I will be doing a monologue from…

If someone asked me what is the worst thing about being an actor, and assuming I couldn’t answer anything like “you don’t make a living” or “there’s not enough work” or “you get tired of the audition couches after a while, you know?” then I’d have to say that it’s finding a good monologue for auditions.

I hate hunting for audition material. It’s so time consuming and tedious and hit and miss. It’s like looking for a needle in a library. I’m always keeping my eye out, whether I’m reading scripts or novels or memoirs, if I come across something that might work as a piece I flag it. The problem is, I don’t come across them often enough. And the ones I do, well, I’m kind of stretching it sometimes to say, yes this has a start and a finish and an arc. Maybe I’m reading the wrong stuff. Maybe it’s me. One would think that a late-30s (on stage, if not in person,) white guy could find a monologue, right? I seem to find pieces for angst ridden 20 year olds and guilt-ridden old sots twenty years my senior. But in between is rarer than it should be.

Well today must be my lucky day. This morning, while sitting at the dining room table eating my oatmeal, I was thumbing through a magazine which included a script. I scanned the pages looking to see if there were any monologues for men. And there it was! A quirky, funny, yet serious, piece with a beginning, middle and end that could be taken out of context and made to stand on its own! And it’s a boy! Er… I mean, an “early 40s” man!

Not only that, but to make it even more fun, it’s not crap. The play itself, is funny and clever, and the characters are well drawn. At least, that’s true in the first half that I read this morning; the first half leading up to my new monologue

I’d say exactly what it is, but I don’t want to share it. I hate nothing more than hearing someone doing my monologue while I’m sitting in the lobby on deck.

What are you doing?

Last night I was sitting at a studio, auditioning actors for a play. It’s the general audition for this show, and I requested a two-minute contemporary monologue. When people are good and interesting and solid, you know it almost right away. Sometimes from them walking in the door. Others you have to warm up to a bit.

I didn’t have anyone timing it, and I’m fairly certain a couple of them were longer than two minutes. That’s ok. I’m pretty easy going at auditions. In fact, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, and feel really bad when I think they’re….awful…or not talented…or especially if they’ve just “blown it” because they were unprepared or nervous. When I’m thinking of other things, I should know I probably don’t need to call them back.

Sometimes my mind wanders to random thoughts. Here are a few of them……

“Really? This is the outfit you chose for an audition?”

“Why do you think that piece is right for you?”

“Did you read the character descriptions in the audition notice? If so, I’m curious, which one do you think you should be considered for? ‘Cuz I’m not seeing it.”

“You are so brave for doing that monologue, I want to cast you on guts alone.”

“You are so brave for coming when you have no experience or training, and reading that poetic paragraph (which I think you wrote) as a monologue. I didn’t even see the paper shaking in your hand, but you looked like you were going to faint. I wanted to say it’s going to be ok, take a deep breath.”

“You are so much cuter in this picture than you are in person.”

“You’re not wearing any shoes. Or socks.”

“I gave you something extra to read, so I was hoping to see something different than what you brought in. You’ve incredibly made it the same as your own monologue.”

“You just apologized about being sick immediatly after shaking my hand. Now I longer care about your monologue, I can only think of getting swine flu.”

“Where did you come from? And will you be in my play, because I think I love you. And I wish I were that talented and skilled when I was your age.”

“Please stop now.”

Two Minutes to Shine

I’m directing another show in about five or six months. Auditions run three days, starting tomorrow. I’m looking forward to this in a different way than the last set of auditions where I was the auditionee. Last time I was in charge of most everything, and it was my project, although truly it was our project. This time, I’m just the director. There’s a whole separate person who’s playing producer, and another playing playwright. This time there’s a dramaturg, even. I just have to show up and audition actors.

How cool is that?

And this time, because it’s a full two-act, original script that’s going to go through development and I’m not exactly sure what I really want in a cast (other than the usual – smart, talented, hardworking and reliable) I’ve decided we’re going with monologues for the initial auditions. It’s been a long time since I sat listening to monologue after monologue, for hours on end, and while I know it can be tiresome and tedious, I think it’ll be a little exhilarating too.

From the looks of the list of actors scheduled it seems like a lot of new faces. This could be good. I mean, this could be bad, too. If I don’t recognize the name, then where have they been? Likely working mostly off my radar. My radar is fairly wide.

But I’m going in optimistic and hopeful. Plus if I’m lucky, I might find a piece or two I can steal, because I hate looking for new material for my own monologues. It’s so hard to find a good monologue to audition with!

Ugh. Monologue auditions. What a pain. For the actor, that is. I’ll try to keep that in mind as each new person walks in the door.