ACTING!

October 15, 2008 8:32 AM

Monologue for a budding drama queen?

What would you recommend as juicy, teeth-sinking-into, over-the-top dramatic monologues or scenes for a budding drama queen to act out? The cheesier the better. Bonus points for stuff not already pop-culture-ized and anything involving fainting, over-wrought prose, and super-heightened pre-teen emotional stakes.

posted by mothershock to grab bag (16 comments total)

Is this just for fun? If it's for an audition, we can be lots more helpful if you give your playing age, what accents you can do, etc.

Based on what you've given me, I'm going to suggest Verity from Olwen Wymark's Find Me, which isn't often performed, so you don't have to worry about popculture links. It's the true story of a girl with emotional/behavioural issues and the effect on her family. She ends up in an asylum and a lot of the play is monologues from her POV. There are speeches where she is a shouty brat you want to punch in the face and there are speeches where she is so desolate and lost that you just want to give her a big hug - sometimes these are the same speeches.
posted by the latin mouse at 8:49 AM on October 15, 2008

a bukowski poem.
posted by krautland at 8:53 AM on October 15, 2008

It's not serious, but it's a LOT of fun -- the play Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer has a great out-of-nowhere monologue that's meant to be for an older actress. It's for a character -- an elderly spinster named "Miss Furnival" -- that has been getting quietly drunk over the course of the previous hour, and right at the moment when the other characters are in the midst of a heated debate about something, she suddenly bursts out with a high-octane rant about customer service in supermarkets.

In the play, it's meant to be comedy, but it's one of those things that only works as comedy if the actress playing her takes it very, very seriously and works up into a full head of rage. I auditioned for this part with this monologue in high school and I think I scared people.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:58 AM on October 15, 2008

Chekhov's "On the Harm of Tobacco" is hilarious and very dramatic.
posted by nasreddin at 9:00 AM on October 15, 2008

I should qualify: this is just for fun -- like the kind of thing, say, a 9-year-old girl might do with friends "putting on a show," or by herself. Like an outlet for budding dramatic sensibilities. Thanks!
posted by mothershock at 9:00 AM on October 15, 2008

But, uh, find a better translation.
posted by nasreddin at 9:01 AM on October 15, 2008

I've always thought the "I Believe" speech from Neil Gaiman's American Gods would make a good monologue:

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."
posted by yellowbinder at 9:08 AM on October 15, 2008 [4 favorites]

Here's an operatic speech from Robert Lowell's version of "The Oresteia." Here's the backstory [spolier]: Queen Clytemnestra murdered her husband, King Agamemnon. Their son, Orestes, avenged his father by killing her. Now, she returns as a ghost. She wants the furies (monsters from hell) to hunt down her son. But they've been put under a spell by the god Apollo. Here, Clytemnestra's ghost conjures the furies up from their sleep:

CLYTEMNESTRA
How can you still be sleeping?
You are no use to me dead. Wake up –
since you have neglected me, I wandered
ashamed and abandoned among the other dead.
They abuse me unceasingly because I killed my husband;
none protests
the blow of my own son. He killed me.
The wound is under my heart … from my son's sword.
Look … though in daylight you cannot see
insubstantial things; yet in your dream,
the mind has eyes to see my slaughtered spirit.
How often I have poured out libations to you –
soothing, sobering … without wine
to muddle your dogged heads.
I served them to you at midnight,
when no other god is banqueted.
Orestes has trampled these gifts underfoot;
he leaps lightly as a fawn from your unattended snare.
He has escaped, he is gone –
how he despises you. Ah Furies,
invincible powers of the depths,
listen to me and understand.
It is my life I entreat you for … my once life.
Clytemnestra rouses you from your dream.

You complain of work, but your prey has escaped.
My son has abler fiends than mine;
they save him while you sleep.

Why aren't you awake yet? Can't you feel guilt?
He is gone,
Orestes who killed his mother is gone.

Are you still whining and barking?
Wake up, stand up;
Evil is your province, it mourns your absence.

Ah poor she-dragons, sleep and exhaustion
have drained the sources of your anger.

FURIES
Catch him, catch him, catch him, catch him, catch him.

CLYTEMNESTRA
In dreams you hunt your prey, barking and baying,
as if your hunger would never rest,
yet you do nothing. Are you so corrupted and conquered
by weariness that you can only sleep,
you forget my pain. Rise,
you must torment him with just accusations,
the cruel words of a quick conscience.
Breathe a mist of blood in his face from your throats and bellies.
Dry his hopes, hunt him to death.
posted by grumblebee at 9:21 AM on October 15, 2008

I've always loved Alec Baldwin's monologue from "Glengarry Glen Ross". I daydream of starting my own theater company just so I can play that part. It's not teen angst, but it is just overflowing with awesome.
posted by DWRoelands at 9:29 AM on October 15, 2008

I've always loved Alec Baldwin's monologue from "Glengarry Glen Ross". I daydream of starting my own theater company just so I can play that part. It's not teen angst, but it is just overflowing with awesome.

Your dream will have to stay a dream, unless you want to alter the script. Mamet wrote that great speech for the movie version. It isn't in the play. Now, PUT THE COFFEE CUP DOWN!
posted by grumblebee at 9:34 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

Maybe M'Lynn's (Steel Magnolias) monologue after her daughter, Shelby, dies of kidney failure. She'd stayed by Shelby's bedside the entire time she was in a coma:

No. I couldn’t leave my Shelby. It’s interesting. Both the boys were very difficult births. I almost died when Jonothan was born. Very difficult births. Shelby was a breeze. I could’ve gone home that afternoon I had her. I was thinking about that as I sat next to Shelby while she was in the coma. I would work her legs and arms to keep the circulation going. I told the ICU nurse we were doing our Jane Fonda. I stayed there. I kept pushing…….just like I always did where Shelby was concerned……..hoping she’d sit up and argue with me. But finally we realised that there was no hope. At that point I panicked. I was very afraid that I would not survive the next few minutes while they turned off the machines. Drum couldn’t take it. He left. Jackson couldn’t take it. He left. It struck me as amusing. Men are supposed to be made of steel or something. But I could not leave. I just sat there…..holding Shelby’s hand while the sounds got softer and the beeps got farther apart until all was quiet. There was no noise, no tremble…..just peace. I realised as a woman how lucky I was. I was there when this wonderful person drifted into my life and I was there when she drifted out. It was the most precious moment of my life.


Or the part at the cemetery when she's asked if she's OK:


[crying] I'm fine, I'm fine, [screaming] I'm fine!!
...I'm fine! I can jog all the way to Texas and back, but my daughter can't! She never could! Oh God! I am so mad I don't know what to do! I wanna know why! I wanna know *why* Shelby's life is over! I wanna know how that baby will *ever* know how wonderful his mother was! Will he *ever* know what she went through for him! Oh *God* I wanna know *why*? *Why*? Lord, I wish I could understand!

[Visibly composes herself]

[In a firm tone]
No! No! No! It's not supposed to happen this way! I'm supposed to go first. I've always been ready to go first! I-I don't think I can take this! I-I don't think I can take this! I-I just wanna *hit* somebody 'til they feel as bad as I do! I just wanna *hit* something! I wanna *hit it hard*!
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:11 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Medea! Sweet merciful crap, Medea!

In vain, my children, have I brought you up,
Borne all the cares and pangs of motherhood,
And the sharp pains of childbirth undergone.
In you, alas, was treasured many a hope
Of loving sustentation in my age,
Of tender laying out when I was dead,
Such as all men might envy.
Those sweet thoughts are mine no more, for now bereft of you
I must wear out a drear and joyless life,
And you will nevermore your mother see,
Nor live as ye have done beneath her eye.
Alas, my sons, why do you gaze on me,
Why smile upon your mother that last smile?
Ah me! What shall I do? My purpose melts
Beneath the bright looks of my little ones.
I cannot do it. Farewell, my resolve,
I will bear off my children from this land.
Why should I seek to wring their father's heart,
When that same act will doubly wring my own?
I will not do it. Farewell, my resolve.
What has come o'er me? Shall I let my foes
Triumph, that I may let my friends go free?
I'll brace me to the deed. Base that I was
To let a thought of wickedness cross my soul.
Children, go home. Whoso accounts it wrong
To be attendant at my sacrifice,
Let him stand off; my purpose is unchanged.
Forego my resolutions, O my soul,
Force not the parent's hand to slay the child.
Their presence where we will go will gladden thee.
By the avengers that in Hades reign,
It never shall be said that I have left
My children for my foes to trample on.
It is decreed.

Then she promptly kills her children. Yay! Man, I love the fucked-up Greeks.
posted by Skot at 10:31 AM on October 15, 2008

The Stepsister Speaks Out (Cinderella's Stepsister)

HERE is a link.

I did this one in high school drama and it was so much fun. I turned into quite the drama queen while doing this.
posted by TurquoiseZebra at 10:37 AM on October 15, 2008

Shakespeare.

His plays are full of brilliant bits - and not just the famous ones. Or any of his sonnets would work.

Working with Shakespeare is really the absolute best thing you can do as training for acting, if that's what you're hoping to do. It will teach you how to use the text to get what you need to understand character and motivation, skill which you can then carry over into any other acting work.
posted by dnash at 11:08 AM on October 15, 2008

I, Claudia by Kristen Thompson is about a 12-year old girl who, devastated by her father's remarriage, hides in her school's boiler room and tells us all about it. The cover of the play shows the character masked, but ignore that- it works great unmasked too, and I highly recommend you buy it for some of the juiciest, funniest, saddest, awesomest writing I've ever read. It's a hugely successful piece of theatre, one of modern Canada's finest works. I suggested it to a coworker for her 12-year old daughter's audition to a prestigious arts school, and the kid got in with flying colours and lots of compliments on her choice of monologue.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 2:07 PM on October 15, 2008

oops, Kristen Thomson.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 2:09 PM on October 15, 2008