The Monologues You (Really) Need

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a speechaholic. I simply devour Shakespeare's language, and love to memorize his speeches. I have a dozen monologues ready to rock at all times, which is super uncommon for actors, and honestly not very helpful for me. I'll spend so much time agonizing over what I'll do in the room, only to immediately second-guess my choice as soon as I leave. 

While in the holding room, I have often overheard other actors say to their friends that they only have ONE Shakespeare monologue, so that's the one they'll be doing. 

Can I just get real with you for a second? If you're still using that one Shakespeare monologue you were forced to learn in college for every Shakespeare audition, you are doing yourself a disservice! I don't even have to know which speech it is to be able to tell you that. Why? because the speech doesn't take into account who YOU are and what you're trying to present in the room. And what if the casting director asks to see something else? Do you have another Shakespeare monologue to show them at all?

You need more than one monologue, but you really, REALLY don't need twelve. In order to effectively market yourself in almost any Shakespeare audition, I recommend having three thoughtfully chosen speeches that fit into specific categories:

1. The "Here I Am" Monologue

Do you know what sort of roles you would be cast in for traditional Shakespeare productions?

What roles would Sir Lawrence Olivier see you playing?

What do people assume about you based on 10 seconds with you?

What do you do really well?

The trick to this is knowing yourself well enough to explain it to the casting team via your monologue choice. Get opinions from friends and teachers that you trust if you're not sure what kind of impressions you're making, and then find a character that embodies that. If you're a clever young lady that appears to be a teenager, check out Juliet (Romeo & Juliet) or Miranda (The Tempest). If you're the "funny best friend" type, look into Silvius (As You Like It) or Bottom (A Midsummer Night's Dream). Despite this perhaps being an "obvious choice", if it's the role you're most suited for, it's okay! It shows a knowledge of yourself and where you fit into the Shakespeare universe. This piece must be in verse, as most auditions will request a verse monologue and it will be the one you use the most frequently.

2. The "Look What Else I Can Do" Monologue

This is still a role you can traditionally play (no gender-bending or anything), but it shows another side of you. If your first monologue is a low class character (like Mrs. Quickly from the Henry IV/Henry V saga and The Merry Wives of Windsor),  then consider a character of a higher social class (like Queen Margaret from the Henry VI/Richard III storyline). If your first piece is about love (perhaps Berowne from Love's Labour's Lost), go for something more bloody (Like Brutus from Julius Caesar, or even Macbeth). This will require some research and a reasonable knowledge of Shakespeare's material, but it's an investment into your career, and something you can probably use for years.

3. The "Breaking the Rules" Monologue

It's becoming mainstream to cast Shakespeare productions with little or no regard to the descriptions of the characters in the text. Gender-blind, age-blind, color-blind casting is happening all the time, which means this monologue might be your favorite one! If you're the Juliet type, maybe try on some Richard III. If you're constantly doing Falstaff, show off your Desdemona! This speech can be verse or prose. Whatever the role, avoid making it into a joke. Give the character their due and show your chops just as you would with other speeches, and you're sure to make a lasting impression on the casting team!

With a solid monologue in each of the three categories, you'll have a great choice that reflects what you can bring to a show for just about any audition. There are just a few other things to consider as you go forth on your quest for the perfect pieces:

Choose verse over prose. (Not sure what I'm talking about? Click here to learn the difference.) Most casting notices will straight-up ask you for a verse monologue. If you show up with prose when they asked for verse, you look like you either don't know what that means and didn't care to find out, or that you can't follow simple directions... neither of which is going to help you land the role you want. 

Funny is good, and surprisingly rare. Casting teams ask for comedic Shakespeare monologues from time to time - make one of your picks funny and you won't be caught off guard. 

Race doesn't matter, except when it does. If you are an actor of color, you can play any role that a white actor can play, period. Aaron from Titus Andronicus and Othello are both "Moors", people from northwestern Africa of Berber and Arab descent. Similarly, the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice is from Morocco, and Shylock, Tubal, and Jessica in the same play are Jewish. These distinctions have significance in their respective storylines. Ask yourself if you are the right person to tell their stories before undertaking it.

Finally, avoid using one of the 154 sonnets as your monologue. I was once in line to audition when the casting director stepped out of the audition room to announce to all of us that Shakespeare wrote nearly forty plays, so we should be playing his characters, NOT doing a sonnet. Unless you're auditioning for an evening of sonnets, pick a speech from a play. 

Whether you need to work your way up to three perfectly picked monologues, or scale it back from a dozen, I hope these tips will help you on your way. And if you need any additional assistance, click here to schedule a coaching with me! Break legs, all!

Two Contrasting Monologues

You guys! I have an approach to audition prep that just might change the game for you. It starts when you read the phrase:

"Please prepare two contrasting monologues."

If you went to drama school, you've probably been taught to have one comedic piece and one dramatic piece just for these sort of situations, and you might mentally catalogue speeches, to be called upon when the need arises. "This is my 1 minute comedic contemporary monologue", "my dramatic classical verse monologue", "my Tennessee Williams monologue", etc. 

While those descriptors are certainly helpful in determining which speeches are right for specific auditions, if you're like me, and pretty much only audition for Shakespeare, you can wind up feeling somewhat stuck when you need to prepare two contrasting monologues.

There simply aren't a ton of inherently "funny" monologues in Shakespeare, particularly for ladies. (Several of my students have made this observation.) The situation may be hilarious in the context of the scene, but strip it down to a single actor giving a speech, and a lot of the time it seems like complaining. Of course, it's possible to make these speeches work, but it can be daunting, and sometimes, the jokes just don't land.

I was prepping for one of these "two contrasting Shakespeare monologues" auditions recently, and I felt stuck with my options for what was truly "contrasting". It's not that I don't have the material, but there just seemed to be a lack of imagination and play if I was doing the monologue that always gets a laugh and the really sad, impassioned speech where I cry. I felt stuck because, as an actor, I am so much more than laughing and crying... and you are, too!

Then, I had a thought that got me completely unstuck from the funny vs serious rut I was in:

What if the contrast wasn't just about the pieces I did, but about the DIRECTION?

I took the two pieces I was most excited about (and sure, one was from a comedy, and the other from a tragedy; both by Shakespeare and in verse), and decided to approach them as though they were directed by two totally different people, with different signature styles!

For my "dramatic" piece, I decided to go super traditional Shakespeare: a little slower than I personally prefer, but honest and earnest, as though the director was Trevor Nunn.

This offset my "comedic" piece, which was ultra-modern, with pauses, emphasis, and physicality that fits right in with the hip, indie Shakespeare scene that Eric Tucker has made his reputation on. 

During my prep, I also imagined what the sets, costumes, props, and lighting would look like, whether there was music, and which actors were playing the people I was speaking to. It really helped me build a whole world in my imagination for my characters to live in, and added to my specificity in the audition. These two ladies were now absolutely NOTHING alike.

By focusing on the make-believe directors for my monologues, I managed to take a lot of pressure off of myself to "be heart-breaking" or to "be funny", and I showed a broader range of what I am capable of when I'm in a show - and I'll bet it will help you showcase your skills, too!

I want to know: did you find this idea helpful? Would you try it out in your own audition prep? If you try it, let me know how it worked for you! How did it make you feel?

Want to go from scared to PREPARED with Shakespeare?

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The Top 5 Mistakes Actors Make in Shakespeare Auditions

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Breaking Down the Bard - WTF is a Soliloquy?

The soliloquy. It's a crazy word that theatre peeps (and others not in the biz) throw around, knowing full well that it's going to go over the heads of some people, and then they, the person saying "soliloquy", will hopefully sound really, really smart for using this high-earning Scrabble word. I'm going to demystify this term, by letting you know what it means and some ways you can do it effectively onstage!

A soliloquy (pronounced suh-LIL-uh-kwee), is the sibling of the monologue. A monologue, in theatre, is generally defined as a prolonged speech by one character to another in a scene. A soliloquy is when one character is speaking while or as if they are alone. Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech is a monologue, because he is speaking to Seyton. However, Viola's "I left no ring with her. What means this lady?" in Twelfth Night is a soliloquy because Malvolio has made his exit and Viola is left onstage to discover that Olivia is mistakenly in love with her. In a soliloquy, the character might reveal more private thoughts than they would in the presence of others; I would argue that characters in Shakespeare do not lie to the audience, though they may lie to each other. If a character is alone onstage, they are speaking truthfully.

Shakespeare gives many of his characters these private moments to discuss their thoughts, and there are generally two different methods of attack when deciding how to stage these tricky speeches:

1. The actor is talking to him/herself, and is unaware of the audience.

The "fourth wall" is a concept that most theatregoers are familiar with, whether they know it or not. The actors on the stage are in their own little world of make-believe, and we watch them. They talk to the other actors onstage, but pretend we, the audience, don't exist - even when we laugh at their jokes or a cell phones rings from the 7th row during a climactic moment. That being said, this first performance option has gained popularity in the last 100 years or so, as audiences grow to expect the action onstage to be removed from the reality that there is, in fact, an audience in the same room as the actors. If the actor is talking to him or herself, they are usually trying to sort out a plan, or what to do next, which can be effective for certain speeches (Hamlet's "To be or not to be" is an obvious example).

2. The actor is speaking directly to one or more members of the audience.

In this scenario, which is considered to be more appropriate to the environment of Shakespeare's plays when they were written and originally performed, the actor delivering the soliloquy speaks to the audience. The audience is acknowledged as being "in on" the action of the play; they see everything, and therefore are often privy to insider info. When Richard III shares his plan to undo his brother, George, and to marry the newly-widowed Anne at the end of Act I, Scene 1, and then gloats to us in another soliloquy at the end of the next scene ("Was ever woman in this humor woo'd? Was ever woman in this humor won? I'll have her, but I will not keep her long."), we are made co-conspirators to his wicked plans - and it's a lot of fun to root for the bad guy! And when Prince Hal tells us of his plan to redeem himself from his wild ways at the end of Act I, Scene 2 in Henry IV Part 1, we are given an intimate view of the prodigal prince that he doesn't show to Falstaff or his father, the king!

There are other ways to tackle the soliloquy that can be surprising:

In 1988, Sir Derek Jacobi directed a production of Hamlet and had Kenneth Branagh deliver "To be or not to be" directly to Sophie Thompson, who played Ophelia, bringing her onstage before her traditional entrance at the end of the speech. Turning the soliloquy into a scene between Hamlet and Ophelia was an inventive way to stage this insanely famous speech.

Turning a soliloquy into a voice-over can also be an effective storytelling tool, particularly in film. We can get the idea that we are inside the character's mind while they continue about their business onstage (or onscreen) and their voice relays their inmost thoughts.

So, how do you know the best way to handle your soliloquy? My best advice is to try it out in rehearsal every way you can think of!

Benedick's "This can be no trick" in Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene 3 could be to himself, or to the audience, who has just witnessed the ridiculous plot laid by his friends to convince Benedick of his love for Beatrice. If the show is being played as a particularly broad comedy, it might be better to involve the audience in this conversation - but it depends entirely on the production!

On the other hand, when the novice nun Isabella weighs her choices about how to proceed when she is propositioned by Angelo to save her condemned brother's life in Act II, Scene 4 of Measure for Measure, it might not serve her so well to ask the audience "Did I tell this, who would believe me?" because we would believe her - we were there! Again, this is something to test in rehearsal to see what works best for that individual production, taking into account the pros and cons of talking to oneself or to the audience!

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