The following is a selection of monologues we suggest you use for the 2016 Performance Lab Auditions. You do not need to use these suggestions, you may choose to use a monologue from a school production or something you have used for a previous audition. Whatever you chose, please ensure your piece runs no longer than 3 minutes. Your performance will be stopped after 3 minutes. Please don t perform something you have written yourself or that does not come from a whole stage or screen play (ie: a piece that has just been written as a monologue). We want to see you interpret someone else s writing in the context of a whole story. Before you start learning your lines, make sure you understand the given circumstances of the piece (time of day, how old you are, who you are speaking to etc), and understand where this piece sits in the context of the character s journey. During the audition you will be asked to participate in workshop and group activities as well as present your monologue. Please bring a water bottle, a copy of your monolouge, a pencil and eraser with you to the audition. 1 P a g e
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES written by Nancy Meyers & Charles Shyer CASEY BRODSKY: I'm just a kid, and I don't know what I'm doing sometimes. But I think you should know better when you're all grown up. I think you should know how to act, and how to treat people. And I think if you once loved someone enough to marry them, you should at least be nice to them, even if you don't love 'em any more. And I think if you have a child, you should treat that child like a human being and not like a pet. Not like you treat your dog or somethin'. You know, when you have a dog sometimes you forget he's there, and then when you get lonely suddenly you remember him, and you remember how cute he is and stuff, and you kiss him a lot, but then the next day when you're busy again you don't notice him. That's how I've been treated for the past four years, and you don't treat your kid like your dog. It's not right. DEAD POET S SOCIETY TODD: You know what Dad called me when I was growing up? "Five ninety-eight." That's what all the chemicals in the human body would be worth if you bottled them raw and sold them. He told me that was all I'd ever be worth unless I worked every day to improve myself. "Five ninety-eight." When I was little, I thought all parents automatically loved their kids. That's what my teachers told me. That's what I read in the books they gave me. That's what I believed. Well, my parents might have loved my brother but they did not love me. X- STACY by Margery Forde BEN: When Stacy got sick that night, I brought her back to her own room. I didn t wake Mum. I knew she wouldn t have been able to handle it, seeing Stacy like that. There was spew on the sheets. In her hair. I just sat with her, watching her, holding her hand. Willing her to get better. I even invited God to help, but he must have been busy that day. [Brief Pause] About 5 o clock in the morning I woke Mum. We called an ambulance and got her to hospital. Then we just waited. Finally they said we could see her. She was hooked up to all these machines and tubes and things. She didn t look like Stace anymore. SO MUCH TO TELL YOU by John Marsden LISA: It was my fault really. There d been this lady used to come and stay quite often. Mrs Aston her name was. Then she stopped coming. I didn t think much of it I d never liked her, so I was glad when she didn t turn up anymore. Then one day I was at the farm looking through a magazine, and there was a photo of Mrs Aston and a little girl they said was her daughter. And I said to Mum, Gee Mum, there s Mrs Aston. And look, she s got a daughter now. And gee, she looks so like that baby photo of Chloe in the hall. They look like twins. Isn t that amazing? God, was I ever dumb! My mother came over to look at the photo. And I felt her go cold. It was weird, like opening a fridge door. She turned to ice. She stood there for a while looking at the photo; then she went back to what she was doing. And I just slunk outside. I didn t even understand what I d done wrong. I just knew I d done something awful. 2 P a g e
AWAY by Michael Gow MEG: We have a game we play every year. We sneak presents home, we hide them, we wrap them up in secret even though we can hear the sticky tape tearing and the paper rustling; we hide them in the stuff we take away, we pretend not to see them until Christmas morning even when we know they re there and we know what s in them because we ve already put in our order so there s no waste or surprise. And Dad always hides his in a pathetic place that s so obvious it s a joke and we all laugh at him behind his back but we play along! You knew what was in that box. You left it behind. I want to know why. MILLIONS by Frank Cottrell Boyce DAMIAN: It was my first day at Great Ditton School. The sign outside says, Great Ditton School Creating Excellence for a New Community. See that? said Dad. Good isn t good enough here. Excellence, that s what they re after. My instruction for the day is Be Excellent. One thing about me is I always try to do whatever Dad tells me. It s not that I think he ll go off and leave us if we re a problem, but why take that risk? So I was excellent first lesson. Mr Quinn was doing People We Admire for Art. A boy called Jake nominated some footballer called Darren Lockyer but Mr Quinn was still looking around the room. To be educational about it, football was not taking him where he wanted to go. I put my hand up and nominated St Catherine of Alexandria and explained why I admired her. You see, they wanted her to marry a king, but she said she was married to Christ. So they tried to crush her on a big wooden wheel, but it shattered into a thousand splinters, huge sharp splinters, which flew into the crowd killing and blinding many bystanders. Kind of like collateral damage. After that they chopped her head off which did kill her, but instead of blood, milk came spurting out of her neck. That was one of her wonders. Mr Quinn kept saying thank you. He actually said it three times. If that doesn t make me excellent, I don t know what does. I was also an artistic inspiration, as nearly all the boys painted pictures of the collateral damage at the execution of St Catherine. There were a lot of flying splinters and milk spurting out of necks. Jake painted Darren Lockyer but he was the only one. 3 P a g e
CLOUD BUSTING Monologue 1: SAM: And he was. My best friend. Not that I ever got chance to tell him that. I didn t. In the hospital, Davey nearly left us for good For a better place if you know what I mean. But he pulled through thank goodness. Not that it made any difference. Davey s mum took him out of our school first chance she could and the next thing, they moved house (SLIGHT PAUSE). I never saw Davey again. He never came back. No one fessed up, no one got punished and that was it. Davey never got the chance to face us. To tell us what he really thought, to tell us all the things we really deserved to hear. I never got the chance to tell him loads of things, like what I really thought of him. What we really thought of him We couldn t because we never gave Davey the chance just, well, to be Davey Imagine it Monologue 2: SAM: It was just a day. Just another ordinary day Not that I thought it would be any other sort of day why should I? I didn t. I did not think when I woke up that morning that this would be the sort of day when I started to discover When I started to realise I just didn t, you know what I mean? (A pause) Life changing days. That is what is so weird about them. They start off the same as all the others. Normal. Head on the pillow normal. Can t be bothered getting up normal cos the highlight of the next hour is the normal bowl of cornflakes and the normal banana followed by a bus to school normal! Yeah?... Well, as it turned out, this particular day wasn t gonna be like that. When I got to school it was just a day. The same as any other 4 P a g e
TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN Edited for NIDA CHRIS: They day before it all began Mum and Dad left for Saudi Arabia right. So here I am alone and the power goes off at like 9 or 10. 9. Yeh. Yeh 9. Just trying to think. So I think I better ring up and find out what s going on. I m an idiot (laughs). The phones are down too. Anyway, I walk down to the car and Dad, get this right, Dad has locked the car and taken the keys with him. I just think he s such an idiot for doing that. You know, like he didn t even trust me with the car for like one week. So now I have to walk to the Ramsey s place. And it is far. Like take what you think is far, times it by like, 10, say, and that s how far it was. And when I get there nobody s at home. And it s like oh great. Because, like, the next place is even further. Anyway, I walk around the corner and I can see the Ramsays in their truck. And um they d hit a tree. But that s not what s killed them. Um.. they d been shot. They d been shot. Like, no-one gets shot. And I mean heaps of times. Boom! Boom! Boom! Mr Ramsay, Mrs Ramsay. So, I think to myself. This isn t your typical day in Wirrawee. He laughs and looks around. Yeh. Um well. I ve just been by myself ever since really. Just.. chillin out. It s been nice. Yeah. Nice. 5 P a g e