Choosing a Monologue
- By Irene Ziegler
- Published 12/13/2007
- How To
- Unrated
Irene Ziegler
I'm a hardworking but lesser known writer, actor, voiceover talent, and producer. Check out my website at http://www.irenezieglervoiceovers.com. I'm also an excellent parallel parker. I don't like candlelight dinners or walks on the beach. Married, a kid, perverse sense of humor. You'd like me.
View all articles by Irene Ziegler
Upon learning of today's typical cattle-call audition process, Dustin Hoffman—who hasn't had to audition for anything in a long, long time—once declared that if he had only a minute to make an impression, he'd take off his clothes.
For those of us who would rather think inside the box, there are a number of excellent sources for monologues.
For those auditions or class assignments where brevity is crucial, you need a monlogue that gets to the point. You need a defined character, strong emotional content, and a resonant ending. Just as important, you need a lot of monologues from which to choose.
The best source of excellent monologues is the 60 Seconds to Shine series, and The Ultimate Audition series, both edited by John Capecci and Irene Ziegler, from Smith & Kraus publishers.
That said, let's discuss how you go about choosing the right monologue for you.
SOURCE
Do you need a monologue from a play? Or will a less obvious source work? I find that many of the best monologues from plays have been "done to death." Unless you keep up with the latest published plays, finding fresh material from plays can be difficult.
Often overlooked sources include novels, short stories, poems, essays, comics, radio plays, film scripts and personal narratives. Yep. Blogs. Check out McSweeneys.com for off-beat, often hilarious entries. Even the titles are gems; among my favorites: "A Suburban Mother Tells Her 12-Year-Old Neighbor How to make His street Gang More Powerful," and "Christopher Hitchens Visits St. margaret's School for Young Women, Where He Discovers Little Girls Aren't Funny, Either."
I guess I'm saying you gotta read. That's why the best actors are often very smart people. They read.
AGE
Easy one. How old are you? Pick a monologue that's age appropriate. If you're 25, don't bend over and shake with false palsy as you clatter your way through a monologue better left to an more mature actor. But you know that. Onward.
CLASSIC/CONTEMPORARY
In many professional audition situations, actors are asked to prepare two "contrasting" monlogues. That can mean one comic, and one dramatic, but you are wise to interpret it as one classic, and one contemporary.
In the stricter sense, "classic" refers to any literature written before 1923. For our purposes, let's define it as referring to those texts employing classic language.
Directors want to see how if you can handle "language," and if you can render a Shakespearean sonnet with the same confidence and aplomb and an SNL skit, you gotta show it to 'em. \
Contemporary, of
course, refers to anything written after 1923.
TONE
Tone refers to whether a monologue is comic, seriocomic, or dramatic.
Comic is funny.
Dramatic is serious.
Seriocomic contains elements of both.
While all three categories have much to recommend them, I like seriocomic monologues. They often provide the widest range of performance possibility, and I like to show off in auditions. Why make 'em laugh OR cry, when you can do both?
VOICE
Voice refers to indications of class, geography, ethnicity, nationality, sexual identity, or physicality that may help performers gain entry into an individual character, or closely "match" themselves to a monologue. The language of any text will reveal a certain level of education, class or knowledge. Sometimes, however, a monologue arises out of specific cultural experience, demonstrated either through content or language.
Examples of voice are Southern, Urban, Gay, and the myriad geographical distinctions that indicate a specific accent should be employed, for example, British, Russian, Latino, etc.
If you want to show off your British accent, you're wise to choose a classic monologue so that your choice is grounded in context. Of course, if you are of Russian or Latino heritage, by all means, let's hear it. Just be cautious of mixing voice: Blanche Dubois with a German accent may be too weird for anyone.
EMOTIONAL CONTENT
Aha! The crux of the matter. Write this down and say it ten times: flat narratives bad; feeling-intense proclamations good.
A monologue that simply tells a story is a bad monologue, especially if it is in past tense. There are exceptions, of course, but bear with me.
The best monologues place you, the performer, in the here and now. You are talking to someone who is in the room with you. You are furious, elated, grief stricken or passionately in love. You have something to say, and if you don't say it right now, it will never be said, and the world as you know it will cease to exist.
In other words, you have to do some acting.
Anybody can tell a story about their dog died and how sad it was. But if your dog is dying right in front of you and there are so many things you haven't said, and need to say or you'll regret it the rest of the life, well, pick that one. It's immediate. It's here and now. It has high stakes and powerful emotions that you, using the all the acting tools you learned from those classes you're still paying for, can CONVEY!
And for crikey's sake, don't tell us about a dream you had. Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn.
THE UNWRITTEN RULE
You can be perverse, you can be outrageous, you can be shocking. YOU CANNOT BE BORING.
And if you can't manage that much, take your clothes off.
For those of us who would rather think inside the box, there are a number of excellent sources for monologues.
For those auditions or class assignments where brevity is crucial, you need a monlogue that gets to the point. You need a defined character, strong emotional content, and a resonant ending. Just as important, you need a lot of monologues from which to choose.
The best source of excellent monologues is the 60 Seconds to Shine series, and The Ultimate Audition series, both edited by John Capecci and Irene Ziegler, from Smith & Kraus publishers.
That said, let's discuss how you go about choosing the right monologue for you.
SOURCE
Do you need a monologue from a play? Or will a less obvious source work? I find that many of the best monologues from plays have been "done to death." Unless you keep up with the latest published plays, finding fresh material from plays can be difficult.
Often overlooked sources include novels, short stories, poems, essays, comics, radio plays, film scripts and personal narratives. Yep. Blogs. Check out McSweeneys.com for off-beat, often hilarious entries. Even the titles are gems; among my favorites: "A Suburban Mother Tells Her 12-Year-Old Neighbor How to make His street Gang More Powerful," and "Christopher Hitchens Visits St. margaret's School for Young Women, Where He Discovers Little Girls Aren't Funny, Either."
I guess I'm saying you gotta read. That's why the best actors are often very smart people. They read.
AGE
Easy one. How old are you? Pick a monologue that's age appropriate. If you're 25, don't bend over and shake with false palsy as you clatter your way through a monologue better left to an more mature actor. But you know that. Onward.
CLASSIC/CONTEMPORARY
In many professional audition situations, actors are asked to prepare two "contrasting" monlogues. That can mean one comic, and one dramatic, but you are wise to interpret it as one classic, and one contemporary.
In the stricter sense, "classic" refers to any literature written before 1923. For our purposes, let's define it as referring to those texts employing classic language.
Directors want to see how if you can handle "language," and if you can render a Shakespearean sonnet with the same confidence and aplomb and an SNL skit, you gotta show it to 'em. \
Contemporary, of
TONE
Tone refers to whether a monologue is comic, seriocomic, or dramatic.
Comic is funny.
Dramatic is serious.
Seriocomic contains elements of both.
While all three categories have much to recommend them, I like seriocomic monologues. They often provide the widest range of performance possibility, and I like to show off in auditions. Why make 'em laugh OR cry, when you can do both?
VOICE
Voice refers to indications of class, geography, ethnicity, nationality, sexual identity, or physicality that may help performers gain entry into an individual character, or closely "match" themselves to a monologue. The language of any text will reveal a certain level of education, class or knowledge. Sometimes, however, a monologue arises out of specific cultural experience, demonstrated either through content or language.
Examples of voice are Southern, Urban, Gay, and the myriad geographical distinctions that indicate a specific accent should be employed, for example, British, Russian, Latino, etc.
If you want to show off your British accent, you're wise to choose a classic monologue so that your choice is grounded in context. Of course, if you are of Russian or Latino heritage, by all means, let's hear it. Just be cautious of mixing voice: Blanche Dubois with a German accent may be too weird for anyone.
EMOTIONAL CONTENT
Aha! The crux of the matter. Write this down and say it ten times: flat narratives bad; feeling-intense proclamations good.
A monologue that simply tells a story is a bad monologue, especially if it is in past tense. There are exceptions, of course, but bear with me.
The best monologues place you, the performer, in the here and now. You are talking to someone who is in the room with you. You are furious, elated, grief stricken or passionately in love. You have something to say, and if you don't say it right now, it will never be said, and the world as you know it will cease to exist.
In other words, you have to do some acting.
Anybody can tell a story about their dog died and how sad it was. But if your dog is dying right in front of you and there are so many things you haven't said, and need to say or you'll regret it the rest of the life, well, pick that one. It's immediate. It's here and now. It has high stakes and powerful emotions that you, using the all the acting tools you learned from those classes you're still paying for, can CONVEY!
And for crikey's sake, don't tell us about a dream you had. Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn.
THE UNWRITTEN RULE
You can be perverse, you can be outrageous, you can be shocking. YOU CANNOT BE BORING.
And if you can't manage that much, take your clothes off.