Admissions
Audition Monologues for Women
BFA Acting or Musical Theatre Auditions
Note to those auditioning: The Acting/Musical Theatre Division Faculty strongly recommend that you read the play from which the monologue is selected. This will allow you to make informed acting choices. Monologues must be memorized. At your audition you may be given direction by the faculty and asked to make adjustments in your performance. Please dress professionally and wear shoes in which you can move. We encourage you to seek coaching on your monologue and/or songs from your current or past theatre or music teacher or director. Please arrive at least fifteen minutes early for your appointment.
You will be auditioning for a Professional Training Program which is designed for those individuals who wish to pursue a professional career in the theatre. Admission to the Acting and Musical Theatre programs is competitive and the training is rigorous.
Pick only ONE of the below pieces to prepare as your audition (note: these are WOMEN'S monologues; men's are on a separate page).
All monologues on this site and the plays they are excerpted from are protected by US copyright law.
The Moonlight Room© 2004 by Tristine Skyler Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc. ISBN: 0-8222-2011-3
SAL
What do you know? Your mom’s with someone. She’s happy. My mom barely goes out. She says she’d rather stay home and clean the apartment. I’m not even allowed to have friends over because they’ll interfere with her depression. And she doesn’t want to wash her hair. Sometimes she goes a whole week. I tell her that if maybe we had people around she would start to feel better. But she doesn’t listen. She’ll sit there watching “Jeopardy” and badmouth my dad. The same speech I’ve been hearing since he left. On and on and on and on. And then when he comes over to pick me up, she puts on lipstick!!! She doesn’t wash her hair, and she has on the same outfit she’s worn for three days, but she puts on lipstick!! I swear one night I’m going to go out, and I’m just not going to come home.
(a beat, Sal becomes embarrassed)
I just don’t want to have to call her.
(pause)
You don’t realize how lucky you are. You do whatever you want. You could come home tomorrow and it’s fine. I come home tomorrow and I’m on the back of a milk carton.
Sarah, Sarah © 2005 by David Goldfarb Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc. ISBN: 978-0-8222-2013-8ROCHELLE
Look, I want you to like me, Mrs. Grosberg. I do. Because I’m not going anywhere, and life’ll be a lot easier if we can be friends…
I can do a lot of things, Mrs. Grosberg. But I can’t make myself rich. I can’t make my daddy alive. And I can’t make him more responsible with his money when he was alive. I can tell you he was great. And I loved him a lot. And I miss him a lot. I can tell you, that, even though he maybe spent too much, he did it out of love. And that he had enormous respect for the right things; for education, for culture. He came over from the Old Country when he was nine, by himself Mrs. Grosberg, and worked. He worked hard. And I promise you, I work hard too. I don’t need big rings and cashmere sweaters. If Arthur likes to buy them, if he’s proud, as you say, fine. But my needs and desires aren’t that fancy. I believe in Arthur. I’m going to put school on hold and work to support him while he’s finishing his philosophy degree. And I know, there aren’t a lot of rich philosophers, Mrs. Grosberg, and that’s OK by me—
Abstract Expression© 1998 by Theresa Rebeck Published by Samuel French, Inc. ISBN: 0573642451JENNY:
It's my life too, Dad. I am the only person, I kept you going, all those years everyone told you it was shit, and now it's like, oh big deal, that's your problem, Jenny… but that's what I did, with my life, and I know it was stupid, everyone keeps telling me how stupid I've been, but what was I SUPPOSED TO DO, let you die? I told you not to drink, I told you so many times and I know, I'm too good, well, I'm the one who bought the damn -- it's my fau -- I bought that, you were drinking, that night, if I didn't have that here…
No. It's not my fault. You killed yourself, you son of a bitch. You couldn't be bothered to try and live, for me, because I needed you, that didn't even occur to you. You just went right ahead and killed yourself. Well, you're dead now so you don't get everything you want anymore! I'm not selling those paintings.
Big Love © 2000 by Charles L. Mee, Jr. Published online by the author, at http://www.charlesmee.org/html/big_love.html All rights reserved.
LYDIA:
You know, everything you say may be right, Thyona
but I have to ask myself,
if it is
then why don’t I feel good about it?
I have to somehow go on my gut instincts
because sometimes
you can convince yourself in your mind
about the rightness of a thing
and you try to find fault with your reasoning
but you can’t
because
no matter how you turn it over in your mind
it comes out right
and so you think:
I know it’s right but I don’t think it is
or I think it’s right but I know it isn’t
and you could end up thinking
you’re just a moron
or some sort of deficient sort of thing
but really there are some things
when you want to know the truth of them
you have to use not just your mind or even your mind and your feelings
but your neurons or your cells or whatever
to make some decisions
because they are too complicated
they need to be considered in some larger way
and in the largest way of all
I know I have to go with my whole being
when it says I love him and he loves me
and nothing else matters
even if other things do matter even quite a lot
even if I’m doing this in the midst of everyone getting killed
I can’t help myself
and I don’t think I should.
Probably this is how people end up marrying Nazis
but I can’t help it.
MARTHA
Look, I’m not one of those pieces of fluff you see in men’s magazines. Does that make me less of a woman? It does not. And I’m a fool because for some stupid reason I think it does. And so I buy contact lenses and clothes I can’t really afford. You think I’d of learned by now. You think I’d have learned at the start…
David even had to get me a date for my high school formal. I was on the decoration committee. I put together the whole thing. Nobody asked me to go. David rounded up his friends and told them one of them had to invite me or he’d beat them all up. I think perhaps they drew straws. I didn’t know. Suddenly I was invited, that’s all that mattered. I was so happy. Well, it was something that couldn’t be kept quiet, David’s blackmail. I heard rumors. I confronted David. He wouldn’t admit what he’d done but I knew…
I got very sick the night of the prom. A twenty-four hour thing. David meant well.
“Maid of Athens” © 2001 by David Rambo, from Back Story: A Dramatic Anthology Published by Dramatic Publishing Company ISBN: 978-1-58342-022-5AINSLEY
(Cuts her finger while preparing a meal.)
Shit! Oh…shit! I’m okay. I’ve got an ice cube on it…Come in ice cube. Make it numb. Ice…Kissing my finger, making the pain go away. Glaciers. Snow…Leonard Bernstein’s hair. The summer I was eleven, and Reuben took me to Tanglewood. They remembered him, all the older musicians did, from when he played there. He told them he was just teaching now…but they knew. It was a hot day and when a drinker sweats, you can just smell it on them. We all could. And then this…this wave of energy comes at us, and it’s Leonard Bernstein. “Reuben! Reuben, God, where the hell have you been? Reuben, dear, darling, Reuben.” And Leonard Bernstein’s hugging Reuben and kissing him. Kissing! Then, Reuben says, “Lenny”—to Leonard Bernstein!—he says, “Lenny, this is Ainsley Belcher, my star pupil. She plays the clarinet.” And then…Leonard Bernstein kisses my hand! Can’t look him in the eye, or I’ll sink like the Titanic. So I’m looking at his hair, these waves of thick, soft, white hair. Like snow. Big, soft, Alaskan glaciers.
They call rehearsal and “Lenny” looks up at me, and quotes Lord Byron, my favorite poet!
“Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart.”
And he left…
After that, when I practiced up in the cake room, if my cheeks hurt, or the muscles in my jaw got tired, I couldn’t feel it. Leonard Bernstein was there. Conducting. Kissing my…
(Her hand.)
It doesn’t hurt anymore.
