Joshua Harmon’s Broadway playwriting debut could categorically be called a “millennial drama,” though that is not meant to be a deterrent. Find a character or situation that you can relate too. For that reason, Chekhov changed the playwright-actor relationship, mandating that it’s the actors who must let audiences know that what is not on the page is just as important—and oftentimes is more important—than what is. The 21st century has seen an influx of plays that deal with Islamophobia, and Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer-winning “Disgraced” is a seminal example of why that is and why that should continue. On paper, Taylor Mac’s “Hir” is a traditionally structured family drama, though there is absolutely nothing “traditional” about it, save for the fact that the story begins with a son returning from war. 10 Practice Scripts for Actors . Tweet . Featured Scripts. Though it carries the torch of many other “family dramas”—and the influence of those is certainly prevalent—“August” is written less like a three-hour drama and more like a three-hour episode of television. Unfortunately, the work of women is still produced fractionally compared to that of their male counterparts, and there is much work to be done in all artistic realms as far as representation is concerned.
Every actor has a moment to shine, but ultimately, no role is more paramount than another. Correspondingly, the five-character drama posits the ensemble to be in nearly claustrophobic close touch with the director’s point of view as well as each other’s. We’ve got some great contemporary monologues from published plays, films and even TV show and are adding more and more everyday. Click to read the two minute version of The Fact Checker.

Both roles match one another in their intensity, and each gets a multipage monologue that can be performed in an isolated context by actors of any given type to show off the breadth of their chops in just a few minutes’ time. Told in hindsight by its protagonist, the entire piece unfolds having been filtered through his id and worldview. Falling unmistakably under the oftentimes misleading “intellectual play” category due to the density of Akhtar’s writing, every actor would be bettering their craft for knowing how to navigate through the complex spoken passages as well as the challenging subject matter that is as poignant as it is topical. Where others on this list leave unsaid the yearnings and internal warfare of their characters, this Eugene O’Neill tour de force actually screams them—and, to be certain, if placed into unskilled hands it will sound exactly as such. This vehemently modern piece solidified Tracy Letts as a peerless voice of the 21st century, and exemplifies the atomic possibilities of equal parts coexistence of comedy and drama. Monologues for women from contemporary plays. Monologue Blogger maintains thousands of free contemporary monologues from published plays you may use for your next acting audition. 1. When she's not writing about television, film, or theater, she is definitely somewhere watching it. Find contemporary monologues for your auditions, classes, and theater training. To essentially force actors to mine truthfulness from surreality is an undying virtue of “Buried Child,” which may also be why the piece propelled Shepard to playwright superstardom. Any number of his celebrated and still highly produced plays could have made this list, but as the first of what is considered to be his “big four” major works, “The Seagull” sailed uncharted terrain in its intentional omission of major events. Find a monologue that fits you and your experiences. Larry Kramer’s heavily autobiographical, 1980s-set heartbreaker went boldly where most before it had not, blazing the trail for what is today a proliferated genre: “the AIDS drama.” But more broadly, it could be considered an activist drama, one which makes splashes on political and social scales as big as it does in the artistic realm. That pain is exacerbated by the sheer truthfulness of the subject matter, and for that reason, it provides a pointed telltale: Actors must be the vehicle for the audience’s emotions, and cannot under any circumstances let the emotions they are feeling in response to the material impede the material itself. Click here to read monologue on google books. The shifting settings and degrees of surreality create an atmosphere that is informed most heavily by the ephemeral nature of the actual theater. The late Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child” is considered by many contemporary theater critics and its luminaries to be the definitive portrait of the dramatized “homecoming.” Traditional, though, it is not. Tags: Monologues for women by women, Womens monologues, Audition monologues for women, Contemporary monologues, Modern monologues, Monologues from published plays.
Leading the charge is Lynn Nottage, whose “Ruined” received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama and which follows the fraught lives of women surviving in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the job of the actors to be as ferociously present as this magnum opus itself. I Ate the Divorce Papers - Comedic Monologue, Female Excerpt: "I ate them.