Fall Play information

Audition Monologues

Prepare ONE of the following monologues for your audition. Pick the monologues that you feel most comfortable with in terms of gender. Memorizing your chosen monologues is not required, but strongly encouraged. You are also encouraged to read the play or watch the play to get a sense of the circumstances surrounding these monologues.

At the audition, you will be called into the audition room one-by-one to preform for us. You will slate yourself (say your name and which monologue you have prepared) and perform the monologue once. After you have done the monologue, we may ask you to do it again or ask you other questions to get an idea of who you are as a person and as a performer. Remember when auditioning, take risks and don’t hold anything back! We are looking to seeing you!

From Auntie Mame by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

Character: Mame Dennis

Mame, a dazzling and unapologetically bohemian socialite, defends her unconventional approach to raising her orphaned nephew against a disapproving bank trustee. She is vivacious, theatrical, and utterly convinced that a full life is a moral obligation.

MAME: Mr. Babcock, I have read your little list of objections twice, and I confess I find it charming in its own drab way. You object to the cocktail parties. You object to the poetry readings. You very nearly had a stroke over the nudist sculptor, though I maintain that was purely educational. But let me tell you something about life, Mr. Babcock, since you seem to have misplaced yours somewhere in that ledger book. Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death! I will not have that boy raised on beige. I will not have him grow up knowing the difference between a debenture and a dividend before he knows the difference between Puccini and a pot roast. So you may take your list, and your spectacles, and your very tidy little rules, and file them away with all your other unread correspondence—because that child is going to LIVE, Mr. Babcock, if it's the last thing I teach him.

From Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin

Character: Billie Dawn

Billie, a sharp former showgirl once dismissed as an airhead by the corrupt businessman who "owns" her, has just realized how much smarter she's become—and how much she's been underestimated. She speaks with dawning confidence and bite.

BILLIE: You know what your problem is, Harry? You never once figured I was listening. All those years you had me sign whatever you shoved in front of me, sit pretty in the corner, keep my mouth shut at dinner—you figured a girl who doesn't know which fork to use couldn't possibly know what "antitrust" means either. Well, I know now. I know exactly what you've been doing, and I know exactly whose name is on all of it. Funny thing about being underestimated, Harry—it gives a girl a whole lot of time to read. And I have read everything. Every contract, every deed, every little paper you were so sure I'd never bother to understand. So don't you dare call me stupid again. I may have started this yesterday. But I finished it today.

From You Can't Take It With You by Kaufman and Hart

Character: Penny Sycamore

Penny, a cheerfully scattered playwright who took up writing eight years ago simply because a typewriter was delivered to the house by mistake, explains her creative process to a bewildered guest. She is breezy, unbothered, and delightfully illogical.

PENNY: Oh, I never plan them, dear—the plays just arrive, like the mail. Eight years ago a typewriter showed up here by accident, meant for the house next door, and I thought, well, someone ought to use it, and here we are. I've written eleven plays. None of them have endings, exactly, but I don't see why that should stop anyone from enjoying the first four acts. This one has a sex play in a monastery, though I may move it to a submarine—it's ever so much more dramatic underwater, don't you think? Now, would you hold this trumpet a moment? Essie needs it for her ballet, and I need both hands free to finish my murder scene.

From Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

Character: Jonathan Brewster

Jonathan, a menacing career criminal returning to his sweet old aunts' home with a body to dispose of, grows increasingly rattled that his terrifying reputation keeps being upstaged by his own family. He is dark, seething, and comically thin-skinned about it.

JONATHAN: Do you have any idea who I am? I have been thrown out of more countries than most people have visited. Interpol has a drawer just for me. I once made a man cry simply by looking at him for too long. And yet I come home—home, mind you—and what do I find? My aunts have buried more men in the cellar than I have in my entire career! Twelve! Twelve bodies, and a gentleman's agreement with the local clergy! I have spent my whole life cultivating an aura of dread, Doctor, and I am not about to be out-murdered by two women who serve lemonade and quote scripture between corpses. This is my house. This is my terror. And someone in this family is going to remember that.

From Private Lives by Noël Coward

Character: Elyot Chase

Elyot, sophisticated and impulsive, has just run into his ex-wife on his honeymoon with someone else—and finds old feelings resurfacing against his better judgment. He is flippant, self-aware, and hopelessly weak-willed.

ELYOT: Of all the balconies, in all the hotels, in all of France. I want you to know I find this exactly as absurd as you do, possibly more so, since I'm the one who has to explain it to my wife. We divorced for excellent reasons, Amanda—reasons I recall in vivid, occasionally violent detail—and yet here you are, five feet away, looking unreasonably pleased with yourself, and here I am, already forgetting every single one of them. It's appalling. It's completely against my own good judgment. I ought to walk back through that door, sit down next to Sibyl, and never think of you again. I give it about ninety seconds.

From Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti

Character: Bernard

Bernard, a suave Parisian bachelor juggling three airline-stewardess fiancées through careful scheduling, has just discovered that faster jets have thrown his entire timetable into chaos. He is charming, frantic, and trying very hard to keep smiling.

BERNARD: The new jet is fifty minutes faster. Fifty minutes! Do you understand what that does to a man's schedule? For three years I have run this apartment like a Swiss watch—Gloria departs, Gabriella arrives, never once do the gears touch. It was beautiful. It was practically an air traffic control tower with better linens. And now some engineer in Seattle decides to build a faster airplane, and suddenly I have two fiancées landing within the hour of each other and a third somewhere over the Atlantic deciding to surprise me! I am not a juggler, Robert, I am a man who values precision, and precision has just been sabotaged by progress. Get the timetables. We are recalculating everything, and God help us all.

From Charley's Aunt by Brandon Thomas

Character: Lord Fancourt Babberley ("Babbs")

Babbs, an Oxford student forced into disguise as a wealthy widow to chaperone his friends' romantic visits, grows increasingly exasperated at having to maintain the ruse in full skirts and a bonnet. He is breathless, put-upon, and absurdly committed to the bit.

BABBS: I did not agree to be a woman for the entire afternoon. One introduction, they said. Five minutes, they said. Charley's aunt will arrive, everyone will be terribly proper, and then I may go back to being an ordinary undergraduate with ordinary trousers. Instead I have been proposed to twice, kissed on the hand by a man old enough to be my actual aunt, and I am fairly certain this corset has rearranged my internal organs permanently. And through all of it I must simper! I must flutter this ghastly fan and say "oh, you are too kind" in a register I did not know my voice possessed. If one more person calls me "Donna Lucia" I shall forget myself entirely and challenge someone to a duel in full skirts. The things a man does for his friends.

From Harvey by Mary Chase

Character: Veta Louise Simmons

Veta, a fussy, status-conscious society woman, is mortified that her brother's friendship with an invisible six-foot rabbit is ruining her social standing—and her daughter's marriage prospects. She is flustered, indignant, and teetering on the edge of hysteria.

VETA: Do you have any idea what it is like to host a garden party while your own brother is out on the porch introducing a rabbit to the Judge's wife? A rabbit, Doctor! Six feet tall, wears a boutonniere apparently, answers to "Harvey"! I have spent thirty years cultivating this family's reputation in this town—thirty years of bridge clubs and charity luncheons and very carefully worded invitations—and it is unraveling because Elwood insists on setting a place for him at dinner! People are talking. People are always talking, but now they have something to talk about, and my daughter Myrtle Mae will never get a husband so long as her uncle is out there tipping his hat to empty air! I love Elwood, I do, but a woman can only take so many raised eyebrows at the country club before she starts seeing things herself. I need you to fix this. Today. Before the rabbit RSVPs to something.