Monologues Broadway Student Summit 2020 1 DRAMATIC TREPLEV from The Seagull by Anton Chekhov (SPEECH 1). [Pulling a flower to pieces] She loves me, loves me not; loves--loves me not; loves--loves me not! [Laughing] You see, she doesn’t love me, and why should she? She likes life and love and gay clothes, and I am already twenty-five years old; a sufficient reminder to her that she is no longer young. When I am away she is only thirty-two, in my presence she is forty-three, and she hates me for it. She knows, too, that I despise the modern stage. She adores it, and imagines that she is working on it for the benefit of humanity and her sacred art, but to me the theatre is merely the vehicle of convention and prejudice. When the curtain rises on that little three-walled room, when those mighty geniuses, those high-priests of art, show us people in the act of eating, drinking, loving, walking, and wearing their coats, and attempt to extract a moral from their insipid talk; when playwrightsgive us under a thousand different guises the same, same, same old stuff, then I must needs run from it, as Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower that was about to crush him by its vulgarity. (SORIN. But we can’t do without a theatre.) TREPLEV. No, but we must have it under a new form. If we can’t do that, let us rather not have it at all. [Looking at his watch] (SPEECH 2) I love my mother, I love her devotedly, but I think she leads a stupid life. She always has this man of letters of hers on her mind, and the newspapers are always frightening her to death, and I am tired of it. Plain, human egoism sometimes speaks in my heart, and I regret that my mother is a famous actress. If she were an ordinary woman I think I should be a happier man. What could be more intolerable and foolish than my position, Uncle, when I find myself the only nonentity among a crowd of her guests, all celebrated authors and artists? I feel that they only endure me because I am her son. Personally I am nothing, nobody. I pulled through my third year at college by the skin of my teeth, as they say. I have neither money nor brains, and on my passport you may read that I am simply a citizen of Kiev. So was my father, but he was a well-known actor. When the celebrities that frequent my mother’s drawing-room deign to notice me at all, I know they only look at me to measure my insignificance; I read their thoughts, and suffer from humiliation. July 2020 Monologues Broadway Student Summit 2020 2 Emily from Thorton Wilder’s OUR TOWN I’m not mad at you. But, since you ask me, I might as well say it right out, George. (Oh goodbye, Mrs. Corcoran) I don’t like the whole change that’s come over you in the last year. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings; but I’ve just got to – tell the truth and shame the devil. Well up to a year ago, I used to like you a lot. And I used to watch you while you did everything – because we’d been friends so long. And then you began spending all your time at baseball. And you never stopped to speak to anyone anymore – not to really speak – not even to your own family, you didn’t. And George, it’s a fact – ever since you’ve been elected captain, you’ve got awful stuck up and conceited, and all the girls say so. And it hurts me to hear ‘em say it; but I got to agree with ‘em a little, because it’s true. I always expect a man to be perfect and I think he should be. Well, my father is. And as far as I can see, your father is. There’s no reason on earth why you shouldn’t be too. But you might as well know right now that I’m not perfect – It’s not easy for a girl to be perfect as a man, because, well, we girls are more – nervous. Now, I’m sorry I said all that about you. I don’t know what made me say it. Now I can see it’s not true at all. And I suddenly feel that it’s not important, anyway July 2020 Monologues Broadway Student Summit 2020 3 George from Our Town by Thornton Wilder Emily, I’m glad you spoke to me about that – that fault in my character. What you said was right; but there was one thing wrong with it. That’s where you said I wasn’t noticing – people – and you, for instance – why, you say you were watchin’ me when I did everything – Why, I was doing the same about you all the time. Why, sure – I always thought of you as one of the chief people I thought about. I always made sure where you were sitting on the bleachers, and who you were talking with, and for three days now I’ve tried to walk home with you; but something always got in the way. Yesterday, I was standing over by the wall waiting for you, and you walked home with Miss Corcoran. Listen, Emily, I’m going to tell you why I’m not going to Agricultural School. I think once you’ve found a person you’re very fond of – I mean a person who’s fond of you, too, and who likes you well enough to be interested in your character – Well, I think that’s just as important as college is, and even more so. That’s what I think: Emily, if I do improve, and make a big change, would you be – I mean, could you be? July 2020 Monologues Broadway Student Summit 2020 4 Marisol from ‘Marisol’ by Jose Rivera MARISOL: (No? Then what is it?) Are you real or not? ’Cause if you’re real and God is real and the Gospels are real, this would be the perfect time to tell me. ’Cause I once looked for angels, I did, in every shadow of my childhood—but I never found any. I thought I’d find you hiding inside the notes I sang to myself as a kid. The songs that put me to sleep and kept me from killing myself with fear. But I didn’t see you then. C’mon! Somebody up there has to tell me why I live the way I do! What’s going on here, anyway? Why is there a war on children in this city? Why are apples extinct? Why are they planning to drop human insecticide on overpopulated areas of the Bronx? Why has the color blue disappeared from the sky? Why does common rainwater turn your skin bright red? Why do cows give salty milk? Why did the Plague kill half my friends? AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOON? Where did the moon go? How come nobody’s seen it in nearly nine months . ? July 2020 Monologues Broadway Student Summit 2020 5 Teri from ‘Stage Door’ By Edna Ferber & George S. Kaufman I feel so low because this show closed after only 4 performances. The idiotic part of it is that I didn’t feel so terrible after the first minute. I thought, well, Keith’s coming around after the show, and we’ll go to Smitty’s and sit there and talk and it won’t seem so bad. But he never showed up. I don’t expect Keith to be like other people. I wouldn’t want him to be. One of the things that makes him so much fun is that he’s different. If he forgets an appointment it’s because he’s working and doesn’t notice. Only I wish he had come tonight. I needed him so. Kaye, I’m frightened. For the first time, I’m frightened. It’s three years now since I’ve been trying to be a professional actress. The first year it didn’t matter so much. I was so young. Nobody was ever as young as I was. I thought, they just don’t know. But I’ll get a good start and show them. I didn’t mind anything in those days. Not having any money, or quite enough food; and a pair of silk stockings always a major investment. I didn’t mind because I felt so sure that that wonderful part was going to come along. But it hasn’t. And suppose it doesn’t next year? Suppose it never comes? I know I can always go home....and marry some home-town boy—like Louise did. I can’t just go home and plump myself down on Dad. You know what a country doctor makes! When I was little I never knew how poor we were, because mother made everything seem so glamorous—so much fun. Even if I was sick it was a lot of fun, because then I was allowed to look at her scrapbook. I even used to pretend to be sick, just to look at it—and that took acting, with a doctor for a father. I adored that scrap-book. All those rep-company actors in wooden attitudes—I remember a wonderful picture of mother as Esmeralda. It was the last part she ever played, and she never finished the performance she fainted, right in the middle of the last act.