Monologues


What are Monologues ?

A monologue is a speech made by one person speaking his or her thoughts aloud or directly addressing a reader, audience or character.

HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD MONOLOGUE

  • Choose something that you can relate and connect to in some way. Never pick a monologue because someone else performed well in it. It has to be personal.
  • You must understand the whole scene; where are you? What time of day is it? Who are you? And most important to whom do you speak to?
  • You must have a clear objective. What is your agenda?  Always rise the stakes, even if it is not in the scene.
  • Don't choose a piece longer than five minutes or shorter than a minute and a half. A good length is 2 -3 minutes.
  • Always be aware that your piece has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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MONOLOGUE SAMPLE

THE VEGETARIAN


Gayle
The other day, my mom was cleaning a chicken....you know, the dead kind - the kind you eat. Notice, I say "you". That's because I don't eat dead chickens anymore. I don't eat live ones either, of course. I just don't eat chickens. Not after seeing a perfectly shaped chicken just sitting on the kitchen counter getting its last tiny feathers plucked out, just before getting cooked, cut up into pieces and eaten for dinner. It's easy when it's chicken salad - or even chicken cutlets - if you just never think about where it came from. But, I mean there it was - it looked just like a chicken - just like the kind you see on a farm or in a petting zoo. Except this one was bald. Bald and dead. I just decided right then and there that I couldn't do it. I told my mom "starting right now, I'm a vegetarian!" Without so much as a blink she said "So, should I make you some spinach for dinner tonight?" "What do you mean?" I asked her. It had never occurred to me that vegetarians actually eat vegetables.




© 1998 Jill Abusch, Barbara Orwick at The Play Group Theatre for children and Young Adults

COMING SOON - A FREE MONOLOGUE DATABASE AT Talent Pages