Years ago, when I was pursuing the stage, I was told by my mentor to always have a couple of monologues ready to go – preferably one comic and another tragic, perhaps contemporary or classical, even better always carry one of each in your back pocket and have them all memorized. Have a resource of around four or five memorized monologues. An actor really hasn’t any idea when this prep will come into play outside of the called for monologue in an audition.

As a high school theater director I always instilled this upon my students. I often held auditions that required memorized monologues, if not at least holding it in their hand. This was still high school so I was reasonable, but the emphasis remained. Unless it was a cold reading from the script I wanted students to take the audition seriously. The effort alone to present something outside of themselves was valuable.

My students would shirk and moan and dismiss the idea often just reading off a script found minutes before their scheduled slot. Like I said, I would give them a break but then afterwards cast or not try to explain to them how important it is to represent a character outside of themselves. If they walk into the room beaming with confidence can they express the sensitive nature of vulnerability or emulate the complete opposite.

I always tried to remind them of a funny story of an actor who once auditioned for a Hollywood cop show and after reading a piece for the director as he was dismissed the actor jumped up on the table and delivered a barrage of indignant banter to the director. He was cast in the show as an undercover cop with a personality that expressed a barrage of indignant banter. Now, that wasn’t the practiced theory of a monologue but this fellow knew what he was doing and he got the director’s attention.

I’m not suggesting students jump up on my desk and go crazy but the point was made. This actor knew what he was doing and presented that in their audition. I once had a student do that to me with the monologue “You can’t handle the truth” in true Jack Nicholson form. He scared the hell out of me and I gave him an A because not only did his stance work, he also knew the piece, word for word.

I would share the story of my own experience of an audition with the creative director of a well known theater company in the city. The audition called for cold readings, monologues preferred but unnecessary. So I went with the latter and didn’t tune up my library of monologues not expecting anything from the audition. I was in the last group of about eight people for the session and at the end of our cold readings he asked me to hang back. I was alone in the room with the artistic director. I was quite excited. He then asked me that dreaded question. “Do you have a couple of monologues you can show me?”

Silence.

I told him I had a couple but didn’t have them with me and I probably wouldn’t do them any justice.

“Well, that’s too bad, thanks for coming in,” he emoted and I walked out quite embarrassed. This man wanted results and preparation and I failed on both accounts. This is a message I did tried to implore to my students whenever delivering the ‘monologue’ lecture in class.

Are you earnest about getting a part, or just showing up to check things out? The former will be imperative.

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© Thom Amundsen 4/2022