KCACTF: Preparing A Great Audition Monologue (Part 1)

Material Selection: 

Choose a monologue of a character that you could actually play in real life.  Actual age range and type-how you look, who you are.  Show off your skills.  The character should be easily accessible to you emotionally-you need to understand it.  It should be contemporary (less than ten years old).  Read the New York Times, find playwrights who sound good to you and order their works.  The monologue needs to be from plays.  A selection from a monologue book does not show that you know the play-they are looking for smart actors.  Avoid monologues that are only telling a story, this is really hard to make present and active.  Be careful of rants or manifestos and avoid ubersexual.  It would be hard to find a good monologue from a musical because the really great one-person talking is usually expressed through a song rather than monologue.  If you are gonna do a monologue with a dialect, you better be darn good at it.  Try to avoid dialect though because it seems like you are trying to show a skill.  It is very hard to do style in 90 seconds, do realistic.

What to know:

Who the character is and what is happening in the scene.  What are the circumstances of the play?  What is this monologue about?  Why does the character choose to speak now?  The tone of the monologue goes back to the playwright.