Here are two monologues from Voices Monologues for Young Actors. If you like them, we would be grateful if you give the book a review on Amazon by clicking here and scroll down to the bottom of the page and add your thoughts.
Comedic Monologue:
8. Stage Fright
Any · 2 minutes · Inner Monologue
The World: This character is standing in the wings of a stage, about to go on. It could be a play, a speech, a talent show; the specifics are left open. They are alone, and they are having a full internal crisis that is equal parts terrified and absurd. The monologue is the runaway freight train of their thoughts in the two minutes before they go on. By the end, something clicks and they step forward.
Okay. Don’t look at the audience.
Wait, you have to look at the audience.
You’re supposed to look at the audience.
Pick a spot. They said pick a spot.
The back wall. Look at the back wall.
But look friendly about it.
Are your hands doing that thing?
They’re doing that thing.
Put them somewhere. Where do hands go.
At your sides. Hands go at your sides.
Don’t think about your hands.
What’s my first line?
What is… I know this. I’ve said this line eight hundred times.
Eight hundred times in my bedroom to a poster of a movie I haven’t seen.
I know this line.
(a long moment of genuine blankness)
I do not know this line.
Okay. Okay. It’ll come back. It always comes back.
Just walk out there and it will come back.
Your body knows what to do.
Your body has done the work.
Your brain is just — having a moment.
Your brain is not invited right now.
You practiced. You prepared. You did the thing you were supposed to do.
And every single person out there
is hoping — actually hoping —
that you’re going to be great.
(the lights shift — a cue from offstage)
…They want you to be great.
(and something settles.)
Okay.
Hi.
I’m ready.
Dramatic Monologue:
23. Invisible
Female · 2 minutes · Inner Monologue
The World: This character is a teenage girl who is not an outcast — she’s not bullied, not friendless, not visibly struggling. She is simply the kind of person who moves through spaces without being fully noticed. She sits in the middle of the classroom. She’s in photos but nobody tags her. She feels the specific loneliness of being present but unseen. This monologue is not a cry for help; it is a precise, thoughtful articulation of an experience a lot of young people carry quietly.
I want to be clear about something.
I have friends.
I go to things.
I’m not standing alone at parties in the corner.
I am in the room.
But there’s this thing that happens.
Where I’ll say something
and there’ll be this half-second pause
and then the conversation moves on
like I spoke in a frequency
that didn’t quite register.
And it’s not cruel.
That’s what I’m trying to explain.
It’s not that anyone is leaving me out.
It’s that no one is noticing they’re not letting me in.
There’s a difference.
I got a library book last month
and on the checkout card inside the front cover —
do you know those old cards?
With the names of everyone who borrowed it before?
Someone had written their name so small
you could barely read it.
And then someone after them wrote in big looping letters
right over the top of it.
I thought about that person with the small writing for a long time.
(beat)
I don’t want to be invisible.
I don’t think I deserve to be invisible.
I’m working on making my writing bigger.
That’s the best way I know to say it.
I’m working on it.