College Audition Monologues

Belinda Bremner, Roosevelt University

Chicago College of Performing Arts Theatre Conservatory

A Monologue should be:

• One that does not come from a monologue book

• A verbal headshot

• A job interview using someone else’s words

• A bridge between you and the auditor

• Positive

• Something the auditors really want to listen to

• Loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to make the auditor’s

ears bleed

• Comfortably under the suggested time

• What you want the auditors to know and remember about you

• Appropriate to the space and project

• Exactly what they asked for

• Completely prepared

• Active ie. does not begin with “That summer when I was twelve…”

• Delivered in such a way that it does not do the auditors’work for

them, does not tell them what to think

• Brave

A monologue should NOT be:

• Something that has little of no relation to who you are

• Good enough

• Out of a monologue book

• Overdone

• Loud

• Offensive

• Negative

• Angry

• Inappropriate to the audition situation

• Over the time limit

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Something the auditor has just directed (unless you are brilliant

and then they may hate you for not auditioning earlier)

The Twelve Step Program to finding the Perfect Monologue

1. List at least a dozen adjectives that describe who you are.

Contradictions only prove you are human

2. What roles have you most enjoyed playing? Why?

3. What roles would you most like to play? Why?

4. Who are your favorite playwrights? Why?

5. Who are your favorite authors and why?

6. What films have you most enjoyed and why?

7. A. Who are the actors whom people most often tell you that you

remind them of? This is not a matter of looks but rather of a

quality? Repeat…not looks. This may be hard for most. B. What

actor, past or present, plays(ed) the roles for which you feel

you are suited?

8. What/who makes you laugh and how come?

9. About what are you passionate?

10. if you were not an actor, what would you make your life’s work?

If you could live in any other time or place where and when

would that be? And why. Hint: future doesn’t work very well.

Not a lot of plays set in the future. But if you must pick the

future, why then?

AND with what ethnic, sociological,

geographic, religious groups do you closely identify. What is in

your family history makes you you. Ie. “I feel very

Midwesterner, Italian Irish Catholic but more Italian than Irish

and my families have ALWAYS been cops.”

12.

What famous people NOT ACTORS OR ENTERTAINERS do you most

admire? And yup, why?

Questions when looking at selected pieces…

• Which of my pieces suit which audition situations?

• Do I have pieces which suit the kind of work I want to

pursue?

• What gaps need to be filled?

• Why do I like the pieces I have chosen? What do they say

about me?

• If I am luke warm about a piece, why do I feel this way?

• If I am having trouble with a piece, can I identify what

the block is.

• Some pieces are very appealing but are lousy audition

pieces. If this one of them?

• Do I like this piece for what it talks about but I have

trouble because this is not the way I would say in?

• Am I drawn to this piece for the emotion in it but not the

content?

• Are all my pieces ready all the time?

• How many ways could I do this piece?

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Questions for auditioning for a theatre company

What am I auditioning for?

What kinds of plays does this theatre usually present?

What plays has this theatre presented in the last five years?

If I am auditioning for a specific play, do they want a piece

from the script, from the playwright or from a similar work.

Whose work is like this playwright. Just because they are

contemporaries does not mean that they are similar.

5. Do I need a dialect? If so EXACTLY what does the director want?

And how will I find it?

6. For whom will I be auditioning?

7. What has the director done recently?

8. Do I really want to do this? Why?

9. Who do I know who has worked with this company/director?

10.

Can I get my hands on this/these scripts?

11.

Am I completely free to audition?

12.

Why am I doing this audition? Why am I doing this piece

for this audition?

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A GUIDE TO AUDITION MATERIAL TO AVOID

B.Bremner

College Monologues 2

In general the works of Mamet, Shepard, Durang, Williams, Henley,

Wasserstein, Simon, Martin, Shanley and Ives are all way to familiar.

If you can find good obscure stuff, go for it.

Additionally, auditors really do not to hear pieces about: rape,

incest, cruelty to animals or humans, child abuse, bodily functions,

eating disorders, first sexual encounters, whining or bashing. Also,

monologues about what a bad actor you are, or what a good actor you are

or how much you hate auditioning. What are we saying here? If it came

out of a monologue book, get rid of it. Especially if it is one of

those egregious (bad) written as a monologue efforts. And NEVER, not

that you would dream of it, rewrite a monologue to suit yourself. You

might add an expletive or two, but NEVER change words, or worse, add

your own contributions. Learn and perform it AS WRITTEN. Sometimes

cutting and pasting requires an added word but that is it. BE VERY

CAREFUL about piecing together.

Shows to avoid:

• Agnes of God

• A, My Name is Alice (I and

II)

• Angels in America

• Talking With

• Keely and Du

• Lone Star

• Laundry and Bourbon

• Is There Life After High

School

• Nuts

• Zoo Story

• Three Tall Women

• I Hate Hamlet

• Key Exchange

• Runaways

• Streetcar or Glass

Menagerie

• Laughing Wild

• Boys Next Door

• Say Goodnight Gracie

• Any Neil Simon beginning

with a B

• Woolgather or Extremities

• Earth and Sky

• ‘Night Mother

• Steel Magnolias

• K2

• Blue Window

• For Colored Girls

• Loose Knit or Spike Heels

• Much Nicky Silver

• Shadow Box

• The Nerd

• Reckless

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Brilliant Traces

It Had To Be You

In the Boom Boom Room

And They Danced Real Slow

in Jackson

Amadeus

Picasso at the Lapin Agile

Terra Nova

Painting Churches

Dining Room or Love

Letters

Any Lily Tomlin

Lives of the Great

Waitresses

Personality

Much Jules Feifer

Unbridaled Passion

Lady with a Clarinet

Coyote Ugly

Getting Out

Holy Ghosts

Rosencrantz and

Guilderstern…

A Piece of My Heart or

Shrapnel in the Heart

Man in the Moon Marigolds

Uncommon Women

Six Degrees of Separation

St. Joan—any of them

To Gillian…

Molly Sweeny or Dancing at

Lughnasa (Maggie on the

bike)

Primary English Class

Girls Guide to Chaos

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Line that picked up a

Thousand Chicks

Night Larry Kramer Kissed

Me

Quilters (Esp. Sunbonnet

Sue)

Elemosinary or Patient A

Les Liaison Dangereus

Naomi in the Living Room

House of Blue Leaves or

Loveliest Afternoon

Fantastiks

Standing on my Knees

Children’s Hour

Colored Museum

Death of a Salesman

Crucible

After the Fall

Defying Gravity

I Never Saw Another

Butterfly or Anne Frank

White Rose

Bright Room Called Day

Cyrano

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Our Country’s Good

Sylvia

How I Learned to Drive

Fooling Around with

Infinity

The Harvesting

Eqqus

Independence

Children of a Lesser God

Why we Have Bodies

Most Massive Women Wins

Catholic School Girl

Moving

Real Queen of Hearts

Our Town

Album

Waiting for the Parade

Rainmaker

P.S. Your Cat is Dead

‘Dentity Crisis

No Exit

Look Back in Anger

Sonnets

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UNTAPPED SOURCES

Shakespeare Histories

Marlowe, Dryden, Jacobeans, Jonson

Corneille/Racine

Mariveaux

Lope de Vega (Except Laurencia in F o)

Anhouilh and Giradoux, Camus and Sartre

Brecht, Buchner, Frisch, Duerrenmat

Great neglected stuff from the 30’s through the 60’s

Great scripts from 50’s television dramas

Fry, Inge, Odtes, Hellman, Luce

New translations of Greeks

Richard Nelson and George Walker

Dario Fo, Ugo Betti

Underdone Ibsen

Canadian, New Zealand, and Australian Scripts

English 60’s such as Osborne, Saunders, Whiting

American Theatre Magazine

Biographies and interviews and commentaries

10 Minute plays from Louisville

Radio plays

Scriptseeker.com

In rehearsing monologues—Be Excruciatingly Specific:

• Who am I?

• Where am I?

• To whom am I speaking?

B.Bremner

College Monologues 4

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What do I want?

What stands in my way?

What am I going to do to get it?

What just happened that “makes or permits” me to say this?

To what is this a response? How can I deliver the opening of this

monologue in a way that conveys that it is a response, a

reaction?

Why I am I saying this now, not last week or five minutes from

now? Why MUST I say this now?

How much of this do I know I am going to say?

Have I ever used these exact words before?

What does it cost me to say this?

What surprises me in this speech? What do I discover?

What in this speech does the other person already know? What

words have resonances? What is shared knowledge, experience?

At which point(s) do I realize I have to continue speaking?

When do I realize I have to change tactics?

What must I do/not do to keep the other person’s attention?

What are the other person’s reactions (facials, verbal,

physical)?

What is my body doing? (hands, feet, back…) What does my posture

say?

What do I need to access this monologue?

What is my first state?

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SOME QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED

• What have you done with your emotional arc?

• Describe the way this character thinks. Where is his/her

emotional center?

• What is his/her emotional/intellectual age? The two can be

widely different?

• Does he/she act instinctually? Premeditatedly? Passive-

aggressively? How?

• About what does she/he care most in the world?

• What quality does he/she hold in the highest esteem? In lowest

regard?

• To what extent has she/he examined her/his life?

• How much of what he/she does or of what happens to her/him does

she/he understand?

• How much does he/she THINK they understand?

• To what extent is she/he in control?

• What does she/he keep in her/his pocket/purse?

• How and to whom does she/he pray? For what?

• What’s on the bookcase? Beside the bed?

• Favorite meal? Worst nightmare? Secret fear?

• Worst/best habit?

• Attitude toward money/work/fame/social position?

• For who did he/she vote—if they voted?

• What would they choose to do if they knew they had only six

months to live

• One day? One hour?

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Whom do they love most? Hate most?

Who is their best friend?

Who is the hero/villain of his/her life?

If the chips were really down, what would he/she do to survive?

How does she/he deal with change?

What makes him/her laugh? Cry?

How does she/he lose her/his temper?

What is the favorite flower/holiday/childhood memory/meal/time of

the day/season of the year/writer/song?

What impression does she/he make on others? How much is

intentional? How aware is she/he of this? How much is accurate?

How would he/she describe her/himself to others?

What does he/she smell like?

What are the secrets?

What does he/she do when nervous/lying/tired/happy/embarrassed?

Have they ever been in love? With whom? Is the glass half empty

or half full?

What is their idea of perfect happiness?

What does she/he consider her/his greatest achievement?

What does she/he like most /least about self?

What does she/he consider the most overrated virtue?

What word is the most overused?

What is his/her greatest regret? Idea of misery? Favorite name?

Favorite expletive?

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B.Bremner

College Monologues 6