MONOLOGUES FOR AUDITION
A RAISIN IN THE SUN by Lorraine Hansberry FEMALE-DRAMA
BENEATHA (talking to Asagai)
Me? … Me? … Me, I’m nothing… Me. When I was very small…we used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street. And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day… and it was very dangerous you know… far too steep… and sure enough one day a
kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk… and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us… And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital and they fixed the broken bones and they sewed it all up… and the next time I saw Rufus he just
had a little line down the middle of his face... I never got over that... That was what one person could do for another, fix him up—sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world… I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know—and make
them whole again. This was truly being God… I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt… I mean this thing of sewing up bodies or administering drugs. Don’t you understand? It was a child’s reaction to the world. I thought that doctors had the secret to all the hurts… That’s the way a child sees things—or an idealist.
THE REZ SISTERS by Tomson Highway FEMALE-COMEDY
ANNIE (Seven women on a Manitoulin Island First Nations reserve, the ‘rez’, decide to travel to Toronto to compete in the world’s biggest bingo tournament. Winner –Dora Mavor Moore and Chalmers Awards.)
When I go to the BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD, in Toronto, I will win. For sure, I will win. If they shout the B 14 at the end, for sure I will win. The B 14 is my lucky number after all. Then I will take all my money and I will go to every record store in Toronto. I will buy every single one of Patsy Cline’s records, especially the one that goes (singing ) “I go a walking, after midnight,” oh I go crazy every time I hear that one. Then I will buy a huge record player, the biggest one in the
whole world. And then I will go to all the taverns and all the night clubs in Toronto and listen to the live bands while I drink beer quietly - not noisy and crazy like here - I will bring my daughter Ellen and her white guy from Sudbury and we will sit together. Maybe I will call Fritz the Katz and he will take me out. Maybe he will hire me as one of his singers and I can (singing) “Oooh,” in the background while my feet go (shuffling her feet from side to side) while Fritz the Katz is singing and the lights are flashing and the people are drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and dancing. Ohhh, I could dance all night with that Fritz the Katz. When I win, when I win THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD!
BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS by Neil Simon FEMALE – COMEDY
NORA (talking to her family)
Okay! Here goes … I’m going to be in a Broadway show! (They look at her in stunned silence.) It’s a musical called Abracadabra … This man, Mr. Beckman, he’s a producer, came to our dancing class this afternoon and he picked out three girls. We have to be at the Hudson Theatre on Monday morning at ten o’clock to audition for the dance director. But on the way out he took me aside and said the job was good as mine. I have to call him tomorrow. I may have to go into town to talk to him about it. They start rehearsing a week from Monday and then it goes to Philadelphia, Wilmington and Washington … and then it comes to New York the second week in December. There are nine big musical numbers and there’s going to be a big tank on the stage that you can see through and the big finale all takes place with the entire cast all under water … I mean, can you believe it? I’m going to be in a Broadway show, Momma!
WHERE HAS TOMMY FLOWERS GONE? by Terrence McNally FEMALE-COMEDY
NEDDA (a young girl who now lives with Tommy. In the following scene, she stops playing her cello to address the audition)
I’d like to ask Tommy if he loves me. I wonder what he’d say. I’m sorry, but I’m a very conventional budding girl cellist from Tampa, Florida, that way. Tommy’s from St. Petersburg. Small world, isn’t it? I grew up thinking life could be very nice if you just let it. I still do. It’s certainly full of surprises and most of them are good. Like my music. That happened when I was
ten years old and went to my first concert. I came home in a dream. Or like Tommy Flowers! That happened --- well, you saw where that happened and we came home in a cab Tommy didn’t pay for. I love my music. Whenever I get the teeniest bit depressed I think about it and I’m all right again. The notes are hard for me, I can’t always play them at first, but if practice makes perfect then I’m going to be a very good cellist one day. That’s what I want. And now there’s Tommy. Someone I hadn’t counted on at all. A small world but so many different people in it! I don’t know what Tommy wants, so I have to play it by ear with him. That’s hard for me and I’m pretty smart about men. It’s not like practicing my music; Tommy has to help, too. And which is real or which is realer? All these little, wonderful, different notes some man wrote once upon a time
somewhere or me, right now, in a whole other place, trying to play them and wanting to ask Tommy Flowers if he loves me and wanting him to answer, “I love you, Nedda Lemon”? They’re both real. I don’t want to change the world. I just want to
be in it with someone. For someone with such a sour name, I could be a very happy girl.
THE MELVILLE BOYS by Norm Foster FEMALE-COMEDY
MARY (Two brothers visit a nearby cottage and invite Mary and her sister to a dance. The dance is over.)
Well, let me tell you something, mister. Don’t start preaching to me about how things can’t be the way they used to be, because I, for one, am counting on it. And if I want to sit around for two years, or five years, or ten years and wait for some clown to come home with my car, then I’ll goddamn wait! And if, for some reason, I get it in my mind that I want to go out on a date, then I’ll go out. And don’t you tell me this isn’t a date. Don’t you dare. Your brother stood right here and asked us if we’d go with you, and we said yes. I don’t care whose idea it was. We went! We had dinner with you. We danced with you. We put dresses on. How many women did you see there tonight with dresses on? Three! Me, Loretta, and Mrs. Gunther, who’s a cow and can’t fit into a pair of pants anyway. So, don’t tell me this isn’t a date. I haven’t been out with a man in two years, and I don’t appreciate the fact that the first time I do go out, it gets passed off as a car pool. It’s a date! And it’s not over yet. So, you’d better start showing me a good time, and pretty fast!
NURSE JANE GOES TO HAWAII by Alan Stratton FEMALE-COMEDY
VIVIEN (talking to the phone and then her tape recorder after seeing a ceramic reminding her of Hawaii)
Hello “Hawaii.” HAWAII! EUREKA! TELEPHONE! BETTY! WHERE’S THE—HAWAII! Ceramics live. They breathe. They—they—oh thank you, Edgar—(Into phone) Harlequin? This is Vivien Bliss… Yes, I know my novel was due yesterday. DON’T YELL AT ME, I’M IN PROCESS! Tell Betty I’m luxuriating with my paramour at 16 The Bridle Path. Tell her it’s paradise and I’m calling it Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii. I can see it now—lagoons, Ferraris and tsetse flies! Bye! (into tape recorder) Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii. Chapter One. Nurse Jane sighed. Paragraph. She had just arrived in
Honolulu from Pleasantville Hospital for an International Symposium on Malaria. And she had met the continental Dr. Edgar Sterling from Britain. He had a strikingly cleft jutting chin, piercing blue eyes that danced and a silver tie clip on which was emblazoned his family crest. “Oh, to call him Ed instead of Dr. Sterling,” she mused, as they strolled along the shore, listening to the crashing waves while porpoises whistled playfully beyond the coral reef. Paragraph. An aged denizen approached. Aloha. You might please to join our luau?” he inquired. Dr. Sterling replied in the affirmative and guided Nurse Jane into the nearby bamboo hut with professional ease. Chapter Two. Suddenly Nurse Jane found herself plied with exotic libations. “Here we are”, said Dr. Sterling. “Thank you,” she replied huskily. What were his intentions, she pondered with fluttering
heart. Dr. Sterling advanced. An inner voice beckoned. It said—It said… (turning off tape recorder) Never mind, it ’s gone.
GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA (GOOD MORNING JULIET) FEMALE-COMEDY
By Ann-Marie MacDonald
CONSTANCE (talking to the audience)
Boy, Shakespeare really watered her down, eh?…
I wish I were more like Desdemona.
Next to her I’m just a little wimp.
A rodent. Road-kill. Furry tragedy
all squashed and steaming on the 401
with ‘Michelin’ stamped all over me. It’s true:
people’ve always made a fool of me
without my even knowing. Gullible.
That’s me. Old Connie. Good sport. Big joke. Ha.
Just like that time at recess in grade five:
a gang of bully girls comes up to me.
Their arms are linked, they’re chanting as they march,
‘Hey. Hey. Get outta my way!
I just got back from the I.G.A.!’
I’m terrified. They pin me down,
and force me to eat a dog-tongue sandwich.
I now know it was only ham…
O, what would Desdemona do to Claude?
Had she the motive and the cue for passion
that I have? She would drown all Queen’s with blood,
and cleave Claude Night’s two typing fingers from
his guilty hands. She’d wrap them in a box
of choc’lates and present them to Ramona.
She’d kill him in cold blood and in blank verse,
then smear the ivied walls in scarlet letters spelling ‘thief!’
To think, I helped him use me: a gull, a stooge,
a swine adorned with mine own pearls,
a sous-chef, nay! A scull’ry-maid that slaved
to heat hell’s kitchen with the baking stench
of forty-thousand scalding humble-pies,
O Vengeance!!!
Plays and monologues are available at the following locations:
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