IDEAS FOR A Monologue?

Question

I have to do a monologue for a class. Min is 3 minutes. Any genre is fine. It has to be from a movie tv show or play. Im a 16 year old girl but the age really doesn't matter. Any ideas? I can't find a good one

Answer 1

Erica, your teacher may have said the piece could be from a movie but I would advise against it. Most people will probably pick movie monologues, because it is easier. There is a tendency to mimic other actor's performances from a film. You should go to the library tomorrow and read some plays and monologue books. That would impress your teacher and make you different from about 90 percent of the others. To start, you could look into The Diary of Anne Frank, Crimes of the Heart, Little Women, Sreel Magnolias, The Star Spangled Girl, Miss Firecracker Contest, The Glass Menagerie, The Heidi Chronicles, or Sylvia. Good luck.

Answer 2

Pick something that you understand and can relate to. Also, try to pick something from a play, teachers like that a LOT more. Read the entire play so that you understand what when where and why that character is saying what she says.
It's going to be hard to find something long enough in your age group but I advise you to not choose something too old for yourself as the physical characteristics make it harder on you and less believable in the end.
Romeo and Juliet is a great choice but usually over dramatized and over done.
How about something from "Our Town", it's a classic and Emily is your age in most of the play... I'm sure you can find a good monologue there that your teacher will recognize and also not out of your range. You'll do great. Break A Leg!

Answer 3

Pick one from a play or show you really like, I mean if it can be anything you have a lot of options. In high school this one guy in my drama class did the scene from Friday where the dad is talking about having his foot up a dog's a** all day...it was pretty damn funny, and he also did a really good one from Julius Caesar the next day, he was pretty good...I digress...I don't know many female monologues, but Shakepeare is loaded with monologues...even though they are kind of tough

Answer 4

There are so many possibilities!! don't do anything that is over done! if you want a weaker character forget romeo and Juliet and do Ophelia!! if you want to try a stronger woman don't go for a normal lady Macbeth try the duchess of malfi or Joan of arc!
for modern plays there are some very comic monologues in The queen of hearts but you are after something abstract, dark and older something by Sarah kane in 4.48 psychosis! avoid the obvious, only do something you will enjoy and stick to what you are good at!! good luck!

Answer 5

In the movie "Midnight Express" there's a three minute monologue by Brad Davis when he's sentenced to 30 years in prison. That was cool. I think I saw someone post it on Youtube, if you cna't find the movie.

Answer 6

At the age of 16, you have probably read, at least 30 or 40 plays. Look in your file of plays, there should be a monologue, you like from a play.

Answer 7

There's a web site that has good number of monologues. It identifies if they are for men or women and further breaks them into comic, dramatic, or classic. It even has a "senior" category!

http://www.monologuearchive.com/

Answer 8

Shakespeare wrote many a monolouge, try maybe something from Romeo and Juliet. It's very easy to get your hands on that, and probably easy to act out, (if you need to act it out too.)

Answer 9

hy iam odviously 16 years old, i just want too tell you that when that day comes when i turn 21, and i stand before you now on my 21th, birthday not that far off, i want to try and contact some of you in this very room you know who you are if i can why?? i dont want you too become, casualities too drunk driving, when you turn 21 please consider not having too much at that, age, lets make a pledge to each other too try and stay in contcat at 21, okay if we can, lets not become, twistedd wreckage, or, some bodys, viewing at, at funeral, or leaving behind loved ones or killing some body else, if you want this please consider my very requeest please, dont drink drive, and party too much on our 21th birthdays, please-- dont!!

Answer 10

Here are a few...personally, the last is my favorite. None are common and should help your teacher have a fresher ear for it.

Break a leg!
TxR

THE CASKET COMEDY
A monologue from the play by Titus Maccius Plautus
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Plautus, vol. II. Trans. Paul Nixon. London: William Heinemann, 1917.

HALISCA: If heaven doesn't rescue me, I'm dead and done for, with not a soul to look to for aid! Oh, how miserable my own heedlessness makes me! Oh! how I dread what will happen to my back, if my mistress finds out I've been so negligent! [thinking] Surely I had that little casket in my hands and received it from her here in front of the house--and where it is now I don't know, unless I dropped it somewhere about here, as I suspect. [to audience] Dear gentlemen, dear spectators, do tell me if anyone of you saw him, the man who carried it off or who picked it up. Did he go [pointing] this way, or that? [pauses, then indignantly] I'm none the wiser for asking or pestering them--the creatures always enjoy seeing a woman in trouble! Now I'll [scans the ground] examine the footprints here, in case I can find any. For if no one passed by after I went inside, the casket would be lying here. [looking about again, then hopelessly.] What am I to do? I'm done for, I fancy! It's all over, my day has come, unlucky, fated wretch that I am! Not a trace of it, and there won't be a trace left of me, either! It's lost, and so I'm lost, too! But I won't give up, though; I'll keep on looking. Oh, my heart's in a flutter and my back's in a fright--fear on both sides driving me frantic! What poor, poor things human beings are! Now he's happy, whoever he is, that has it--something that's no use to him and the death of me! But I'm delaying myself by not setting to work. To work, Halisca! Eyes on the ground, eyes down! Track it--sharp now--like an augur! [looks for footprints, her nose close to the ground] He went this way . . . here's the mark of a shoe in the dust . . . I'll follow it up this way! Now here's where he stopped with someone else . . . Here's the scene of some sort of fracas . . . No, he didn't go on this way . . . he stood here . . . from here he went over there . . . A consultation was held here . . . There are two people concerned, that's clear as day . . . Aha! Just one person's tracks! . . . He went this way . . . I'll investigate . . . From here he went over here . . . from here he went-- [after an energetic and futile search] nowhere! [with wry resignation] It's no use. What's lost is lost--the casket and my cuticle together. I'm going back inside.


EVE'S DIARY
A monologue from the book by Mark Twain
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Eve's Diary. Mark Twain. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1906.

EVE: We are getting along very well now, Adam and I, and getting better and better acquainted. He does not try to avoid me any more, which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. That pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can, so as to increase his regard. During the last day or two I have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful. He can't think of a rational name to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect. Whenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence. In this way I have saved him many embarrassments. I have no defect like this. The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is. I don't have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am sure it wasn't in me half a minute before. I seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is. When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it in his eye. But I saved him. And I was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride. I just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there isn't the dodo!" I explained--without seeming to be explaining--how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me. That was very agreeable, and I thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept. How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it!

A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
A monologue from the play by Oscar Wilde
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from A Woman of No Importance. Oscar Wilde. London: Methuen & Co., 1916.

MRS. ALLONBY: The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him. If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgivable. But he should shower on us everything we don't want. He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.