asia Miss?” Do? You mean, who would I do? (Waits, sees more on teleprompter.) Oh, there’s more. “How would you be a positive role model for young girls?” A model? I would love to be a model! I think it’s very important that if you’re a model, you be a positive one, too. Any kind of model would be fine with me. Shoe modeling, hair modeling, hand modeling … (Beat.) What’s so funny …? OK, I’m not a genius. I can’t explain Kepler’s laws for all the tea in China. I don’t even know how much tea is “all the tea in China!” I’m no Edgar Einstein, but it’s unfair of you to assume I’m here because I’m young and beautiful and the ugly girls aren’t because they’re young and ugly. Because this scholarship competition is not about looks! — it’s about … well, it’s not about looks! It’s about being Asian. And about being proud of it and doing something positive. I may not know (Pronounces incorrectly.) chemmistry or psy-koology or physololerogy, but whatever I do does a lot more than those smart people who know everything and do nothing. That’s why I should be your Junior Asia Miss — because I’ll try. And that’s what makes Asia a very special country. (Triumphant, about to exit, then trips on skirt.)
The Gary Chain
By Adam Simon
Tricia: mid-twenties, airport newsstand employee
Seriocomic
The play is a whirlwind tour of what happens in three lives after a brief celebrity encounter at an airport in Gary, Indiana. Tricia works in the airport and delivers the following to a co-worker during an early morning smoke break. After a discussion of the sad state of their love lives, her co-worker has just bluntly asked Tricia “When was the last time you even had sex?”
TRICIA: Somebody told me — or maybe it was in a movie — I don’t know. Anyway, they said “the thing about sex is that it’s impossible to replicate” and that struck me as wrong. Sometimes things, ideas usually strike me as really horribly wrong. I think that some things like “sex is impossible to replicate” are so wrong that I get ill. I have to take a moment to reason it out with the voice in my head who does its best to temper the one sided argument. And I’ll say that that’s a load of shit, sex is entirely possible to replicate, it’s biologically simple, it can happen the same way again and again and it (the voice) will say that it’s had sex with the same woman hundreds of times (it’s a wife I assume, sometimes I give the voice a wife … (Realizing for the first time.) and a gender I guess) and of those hundreds of times it’s never truly been the same. Now I don’t think that can be true and I’ll say “Yeah, but aren’t you divorced?” Cause I invented the voice, and I invented its wife and I can take her away, it’s my right. And it’ll say “Are you saying that if we had found a way to replicate sex we wouldn’t be divorced?” The voice argues me into corners sometimes, but I think that’s true. I think marriages work when sex is replicated into everything and not in a photocopy facsimile way but in a conch-shell-held-to-my-ear-sounds-like-the-ocean way — meaning I can take the ocean to the dry cleaners, to work, to the doctor’s, I could even take the ocean to the beach. I think that in a successful marriage sex can be replicated into a ten-second cell phone conversation about what’s for dinner. And that’s — “sex can’t be replicated” — that’s how far it usually takes me to understand why things disagree with me so much. My husband says I shouldn’t let things get under my skin so much. And I don’t say it out loud, but I think he doesn’t let enough get under his skin.
Bridge Partners
By Ira Brodsky and Barbara Lhota
Cindy: late twenties, a former rock-and-roll singer
Seriocomic
After a series of love-life and career setbacks, two women, both who went to the same high school, accidentally meet up on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. Coincidently, both of them have come to kill themselves by jumping off the bridge. Cindy, who was a wild-child with rock-and-roll ambitions, is happy to pour her heart out to her former schoolmate Susan. Susan’s competitive nature forces her into a battle with Cindy over who has had to bear more of life’s miseries.
CINDY: I said, very meditatively like, love will find me at the right time. I put myself in the hands of the Great Creator. It’s been a real struggle. Every time I pass a club and hear the music, I want to go in and see what’s cookin’. Or I’d be surfin’ the Internet and start reading the personal ads. But I stopped myself. No, no, I said. You have put yourself in the hands of the Great Creator. I go to work at Tower Records, and I stock the CDs of all the other rock-and-roll divas and that kinda bums me out. But anyway. I’m accepting of life. I neither pull nor push. I let the tide carry me. (Singing.) “The tide is high, but I’m holdin’ on. I’m gonna be your Number one. Number one.” Anyway this has been my life for the past two months. Solitary, OK lonely, well, downright boring. And that’s when Seth walks into Tower. So I’m straightening the oldies section. Seth is tall, cute, intelligent, discerning — everything you want in a record buyer. And he smiles at me. Notice — he smiles first. I’m not pushing or pullin’. I’m going with the flow. I smile back. Small talk. Blah, blah, blah. He asks me on a date. What was wrong I thought? There must be something wrong with him to ask me on a date. He was celibate. He had sworn off sex. My guess is that he figured I wouldn’t be much of a temptation. He even asked me to be his celibate wife. I am a failure in my art, a failure in life and love. Just a complete failure. I suppose it could be worse. For instance, if I were diagnosed with a disfiguring and fatal ailment. But I guess God thought that would be redundant.
Skid Marks: A Play About Driving
By Lindsay Price
Jillian: twenty-one. Jillian is a high-strung girl who sees her car as a person.
Comic
Jillian lectures her car on its recent unsatisfactory behavior. She believes “Herman” has been acting up on purpose.
JILLIAN: Herman, I want you to listen up and listen good. You’re going to start properly. You’re not going to stall. You’re not going to make those knock, knock, cha-ping noises like last time. I know you were just doing it to spite me cause I took you to the mechanic and the mechanic said there was nothing wrong! So there’s no point in making knock, knock, cha-ping noises. I’m on to you now. I know the little game you’re trying to play. You’d best remember who’s in charge. Who’s got the keys Herman? Who’s got the keys? I could put you in a no-park zone, let you get towed and never collect you. How’d you like that huh? I could take you to the wrong side of town and leave you all alone with the windows down and the keys in the ignition. That wouldn’t be nice would it? Would it? So no more knock, knock, cha-ping noises. No more chugha-choughing. No more wheeza, wheeza, humpa humpa znack znack znack when we’re going up hills. And absolutely no more spitting gas when I’m filling the tank. I can hear you snickering, Herman, when I’m standing there covered in gas but let me tell you it is so not funny. Not funny. Repeat after me please. I will not spit gas on Jillian when she is trying to fill the tank. (She listens.) Don’t mumble! (She listens.) Thank you. There. I’m glad we had this little talk. I hope we can improve our relationship and put this little difficulty behind us. All right. Let’s drive.
I Think You Think I Love You
By Kelly Younger
Branw
yn: twenties, female, frantic talker, highly caffeinated
Comic
Branwyn has just returned from a long hike on Castle Rock where she spread the ashes of her recently deceased mother. She is relaying the absurd story to a stranger named Mark whom she believes is interested in buying her mother’s house. Here, Branwyn shares what she thinks is the most humiliating part of her day before she discovers Mark has actually arrived for a blind date that slipped her mind.
BRANWYN: I take out Mom’s ashes. I recite a line from Shakespeare, Othello, she liked that play. And then I said, good-bye Mom, and tossed her ashes up in the air. And by air, of course, I mean wind, and by wind I mean the wind blowing in the direction I’m standing and I’m sorry, but I never paid much attention to those old sailor movies that say never spit into the wind because sure enough Mom blows right out and back at me. And by back at me, of course, I mean my face and by my face I mean my nose and mouth. So of course my face is all wet and weepy so Mom sticks to my face, and I freak out and inhale with horror and down she goes. Not all of it, or her, but enough, you know? Just a bit to be absolutely horrified that I’ve just inhaled some of my mother, which I’m sure could be some beautiful metaphor for Mom living inside me and all that sentimental stuff but really all I can think is my mother tastes like charcoal. Not that I know, but you can imagine, you know? So I start pouring water out of my canteen onto my face and into my mouth and nose and I’m stumbling all around the top of Castle Rock thinking I’m either going straight to hell for cannibalizing my mother or I’m going straight off the side of this rock like that old Indian girl who couldn’t live without her lover. It’s OK, you can laugh.
The Whiz
By Ira Brodsky and Barbara Lhota
Audition Arsenal for Women in their 20's Page 2
