Short Monologues
Blind Dog
CAST
Beth
Female, any ethnicity, approx. 20-30 years old.
TIME
The Present
SET REQUIREMENTS
A bare stage
Published in:
Young Women's Monologues and Scenes From Contemporary Plays II, Meriwether Publishing
Eleven Eleven Journal for Literature & Art, Online #14
Playground Experiment, Faces of America Anthology
BETH
I always did what I was told. That's the way it was in our house. My father would say "A man's home is his castle". My mother would say "Obey your father." Bobby was like that song "misguided angel"? This misunderstood, misguided angel. My parents hated him. We ran away, got married, came home and right away Bobby started in on his improving Beth program. I had to be just so, the meals just so. Didn't like my friends, didn't like my parents, didn't like my hair, didn't like my attitude. And I obeyed. Honor and obey, right? I was focusing so hard on making sure that everything was perfect that I didn't have room to think of anything else. Have his socks washed. Have dinner on the table at exactly 5:30. Of course, he didn't always come home at 5:30, so I'd just sit by the stove and wait. I'm serious. Anything to avoid a fight.
My mother said "Good husbands are made by God, good marriages by women." My father said "You made your own bed, now lie in it. "
So, Valentines Day…
(Please download to read the rest)
(Please contact author for rights to perform)
(Excerpt from Veils)
CAST
Intisar
Female, Black, American Muslim, 16-30 years old, wears a veil (hijab) that is wrapped snugly around her head covering her hair but not her face. "Inti" is a strong-willed, intelligent passionate young woman.
TIME
Present
SETTING
A bare stage
Intisar
Published in:
The Best Women’s Stage Monologues of 2015, Smith and Kraus
Good Ear Review
Millay Colony for the Arts Magazine
Audition Monologues for Young Women 2, Meriwether Publishing
In this scene Inti, doing a year abroad studying at the American Egyptian University in Cairo, Egypt, is making a video to be posted on her Egyptian roommate's online blog. Together they are making short videos about the topic of Islamic veiling. Speaking directly to audience/camera...
Intisar
I want to answer a few questions about this, my veil, my hijab. No, it is not hot. No, my father doesn’t make me wear it. No, I don’t wear it in the shower. And no, I am not oppressed, no need to call Oprah.
9/11, 2001, right? My mother...was forced to strip to her underwear in the back room of an airport. I was thirteen and we were flying home from my aunt’s wedding. Halfway there our plane was diverted to a small airport. Nobody knew what was happening. We didn’t know of the hijackings or that all flights were being grounded. We were on the runway for more than an hour when airport security came on the plane. Searching, apparently, for anybody who looked dangerous and proceeded to escort my Mother and me onto the tarmac, everybody staring. In a back room full of security, they had our suitcases open, belongings strewn all over, and my mother was requested to submit to a body search. When she refused, the requests became uglier, strip or be arrested. She looked at me, afraid, tears running down my face, and she took her clothes off. Of course they found nothing. What was there to find? They looked at me and she said “You will NOT undress my daughter.” They didn’t but they made me take my veil off. Why is that?
It was my first veil. When a girl reaches puberty. Delicate, light blue. Like the sky we had been flying through. A proud moment. Becoming a woman. A rite of passage. I hadn’t had it a month and a person of supposed authority forced me take it off. Raghead…
(Please download to read the rest)
(Please contact author for rights to perform)
(For full play, see Veils in the Full-length section)
She Must Like It
CAST
Mrs. Smith
Female, Black,
30-50 years old
TIME
The Present
SET REQUIREMENTS
A bare stage
Published in:
Young Women's Monologues and Scenes From Contemporary Plays II, Meriwether Publishing
MRS. SMITH
"I would never let that happen to me." "Why doesn't she leave?" "She must like it." Damn I get tired of hearing that. You wanna know why I didn't leave? Cause I was determined not to fall into that white folks stereotype of "Mama on welfare and a bunch of fatherless kids delinquent kids". I took the violence for years to avoid being that welfare mother white folks hated, only to have them turn around and tell me that I should have left long ago and applied for welfare.
I'm a strong woman. A college graduate. Had a nice home, a respectable job, and a husband who worked. Now am I mistaken or isn't that the American Dream? Now am I gonna give up all that and go on welfare with my three kids, become the white man's burden, because my husband drinks too much Colt 45 one night and shove me? Or slap me? Think about it. I got pride. I'm stubborn. I talked to my pastor 'bout it, 'bout the abuse he was putting me through. And pastor told me I need to turn the other cheek, that it was my cross to bear. Think of the family. Children need their father. Finally "their father" started beating on my oldest and I had him arrested. I went to court and I tried to explain to this judge that I wanted him punished so he knows it was serious but not so's he lose his job. Cause then we'd just have another black man out on the street, plus we needed his support money. And the judge said I was wasting the court's time and did I want him in jail or not? All the time my husband is saying he didn't do anything. So I finally said, "Ok, put the bastard away for the rest of his life, I don't care," Then the man says, Now, come on, he is your husband after all." Finally just said the hell with it. They give him probation.
First thing he came home….
(Please download to read the rest)
(Please contact author for rights to perform)
Why Are You Laughing?
CAST
Jennifer
Female, any ethnicity, 30-49 years old, slender
attractive, chic
TIME
Present
SETTING
A bare stage
Published in:
221 One-Minute Monologues From Literature, Smith & Kraus, Inc.
Jennifer
“If you ever leave me I’ll kill you.”
We were watching this late night talk show..."Has the romance gone out of your marriage?" Without thinking I laughed. I had been thinking a lot about how our marriage and I laughed out loud.
My husband, George, is a powerful man, a politician...a politician with ambitions. "Why are you laughing?" he said in the quiet, powerful way he has. As if he was genuinely interested in the answer. He says things in a way that makes you believe him. Very controlled, my husband. Never a hair out of place, a wife out of line, or an emotion out of control. He never, for instance, hits me in public or where it will show.
"Why did you laugh? Has the romance gone out of our marriage?"
He was voted Man of the Year by the city fathers. I was voted Best Dressed by the local paper. Clothes by Armani, hair by Horst, fractured ribs by George. I went to the hospital and broke down crying on the examination table. It was gently suggested that I meet with a psychiatrist. I took several tests and he said I scored high on the paranoia scale. I asked what that meant. "It means you have an irrational fear that someone is out to get you."
"Why did you laugh?" he asked again…
(Please download to read the rest)
(Please contact author for rights to perform)