Male Music Theatre Monologue Booklet 2015 v2

Faculty of the VCA and MCM, The University of Melbourne Bachelor of Fine Art Music Theatre Audition Monologue – 2015 Entry

Faculty of the VCA and MCM

Audition Monologue

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Music Theatre)

Monologues Booklet (Male) Selections for 2015 entry

Please read the following instructions carefully

You must prepare one Shakespeare and one contemporary monologue. One of these pieces must be from

the list in this Music Theatre Monologues booklet.

Where possible, you should read the entire play from which your piece has been chosen in order to place

the speech in context. If choosing your own piece, you are strongly advised to select from plays rather than

film or television scripts.Pieces must be no longer than two minutes.

Texts must be fully learned and performed off-book.


Male - Shakespeare

HENRY V Prologue Chorus O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide on man, And make imaginary puissance; Think when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' th’receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.


Male - Shakespeare

Julius Caesar Act 1, sc 2 CASSIUS Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. ‘Brutus’ and ‘Caesar’: what should be in that 'Caesar'? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em, ‘Brutus’ will start a spirit as soon as ‘Caesar’. Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed! Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! When went there by an age, since the great flood, But it was famed with more than with one man? When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome, That her wide walls encompass'd but one man? Now is it Rome indeed and room enough, When there is in it but one only man. O, you and I have heard our fathers say, There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome As easily as a king.


Male - Shakespeare

The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act 2, sc 3 Enter LAUNCE, leading a dog LAUNCE Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping; my father wailing; my sister crying; our maid howling; our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity; yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog: a Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father: no, this left shoe is my father: no, no, this left shoe is my mother: nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole. This shoe, with the hole in it, is my mother, and this my father: a vengeance on't! there 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog. O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father; ‘Father, your blessing’ Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping: now should I kiss my father; well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother: O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her. Why, there 'tis; here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word; but see how I lay the dust with my tears.


Male - Shakespeare

Othello Act 1, sc 3 IAGO It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man! Drown thyself? drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness. I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars, defeat thy favor with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor — put money in thy purse — nor he his to her. It was a violent commencement in her, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration — put but money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills: fill thy purse with money. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must. Therefore put money in thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning - make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring Barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her - therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.


Male - Shakespeare

Hamlet Act 1 sc 2 HAMLET O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't, ah fie, 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead - nay, not so much, not two - So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth, Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; and yet, within a month - Let me not think on't - Frailty, thy name is woman - A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears -why she, even she - O, God, a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer - married with my uncle, My father's brother - but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married - O most wicked speed! To post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.


Male - Shakespeare

Mcabeth Act 1, sc 8 MACBETH:

If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well It were done quickly: if th’assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success: that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all – here But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases, We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague th’inventor: this even-handed Justice Commends th’ingredience of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman, and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against the murtherer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek; hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu’d against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And Pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or Heaven’s Cherubin, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, And falls on th’other-


Male - Shakespeare

Richard III

Act 1 sc 1 Richard Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our House In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our bruised arms hung up for monuments, Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag’d War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front: And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries – He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking glass, I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph: I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world scarce half made up – And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them – Why, I, in this weak, piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate, the one against the other. And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up


About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’ Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be. Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes.


Male - Shakespeare

The Winter’s Tale Act 1 sc 2 Leontes Gone already! Inch-thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one! Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour Will be my knell. Go play, boy, play. There have been, (Or I am much deceived), cuckolds ere now; And many a man there is, (even at this present, Now while I speak this), holds his wife by th’ arm, That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd, As mine, against their will. Should all despair That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none; It is a bawdy planet, that will strike Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it, From east, west, north and south: be it concluded, No barricado for a belly. Know't; It will let in and out the enemy With bag and baggage: many thousand on's Have the disease, and feel't not. How now, boy!


Male - Shakespeare

Measure for Measure Angelo Act II sc 2 What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault, or mine? The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most, ha? Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I That, lying by the violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman’s lightness? Having wasted ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils there? O fie, fie, fie! What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo? Dost thou desire her foully for those things That make her good? O, let her brother live! Thieves for their robbery have authority, When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her, That I desire to hear her speak again? And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on? O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait the hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet With all her double vigour, art and nature, Once stir my temper: but this virtuous maid Subdues me quite. Ever till now When men were fond, I smil’d, and wonder’d how.


Male - Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet Act II sc 2 Romeo He jests at stars that never felt a wound.

[Enter JULIET above] But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun! Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon Who is already sick and pale with grief That thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid since she is envious, Her vestal livery is but sick and green And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off. It is my lady, O it is my love! O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses, I will answer it. I am too bold. ‘Tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars As daylight doth a lamp. Her eyes in heaven Would through the airy regions stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek. She speaks. O speak again bright angel, for thou art As glorious to this night, being o’er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air.


Male - Contemporary

LAKEBOAT by David Mamet JOE: You get paid for doing a job. You trade the work for money, am I right? Why is it any fucking less good than being a doctor for example? That’s one thing I never wanted to be, a doctor. I used to want to be a lot of things when I was little. You know, like a kid. I wanted to be a ballplayer like everyone. And I wanted to be a cop, what does a kid know, right? And can I tell you something that I wanted to be? I know this is going to sound peculiar, but it was a pure desire on my part. One thing I wanted to be when I was little (I don’t mean bragging now, or just saying it). If you were there you would have known, it was a pure desire on my part. I wanted to be a dancer. That’s the one thing I guard. Like you might guard the first time you got laid, or being in love with a girl. Or winning a bike at the movies…well, maybe not that. More like getting married, or winning a medal in the war. I wanted to be a dancer. Not tap, I mean a real ballet dancer. I know they’re all fags, but I didn’t think about it. That is, I didn’t not think about it. That is, I didn’t say, “I want to be a dancer but I do not want to be a fag.” It just wasn’t important. I saw myself arriving at the theatre late doing Swan Lake at the Lyric Opera. With a coat with one of those old-time collars. (It was winter.) And on stage with a purple shirt and white tights catching these girls…beautiful light girls. Sweating. All my muscles are covered in sweat, you know? But it’s clean. And my muscles all feel tight. Every fucking muscle in my body. Hundreds of them. Tight and working. And I’m standing up straight on stage with this kind of expression on my face waiting to catch this girl. I was about fifteen. It takes a hell of a lot of work to be a dancer. But a dancer doesn’t even fucking care if he is somebody. He is somebody so much so it’s not important. You know what I mean? Like these passengers we get. Guests of the Company. Always being important. If they’re so fucking important why the fuck do they got to tell you about it?


Male - Contemporary

LOOK BACK IN ANGER by John Osborne JIMMY: Don’t try and patronise me. (Turning to Cliff.) She’s so clumsy. I watch for her to do the same things every night. The way she jumps on the bed, as if she were stamping on someone’s face, and draws the curtains back with a great clatter, in that casually destructive way of hers. It’s like someone launching a battleship. Have you ever noticed how noisy women are? Have you? The way they kick the floor about, simply walking over it? Or have you watched them sitting at their dressing tables, dropping their weapons and banging down their bits of boxes and brushes and lipsticks? I’ve watched her doing it night after night. When you see a woman in front of her bedroom mirror, you realise what refined sort of a butcher she is. Did you ever see some dirty old Arab, sticking his fingers into some mess of lamb fat and gristle? Well, she’s just like that. Thank God they don’t have many women surgeons! Those primitive hands would have your guts out in no time. Flip! Out it comes, like the powder out of its box. Flop! Back it goes, like the power puff on the table. She’d drop your guts like hair clips and fluff all over the floor. You’ve got to be fundamentally insensitive to be as noisy and as clumsy as that. I had a flat underneath a couple of girls once. You heard every damned thing those bastards did, all day and night. The most simple, everyday actions were a sort of assault course on your sensibilities. I used to plead with them. I even got to screaming the most ingenious obscenities I could think of, up the stairs at them. But nothing, nothing would move them. With those two, even a simple visit to the lavatory sounded like a medieval siege. Oh, they beat me in the end – I had to go. I expect they’re still at it. Or they’re probably married by now, and driving some other poor devils out of their minds. Slamming their doors, stamping their high heels, banging their irons and saucepans – the eternal flaming racket of the female.


Male - Contemporary

THE PRIVATE EAR by Peter Shaffer BOB: We weren’t born to work in offices. Eyes. Complicated things like eyes, weren’t made by God just to see columns of twopence-halfpennies written up in a ledger. Tongues. Good grief, the woman next to me in the office even sounds like a typewriter. A thin, chipped old typewriter, always clattering on about what Miss Story said in Accounts and Mr Burnham said back. It’s awful! Do you know how many thousands of years it took to make anything so beautiful, so feeling, as your hand? People say I know something like the back of my hand, but they don’t know their hands. They wouldn’t recognise a photograph of them. Why? Because their hands are anonymous. They’re just tools for filling invoices, turning lathes round. They cramp up from picking slag out of moving belts of coal. It that’s not blasphemy, what is? I’ll tell you something really daft. Some nights when I come back here I give the stereo a record for his supper. That’s the way I look at him sometimes, feeding off discs, you know. And I conduct it. If it’s a Concerto I play the solo part, running up and down the keyboard, doing the expressive bits, everything. I imagine someone I love is sitting out in the audience watching; you know, someone I want to admire me. Anyway, it sort of frees things inside me. At great moments I feel shivery all over. It’s marvellous to feel shivery like that. What I want to know is, why can’t I feel that in my work? Why can’t I – oh, I don’t know – feel bigger? There’s something in me I know that’s big. That can be excited, anyway. And that must mean I can excite other people, if only I knew what way. I never met anyone to show me that way.


Male - Contemporary

SEXUAL PEVERSITY IN CHICAGO by David Mamet BERNIE: So here I am. I’m just in a town for a one-day layover and I happen to find myself in this bar. So, so far so good. What am I going to do? I could lounge alone and lonely and stare into my drink, or I could take the bull by the horns and make an effort to enjoy myself… So hold on. So I see you seated at this table and I say to myself, ‘Doug McKenzie, there is a young woman,’ I say to myself, ‘What is she doing here?’, and I think she is here for the same reasons as I. To enjoy herself, and perhaps, to meet provocative people. (Pause.) I’m a meteorologist for TWA. It’s an incredibly interesting, but lonely job…Stuck in the cockpit of some jumbo jet hours at a time…nothing to look at but charts…What are you drinking? You’re a scotch drinker, huh? Well, what the hell, you’re drinking scotch. But I say ‘Why pigeonhole ourselves?’ A person makes an effort to enjoy himself, why pin a label on it, huh? This is life. You learn a lot about life working for the airlines. Because you’re constantly in touch, you know with what?, with the idea of Death. (Pause.) Not that I’m a fan of morbidness, and so on. I mean what are you doing here? You’re by yourself, I can see that. So what do you come here for? To what? To meet interesting new people or not. (Pause.) What else is there?...All kidding aside…lookit, I’m a fucking professional, huh? My life is a bunch of having to make split-second decisions. Life or death fucking decisions. So that’s what it is, so okay. I work hard, I play hard. Comes I got a day off I wanna relax a bit…wander – quite by accident – into this bar. I have a drink or two…perhaps a drop too much. Perhaps I get too loose (it’s been known to happen.) So what do I see? A nice young woman sitting by herself…


Male - Contemporary

BODIES by James Saunders MERVYN: Back of the hand barely touching the skirt. God, I thought, they must feel it back there, the waves of it, like bloody D-Day! After that it was torment. Of course it was totally impossible: her best friend, the wife of my best friend; we lived practically in each other’s pockets. It was mad. I tried to rationalise it away. I said: it’s obvious what’s happened. She’s rather fallen for me for some reason, after all this time, perhaps they’re having trouble; she’s dissatisfied, looking around for something else. But that’s her business. I don’t have to follow suit. I’m flattered, that’s all it is, because she wants me at a time when I don’t feel particularly wanted. Don’t be a fool, don’t behave like a child. Keep clear. Forget it. It’ll go away. I knew the cost of it, I was no beginner: the sick excitement, the lurchings, the constant planning, the tearing in two; a few islands of extraordinary happiness in a waste of messy discomfort. I’ve wondered since whether I could have stood out against it. I don’t know, I suppose I could, I was a rational human being, part of me anyway. The letting go is always a conscious decision, whatever they say. What tipped the balance, as before, as always, was first, an anger. How dare things be this way! That the simple, good coming together of two people is made an act of madness! Then a fear. I was afraid of losing something of myself, afraid, in a way, of dying. The need, the desire, whatever it was, was my experience; it was real, however painful it was, however perverse, it was mine, it was me, it was the only real thing about me, that awful obsessive clawing, the clawing of that need to be myself, to do what needed to be done if I were not to kill part of myself by killing that need. So I did it; or it was done. One day I let go.


Male - Contemporary

DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller

BIFF:

Now hear this, Willy, this is me. You know why I had no address for three months? I

stole a suit in Kansas City and I was jailed. I stole myself out of every good job since

high school. And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I

could never stand taking orders from anybody! That’s whose fault it is! It’s

goddamn time you heard that! I had to be boss big shot in two weeks, and I’m

through with it! Willy! I ran down eleven flights with a pen in my hand today. And

suddenly I stopped, you hear me? And in the middle of that office building, do you

hear this? I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw- the sky. I saw the

things that I love in the world. The work and the food and the time to sit and

smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this

for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an

office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there,

waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy? Pop!

I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you! I am not a leader of me, Willy, and neither are

you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash-

can like all the rest of them! I’m a dollar an hour, Willy! I tried seven states and

couldn’t raise it! A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing

home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them

home! Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no

spite in it any more. I’m just what I am, that’s all. Will you let me go, for Christ’s

sake? Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?


Male - Contemporary

FAT PIG by Nell LaBute

TOM:

I’m weak. That’s what I basically learned from our time together. I am a weak

person, and I don’t know if I can overcome that. No, maybe I do know. Yeah. I do

know that I am, and I can’t… overcome it, I mean. I think you are an amazing

woman, I honestly do. And I really love what we’ve had here. Our time together…

But I think that we’re very different people. Not just who we are- jobs or that kind

of thing- but it does play into it as well. Factors in. We probably should’ve realized

this earlier, but I’ve been so happy being near you that I just sorta overlooked it

and went on. I did. But I feel it coming up now, more and more, and I just think- No,

that’s bullshit, actually, the whole work thing. Forget it. (Beat.) I’m just, I feel that

we should maybe stop before we get too far. It’s weird to say this, because in many

ways I’m already in so deep. Care about you a lot, and that makes it superhard. But-

I guess I do care what my peers think about me. Or how they view my choices and,

yes, maybe that makes me not very deep, or petty, or some other word, hell, I don’t

know! It’s my Achilles flaw or something. It doesn’t matter. What I’m sure of is this-

we need to stop. Stop seeing each other or going out or anything like that. Because I

know now how weak I am and that I’m not really deserving of you, of all you have

to offer me. I can see that now. Helen… things are so tricky, life is. I want to be

better… to do good and better things and to make a proper sort of decision here,

but I… I can’t.


Male - Contemporary

THE GOLDEN AGE by Louis Nowra FRANCIS:

Look at us reflected in the water, see? Upside-down.

[He smiles and she smiles back. Silence.]

So quiet. I’m not used to such silence. I’m a city boy, born and bred. You’ve never

seen a city or town, have you? Where I live there are dozens of factories: shoe

factories, some that make gaskets, hydraulic machines, clothing. My mother works

in a shoe factory. [Pointing to his boots] These came from my mother’s factory.

[Silence.]

These sunsets here, I’ve never seen the likes of them. A bit of muddy orange light in

the distance, behind the chimneys, is generally all I get to see.

[Pause]

You’d like the trams, especially at night. They rattle and squeak, like ghosts rattling

their chains, and every so often the conducting rod hits a terminus and there is a

brilliant spark of electricity, like an axe striking a rock. ‘Spisss!’ On Saturday

afternoon thousands of people go and watch the football. A huge oval of grass.

[Miming a football] A ball like this. Someone hand passes it, ‘whish’, straight to me. I

duck one lumbering giant, spin around a nifty dwarf of a rover, then I catch sight of

the goals. I boot a seventy-yard drop kick straight through the centre. The crowd

goes wild!

[He cheers wildly. BETSHEB laughs at his actions. He is pleased to have made

her laugh.]

Not as good as your play.

[Pause]

This is your home. My home is across the water, Bass Strait.

[Silence.]

What is it about you people? Why are you like you are?


Male - Contemporary

TANGLED UP IN BLUE by Brad Boesen

HE:

You know – I know this was bad timing. I know you guys...I know you just broke

up. I do. But ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always been in a relationship. You

always have. Always. And in the few, brief times when you weren’t in a

relationship, I was, so we... We just never...

And I know I’ve had too much to drink, but I just need to finish this now, and say

what I need to say, because – the way things... The way it looks now, we’re not

going to be spending so much time together anymore.

And I just need to say this. I need to say this. I need to get this out. (pause) I’m

sorry – that I put you through this. But for as long as I can remember, since – as

long as I can remember, I’ve been settling, you know? I remember – it must have

been seventh or eighth grade – my first girlfriend. I mean, we’d talk to each other in

the halls, and sit by each other in study hall, and, next thing I knew, she was calling

me at home, asking what I thought she should wear to the dance that I hadn’t

actually asked her to. So I guess she was my girlfriend. But I remember walking

home from school one day, and thinking I don’t, really, even like her. I mean, she

was nice, you know? I liked her. But I didn’t – like her.

She bored me when we’d talk. But I remember, even then, that long ago, in junior

high school, thinking, what if I never meet anyone else? What if – no one else ever

wants to go out with me? Because, believe me, the offers weren’t pouring in any

better then than they are now. And I really didn’t think I would meet anyone else.

(pause)

When I actually met you at the party, we were so good together. We were just so –

good. But you were with someone. And you’ve been with someone ever since. And

we’ve gotten to the point, now, where I really can’t imagine not being your friend. I

can’t... I just can’t imagine my life without you. (pause) You asked me why I never

stayed very long with the women I’ve dated; it’s you. Because of you. Because I

didn’t want to settle any more. I’d been doing it all my life, and I didn’t want to

settle. And every woman I met, every one, I would compare them to you, and they

weren’t you. They just weren’t. And I refused to settle until – until I knew one way

or another. So don’t tell me that I’m just drunk, or that I don’t really feel the way I

feel, because I’ve had four years to think about this, and I know how I feel.


Male - Contemporary

THE FATHER WE LOVED ON A BEACH BY THE SEA by Stephen Sewell

DAN:

What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got fucking eyes? Look at the place!

They’ve turned it into a fucking prison…

Jesus Christ. You never understood, did you? What did you want me to do? Turn my

back on the whole thing? You bring me up to believe in truth and charity and then

you want me to ignore what’s going on in the world. You can napalm fucking

peasants to the shithouse and still receive communion on Sunday. The cops can

murder blacks in the streets but the rule of law still holds. Did you ever ask whose

law? Didn’t you ever ask why you ate bread an’ dripping an’ them on the North

Shore fed steak to their dogs? Fuck me dead. If you wanted me to be anything else,

why didn’t you just teach me how to cheat an’ swindle a fortune for myself an’ leave

it at that?

(Pause)

Why don’t you say something to me, for God’s sake? Why didn’t you ever say

anything to me? Were you frightened of me? Don’t you think I needed you?

Male Music Theatre Monologue Booklet 2015 v2

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Transcript of Male Music Theatre Monologue Booklet 2015 v2