MONOLOGUE PACKAGE CAWTHRA PARK SECONDARY SCHOOL REGIONAL ARTS PROGRAM - DRAMA

Transcription

1 CAWTHRA PARK SECONDARY SCHOOL REGIONAL ARTS PROGRAM - DRAMA MONOLOGUE PACKAGE Read over the five monologues provided in the package. Select the one that interests you the most; the one you can see yourself performing. Mermorize it exactly. Line security is important. Check the pronunciation of any words unfamiliar to you. Practice saying the monologue aloud, suggesting the personality of the character you are portraying through your tone of voice and body language. Costumes and props are not required.

2 BILLY BISHOP GOES TO WAR by John Gray & Eric Peterson It was a grim situation. But we didn t know how grim it could get until we saw the RE-7... the Reconnaissance Experimental Number Seven. Our new plane. What you saw was this mound of cables and wires, with a thousand pounds of equipment hanging off it. Four machine guns, a five-hundred pound bomb, for goodness sake. Reconnaissance equipment, cameras... Roger Neville that s my pilot he and I are ordered into the thing to take it up. Of course, it doesn t get off the ground. Anyone could see that. We thought, fine, good riddance. But the officers go into a huddle. (Imitating the Officers) Mmmmm? What do you think we should do? Take the bomb off? Take the bomb off! So we take the bomb off and try it again. This time, the thing sort of flops down the runway like a crippled duck. Finally, by taking everything off but one machine gun, the thing sort of flopped itself into the air and chugged along. It was a pig! We were all scared stiff of it. So they put us on active duty... as bombers! They gave us twobombs each, told us to fly over Hunland and drop them on somebody, but in order to accommodate for the weight of the bombs, they took our machine guns away! (As if writing or reciting a letter) Dearest Margaret. We are dropping bombs on the enemy from unarmed machines. It is exciting work. It s hard to keep your confidence in a war when you don t have a gun. Somehow we get back in one piece and we start joking around and inspecting the machine for bullet and shrapnel damage. You re so thankful not to be dead. Then I go back to the barracks and lie down. A kind of terrible loneliness comes over me. It s like waiting for a firing squad. It makes you want to cry, you feel so frightened and so alone. I think all of us who aren t dead think these things. Thinking of you constantly, I remain...

3 YOU RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN by Clark Gesner I think lunch time is about the worst time of the day for me. Always having to sit here alone. Of course, sometimes mornings aren t so pleasant, either waking up and wondering if anyone would really miss me if I never got out of bed. Then there s the night, too lying there and thinking about those stupid things I ve done during the day. And all those hours in between when I do all those stupid things. Well, lunch time is among the worst time of the day for me. Well, I guess I d better see what I ve got. Peanut butter. Some psychiatrists say that people who eat peanut butter sandwiches are lonely. I guess they re right. And if you re really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth. Boy, the PTA sure did a good job of painting these benches. There s that cute little redheaded girl eating her lunch over there. I wonder what she d do if I went over and asked her if I could sit and have lunch with her. She s probably laugh right in my face. It s hard on a face when it get laughed in. There s any empty place next to her on the bench. There s no reason why I couldn t just go over and sit there. I could do that right now. All I have to do is stand up. I m standing up. I m sitting down. I m a coward. I m so much of a coward she wouldn t even think of looking at me. Why shouldn t she look at me? Is she so great and am I so small that she couldn t spare one little moment just to... She s looking at me. She s looking at me.

4 THE FIGHTING DAYS by Wendy Lill My name is Nellie McClung and I m a disturber. Disturbers are never popular. Nobody likes an alarm clock in action, no matter how grateful they are later for its services! But I ve decided that I m going to keep on being a disturber. I m not going to pull through life like a thread that has no knot. I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some word that will shine in a dark place. And I want that word to be... DEMOCRACY! Democracy for Women. Because I m a firm believer in Women who set the standards for the world and it is up to us, the Women of Canada, to set the standards... HIGH! Maybe I m sort of a dreamer, maybe I sort of of naive... but I look at my little girls and boys and I think I want a different world for them than the one I was born into. I look at them and my heart cries out when I see them slowly turn towards the roles the world has carved for them: my girls, a life of cooking and sewing and services the needs of men; and the boys, scrapping and competing in the playground, then right up into the corridors of government, or even worse, the battlefields. I want them to have a choice about their lives. We mothers are going to fight for the rights of our little girls to think and dream and speak out. We re going to refuse to bear and rear sons to be shot at on faraway battlefields. Women need the vote to bring about a better, more quitable, peaceful society, and we re going to get it!

5 THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams Listen! You think I m crazy about the warehouse? You think I m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that celotex interior! With fluorescent tubes! Look! I d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that Rise and Shine! Rise and Shine! I say to myself, How lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self self s all I ever think of. Why. Listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I d be where he is gone! As far as the system of transportation reaches! Don t grab at me, Mother! I m going to the movies! I m going to opium dens! Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminals hangouts, Mother. I ve joined the Hogan gang, I m a hired assassin, I carry a tommy-gun in a violin case! They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield, I m leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother. I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table! I wear a patch over one eye and a false mustache, sometimes I put on green whiskers. On those occasions they call me El Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They re going to blow us all sky-high some night! I ll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You ugly babbling old witch...

6 RATTLE IN THE DASH by Peter Anderson I ever tell you about the time my old man ran into our house? I was five or six and I was upstairs in bed and my mother was reading me this bedtime story when we hear this crash, sounds like thunder only it come from downstairs. My mother tells me to stay in bed and goes down to see what s up. She doesn t come back for a while so I tiptoe down the stairs and right there in the living room is the old man s Thunderbird. It s half inside and half outside and there s bricks all over and this perfect half-circle knocked out of the wall. And there s the T-bird sitting in the middle of the living room with the stars shining through. And this big crowd of neighbours in pajamas and housecoats standing around outside staring into our house. Nobody was talking. They were staring in at me and my mom and the T-bird in the living room. My old man was sitting there behind the steering wheel with this stunned kind of look on his face like he couldn t believe it. I thought it was the most terrific thing he d ever done.