Jo, Little Women

1 minute

What’s the use of asking what we shall wear, when you know we shall wear our poplins,
because we haven’t got anything else? But don’t worry, Meg. I’m sure our pops look like silk,
and they are nice enough for us. Yours is as good as new, but I forgot the burn and the tear in
mine. Whatever shall I do? The burn shows badly, and I can’t take any out. My gloves are
spoiled with lemonade, and I can’t get any new ones, so I shall have to go without. I can hold
them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are. That’s all I can do. (a
beat) No! I’ll tell you how we can manage, we each wear one good one and carry a bad one.
Don’t you see? You don’t like the idea? Fine. Then I’ll go without. I don’t care what people think.

Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables

1 minute

Mrs. Lynde, I'm extremely sorry I behaved so terribly. I've disgraced my good friends who've let
me stay at Green Gables on trial, even though I'm not a boy. I am wicked and ungrateful, and I
deserve to be cast out forever. What you said was true; I am skinny and ugly, and my hair is
red. What I said about you was true too, only I shouldn't have said it. Please, Mrs. Lynde,
forgive me. You wouldn't be so cruel as to inflict a life-long sorrow on a poor orphan. Please.
Please, forgive me.

Catherine, Wuthering Heights

2 minutes

I wouldn't be you for a kingdom! Nelly, help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what
Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid wilderness
of furze and whinstone. I'd as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter's day, as
recommend you to bestow your heart on him! It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child,
and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don't imagine that he
conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He's not a rough
diamond - a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to
him, "Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;" I
say, "Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:" and he'd crush you like a
sparrow's egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome o charge. I know he couldn't love a
Linton; and yet he'd be quite capable of marrying your fortune and expectations: avarice is
growing with him a besetting sin. There's my picture: and I'm his friend -- so much so, that had
he thought seriously to catch you, I should, perhaps, have held my tongue, and let you fall into
his trap. Banish him from your thoughts. He's a bird of bad omen: no mate for you.

Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing: Act II, Scene I( used for Midsummer Audition fall 2017)
1 minute (cut)
Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen God's sending that way; for it is said, 'God sends a
curst cow short horns'; but to a cow too curst he sends none. So, by being too curst, let God
send me no horns. Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my
knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face:
*Beat* Though I may light upon a husband with no beard. But What should I do with him? Dress
him in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? *Pause to laugh* He that hath a
beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man: and he that is more
than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him:

Louise, Gypsy
1-2 minutes
I SAID TURN IT OFF! Nobody laughs at me--because I laugh first! At me! ME--from Seattle;
me--with no education; me, with no talent--as you've kept reminding me my whole life. Look at
me now: a star! Look how I live! Look at my friends! Look where I'm going! I'm not staying in
burlesque. I'm moving--maybe up, maybe down--but wherever it is, I'm enjoying it! I'm having
the time of my life because for the first time, it is my life! I love it! I love every second of it and I'll
be damned if you're going to take it away from me! I am Gypsy Rose Lee! I love her--and if you
don't you can just clear out now!

Sara, A Little Princess

1-2 minutes
I don't have a mother either... she's in heaven with my baby sister... But that doesn't mean I
can't talk to her, I talk to her all the time... I tell her everything and I know she hears me
because... because that's what angels do. My mom is an angel and yours is too. With beautiful
satin wings, a silk dress, and a crown of baby rosebuds, and they all live together in a castle.
And do you know what it's made out of? Sunflowers. Hundreds of them, so bright they shine like
the sun. And when they want to go anywhere they just whistle, like this...(whistles) and a cloud
swoops down to the front gate and picks them up and as they ride through the air, over the
moon and through the stars... until they are hovering right above us, that's how they can look
down and make sure we're alright.

Eliza Doolittle, My Fair Lady

1-2 minutes
My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it's my belief they done the old woman in. Yes Lord
love you! Why should she die of influenza when she come through diphtheria right enough the
year before? Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my father, he kept
ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.
Now, what would you call a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza, and what
become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I
say is, them that pinched it, done her in. Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin,
let alone a hat. And as for father ladling the gin down her throat, it wouldn't have killed her. Not
her. Gin was as mother's milk to her. Besides, he's poured so much down his own throat that he
knew the good of it.

Anne, The Diary of Anne Frank

1 min
Look, Peter, the sky. What a lovely, lovely day! Aren’t the clouds beautiful? You know what I do
when it seems as if I couldn’t stand being cooped up for one more minute? I think myself out. I
think myself on a walk in the park where I used to go with Pim. Where the jonquils and the
crocus and the violets grow down the slopes. You know the most wonderful thing about thinking
yourself out? You can have it any way you like. You can have roses and violets and
chrysanthemums all blooming at the same time…it’s funny…I used to take it all for granted…
and now I’ve gone crazy about everything to do with nature. Haven’t you?

Mabel Chiltern, An Ideal Husband

1-2 min

Well, Tommy has proposed to me again. Tommy really does nothing but propose to me. He
proposed to me last night in the music-room, when I was quite unprotected, as there was an
elaborate trio going on. I didn't dare to make the smallest repartee, I need hardly tell you. If I
had, it would have stopped the music at once. Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable.
They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be
absolutely deaf. Then he proposed to me in broad daylight this morning, in front of that dreadful
statue of Achilles. Really, the things that go on in front of that work of art are quite appalling.
The police should interfere. At luncheon I saw by the glare in his eye that he was going to
propose again, and I just managed to check him in time by assuring him that I was a bimetallist.
Fortunately I don't know what bimetallism means. And I don't believe anybody else does either.
But Tommy is so annoying in the way he proposes! I wish you would speak to him, and tell him
that once a week is quite often enough to propose to anyone, and that it should always be done
in a manner that attracts some attention.

Maria, The Sound of Music

1 minute
Well, you see, the sky was so blue today and everything was so green and fragrant, I
just had to be a part of it. And the And the Untersberg kept leading me higher and
higher as though it wanted me to go right through the clouds with it. Mother, I could
never be lost up there. That's my mountain. I was brought up on it. It was the mountain
that led me to you. When I was a child, I would come down the mountain and climb a
tree and look over into your garden. I'd see the sisters at work and I'd hear them sing on
their way to vespers. Which brings me to another transgression, Reverend Mother. I
was singing out there today without permission.

Dotty Otley, Noises Off

1-2 minutes
“It’s no good you going on. I can’t open sardines and answer the phone. I’ve only got
one pair of feet. Hello…. Yes, but there’s no one here, love…. No, Mr. Brent’s not
here…He lives here, yes, but he don’t live here now because he lives in Spain… Mr.
Philip Brent, that’s right…. The one who writes the plays, that’s him, only now he writes
them in Spain… No, she’s in Spain, too, they’re all in Spain, there’s no one here… Am I
in Spain? No, I’m not in Spain, dear. I look after the house for him, but I go home at one
o’clock on Wednesday, only I’ve got a nice plate of sardines to put my feet up with,
because it’s the royal what’s-it’s called on the telly — the royal you know — where’s the
paper, then? And if it’s to do with letting the house then you’ll have to ring the house-
agents, because they’re the agents for the house…. Squire Squire, Hackham and who’s
the other one…? No, they’re not in Spain, they’re next to the phone in the study. Squire,
Squire, Hackham, and hold on, I’ll go and look. Always the same, isn’t it. Soon as you
take the weight off your feet, down it all comes on your head.”

Eve, Eve’s Diary (Mark Twain)

NEEDS TO BE CUT

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!

Steve, Fat Cat Killers (Adam Szymkowicz)

I would like to call on the leniency of the jury. Not because I didn't know what I was
doing. I knew what I was doing. Although please keep in mind that it wasn't actually me
who killed Dave. I didn't shoot at anyone or anything. I just helped with the kidnapping. I
may be an accessory to murder, but a minor accessory like . . . what's a minor
accessory? Like a barrette. It's true I helped keep him hostage, but I had a good reason
for all my actions. Also, I would like to say to those who try to copycat me and kidnap
CEOs--I would not do that. I think it is a bad idea despite the manifesto I wrote saying it
was a good idea. I no longer believe this manifesto. I am penitent and see the errors I
have made in the past. Thank you. Please be lenient. Cool. Thanks.