Category: Monologues

Monologues and Dialogues I have done, liked, memorized, etc.

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Domingo Montoya

Book: The Princess Bride
Author: William Goldman

Description: Domingo Montoya, Inigo’s father, explains to his friend, a fellow sword-maker, why he refuses to help him out by making a sword for some Italian noble.

Domingo: Why? My fat friend asks me why? He sits there on his world-class ass and has the nerve to ask me why? Yeste. Come to me sometime with a challenge. Once, just once, ride up and say, “Domingo, I need a sword for an eighty-year-old man to fight a duel,” and I would embrace you and cry, “Yes!” Because to make a sword for an eighty-year-old man to survive a duel, that would be something. Because the sword would have to be strong enough to win, yet light enough not to tire his weary arm. I would have to use my all to perhaps find an unknown metal, strong but very light, or devise a different formula for a known one, mix some bronze with some iron and some air in a way ignored for a thousand years. I would kiss your smelly feet for an opportunity like that, fat Yeste. But to make a stupid sword with stupid jewels in the form of stupid initials so some stupid Italian can thrill his stupid mistress, no. That, I will not do.

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I hate being Scottish

Movie: Trainspotting
Director: Danny Boyle
Author: Irvine Welsh

TOMMY: Doesn’t it make you proud to be Scottish?

RENTON: I hate being Scottish. We’re the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don’t. They’re just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonized by. We are ruled by effete arseholes. It’s a shite state of affaires and all the fresh air in the world will not make any fucking difference.

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The Child

Title: The Child
Author: Anthony Giardina

Description: Thomas, twenty-seven, an idealistic man who drives a milk truck, and his wife Leah, twenty-three, a first-year medical student, struggle to decide whether to have the baby which is growing inside of Leah or to abort it. They finally decide to have an abortion, mainly on Thomas’s insistence. In this monologue, Thomas discusses a recurring dream of his in which he meets the child that they going to name Tonio.

THOMAS: I keep having this dream.
Can I tell you this dream?
I know you must not like me much just now, but can I tell you this dream I keep having?
(Beat.)
We have a little boy, Leah.
You’re not in it.
Just me and this boy. In my dream he looks like a little Indian.
So wild I don’t know where he comes from.
We’re up in the mountains, hiking, I guess.
We see this bird.
And the boy, Tonio, can’t get over this bird, cannot take his eye off it.
So I sit down on a rock to get out this book I have. This bird book, Birds of North America. I want to find this bird so I can explain everything to Tonio. His markings, his mating habits, where he lives.
When I find it, I look up to tell him.
He’s far away from me.
On the edge of the mountain.
Making like a bird.
Flapping his arms.
Then he jumps.
I watch him jump, it’s too quick for me to say anything.
I sit there with an open book, but I’m not afraid.
Because I expect to see him any minute.
Flying above me.
With the markings and the mating habits of a thing I have to look up in books to find out about.
So I sit on this rock. Waiting.
And finally he flies up. Like I knew he would.
And I smile to see him, Tonio, in the trees, branch to branch.
Tonio over the mountain.
Then he swoops down over me.
He says, “Come on, Dad. Jump. It’s fun.”
(Beat.)
So I go to the edge.
I stand there.
I can see right down to the bottom.
I’m holding a bird book.
I know everything there is to know about birds from the book.
I know I’m not a bird.
I feel so scared.
I look up.
He’s gone.
(Beat.)
No. Christ. No.
I want you.
I want you.
I want you. Please don’t leave me here, Tonio. Come back. I’ll jump. I swear. Just come back. You’ll see me, arms spread, legs out, one golden image of your father I’ll give you?
(Beat.)
Tonio.
Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.

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Inferno

Title: Inferno
Show: BBC TV series “Coupling”
Author: Steven Moffat

Description: At a dinner party, Steve (Jack Davenport) is confronted by his girlfriend about a porn tape she found in his apartment, “Lesbian Spank Inferno.” He is forced to describe the plot of this ‘erotic film’ as he calls it, much to the confusing and amusement of the women present. He describes the ‘plot’ as the story of a ‘lesbian film collective’ that hold a contest to see which film-maker had made the best film. Eventually, the whole thing becomes a ‘spank inferno.’ But that’s not the point.

Dinner Guest: How could you possibly enjoy a film like that?

Steve: Oh, because it’s got naked women in it! Look, I like naked women! I’m a bloke, we’re supposed to like naked women, we’re born like that! We like naked women as soon as we’re pulled out of one; halfway down the birth canal we’re already enjoying the view! Look, it is the four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche. We like: Naked Women, Stockings, Lesbians, and Sean Connery best as James Bond, because that’s what being a boy is. And if you don’t like, darling, join a film collective. Look, I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman at the end of that table there, but that does not stop me wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die, because that’s what being a bloke is. When man invented fire, he didn’t say “Hey, let’s cook!” He said “Great! Now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!” As soon as Caxton had invented the printing press, we?re using it to make pictures of, hey! Naked bottoms! We have turned the internet into an enormous international database of naked bottoms. So you see, the story of male achievement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been a story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. Thank you, girls, I’m not sure how insulted you really ought to be.

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First monologue in class

Actual Post Date: 2004-08-19. Harry (II) was the first monologue I performed in class. I do not remember if this was the first day of call or later. I did not start a journal until, well, May 10th. It was probably earlier because of what I say on May 17th entry. I do remember I was nerves as hell. But with a little direction, coach says I did well. Chris Cole Harris is a great acting coach. I do know that I loved acting just a few weeks into the class.