How do you choose an audition monologue?

A monologue does a lot of work for a short speech. In two minutes it has to show casting who you are, what range of roles you belong in, and whether you can make a written speech feel like something a person needs to say, right now, to someone in particular. Choosing well is half the battle, and it is where most actors lose the most ground before they start.

Monologues come up most in theater auditions, drama school entry, general auditions for theater companies, open calls, and agent meetings. Screen auditions rarely use them, since casting will give you sides instead. If you are asked for one, the criteria below apply in roughly this order.

Start with what the audition asks for

Read the call before you read a single play. Auditions often specify length, number of pieces (one, or two contrasting), period (classical, contemporary, or one of each), source (from a published play, or "no film or TV"), and sometimes style ("in the style of the show"). Drama schools in particular publish precise requirements, and some list speeches or playwrights to avoid.

Follow every instruction. Choosing a piece that ignores the brief tells the panel you did not read it, and no performance recovers from that. If the call says "a speech written after a certain year," check the date of the play.

Choose a role you could be cast in now

Pick a character in your casting range: roughly your playing age, someone you could plausibly be cast as in a production next month. A monologue is a sample of what you would be like in a role, so give them a sample they can imagine using.

This rules out more than people expect. A speech written for someone thirty years older, a part tied to a very specific physical type you are not, or a role whose life experience you cannot yet play convincingly all make casting do extra imaginative work. They can do it, but they usually will not.

Within your range, look for something close to you in temperament or experience. It is easier to be truthful in a speech when you understand from the inside what the character wants and why.

Make sure it is active

This is the single biggest criterion, and the most common failure. A strong audition monologue is a person talking to someone, trying to get something from them, with something at stake if they fail. The other person is silent, but they are there, and the speech is changing them (or trying to).

Weak choices tend to be the opposite. Long memories told to nobody in particular, poetic descriptions of a feeling, speeches that explain the character's backstory, and diary-style reflections can all be beautiful to read and very hard to play, because nothing in them pushes against anything. Ask of any speech you are considering:

• Who am I talking to, and why can't I wait to say this?
• What do I want them to do, say or feel by the end? (If you are new to the idea, here is what an objective is in acting.)
• What is stopping them from giving it to me?
• Does the speech change direction at least once, a moment where I try something new?

If you can answer all four quickly and clearly, the speech will play. If you have to invent most of the answers, keep looking.

A monologue that tells a story can still be active, as long as the story is being told for a reason. When Othello tells the Venetian senators how he courted Desdemona, he is answering her father's charge that he won her with witchcraft, and he needs the room to believe him. That is why the story builds to "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them." The same story told to an empty stage is a recital.

Get the length right

When the call names a limit, stay inside it with room to spare. When it does not, a common expectation is about one to two minutes, and many panels are happier with ninety seconds than with two and a half. Shorter pieces leave time for a redirect, and a redirect is where you get to show how you work.

Time it out loud, at the pace you will actually perform it, with pauses. Most actors underestimate how long a speech takes once it is acted. If it runs long, trimming is normal practice: cut repetitions, secondary images or a digression, while keeping the arc and the character's own words intact.

Avoid what casting hears every day

Some speeches are performed so often that casting directors and audition panels hear them many times in a season. Usually they became popular because they are good. The trouble is that you are compared with every other version in the panel's memory, and the panel's attention drops the moment they recognize the first line.

You do not need a list of pieces to avoid. You can spot the pattern yourself. A speech is probably overdone if it appears in the most popular monologue anthologies, comes up first when you search for monologues for your age and type, is the famous speech from a famous play, or comes from a film everyone has seen. Ask teachers and other actors, too; they will tell you which ones they are sick of.

The best way to find something fresher is to read plays, whole ones, especially recent work, plays from other countries, and less produced work by well-known writers. The speech you find inside a play you read for pleasure is more likely to be yours than one someone else extracted for a book.

Use published plays, and read the whole thing

Choose monologues from published plays unless the call allows otherwise. Many theater auditions and drama schools require it, and published plays give you a full context: the story, the relationships, what happened right before the speech. Standalone monologues written for monologue websites or collections often lack that context, and many calls explicitly do not accept them.

Always read the entire play. Panels sometimes ask about the character or the situation, and an actor who only knows the speech will be caught out. More practically, the play gives you the given circumstances that make the speech playable. You cannot know what you want from someone until you know who they are to you.

Build a contrasting set

Over time, aim to have a small repertoire ready to go, so a last-minute audition never sends you looking. A useful set for most actors includes:

• A contemporary dramatic speech.
• A contemporary comic speech.
• A classical speech in verse, often Shakespeare, if you audition for theater.
• Optionally, a second classical piece in prose or a different period, and a short piece of about a minute for calls with tight limits.

Pairs should contrast in more than just mood. Look for differences in status, energy, rhythm, and the kind of want: one character pushing hard against someone, another trying to hold something together. Two speeches that are both furious young people confronting a parent are not a contrasting pair even if one is a comedy.

Once you have chosen, the work becomes learning it deeply enough that it feels spontaneous. This guide covers how to memorize a monologue, and the general audition process is in how to prepare for an audition. Keep the set fresh by revisiting each piece every few weeks, and replace a speech when you age out of it or stop being surprised by it.

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