Outrageous - Drama Monologue

O U T R A G E O U S

You say you have to lay people off. That’s terrible, and you look awful. You're really getting yourself worked up about it, huh?

It’s never easy to ruin someone’s life, is it?

Don’t look at me like that! You just stood here for an hour, and told me your sob story, then you stood here for another hour, and told two other managers about it. You stood here talking, and the guy you’re about to lay off is actually doing work. In the time it took you to stand here and bitch, I could have paid that guy for three hours of work. Maybe we should lay you off? Maybe we should take your pay check?

The hypocrisy is staggering. You stand here with your fake sadness. That puppy dog look. Meanwhile there is some guy working his ass off in the heat that is about to be told to gather his things, because today is his last day.

You come up to me, you tell me about your troubles. You tell me how this affects the departments. How it has put you in a terrible mood. How if we keep firing people, we can never train them right. Everything you say is about the bottom line, and in the same breath you curse the bottom line as if it has nothing to do with you.

What about them? What about their lives? What does this do to the morale of our employees to see people culled like cattle? What does it do to a family to hear their breadwinner was laid off?

But yeah, I hope you survive this terrible crisis. Now go do your fucking job.

Analyzing Monologues and Tips On Performing

I am going to do a different kind of monologue today. This monologue is going to explain my thought process when I write a scene as well as my thought process when I coach an actor to perform it for an audience. 

Let's take a look at a dramatic monologue:

Oh but you are so perfect! You take every opportunity to tell me when I am wrong! You think I can't make decisions on my own! That I'm going to somehow end up on the street without daddy there to tell me how I fucked up.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe you don't have life nailed down the way you think you do? I mean, you know what they say about glass houses right?

You sit there every day, judging me. I come to you for help and all I get are those eyes, probing me. Have you ever looked at yourself? Asked yourself...

What the hell am I doing here? I mean, if the only purpose of life is to keep on living. To wake up in the morning, eat, sleep, repeat, then why do it!

Look. Will you do me a favor? Go out with me today. Just trust me, we’ll just, go for a walk or something. Down at the park. Just you and me. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me and hell. Maybe you’ll get a tan.

What do you say? Will you come?

My thoughts on an effective monologue and an effective performance are kind of one in the same. In order to understand a monologue you must understand the audience and how they will react to a given written word once performed.

I think a common mistake by actors is they see a given monologue and they believe that it is one note. I see good actors give an otherwise boring yet thoroughly convincing performance simply because they do not understand that they are not performing for the camera, but instead, the audience. They do not understand the emotional arc and how to manipulate their audience both physically and emotionally.

Now I know what you may be saying. "No shit Sherlock." You say that, yet you may be thinking this is simpler than it is. "Just act good." Please, it's not that simple.

A monologue is supposed to have an emotional arc, whether that arc be a build up to a fall, or a frantic roller-coaster of emotion with many dips and many highs and devastating lows.

Let's walk through an example real quick:

Anger:

Oh but you are so perfect! You take every opportunity to tell me when I am wrong! You think I can't make decisions on my own! That I'm going to somehow end up on the street without daddy there to tell me how I fucked up. 

Anger is a powerful emotion. It has impact on you, the person you are angry with, as well as the people around you who are not even involved in the conversation. Ask yourself what happens when you yell at someone. What do they do? 

Most back away, reel back. Especially if you catch them off guard. So if you are in the audience, or behind a desk at a casting, and someone makes you reel back, surprised, that's powerful. You make them take notice. You shake them out of the mundane, day to day, one millionth: "I'm so sad, daddy why don't you like me." Monologues they hear every day. 

I'm not going to be so bold as to say they don't see anger but when you can command their attention the whole way through by taking them on an emotional journey, then you have done your job. The next stop on the journey is the calming stage. You are coming down off your anger now, because you realize you aren't mad at him. You feel bad for him, but there is still some anger there and you can't just let go of it totally.

Calming:

Did you ever stop to think that maybe you don't have life nailed down the way you think you do? I mean, you know what they say about glass houses right?

You sit there every day, judging me. I come to you for help and all I get are those eyes, probing me. Have you ever looked at yourself? Asked yourself...

What happens when you whisper? When you speak low. People come forward, they lean in so they can hear what you have to say. You have their attention now only because you started off so explosively. Let's rate our anger on a scale of 1-10. A 1 is slightly irritated. A ten is spitting mad, your face red and crumpled. In the beginning you are at about an 8, a 9 if you are brave but by the time you get to calming, you have slowly brought your anger down to a five. When you get to the end of the calming state, you should be somewhere along the lines of a 3 to a 1.

In transit between these feelings should be a moment of silence. A moment of reflection for your character. Time to think about what you are going to say. 

What this moment really is, is time for you to gather your emotion for the next scene. Whether you use the Meisner technique, or you pull your emotions from an event or person in your past, this is your moment to gather it.

Surprise anger:

What the hell am I doing here? I mean, if the only purpose of life is to keep on living. To wake up in the morning, eat, sleep, repeat, then why do it!

So now that our audience is leaning in to hear what we have to say, we hit them in the face with a 6 maybe a 7 if you can get there on the anger scale again. Once again you have them reeling back emotionally from the onslaught you are hitting them with. Once again, you are slowly bringing all of this anger down to the moment of emotional bareness. Here is the finale. 

So while you are working your way through the anger scale, tears should be being brought forth. In order to do this, your anger must be about something real. Something or someone from your life that you can associate to this. Once the tears start coming , let them flow. Do not try to control it. Sob if you have to. Many people try to control the emotion. Do not. Allow the emotion to control you.

Your goal is emotional bareness.

Sincerity:

I get sad watching you. Sitting there, watching the world pass by in fucking… 

Emotion has you chocked up, tripping over your words. Look for elipses. They are either lapses in the characters train of thought, or they are tripping themselves up.

Sound bites, on the news, while the real world is out there happening every day without you. All this time. All this pain. Just avoiding life.

This is the moment of sincerity of emotion. You have about 10 seconds max to transition from anger, to sadness. Preferably with tears. Sadness is equal to anger in a lot of ways. Anger is an expression of hopelessness at times. The hopelessness in this case of watching someone you love waste away. Wasting the potential of life because they feel they are incapable of doing anything worthwhile.

Every point in this scene should be emphasized. Pauses used to gather thoughts and emotions should be inserted to increase the tension. When you pause between thoughts, what does the audience do? They listen, they lean in. They wait, impatient, for the next word. Use that impatience to increase the tension. The question that this peice asks of the viewer is: Will the characters come to understand and accept each other for their flaws... Well, will they? That depends on you. Depends on how you chose to play the next part.

So, for sake of argument, let's say that while you are angry, the sadness should show through. The voice should be calling out in anger, but the face should show the despair you feel over feeling helpless.

What is the audience doing? If we have taken them on this roller-coaster ride, they should be right there with us, wanting to share in our sadness.

At the end of this scene we have a moment to think once again. To wipe our tears, maybe even laugh at ourselves. Look at the mess we've mad of ourselves. We haven't cried like this since we were kids. You take a deep breath and look at the man, wasting away and say:

Hopeful:

Look. Will you do me a favor? Go out with me today. Just trust me, we’ll just, go for a walk or something. Down at the park. Just you and me. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me and hell. Maybe you’ll get a tan.

What do you say? Will you come?

You have just taken your audience on a journey. Led them through a story that has an end. A complete three act within just a snippet of time. They still have questions. What did the father say? Did they go for their walk? Did they come to understand each other?

These questions are good, it shows they were paying attention.

So what is essential to a good performance? A knowledge of how the audience will react when confronted by a particular sound, volume, or emotional cue. How do you sharpen this knowledge?

That will be a topic for next time.

I hope you enjoyed this entry and that this helped open your mind a little.

Penicunt - Comedy Monologue

P E N I C U N T

By: Paul William Fassett

Penis... Let the word swirl around in your head like mouth wash, then spit it out.

What a sterile sounding word, right? I prefer cock! 

Wait, that came out wrong. I mean it's a word with a little punch is all. You can almost imagine your dick with a feather mohawk and a beak clawing the eyes out of some other cock. It's a masculine word. That's the problem with society today. People are becoming walking pussies by words that are supposed to describe their fun bits. Even words like cunt. You think cock has punch, try calling someone a cunt. That's like a hard right hook to the jaw. Words create visuals, especially the ones people are afraid of. When I hear cunt, I think of a huge pot hole in the street filled with oily water, surrounded by dead birds.

Pussy though... Now that's a word I can get behind. Like a fluffy cloud floating in a big blue sky, all alone, made yellow and orange by a low hanging sun.

When I think of vagina, though, I don't imagine a warm wet playground like I would like... No. I think of some obscure village in Romania that raises sheep whose number one export are wool pelvic wigs. It's sterile, too clinical a word to be sexy.

Don't believe me? Then let me prove it. Close your eyes for just a moment and imagine this. Your girlfriend is laying on her back, naked, ready to... Receive you... She pulls you closer and whispers into your ear: “I want you to insert your penis into my vagina.”

I think it's safe to assume you would be a half mast sailboat floudering in the water hoping for a wind to take you far far away. So the point is, political correctness is great and all, but leave my genitals alone, unless you plan on knocking them around a bit.

Just don't call it a fucking penis.

Null Object Pattern - Dark Villain Monologue

This is a snippet from a story I am working on called Null Object Pattern. Works as a sort of weird monologue and should hold a casting directors attention.

N U L L   O B J E C T   P A T T E R N

BY: Paul William Fassett

You don't matter. I wouldn't shed a tear for you no more than I would shed a tear for the millions that died in the Holocaust. Now I don't deny it was a tragedy, I'm not a complete monster. There's just no emotional attachment there. I didn't know anyone that died there so how could I weep? 

After all, people cry more for dead pets than they do the deaths of people they never met.

Just yesterday I was coming home from work and through my windshield I could see a bunny, or a rabbit, (hard to tell the difference). It was white, with pools of blood gathering at its matted fur. It must have gotten hit by a car maybe, I don't know. It was limping, bloodied, up to the curb dragging an injured leg behind it. 

The curb was too high for it to climb but it tried nonetheless. Over and over again. Failing each time. Smacking up against the curb flatly, then falling back until it finally just laid there, breathing heavily, ready to accept death. 

But death never seemed to come... 

It just kept on breathing, and breathing, and blinking, and breathing, and breathing. Blink, expand, contract, expand, contract, blink... 

I watched unable to move, unable to think of what I could do, aside from watch and feel sadness for the pitiful little thing. His blinking became slower, his breathing shallow, until its body shuddered with a coughing fit. Slowly its chest rose, and deflated. Mouth dropped open, eyes stared ceaselessly at me, as if pleading. Pleading for help, or comfort, as if I should run from my car, cradle its head and shout up to the dark sky: 

“No! Not this one! You can't have him!”

I didn't posses the power to do anything, and it didn't matter... It was a dead thing, and didn't matter...

I Can't Forget Her - Drama Monologue

I   C A N ' T   F O R G E T   H E R

BY: Paul William Fassett

That's the problem! You never get over something like this. It sticks with you forever and the harder I fight to push the memory out, the more vivid the pictures become. It's like a scab that keeps peeling off. You don't just forget people. They hang around in your head like ghosts, appearing out of nowhere. They don't care what you are doing, or how inconvenient it might be to cry at that moment. They want attention.

How do you forget a child? No matter the age. It came from me! It came from you! How do you expect me to forget that and how the fuck can you!

This isn't a matter of: “She's gone, we have to move on.” I can't get her face out of my head! She's... She's in here... Smiling at me one day. Showing the gaps where her baby teeth hadn't grown in, and the next she's in a coffin with her eyes closed. Looking so peaceful but so fucking dead!

How am I supposed to forget that? How am I supposed to move on when the only purpose I had for living the last five years is gone? What? Do I take up a hobby? Take my mind off her the way you'd take your mind off a dead pet? How do you do it? Pour alcohol on the problem? Maybe I'll take up needle point? Yeah. That will keep me from waking up in the middle of the night to an imaginary crying in my head.

You know what the worst part is? I still get panic attacks. I wake up in the middle of the night and on instinct I walk in to her room to find her crib empty and for a split second my breath gets caught in my chest. My heart starts beating out of control. I think: “Where is she?” And when I look around and see the emptiness of the room, how you gutted it. I remember, she's gone.

She's gone and I can't let go....

Simple Things - Comedy Monologue

S I M P L E   T H I N G S

BY Paul William Fassett 

I was watching. Watching them. They look like people. Move like people. Talk like people. I guess that makes them people but regardless of the outer shell, they just don't seem right. Their heads buried into a shiny black device, poking at their tiny screens with their fingers like they are piloting the Starship Enterprise through an asteroid belt.


Were we meant to be like this?


I mean, can't you imagine a time when people did things? Big things... Like... I don't know... Built shit? We live in a time where we can fly to other states, even across the oceans to get to other countries, and someone had to make that thing. The plane. Someone invented that. I mean when you consider that someone invented a flying vehicle, it's like, well what have you done lately right?


Computer chip? Fuck you! Can it fly?


Ipad? Fuck you! Can I seat a hundred people on it and shuttle them like a heavenly chariot across the ocean to a land where they don't speak my language? Uhhh noooooo. Try again.


Cell phone? Again, fuck you! Sure you might be able to facebook your friends while you take a shit but you aren't taking a shit while thirty-thousand feet in the air now are you? Nope! I thought not.


I don't know. Just seems like people just don't do anything anymore. I mean, I know we discovered the human genome and all but seriously... Where is my personal teleporter? Seventies Sci-fi told me we would be flying in a hover car right now. What did we get instead? Angry Birds.


People have become such simple things.

I Am Sorry - Drama Monologue

Day 2 and I am posting up a drama monologue. I hope you guys like it and as always, feel free to use it for auditions with the caveat that you must tell us how it went.

I   A M   S O R R Y

BY   Paul William Fassett

There is a vicious little monster eating my insides and the doctors say I got about a month to live. In doctor speak that can mean anywhere between a day and two years but I can feel it coming. I know it's not gonna be long before I'm staring up at the ceiling with morphine pumping into my body, looking at my wife's face one last time before the days disappear and I become nothing. 

There's something that I need to tell you first and I know we haven't spoken in years but it's important that I tell someone. You, my daughter, are the child of a madman.

I could never enjoy the time we spent with each other because I was so afraid. I was always looking for a reflection of myself in your face but it never showed and I am grateful for that but I am sorry that it took so long to say this. I am sorry.

I am sorry for every missed birthday these last five years. I am sorry for every time I called you something awful. I'm sorry for every Christmas card I ever threw away and I'm sorry for every time you cried and I didn't hug you until you stopped. I'm sorry I could not accept you for who you were and whoever you chose to be with. I'm sorry for the night you came over to see me, in the rain, and tried to make things right.

I'm sorry that I slammed the door in your face.

I'm sorry that it took me until my deathbed to realize what a bastard I've been and I am sorry that this letter will not reach you in time for any of this to matter. I just wanted you to know that you were always perfect just the way you were and I was the one with all the flaws.

I'm sorry that I was disappointed in you. I was disappointed in myself and every small failure on your part was a way for me to make myself feel better. A way, through you, to make my life not seem so bad.

I've spent the last three years of my life, sitting, waiting for something, while on the inside I was dying. All I needed was to write this letter.

I'm sorry I did not do it sooner.

With love,

Your father.

Fucking Horrible - Comedy Monolgue

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. This will be a place for me to post my many MANY monologues which I create on a daily basis. You may use them for auditions as much as you want, the only rule (if you can call it a rule) is that you have to tell us how the audition went in the comment section below.

Without further delay, I bring to you: 

F U C K I N G   H O R R I B L E

BY   Paul William Fassett

 

I have one singular love in this world and it is a simple love. It's the one thing that gets me up in the morning. That love is, you ask?

The squeegee. Yes. I love to clean my car windows.

It's the one thing that keeps me going is knowing, that no matter what happens in my life, at least I know how to get a streak free shine on my windows. See I have this special technique. I go up and down, with the spongy part. Then I go side to side with the squeegee. I never leave a single streak.

So that's why I attacked that homeless man.

He was standing there on the corner, yelling at something imaginary floating in the air around him, when he saw me. At a dead stop. The red light at Vermont and Hollywood. The one that takes forever to change... That's when I saw it. The bottle of blue stuff. Soap streak in liquid form. I wasn't going to let him take away one of the last joys I had in life so I scrambled to get my windows down. My hands out, waving, practically screaming: “No thank you!”

He kept on coming and was already half-way through the intersection when I got out of the car. I stood in front of him but he actually tried to go around me to get to my windows. That's when I pushed him. That's also when I noticed he was an old man.

So yes. I pushed down a crazy old homeless man. To be fair though, tensions were high. I had a change of heart when I saw him laying there. Might have had something to do with him screaming: “I'm trying to clean his windows! Asshole!”

That's when I noticed the car sitting next to me at the light. Hasidic guy. He was wearing one of those crazy top hats and the spiral spaghetti hair. Anyway he looked straight on down the road. Had a white knuckle grip on the steering-wheel. When the light went green he took off like a lightning bolt.

I put a hand out to help the old man up but he slapped it away and got up on his own. Called me every kind of fucker name he could think of. Like mother-fucker, cock-sucker, crazy mother-fucker. Even some colourful variations I can't quite remember. He pushed me and then told me to go: “Fuck my mother.” And given all the accusations of mother fondling before, it sounded like he was giving me a command, so I punched him.

Yes. I know. I punched an old homeless man.

I'm fucking horrible...