Monologues 2025

'In the Next Room--CATHERINE GIVINGS:

Do you want more children, Elizabeth? That is a tactless question, you don’t need to answer, forgive me,
sometimes I say whatever is in my head.

I want more children and my husband desperately wants more children but I am afraid of another birth,
aren’t you? When I have birth I remember so clearly, the moment her head was coming out of my body,
I thought: why would any rational creature do this twice, knowing what I know now? And then she came
out and clambered right on to my breast and tried to eat me, she was so hungry, so hungry it terrified
me – her hunger. And I thought: is that the first emotion? Hunger? And not hunger for food but wanting
to eat other people? Specifically one’s mother? And then I thought – isn’t it strange, isn’t it strange
about Jesus? That is to say, about Jesus being a man? For it is women who are eaten – who turn their
bodies into food – I have up my blood – there was so much blood – and I gave up my body – but I
couldn’t feed her, could not turn my body into food, and she was so hungry. I suppose that makes me an
inferior kind of woman and a very inferior kind of Jesus.

Lynette from Richard Cameron's CAN'T STAND UP FOR FALLING DOWN

I tried to clean up after he'd pulled everything out of the kitchen cupboard and smashed it, but I cut my
hand quite bad on a piece of glass from a sauce bottle, I think it was, and I had to leave it. I should have
had stitches really. It's funny. I thought it was ketchup. "Serves you right," he says. "Cleaning up.
You're always cleaning up. Leave it. Dammit -- LEAVE IT!" and something's exploded in my head and he
must have hit my ear. My hand's full of blood but it's my ear that hurts. "Don't you swear in this house!
You stop saying your foul language to me. I won't have it. Don't swear!" and I'm hanging on to the edge
of the sink to stop from falling over. I'm going dizzy. It makes me ill to hear bad words said before God
and he knows it and he says it all the more, over and over, and my hand's under the tap and my head's
swimming and ringing loud and the water turns red. That night, I mend the door lock with one hand,
while my other hand is throbbing through the cloth, and I hear him hammering and sawing in the shed
in the yard, like it's been for days now into the night, but I don't care anymore about what he's doing. I
don't care, and I don't care if God doesn't want me to say it, I wish he were dead. I wish he were dead.

Darlene from Jim Leonard, Jr.'s THE DIVINERS

Don't you guys read the Bible? I gotta learn the whole thing. Like, say I'm sittin at the table and I want
seconds on dessert, Aunt Norma says, "Give me a verse first, Darlene." If I didn't know the Bible I'd
starve to death, see? But I been learnin who Adam and Eve are. They're the first people, and they're
livin in this great big old garden in Europe. And the thing about Eve is she's walking around pickin
berries and junk with no clothes on. And this snake comes strollin up, see? And he tells her how she's
sittin there jaybird stark naked. So this business a bein naked really sets God off at the snake, see?
Cause Eve bein so dumb she didn't get in any trouble, but now it's like a whole nother ball game. And
God wasn't just mad at this one snake either -- he was mad at all a the snakes and all a the worms in the
world. So he tells em "From now on you guys're gonna crawl around in the dirt!" God says, "From now
on nobody likes you."
Lucy from Alan Ayckbourn's INVISIBLE FRIENDS

This is my room. No one is allowed in here except for me. I'm a very tidy sort of person. Which is a bit
extraordinary in this house. I think I must be a freak. I actually like to know where I have put my things.
This is my bed. And this is my desk. And up there on the shelf are my special, most favorite books.
Actually one of the reasons that I keep it tidy is because my very, very special friend, Zara, also like
things tidy. Oh yeah, I should explain to you about Zara shouldn't I? You may have heard my mom
talking about my invisible friend? Well, this is Zara. Zara, say hello to my friends. And won't you say
hello to Zara, she did say hello to you. I invented Zara when I was seven or eight. Just for fun. I think I
was ill at the time and wasn't allowed to play with any of my real friends, so I made up Zara. She's my
special friend that no one else can see, except me. Of course, I can't really see her either. Not really.
Although sometimes I--it's almost as if I could see her, sometimes. If I concentrate very hard it's like I
can just glimpse her out of the corner of my eye. Still...Anyway...I've kept Zara for years and years, it's
been almost ten years now actually. Until they all started saying I was much too old for that sort of
thing and got worried and started talking about sending for a doctor. So then I didn't take her round
with me quite so much after that. But she's still here. And when I feel really sad and depressed, I sit and
talk to Zara. Zara always understands. Zara always listens.

Woman from Kate Shein’s A…MY NAME IS STILL ALICE

Excuse me, are you the registry consultant? Well, I'm here to register! For gifts. I'm very excited.
When is the happy event? There isn't one. I'm not getting married. I'll probably never get married. Yes,
I know that you only register brides. Frankly, I find that a little discriminatory. I'm here to register and I
really don't want any hassle. No, no—don't get the manager. It's just that yesterday while I was
attaching tiny silver bells to a spice rack for my friends, this voice inside my head started screaming at
me. It said, "Schmuck! Why do you keep buying presents for people who have found everything they
want?" Isn't it enough that they fell in love? They've already won the sweepstakes, why do they need
door prizes? Now then, I need things. I need matching luggage. Candlesticks! Put me down for two
pairs! Come on, just do it! I know I'm single. I confront that fact every day of my life. You want to
know when the special event is? A week from Saturday. I'm throwing a shower to announce a life of
singlehood, and the beauty is I won't have to return anything if it doesn't work out!

Jessie from Marsha Norman’s ‘NIGHT, MOTHER

I am what became of your child. I found an old baby picture of me. And it was somebody else, not me.
It was somebody pink and fat who never got sick or lonely, somebody who cried a lot and got fed, and
reached up and got held and kicked but didn’t hurt anybody, and slept whenever she wanted to, just by
closing her eyes. Somebody who mainly just laid there and laughed at the colors waving around over
her head and chewed on a polka-dot whale and woke up knowing some new trick nearly every day, and
rolled over and drooled on the sheet and felt your hand pulling my quilt back up over me. That’s who I
started out and this is who is left. That’s what this is about. It’s somebody I lost, all right, it’s my own
self. Who I never was. Or who I tried to be and never got there. Somebody I waited for who never
came. And never will. So, see, it doesn’t matter what else happens in the world or in this house, even.
I’m what was worth waiting for and I didn’t make it. Me . . . who might have made a difference to
me . . . I’m not going to show up, so there’s no reason to stay, except to keep you company, and that’s . .
. not reason enough because I’m not . . . very good company. Am I.
FENCES, by August Wilson. Rose.

I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave seventeen years of my
life to stand in the same spot with you. Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had
dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me, Troy. Don’t you think it ever crossed my mind
to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities?
That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good. You not the only person who’s got wants
and needs. But I held onto you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams . . . and I
buried them inside you. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you
and waited to bloom. And it didn’t take me no seventeen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky
and it wasn’t never gonna bloom. But I held onto you, Troy. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I
owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And upstairs in that room . . . with
the darkness falling in on me . . . I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn’t the
finest man in the world. And wherever you was going . . . I wanted to be there with you! ‘Cause you was
my husband. ‘Cause that’s the only way I was gonna survive as your wife. You always talking about what
you give and what you don’t have to give. But you take too, Troy. You take . . . and don’t even know
nobody’s giving.

Angels in America by Tony Kushner Harper:

I feel better, I do, I...feel better. There are ice crystals in my lungs, wonderful and sharp. And the snow
smells like cold, crushed peaches. And there’s something... some current of blood in the wind, how
strange, it has that iron taste. Where am I? (looking around, then realizing) Antarctica. This is Antarctica!
Oh boy oh boy, LOOK at this, I... Wow, I must’ve really snapped the tether, huh?

I want to stay here forever. Set up camp. Build things. Build a city, an enormous city made up of frontier
forts, dark wood and green roofs and high gates made of pointed logs and bonfires burning on every
street corner. I should build by a river. Where are the forests?

I’ll plant them and grow them. I’ll live off caribou fat, I’ll melt it over the bonfires and drink it from long,
curved goat-horn cups. It’ll be great. I want to make a new world here. So that I never have to go home
again. I can have anything I want here–maybe even companionship, someone who has...desire for me.
There isn’t anyone...maybe an Eskimo. Who could ice-fish for food. And help me build a nest for when
the baby comes. Here, I can be pregnant. And I can have any kind of baby I want.

I’m going to like this place. It’s my own National Geographic Special! Oh! Oh! (She holds her stomach) I
think... I think I felt her kicking. Maybe I’ll give birth to a baby covered with thick white fur, and that way
she won’t be cold. My breasts will be full of hot cocoa so she doesn’t get chilly. And if it gets really cold,
she’ll have a pouch I can crawl into. Like a marsupial. We’ll mend together. That’s what we’ll do; we’ll
mend.
Angels in America by Tony Kushner

HARPER: People who are lonely, people left alone, sit talking nonsense to the air, imagining… beautiful
systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart…

When you look at the ozone layer, from outside, from a spaceship, it looks like a pale blue halo, a gentle,
shimmering aureole encircling the atmosphere encircling the earth. thirty miles above our heads, a thin
layer of three-atom oxygen molecules, product of photosynthesis, which explains the fussy vegetable
preference for visible light, its rejection of darker rays and emanations. Danger from without. It’s a kind
of gift, from God, the crowning touch to the creation of the world; guardian angels, hands linked, make a
spherical net, a blue-green nesting orb, a shell of safety for life itself. But everywhere, things are
collapsing, lies surfacing, systems of defense giving way… This is why, Joe, this is why I shouldn’t be left
alone.

I’d like to go traveling. Leave you behind to worry. I’ll send postcards with strange stamps and tantalizing
messages on the back. “Later maybe.” “Nevermore…”

Two Rooms by Lee Blessing

MICHAEL

Sometimes I wake up with the most intense desire to know what day it is. Sunday?

Thursday? I feel like I’m going to die the next minute if I don’t find out. Other times I’ll

wake up and suddenly realize that months have gone by—must have gone by—since I

last had a conscious thought about time. It makes me feel like the astronaut who travels

forty years at the speed of light and then returns, no older. ―What’s happened to

everyone?‖ he must think. ―Time must be for them, not me.‖ I never thought of time as a

coat you could take off and put on again. Too cold to live without it—so we all keep it

on. We hug it to ourselves, because if we can’t… Time is change. That’s all it

is. When there’s no change. When there’s no change…Yesterday one of my guards told

me I’d been here three years. I didn’t know what he meant.

Ariel’s Monologue from The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

ARIEL. Oh, really? Well, y'know, I'll tell you what there is about me. There is an overwhelming, and
there is an all-pervading, hatred ... a hatred ... of people like you. Of people who lay even the littlest
finger ... on children. I wake up with it. It wakes me up. It rides on the bus with me to work. It
whispers to me, "They will not get away with it." I come in early. I make sure all the bindings are clean
and the electrodes are in the right order so we won't ...waste ... time. I admit it, sometimes I use
excessive force. And sometimes I use excessive force on an entirely innocent individual. But I'll tell
you this. If an entirely innocent individual leaves this room for the outside world, they're not gonna
contemplate even raising their voice to a little kid again, just in case I fucking hear 'em and drag 'em in
here for another load of excessive fucking force. Now, is this kind of behaviour in an officer of the law
in some way questionable morally? Of course it fucking is! But you know what? I don't fucking care!
'Cos, when I'm an old man, you know what? Little kids are gonna follow me around and they're gonna
know my name and what I stood for, and they're gonna give me some of their sweets in thanks, and
I'm gonna take those sweets and thank them and tell them to get home safe, and I'm gonna be happy.
Not because of the sweets, I don't really like sweets, but because I'd know ... I'd know in my heart,
that if I hadn't been there, not all of them would have been there. Because I'm a good policeman. Not
necessarily good in the sense of being able to solve lots of stuff, because I'm not, but good in the
sense of I stand for something. I stand for something. I stand on the right side. I may not always be
right, but I stand on the right side. The child's side. The opposite side to you. And so, naturally, when I
hear that a child has been killed in a fashion ... in a fashion such as this "Little Jesus" thing ... You
know what? I would torture you to death just for writing a story like that, let alone acting it out! So,
y'know what? (Takes out from the cabinet a large, grim-looking battery and electrodes.) ... Fuck what
your mum and dad did to you and your brother. Fuck it. I'd've tortured the fuck out of them if I had
them here, just like I'm gonna torture the fuck out of you now too. 'Cos two wrongs do not make a
right. Two wrongs do not make a right. So kneel down over here, please, so I can connect you to this
battery.

‘Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune’ by Terrence McNally

JOHNNY: That’s your trouble. You don’t want to hear anything you don’t think you already know. Well
I’ll tell you something, Cinderella: your Prince Charming has come. Wake up before another thousand
years go by! Don’t throw me away like a gum wrapper because you think there’s something about me
you may not like. I have what it takes to give you anything and everything you want. Maybe not up
here . . . (He taps his head.) . . . or here . . . (He slaps his hip where he wearshis wallet.) . . . but here.
(He touches his heart). And that would please me enormously. All I ask back is that you use your
capacity to be everyone and everything for me. It’s within you. If we could do that for each other we’d
give our kids the universe. They’d be Shakespeare and the most beautiful music ever written and a
saint maybe or a champion athlete or a president all rolled into one. Terrific kids! How could they not
be?

We have a chance to make everything turn out all right again. Turn our back on everything that went
wrong. We can begin right now, this minute, this room and us. I know this thing, Frankie.

'Grace' by Craig Wright

STEVE: Because I don’t want to. (After a beat.) See, Sam, you’re a scientist. You’re an athlete of the
mind, and that’s great. You, with your great mind, you can compute things I can’t even imagine,
probably that most people can’t. My expertise, Sam, my gift that I’ve been given… is faith. I’m not a
knower. I’m a believer. And that’s what real estate is all about. It’s about faith. It’s about the substance
of things not seen. Is the money here? Is the money there? It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.
What matters is, can you sit down with people and imagine possibilities? Can you sit down with the city
fathers and imagine turning a run-down Comfort Inn into a Holiday Inn Express with a pool?

Can you imagine turning a pathetic, drug-infested big-city block into a glittering new mall with a Hilton
Hotel as the centerpiece, and a Starbucks and a Borders and a Hard Rock Café? If you can imagine that
kinda stuff in my business, Sam, you’re not just halfway there; you’re all the way, because the money
doesn’t matter. The work of real-estate development and especially hotel development — ooh, it’s so
important — is belief. That’s what I’m talking about. Belief. Don’t invest in this hotel. Don’t. Please.
Don’t. Invest in believing. Invest in the believing part of yourself. Because … it’s fun. (After a long beat.)
This is not rocket science, Sam. It’s real estate.

'Come, Go, Stay' by Annie Wood

Just hear me out. That thing that you thought that I was – I’m not. I mean, I’m not really sure exactly
what that thing is that you thought that I was – but I’m almost positive that I am not it. And please don’t
try and tell me that I could be it. Because I can’t. Or, I can – but, I wont. Same difference. And don’t ask
me to clarify what I’m talking about. Because… I don’t know.

Which leads me to my next point – if I don’t know who I am – how can you possibly know who I am? I
understand why you try – everybody does – we all try to figure each other out – we even make up ideas
in our heads about who someone is and we stick to it like a bought and sold script. But, really – it’s just
one big improv where the rules keep changing. It’s not your fault. I only gave you so much to work with.

And, please don’t try and say anything to get me to stay – I know we’ve seen it in the movies – how
people can stop someone in their tracks so easily. Two people could be having a huge fight and one of
them begins to walk away – but, the other one says something…something trite, usually. Like, “you can’t
run from the truth!” Or “you can’t hide away forever!” And that simple “you can’t” phrase, this “oh so
poignant” observation makes the other person freeze stone cold. The camera pans in as we see the
thoughtful expression on the frozen persons face. Ah ha! This person is thinking something. Something
that is making them change their mind and not want to leave. This person will now stay – maybe even
turn around – slowly so as not to upset the moment too much. But that’s just movie logic, you know?