How to Never Audition Again

I was a terrible auditioner. The worst. Monologues were never my strength. I never won a lead role for a director that didn’t already know me or know my talent until I was in my 30’s, and that audition process didn’t require a prepared monologue.

After leaving drama school in the 90’s, I moved out to Denver and started hanging out at the Denver Civic Theater where one of my college professors knew an artist working out of that location. I worked some of the volunteer positions, such as taking tickets, ushering, concessions and general cleaning of the theater. This is the kind of story that is “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” The civic was a collaborative space with many companies working together. The all seemed to like me and one company recruited me to teach some children’s theater programs.

Long story short, after a few years of weaving in and out of back stage duties and children’s theater instruction, some of the artists formed a new company and left the civic. They took me with them and we acted as a type of repertory company, where the core group took turns at lead roles in different productions. This allowed me to stay frightened of monologues, which is both great for my self esteem and terrible for my growth as an artist.

After that company split up, some of the core people formed yet another company and this time we all used our talents to write our own scripts, including modern operas. I continued to be focused on teaching and producing theater for young people and never having to audition for our mainstage work. The roles were now written for me.

There are two main take-aways to this story. The first is having the courage to build a life that is exactly what you want. I wanted to live and breath theater without having to audition. That is exactly what I built for myself.

The second point is by writing my own works and spending decades teaching theater to both young people and adults, I learned why I didn’t resonate with monologues and why I thought I was not good at them.

I never put in the work to get good at any monologue.

I let my fear of monologues block me from a tool that can be extremely powerful.

I am currently writing a collection of original monologues for young artists that will include all the guidance I wished that I had. There is coaching and character building work laid out for each piece that will be both a resource for the student learning the script and for teachers who need some classroom tools for teaching monologues.

This collection is not ready yet. I will post it hear when it is done. In the meantime, here’s one monologue included in the collection.

The Alibi

Character: JESSICA, late teens/early 20s, increasingly frantic

Where was I? Where was I. That’s such a funny question because obviously I was exactly where I said I was, which was at the library. Studying. For my exam. The big one. In the quiet section. Very quiet. So quiet that nobody saw me, which is actually very normal for a library, when you think about it, because people are focused on their books and not on, you know, looking around taking attendance like it’s some kind of roll call situation.

(beat, realizing this sounds bad)

BUT there was a librarian. Tall woman. Glasses. Very… librarian-y. She definitely saw me. I mean, I didn’t get her name because that would be weird, right? Walking up to a librarian and going “Hello, what’s your name, I need you to remember me specifically”? That’s suspicious behavior. And I wasn’t being suspicious because I was just at the library. Studying.

(gaining false confidence)

Actually, now that I think about it, I did interact with her because I checked out a book. So there’s a record. It’s in the system. Time-stamped and everything. Very official. The book was… about… history. American history. No, European. European American history. The history of Europeans coming to America. Very educational. I’m retaining so much information from it already.

(pause, then steamrolling forward)

And THEN after the library, I stopped for coffee. At that place. You know the one. The one with the coffee. And the barista wrote my name on the cup, so she’d remember me too, except I gave her a fake name because I always do that, not because I’m hiding anything but because one time they called out “Jessica” and three people came up and it was humiliating, so now I say my name is… Svetlana. Which in retrospect makes me more memorable, not less, but the point is I was definitely there, smelling like coffee, holding European American history, being very innocent and normal.

(desperately)

So when you ask me where I was, I just think it’s interesting that I have to defend being at the two most boring places on earth – a library and a coffee shop – when I could have said I was somewhere exciting and made myself look better, but I didn’t, because I’m telling the truth! And the truth is boring! Which is suspicious in its own way, I guess, but—

(catching herself)

Not that there’s anything to BE suspicious about. Because there isn’t. I was at the library. With Svetlana the barista and the tall librarian who definitely exists.

(long pause)

Can we please talk about literally anything else now?

 

Performance Notes:
Build the pace and panic gradually – start somewhat confident, end nearly breathless
Physical comedy opportunities: nervous gestures, defensive body language, false confidence that crumbles
The pauses are important for comedic timing and to let the absurdity land
Commit fully to each new detail even as they make things worse