Audition Monologues for Roles Where Characters Experiment With Something New, Vol. 9
The hardest thing to fake in an audition is genuine risk. Casting can tell the difference between a character who is technically taking a stand and one who is actually putting themselves on the line. The monologues in this volume are built around real exposure. Coming out, changing a name, walking into a room you weren't raised to enter. These can't be performed cleanly. They have to be risked. Use them for the kind of self-tape where you want to remind yourself what it feels like to commit. Ten characters, ten moments of stepping into something irreversible.
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Genevieve — 27, coming out to her religious mother at the kitchen table
(Sets down her fork carefully) Mom. Mom, please don't get up. Sit. Sit down with me for a second. I'm not. I'm not asking anything from you right now, okay, I just need you to hear it. (steadies) I'm gay. I've known since I was fifteen. I tried, Mom. I really tried to be what you wanted. I dated Brian for three years and I cried every Sunday after church. (voice cracks) I'm not telling you to hurt you. I'm telling you because I love you, and I'm tired of you loving a version of me that doesn't exist. (beat) Her name is Robin. She's a teacher. She makes me laugh in a way I didn't know I could. (softer, pleading) You don't have to say anything tonight. I just. I need you to know that I'm still your daughter. Please. Look at me. I'm still your daughter.
Rufus — 33, wearing makeup and a dress in public for the first time
(In the car, parked outside a restaurant, to his best friend) Don't say I look great. Please. If you say I look great I'm going to cry and ruin all of it. (laughs shakily) Forty minutes. Forty minutes to do an eyeliner that any sixteen-year-old could do in their sleep. (beat) Eli. I have wanted to do this since I was nine years old. Nine. I stole my sister's mascara and she found me and laughed and I never. I never tried again. Twenty-four years. (steadies) I don't know what's going to happen when I walk into that restaurant. I don't know if anyone's going to stare. I don't know if I'm going to want to leave. (firmer) But you're going to walk in front of me. You're going to order for both of us. And I'm just going to sit there and be a person in a dress eating pasta. (beat) Okay. Okay, I'm ready. Don't let me chicken out.
Lavinia — 44, legally changing her name after forty-four years
(To the family lawyer, holding a folder) I know it's not a quick appointment. I know. I brought everything. Birth certificate, driver's license, the deed to the house, the divorce decree. (sets the folder down) Lavinia. My new first name is Lavinia. I picked it from my great-grandmother on my mother's side. I never met her. She was apparently a terror, which I respect. (small laugh) My old name. The one my father gave me. I haven't been able to hear it without flinching since I was eleven years old, Mr. Klein. Eleven. (steadier) And I sat on it. I sat on it through college, through marriage, through divorce, through therapy, through my mother dying. (beat) I'm forty-four. I'm running out of decades to be the wrong name. (softer) So. What do you need me to sign first?
Crispin — 58, who just sold his company and walked away from his career
(In a backyard chair, to his wife, gin in hand) Don't look at me like I've lost my mind. I have not lost my mind. I have lost a job. There is a meaningful difference. (laughs) Patricia. We have enough. We have more than enough. We have a number that the financial guy drew on a napkin and that number has zeros I had to count twice. (beat) I started that company when I was twenty-six. I have been the man in the corner office for thirty-two years. Today I walked out of that building and I felt. I felt nothing. (quieter) Which is terrifying. Because I thought I'd feel proud, or sad, or anything. Nothing. (looks at her) Who am I tomorrow morning? What do I do at seven a.m.? I haven't not had a meeting at seven a.m. since Reagan was in office. (small smile) Teach me. Teach me what people do.
Petra — 31, who dyed her hair bright pink at a salon for the first time
(Bursts into her sister's apartment) Don't. Don't say anything. Look at it. Just look at it for a second. (turns) It's pink. It is bright, loud, screaming pink, and I am a corporate paralegal in a midsize firm in Cleveland, and I did it on a Tuesday. (laughs, almost manic) Caro, I have had the same haircut since I was nineteen. The same. Brown bob. Brown bob. Brown bob. (sits) Tom left in February. You know this. You were there. And for six months I have been doing the thing where you wear his old sweatshirt and you cry in the cereal aisle. (steadier) And this morning I was getting dressed and I thought. I thought, what would terrify Tom. What would have made him sigh and shake his head. (beat, defiant) And I went to a salon, and I sat in a chair, and I said, the brightest one you have. (softer) Tell me I look insane. Tell me I look free. Tell me both.
Walden — 26, getting his first tattoo while talking to the artist
(On the chair, slightly tense) Okay. Okay, that's. That's a needle. That's a real needle that's about to go in my arm. (exhales) Sorry. Sorry, ignore me, just keep doing what you're doing. (beat) My father had a tattoo. Did I tell you that? On his left bicep. Anchor. Navy. He hated it for forty years. Said it was the dumbest thing he ever did at nineteen. (small laugh) And I grew up terrified of permanence. Tattoos, marriage, mortgages, all of it. (winces) Oh. Oh that's a feeling. (steadies) But my father died in October. And at the funeral I kept looking at his arm. And I realized that anchor was the most him thing about him. (quieter) So this. This is a coordinate. Latitude and longitude. The lake we used to fish at. (beat) Sorry, I'm talking too much, aren't I. Keep going. Please. Don't stop. I'll cry if you stop.
Eleni — 38, the night before her first stand-up comedy open mic
(Pacing the kitchen, phone on speaker to her best friend) Five minutes. Five minutes of material, Dee. That is three hundred seconds of me, alone, on a stage, in a bar, trying to make strangers laugh. (laughs nervously) I am a dental hygienist. I clean teeth. People do not, as a rule, expect to be entertained by their dental hygienist. (beat) Why am I doing this. Why did I sign up for this. (steadies) Okay. Okay, the bit about my mother. The bit about the dog. The bit about the dating app. Three solid bits. I've practiced them in the car for six weeks. (quieter) Dee. What if no one laughs. What if it's just silence and the sound of the espresso machine. (beat, firmer) Fine. Fine, then it's silence and an espresso machine and I survive and I go home and I try again next month. (softer) Tell me I'm not insane. Tell me people do this. Tell me I'm allowed to want this at thirty-eight.
Brooks — 50, at his first men's emotional support group after his father died
(Sitting in a circle, hesitant) I, uh. I don't really. I haven't done this before. So. Bear with me. (clears throat) My name is Brooks. I'm fifty. My father died in March. He was eighty-one. It wasn't sudden. (beat) I haven't cried. Not once. I gave the eulogy. I cleaned out his garage. I called the insurance company. Twelve different times. (small, dry laugh) My wife told me last Tuesday that if I didn't find somewhere to put this, she was going to start sleeping in the guest room. Her exact words. So. Here I am. (steadies) My father never. My father never told me he loved me. Not once. I'm not saying that to be dramatic. I'm saying it because I think it's relevant. (voice catches) And I have a son. He's fourteen. (long beat) I don't want him at fifty in a room like this. (quieter) Sorry. That's. That's all I've got tonight.
Wren — 22, telling her parents she's taking a gap year mid-college
(In the living room, both parents on the couch) Please don't interrupt me. Please. Let me get through it. (steadies) I'm not going back in the fall. I'm taking the year off. I already filed the paperwork. The dean has it. It's a leave of absence, not a withdrawal, I will be re-enrolled the following September. (beat) Mom, breathe. (firmer) I have been miserable for two years. Two years. I have been failing classes I used to coast in. I haven't slept a full night since sophomore spring. I am not okay. (quieter) And I know what you spent. I know what the tuition is. I know you both worked overtime for this. I know. (voice cracks) But I am twenty-two and I am cracking and if I go back in August I will not finish. (steady again) I have a job lined up. At the bookstore. I have a therapist. I have a plan. (softer) Please. Just. Please trust me on this one.
Cassius — 67, at his first ballroom dance lesson, talking to his partner
(Catching his breath, mid-lesson) I'm sorry. I'm sorry, that was your foot again, wasn't it. (small laugh) Margaret. Margaret, you signed up for this class knowing I had two left feet. You cannot now be surprised that I have two left feet. (beat) Forty-two years. Forty-two years we've been married and the only dancing I've done is the one slow song at our wedding and the one at our daughter's wedding. Two songs. In four decades. (steadies) You said last Christmas. You said, Cass, I want to dance before my knees give out. And I said, sure, honey, sure, and I thought you'd forget. (quieter) You didn't forget. (firmer) Okay. Okay, give me the count again. One, two, three. One, two, three. (beat) I am sixty-seven years old and I am attempting the foxtrot for the woman of my life. (small smile) Don't tell the boys at the club. They'll bury me.
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