The Monologue Store

Feel free to use all of the monologues listed on the site for your acting needs! If you don’t find what you are looking for visit the monologue store for complete lists of female monologues.

Finding Appropriate Female Monologues

When searching for female monologues, you need to keep what you are trying to accomplish in mind. What kind of personality do you have? Are you the quirky girl next door type? The seductive vixen? Or are you the catty jealous rival of the goody two shoes protagonist?

Your monologue should be an extension of your personality. So while you are browsing through female monologues, keep your type in mind. You want to showcase your personality.

Feel more confident and powerful when delivering your monologues

Preparing A Monologue For An Audition Or Class

Alot of people are confused as to go about preparing a monologue for audition or stage. Let me tell you something, it isn’t that hard! You just need to follow a few simple steps in order to maximize your effectiveness in the audition or class. One of the common misconceptions about monologues is that you should memorize all of the stage directions and words first, THIS IS NOT TRUE!

To prepare a monologue you should first decide where your character is in the scene, and who is there with you. If you haven’t read the play then you can use your imagination based on the words in the text. It is your creative choice to decide where you are, because the point of any monologue is to MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU. What do I mean by this?

You should always choose a monologue that shows off your personality. Forget everything else if you are trying too hard to convey something that you simply aren’t, no one is going to believe it! So you want to choose a monologue that makes the light in you shine, something you can relate to! Although it is the goal of any actor to be as versatile as possible, the goal before that is BELIEVABILITY!

The next step you should take is reading between the lines. To do this, you may have to re read your monologue over and over again, THIS IS OK! Eventually the purpose of the monologue will rise to the surface and you will understand what is going on in the scene. Another great way to read between the lines is to establish a goal.

By establishing a goal for your character you eliminate many of the common mistakes actors will make in a given scene. When you have a direct purpose you are aiming for it is much more interesting, and it makes you as an actor less nervous. This is important because you as an actor SHOULD NOT BE NERVOUS. It does not serve you in any way and takes away from the believability of your character. Why would your character be nervous in a scene? It does not help you at all!

Finally IGNORE STAGE DIRECTIONS in the monologue. Yes you heard me correctly. Stage directions are merely guidelines to help the final product of the play take form. As an actor in an audition, it will limit you from making your OWN creative choices and fulfilling your artistic interpretation of the character. What could be worse than that?

Feel more confident and powerful when delivering your monologues

Memorization Does Not Equal Readiness

Everyone considers themselves a natural at one time or another on the stage, this is just a fact. When we look at the actors on the silver screen making big money, we say to ourselves “Hey I can do that!” The truth of the matter is, there is a lot of hard work that goes into preparing for these roles.

What we don’t realize is that there are countless hours of rehearsal, rigorous preparation, and exhausting circumstances resulting in the final product we see. Just like a professional athlete that makes the winning shot to score a game, hours have been spent in practice to realize one single moment. Such is the same in the acting processs.

This is where alot of actors fail in the creative process. It is not about walking on stage and being “natural” it is being believable in the moment after preparing a variety of interesting choices. If one were to just jump on a set without preparing, it would be like jumping out of a plane without knowing where the rip chord was on your parachute! Disastrous!

Fortunately for us there are casting directors to weed out the people that just walk in thinking they are the next big thing. As much as it pains me to say, there are countless numbers of talented actors that do not train their craft. When going to an audition you can always tell these people by their level of commitment to the script. If they are joking around and talking to other actor’s, you may safely assume they are not professionals.

A real professional actor will handle a situation as follows:

1) Show up early and request sides and sign in (if available)

2) Find a nice quiet place to get familiar with the script

3) Do NOT talk to other actors your time is absolutely precious

4) Go in and give the best reading you possibly can!

Feel more confident and powerful when delivering your monologues

Major Barbara

LADY BRITOMART. Well, dear, there were other differences. I really cannot bear an immoral man. I am not a Pharisee, I hope; and I should not have minded his merely doing wrong things: we are none of us perfect. But your father didn’t exactly do wrong things: he said them and thought them: that was what was so dreadful. He really had a sort of religion of wrongness just as one doesn’t mind men practising immorality so long as they own that they are in the wrong by preaching morality; so I couldn’t forgive Andrew for preaching immorality while he practised morality. You would all have grown up without principles, without any knowledge of right and wrong, if he had been in the house. You know, my dear, your father was a very attractive man in some ways. Children did not dislike him; and he took advantage of it to put the wickedest ideas into their heads, and make them quite unmanageable. I did not dislike him myself: very far from it; but nothing can bridge over moral disagreement.

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Major Barbara

BARBARA: Yes, you, and all the other naughty mischievous children of men. But I can’t. I was happy in the Salvation Army for a moment. I escaped from the world into a paradise of enthusiasm and prayer and soul saving; but the moment our money ran short, it all came back to Bodger: it was he who saved our people: he, and the Prince of Darkness, my papa. Undershaft and Bodger: their hands stretch everywhere: when we feed a starving fellow creature, it is with their bread, because there is no other bread; when we tend the sick, it is in the hospitals they endow; if we turn from the churches they build, we must kneel on the stones of the streets they pave. As long as that lasts, there is no getting away from them. Turning our backs on Bodger and Undershaft is turning our backs on life.

Feel more confident and powerful when delivering your monologues

Major Barbara

LADY BRITOMART. It’s not pleasant for me, either, especially if you are still so childish that you must make it worse by a display of embarrassment. It is only in the middle classes, Stephen, that people get into a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are wicked people in the world. In our class, we have to decide what is to be done with wicked people; and nothing should disturb our self possession. Now ask your question properly. (…) Treat you as a child! What do you mean? It is most unkind and ungrateful of you to say such a thing. You know I have never treated any of you as children. I have always made you my companions and friends, and allowed you perfect freedom to do and say whatever you liked, so long as you liked what I could approve of.

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A Doll’s House

Nora: (meditatively, and with a half smile.) Yes—some day, perhaps, after many years, when I am no longer as nice-looking as I am now. Don’t laugh at me! I mean, of course, when Torvald is no longer as devoted to me as he is now; when my dancing and dressing-up and reciting have palled on him; then it may be a good thing to have something in reserve—(Breaking off,) What nonsense! That time will never come. Now, what do you think of my great secret, Christine? Do you still think I am of no use? I can tell you, too, that this affair has caused me a lot of worry. It has been by no means easy for me to meet my engagements punctually. I may tell you that there is something that is called, in business, quarterly interest, and another thing called payment in instalments, and it is always so dreadfully difficult to manage them. I have had to save a little here and there, where I could, you understand. I have not been able to put aside much from my housekeeping money, for [pg 24] Torvald must have a good table. I couldn’t let my children be shabbily dressed; I have felt obliged to use up all he gave me for them, the sweet little darlings!

Use your time effectively while preparing monologues for auditions

As You Like It

PHEBE: Think not I love him, though I ask for him;
‘Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well.
But what care I for words? Yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
It is a pretty youth- not very pretty;
But, sure, he’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him.
He’ll make a proper man. The best thing in him
Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue
Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.
He is not very tall; yet for his years he’s tall;
His leg is but so-so; and yet ’tis well.
There was a pretty redness in his lip,
A little riper and more lusty red
Than that mix’d in his cheek; ’twas just the difference
Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.
There be some women, Silvius, had they mark’d him
In parcels as I did, would have gone near
To fall in love with him; but, for my part,
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him;
For what had he to do to chide at me?
He said mine eyes were black, and my hair black,
And, now I am rememb’red, scorn’d at me.
I marvel why I answer’d not again;
But that’s all one: omittance is no quittance.
I’ll write to him a very taunting letter,

And thou shalt bear it; wilt thou, Silvius?

Without a doubt training can help you land many roles

Twelfth Night

VIOLA: I left no ring with her. What means this lady?

Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her.

She made good view of me; indeed, so much

That, as methought, her eyes had lost her tongue,

For she did speak in starts distractedly.

She loves me sure; the cunning of her passion

Invites me in this churlish messenger.

None of my lord’s ring? Why, he sent her none.

I am the man. If it be so, as ’tis,

Poor lady, she were better love a dream.

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness

Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

How easy is it for the proper false

In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!

Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,

For such as we are made of, such we be.

How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly;

And I (poor monster) fond as much on him;

And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me.

What will become of this? As I am man,

My state is desperate for my master’s love.

As I am woman (now alas the day!),

What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe?

O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;

It is too hard a knot for me t’ untie.

Use your time effectively while preparing monologuesfor auditions