I need some help picking out a monologue for my acting class. This is a little tougher for me because I have a great deal less exposure to theatre than many of the people in this class. Do any of you know any particularly good monologues you’d recommend? Can be comedic or dramatic, should be contemporary, and doesn’t nessecarily need to be done as an audition piece. For the record, I’m a white male, 19 years old, and average hieght and build.
Oh man, I know a great one…well, that is to say, I don’t know it, but remember the details so maybe someone else can come in and tell you what it is.
It’s done by a gay male character who happens to be the mayor of a small city. He’s talking to his lover about a sex tape they made that got lost or stolen, and how it will implicate them (apparantly the Mayor is big on family values.)
Ring a bell for anyone?
I have a comedic monologue for a male doctor named “Ev”. It’s contemporary. The play is called “Doc” and was written by Sharon Pollock. The monologue centres around Ev recounting his memories of hanging out in a Montréal bar as a medical student which was also frequented by prostitutes. One night, he lost one of his friends on the way home. He assumed he’d taken up with one of the girls and went to go retrieve him. He found him locked inside a hotel room with a screaming woman. Once the door was broken down, it turned out his friend had tied the girl to the bed and was trying to accurately sketch her veins on a sketchpad to study for an exam.
It’s massively over-the-top and usually turns out pretty well.
How long does the piece have to be?
Until you said male, I was thinking of a few things from Shirley Valentine and Educating Rita. You might check out ‘Breaker Morant’. I believe it originated as a stage play in Australia, though I know it from the movie version. It’s a courtroom drama but also about things that happen in wartime. A good movie and has speeches (it’s a court room drama, aint it?).
I am not an actor, so take my advice with a mine of salt.
My first thought was a recitation of the first page of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven (follow Amazon;s link to see the first page). I
LOOOOVE
the line “What wll the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each monring. waking?”
If you want to go all macho on your class mates, try the opening monologue from the move Patton.
Better advice: The Wikipedia page on monologue has links for monologue search web pages.
Think of movies you really liked - just about every film has a pretty good monologue in it, we used to do movie scenes all of the time for my acting class.
The hard part is making the piece your own, and not adopting whatever the actor did on screen, especially if they did a really good job.
Does it have to be a play first or can it be a movie?
I have a friend who got into an acting school once doing the “bread bread bread” speech from Moonlighting. I always thought that was a great choice.
One of my favorite monologues is Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York. It’s when Di Caprio wakes up, and DDL is literally draped in the American flag talking to him about power.
There are plenty of books that are compilations of monologues for, say, young adult male actors. If you can’t find any at a mainstream bookstore, finding a specialty bookstore that caters to actors and other film/television/theatre professionals should be pretty easy. Not all of the monologues in any given book will be useable, but you should be able to find a few gems.
Consider checking out the play “Coyote on a Fence” by Bruce Graham. It has a very good monologue for Bobby, a near-illiterate white supremacist, in which he tells how he got swept up in the whole “white power” movement not out of hate, but out of a need to be loved. The play’s an interesting (but pretty quick) read, too.
One minute to a minute and a half, and it can be from a movie. It can’t, though, be from a book of monologues that are written for the sake of being monologues (which is a shame, because I’m in Ashland, OR at the moment, and those specialty bookstores are all over); it has to be from something larger. Those pieces from Doc and Coyote on the Fence sound interesting, and I’ll definately look through the Wikipedia page.
I mentioned on a recent thread that one of the funniest scenes I ever saw on television was in an episode of Roseanne where Jackie (the fabulous actress Laurie Metcalf) had to make a phone call to an elderly relative to tell them their father had died.
The scene starts off rather sad, but because the person on the other end seems to be very hard of hearing, Jackie has to start to scream the news.
I am recalling this from memory, so it is hardly the exact words, but here is the gist:
Jackie turns to Roseanne and says:)
“I should probably call Aunt Mildred and tell her the news.”
Jackie dials a phone number.
“Aunt Mildred, I have some bad news. Dad passed.”
“It’s dad. He died.”
“Dad! He died!”
“Dad died!”
“Dad’s dead!”
“He’s dead!”
“Dad is dead!!!”
“Dead!!!”
“He’s dead!!!”
“DAD IS DEAD!!!”
(Finally giving up, she screams:)
“Dad’s fine!!!”
(She slams down the phone and says to Roseanne:)
“I’m not making any more calls.”
By the end of the scene, I was laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face.
Try to find the episode where Roseanne and Jackie’s father dies, and watch that scene. It is brilliant, and if you do even 1/10th as good as Laurie Metcalf did, you will ace the scene.
Damn…those smiley faces were NOT supposed to be there…must have been my punctuation…(I hate smiley faces…I hate them…Hate them!..fine…I wanted smiley faces!!!)
damn
I’d second Breaker Morant. There are some great courtroom monologues in that.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels)'s speech to the Maine soldiers under arrest in Gettysburg is quite good.
Shakespeare has a lot of good monologues. My favorites are both from Henry V: the King’s speech to his men near the beginning, urging them “once more into the breach, dear friends” during the attack on Harfleur, and near the end, the famous “we happy few, we band of brothers” speech, telling his troops of all the glory that awaits them on St. Crispin’s Day.
Here are a few I like:
Christopher Walken telling young Butch the story of his father’s watch in Pulp Fiction. “Two years I wore this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass…”
Ray Liotta’s closing monologue in Goodfellas. “Now I get to live like a schnook…”
George C. Scott’s opening monologue in Patton. “We are going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the BUSHEL!”
I haven’t been able to even start the “Once more into the breach!” speech without cracking up since I saw that line printed on a condom. And I’d love to do the St. Crispin’s day speech, but my professor isn’t allowing Shakespeare for this assignment.
Oh! I just got done reading Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, and there’s a piece in there that would make an excellent monologue, and is about the length you’d need. He even gives permission in the introduction for it to be used for monologue purposes, though he wrote it as a short story to accompany an illustration (as I recall). Arrgh. I don’t have the book with me – I think it was titled “My Life.”
It’s told by a person drinking a beer and a whiskey (to the reader as the listener), with one bizarre event leading to another. Hilarious and dark.
How about Robert Shaw in Jaws:
"Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian Delailie, we’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the squares in the old calendars like the Battle o’ Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ‘til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, Reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. Three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the twenty-ninth, nineteen-forty five. Anyway, we delivered the bomb."
Or a comedy one by Bob Newhart:
“How do you do?..
Erm, you’re Mrs. Webb, is that right?..
Oh, I see you’ve had one lesson already, who was the instructor on that Mrs. Webb?..
Mr. Adams…
I’m sorry, here it is. Mr. Adams. Just let me read ahead and kind of familiarize myself with the case…
Erm, how fast were you going when Mr. Adams jumped from the car?..
Sev…, Seventy-five. And, and where was that?..
In your driveway…
How far had Mr. Adams gotten in the lesson?..
Backing out…
I see, you were backing out at seventy-five and that’s, that’s when he jumped…
Did he cover starting the car?..
And the other way of stopping?..
What’s the other way of stopping?..
Throwing it in reverse…
that’s, that would do it, you’re right, that would do it…
Erm, alright you want to start the car?..
Uh, Mrs. Webb you just turned on the lights, you want to start the car…
They all look alike, don’t they?..
No, I don’t know why they design them that way…
Erm, alright let’s pull out into traffic…
Now, what’s the first thing we’re going to do before we pull out into traffic?..
What did Mr. Adams do before he let you pull out into traffic?..
Well, I mean besides praying…
No, what I had in mind was checking the rear view mirror…
You see we always want to check the rear…
DON’T PULL OUT !!!..
Erm, please don’t cry…
I’m sorry… but there was this bus, Mrs. Webb…
Oh, alright, the lane is clear is now, you want to pull out?..
Oh, now that wasn’t bad at all, you might try it a little slower next time…
Alright, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second…
Well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early but as long as you have shifted into it…
Of course you’re nervous…
I’m nervous!..
I’m not just saying that, I’m really, I’m really very nervous…
Well, just don’t pay any attention to their honking…
You’re doing fine…
You’re not blocking anyone’s lane…
No, as long as you are here on the safety island, you are not blocking anyone’s lane…
Oh, alright you want to start the car?..
Oh, while you are turning the lights off, why don’t you turn off the heater?..
Alright, there we are, let’s get up a bit of speed…
That’s the way…
Now let’s practice some turns. Um, the important thing on turns is not to make them too sharp, just kind of make a gradual…
Now that was fine…
That was a wonderful turn…
It’s hard for me to believe you only had two lessons after you make a turn like…
Are you sure you haven’t had more now?..
I find that very difficult to believe…
One little thing…
This is a one way street…
Well, no, no, actually it was partially my fault, you see, but, uh, you were in the left hand lane and you were signaling left, and I just more or less assumed you were going to turn left.
SAME TO YOU, FELLA!!!..
No, no, I don’t know what he said Mrs. Webb…
Um, alright let’s pull into the alley up there, uh, and practice a little alley driving…
This is uh, this is something a lot of the schools leave out and we think it is pretty…
YOU’RE GOING TOO FAST MRS. WEBB!!!..
You were up around sixty and that’s kind of a sharp turn there…
Alright, just drive down the alley, that’s the way…
Oh, Mrs. Webb, maybe we better stop here…
Well, I don’t think you are going to make it between the truck and the building…
Mrs. Webb?..
Mrs. Webb…
I…
Mrs. Webb, I, I …
I don’t think you are going…
MRS. WEBB?..
I real…
I…
I really didn’t think you were going to MAKE IT…
That just shows we can be wrong too…
No, no, I’ll get out on your side, that’s alright.
Oh, Mrs. Webb, uh, maybe it might be a good idea if we went over to the driving area. They have a student driver area over a few blocks away and maybe traffic throws you, maybe that’s the problem…
Well, turn here on the street…
Right…
And it’s only about a block up…
Alright, turn right here…
Well, now that was my fault again…
You see, I meant the next street. Not this man’s lawn…
Oh, sir, sir… sir, would you mind turning off the sprinkler?..
For just a…
Newly seeded?..
Is that right?..
That’s always the way, isn’t it? Ha! ha!..
I don’t suppose it is so funny!..
Oh, alright Mrs. Webb, you want to back out and get off the man’s…
Creeping bent, is that right…
Yea, just back out, Mrs. Webb…
Thank you very much, sir for…
Oh, now we’ve hit someone Mrs. Webb…
Oh, remember you’re going to watch the rear view mirror, remember we covered that…
The red light blinded you?..
The flashing red light blinded you?..
The flashing red light on the car you hit blinded you?..
Yes, officer, she was just telling me about it…
Um, alright…
Alright, erm, Mrs. Webb…
I am going to have to go with the officer to the police station…
Erm, they don’t believe it and they’d like, they’d like me to describe it…
And now the other officer is going to get into the car and he is going to drive you back to the driving school and then you are to meet us at the police station.
Erm, my name is Frank Dexter, Mrs Webbb…
Why do you ask?..
You want to be sure and get me next time???”
For your age, I would suggest Ronny’s monologue from “House of Blue Leaves”, the one where he is explaining trying to become Huckleberry Finn which leads to him trying to blow up the Pope. It is funny and tragic at the same time. I recommend it highly.
The priest (played by Donald Sutherland) had a nice monologue in **Little Murders ** by Jules Feiffer.
I tried Richard Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” once for a drama class, with unfortunate results.
There was a great monologue in **Inherit the Wind ** where the Jason Robards character talked about the inevitable cost of inevitable progress. From memory, it was something like “Women vote? Certainly, madam, but you lose forever the right to hide behind the powder puff. Men fly? Certainly, sir, but the clouds will forever smell of gasoline. The origins of man revealed? Yes, but at the cost of the poetry of Genesis.”