Instructions
MONOLOGUES FOR BLAIR SCHOOL OF MUSIC VOICE AREA AUDITIONS 25/26
PLEASE choose one monologue from the four below. Please chose the one which speaks to
you the most, regardless of gender. They are appropriate for any identification. Monologues
must be memorized and will be performed for the pre-screening.
From GAME NIGHT (HUMANS ONLY, PLEASE) by Laura Neill
In an apocalyptic future, the nerds, who have made the library their base, are worried about their friend Avery who went out for food and never came back. When the soccer team arrives on their doorstep, they’re suspicious as they debate whether to let them in. Just as the conflict comes to a head, Avery returns—shockingly wearing a soccer jersey. Everyone stares.
AVERY: (in a rush of words) I was never dead and I was never going to break in and get gummy worms from Rite Aid, I wanted to play soccer, okay, I’ve always wanted to play soccer, I like the grass and the mud and the movement and the adrenaline and the kicking and the shoving and the scoring and the team thing and the passing and the rush and the wind and the sky and the getting out of breath because I’m doing something, and the winning and the losing and the orange slices and the stupid shin guards and the long socks and the dumb jerseys, and back when it existed I liked the audience and the rules and the refs and all those things don’t exist anymore, but […] I WOULD STILL LIKE IT because I LIKE SOCCER […] So when I went scouting a couple weeks ago I didn’t go scouting, because I didn’t want everything to just be about the world ending, I went to practice, I went to soccer practice because I love soccer and I play soccer and I joined the team.
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From WHAT HAPPENS IN NEVERLAND STAYS IN NEVERLAND by Jon Jory
The Crocodile (who allegedly ate Captain Hook’s hand) introduces themself to some tourists to Neverland
CROCODILE: I mean Hook’s hand was simply an automatic response. You would have done the same thing if you had sharper teeth. Plus it was Captain Hook, a man who sneaks around giving vulnerable children poisoned cakes! My greatest worry is that these kinds of rumors will ruin crocodiles’ reputations and we’ll be seen by humans in the same way they see great white sharks. Do crocodiles have a downside, yes. We have terrible skin for one thing and we’re meat eaters, but so are you. What about our upside? I, for instance, am an amazing tap dancer and have a five-octave vocal range but no crocodile has ever gotten a Broadway show. My dream is to play Danny Zuko in Grease with an all-crocodile cast. That is unlikely to happen if I’m facing a murder charge, and the Stage Manager thinks I may eat her hand. The solution is for everyone to adopt a crocodile. For one thing, we’ll eat your garbage so you won’t have to pull those heavy cans out to the street. We’ll slowly work our way up from being family pets to being valued members of society and starring in musicals. Meanwhile for those of you who insist on throwing me clocks, it’s demeaning, just stop it. Also, I have started a GoFundMe drive so that I can self- produce a film. Give me a helping hand. I don’t mean that literally.
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NO QUARTER GIVEN by Arthur M. Jolly
A barista reveals a penetrating truth about the customers of their dad's coffee shop, and their reaction to a quarter glued to the sidewalk in front of the store..
BARISTA: My dad is a genius. After they power-washed the sidewalk, he takes a quarter, and he glues it down with some of that 10-ton epoxy glue, right in front of the picture windows. Lemme tell ya, if the world turned upside down, you could hold onto that quarter and just hang there. So, customers are inside with their lattes and their no-foam caps, and they see some poor schlub come along and try and pick up the quarter... and the first time, maybe one or two people notice - you know, quiet chuckle. But by the second day, it’s a thing. All the regulars are at the window, watching this quarter - most of’em aren’t even on their phones. One quarter–we’re doing two hundred bucks a day extra business. But then I notice that when some schmuck does try to pick it up, there’s so many idiots inside laughin’, they can hear’em. They know they’re being laughed at. And it got... mean. I dunno how else to describe it, it got mean. Business is up, but what are we putting out into the world? Just making it a little worse. Too many mean people as it is.
There’s no grace, no compassion. So this morning I came in early, and I chiseled that quarter up.
Then I took a quarter out of the tip jar, and I put it down there in the same spot, right before we opened. And all morning, I’m watching out of the corner of my eye, and eventually, this little old lady came along, and bent down and picked up the quarter and went off with a smile and you should have seen the faces.
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From Alice Tierney an opera; libretto by Jacqueline Goldfinger
A 21st Century archeology graduate student is digging in the basement of the house of Alice
Tierney, who was the victim of an unsolved murder in 1880’s Philadelphia. He is telling his
colleagues on the dig why he wanted to spend his life digging in the dirt, chasing history, but gradually imagines Alice there herself, listening to him.
JOHN: It was a wish. Not a wish, a dream, a dream found and fought for, for dirt.
For the memories of others, a kaleidoscope, or a stained glass window of how they lived their lives, that we get to interpret, that we get to bring to life. Not the banks of my father or law courts of my uncles. But something more true, more real, more just, the story of the world in our hands. Alice Tierney, who are you? I’ve been looking all my life. I didn’t know. I thought I wanted Tutankhamen, wanted to be famous, but digging, holding, sifting, sharing, seeing, telling, hours upon hours, in the dirt. I just want to be here in the dirt. No wishes, just action in the dirt, in Alice’s home, in the dirt, where I belong, in the dirt. [he uncovers a shoe with a broken heel.
Triumphantly]. After months of impersonal shards, I’ve found it! Personally, privately hers: a shoe! Delicate perfection! From this one find, social status, economic status, so much more, summons her from the spirits. She must have, she must’ve thrown it out in a fit of rage over a lover!