The Eternal Feminine

Play: The Eternal Feminine
Playwright: Rosario Castellanos
Style: Modern, Comedic
Character: Mama (F)

Mama

A decent wife has no motive for being happy ... and if she has, she hides it. She has to keep in mind that her innocence has been blemished, her chastity violated. A lamb of sacrifice, she has just given herself up to satisfy the brutal appetites of the beast.
     What beast? Why, your husband, of course. And, no, you're not going to come out and say that you liked it, because, if so, I'm going to think all of my struggles to bring you up right were in vain. I'm the one who took in sewing in order to pay for the most expensive schools, the most exclusive boarding schools. (She lets herself fall into an armchair and pretends to dry a nonexistent tear) So that, now, this is my reward. I'm not crying because with all the sewing I did for others, my eyes have dried up. But if I could cry ...

Two Sisters and a Piano

Play: Two Sisters and a Piano
Playwright: Nilo Cruz
Style: Modern, Dramatic
Character: Sofia (F)

Sofia

I've lost a whole life of stitches in this house. A whole life. That's what gets to me. So many days gone ... I could knit a bedspread for this whole island with all the lost days. I can't even remember where I left off living my own life. My own place in this mess! I'll never forget that day when Papi left the country. When he kissed us on the forehead and told us not to fall in love, not to get married, because he was going to send for us ... as if love was a car one could stop with a touch of the breaks. For me time stopped. I felt my feet stop growing, my bones, my breasts, as if I had frozen in time, because I was saving myself for North America. It just feels like all my life I've been waiting and I haven't lived. You got to travel with your books. You got married, when you got tired of waiting. But me, stuck here. Stuck, piano lessons, a few students, taking care of Mama. Stuck ... stuck ... stuck ... and now stuck even more.

Maria Celia: Sofie, please ... 

No. Can't you see what you are doing?! Can't you see what you're getting yourself into with that man? He's not going to make it better for us. I've watched him ... He got rid of all the inspectors who used to come to this house. He's the only one who comes here. Can't you see it spelled out on his forehead. Ownership! Everything about him screams out zookeeper.

Maria Celia: That's enough, Sofia! That's enough!

Last night I heard a group of men talking about Russia. Something big has happened there, Maria Celia. They said the Soviet Union has broken apart, that it's over ... Can you believe it! Thousands of people in the squares ... That's what I heard ... all over Moscow celebrating ... statues tumbling down ... (Maria Celia walks away. She seems to be somewhere else, lost.) Maybe something will happen here too.

Maria Celia: Maybe.

One man was even talking about the new maps ... He was saying the world is going to seem bigger with all the changes. Can you imagine? Someone is out there sketching new maps of the world.

'As You Like It'

Play Title: As You Like It, Act III, Scene 2

Playwright: Shakespeare

Style: Classical, Comedy

Character: Rosalind, F

Background: Rosalind is speaking to Orlando, her would-be lover. The two are meeting in the forest after Rosalind's exile drove her to hide out there disguised as a man and Orlando still lives nearby and has been plastering the woods with confessions of his love for Rosalind. During this monologue, Rosalind, disguised as a male page (Ganymede), tries to convince Orlando to pretend that she is his Rosalind so that she can teach him how to be a good suitor.

Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.

I have cured one in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me: at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles, for every passion something, and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are, for the most part, cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness, which was, to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep’s heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in’t.

Why, Hello!

As a theatre major and long-time Thespian, I have been in many acting classes and seminars. I've prepared for hundreds if not thousands of auditions, and I really do just enjoy buckling down and perfecting my scene work. There is something pure and moving about a scene between two people - it was, after all, the only form of theatre that existed for a very long time, and I truly believe that you need to learn to listen to one other person onstage before you can act well in a larger group. Even monologues, which are so often required for classes, auditions, speech competitions, and the like, are small scenes in which one of the participants happens to be visible only to the actor. Duet scenes and monologues are the bread and butter of an actor's repertoire and are essential exercises for every actor, no matter what their level of experience may be.

Despite their importance, good duet scenes and monologues can be difficult to find. Oh, sure, you could fill a library (or at least a large book shelf) with the books compiling scenes and monologues for various groups of people - men, women, young people, college students, volunteer zookeepers, etc. etc. etc, but what amazes me is how much of the content in these books is misleading or just not useful to acting students. As I've said, a good monologue should be a conversation between two people, just that one of them should be invisible. While this doesn't always apply (I'm told that speech and debate operates a little differently), I prefer to use monologues that come from real plays and are intended to be conversations between real characters living in that story.

Finding these monologues is often more difficult than just picking up a random book though. There is a lot of good information out there, in books and online, and this blog is only adding to that massive amount of available data, but my main goal in this is to make the scenes that I have picked out and typed up available to you, dear actor. I try to keep and collect good scenes and things like that, and I don't see why they shouldn't be shared with the world, so I hope you enjoy these scenes and monologues. Feel free to share any insights you have about the scenes - your own stories or experiences with the pieces, and, most importantly, keep creating!