New Monologue by Ed Friedman
Sunday, November 29, 2009
GLORIA:
You see that? That guy with the old lady? That's his mother. They're in here three times a week. Sometimes he just comes in by himself to get her some cheesecake. Ya know what it would take to get one of my brothers to do something for my mother? She'd have to be held hostage by terrorists. I'm not kidding. Nine brothers, none of them do squat. She has to go to the doctor, I take her. She needs shopping, I do it. She wants to visit somebody, go to a wedding, go to a funeral, its me, me and me. I don't mind, but come on. If I had a couple of sisters ok, but it's just me. Plus, 'cause I'm divorced and got no kids, the sky's the limit. If that asshole I married woulda kept it in his pants, I woulda already been livin' upstate twenty years. Instead I'm still livin' in my mother's building. I swear if it wasn't rent controlled I'd be outta there...
This is what I mean: her friend's granddaughter was getting married in Brooklyn. My mother just wanted to go to the church. I was planning to get my hair done that day. I hadn't done it in about two months so I say to her, "Ma, I'm kinda busy, do you think one of the boys can take you?" "Who?" she says. "Who? How about Anthony, Emilio, Vincent..." I start goin' down the list. She goes, "They're busy with their families." I don't even get into that, that's a crock of shit, so I say, "What about John?" "He's got a girlfriend." "What about Danny?" "Oh Danny works so hard." So I say, "Are you kiddin' me Ma? I'm on my feet sixty hours a week." Know what she says? "Forget it, I'll stay home." ...What'd I do? Look at my hair, whadda think I did?
New Monologue by Diane Grant
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Monologue Database is proud to announce a new monologue from The Piaggi Suite by Diane Grant.
DARLENE
Ziggy Martin. Is it you? Is it really? I saw you with Dave Matthews. In Syracuse. It was the most beautiful night of my entire life. Did you really sit in with Sting? I was at the Black Hole when you were there. I'm mad about the Hole. It's the best club ever. I had this song I wrote for you but they wouldn't let me go backstage. In November, two years ago. I was sitting right in front, surrounded by an entourage of coffee cups. I'd had eight cups of coffee and I was high. I don't drink alcohol anymore. I had this boyfriend, Gary, he's twenty one, and he does catering and we used to finish off the booze at the end of parties. One night, we finished off four or five Daiquiris and then we found a bottle with some gin in it. There were some Zimas but we didn't touch them. Gary said we should avoid the Zimas. I was so sick, I kept throwing up and the next morning, all I could eat was a pint of Ben and Jerry's. He's not my boyfriend, anymore. He went out with my friend Gloria and then he dumped her, too...
New Monologues by Elana Gartner
Friday, November 6, 2009
The Monologue Database is proud to announce two new monologues from Because of Beth by Elana Gartner. Penny and Cara are two sisters whose mother has just died. Each visits her grave and ends up complaining about the other.
PENNY
Well, Mom, it looks like we have a few things to talk about! I don't know how things are in that nice coffin of yours, but out here, they kind of suck a lot! How could you give Cara custody of me? Don't you think you could have talked to me about it? I mean, it's about me, don't you think you could have asked what I wanted? All anyone ever says is that I have to be older. Well, when do I get old enough for you to discuss these kinds of things with me? Is there some age limit like drinking and voting? Suddenly you can talk to me about what would happen to me if you died? I am always the last one to know about what happens to me! It's not fair! You make decisions! Cara makes decisions! Stanley makes decisions! And Stanley wants custody! Yeah, he wants custody! He's not my father. He just wants custody because I'm your daughter.
CARA
I can't believe how much this sucks! You're not supposed to be gone yet, Mom! This whole fucking mess sucks! Penny? She's so fucking whiny! It's like she has no other way to relate to me except to sob on me. And who do I have? No one! My friends aren't here. None of those people today cared about you, Mom. I did. I cared about you. It's worse than when Dad left because at least then I had you. Now I don't have anyone. Oh, and what's with him showing up at the funeral? I mean, what the fuck is that, Mom? Since when does Dad even have a clue what the hell is going on in our lives? Do you think maybe you could tell me that? It's sick, you know. It's like I only get to have one parent surfacing at a time. Well, luckily, he's gone again. What a bastard! This is so fucking unreal. You have to come home! You have to!
New Monologues by Chelsea Peluso
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Chelsea Peluso is an incredibly talented playwright who has written a brilliant play about teenagers trapped in the state mental health system. Like We Wasn't People was first presented by Love Creek Productions at the Producers Club in New York City earlier this year. The main character, Jane, is fifteen years old at the start of the play. Despite being violent and sometimes manipulative, Jane is an engaging character in a great deal of pain. She wound up in foster care after her mother's boyfriend abused her. Below is an excerpt from one of the two monologues now featured on the database. In this scene, Jane is talking to her mother's answering machine in the middle of the night from the hospital pay phone.
JANE:
Mom! Mom, I know it's late, but... pick up, please? Mom? Okay, you're probably sleeping for work. Okay. I'll just tell you over the phone. I'll just explain it. Yeah. I dreamt, I dreamt about her. The girl... they must have told you. She was dead, dead like when she died. Slumped in a corner, naked, full of... full of holes. Bloody holes, all over her body, with needles sticking out of them. But her face, the eyes were open, and she looked at me like she saw right through me. So I called to her, I said "Angela, it's Jane" and suddenly her face was full of metal. All these piercings, more than the nose rings and ear holes she already had, appeared out of nowhere, blood trickling down her face... her eyes were sharp, angry, and I heard this low grumbling, almost like that sound a cat makes when it's about to hiss. Then I felt mist around my neck, and I knew, suddenly I knew, my head was... it was gone! I looked down and my body was... leaking! These little rotten holes were worming into me, the needles inching into my body...
New Monologues by Tony Yajko
Sunday, August 30, 2009
LAURA:
I remember when Toni and I finally told my parents. They came to Boston to help us move into my new apartment and I kind of figured my mom knew what was going on, but my Dad was totally clueless. So anyway, we got all our furniture moved in and my Dad says to me, "sweetie, where is your bed?" I was totally speechless. And then there was this dead silence where nobody knew what to say. And I think that's when it finally sank in. My folks didn't speak to me for a year... said they "needed time to accept us". Last summer we went on vacation in Cape Cod and Toni came along. Well as soon as my father saw her get out of the car with me he says, "Did you have to bring her along?" Toni just looked at my father and said... "Well, it would be a little weird if I didn't invite your daughter."
-- From Connecting Flight by Tony Yajko
DOM:
It was the same way with Cathy, the same way with you and same way with the guys we worked with. When we worked a ten hour shift and get back to the house at three in the morning, all Cathy had to say to this man was how he'd better shower quietly, not leave his dirty clothes on the floor, better not wake the kids. All the while I bit my damn tongue. Yeah it's true; he took me in and gave me a place to sleep. If his old lady wanted to yack at him and he decided it was okay - then what right did I have to complain? But dammit, one night, one damn night we hit a few bars after work and come back a little smashed. Oh, I know all about little Malcolm's twelve steps. That whiskey is the devil's water. It can make you act all kinds of crazy. But damn it! It was just one night we needed to take a break and blow off some steam. The building was complete, we were off probation. It was a night to celebrate so I convinced him to drink some well-deserved shots at the bar. Mikey and the all the guys were with us... they couldn't understand why Malcolm and I were hanging out together, but they just figured he was high off the stuff. But shit, when we got back to the house Cathy had to open her mouth, it doesn't matter how many times we crept up the stairs as silent as apparitions. The one night we lose the keys and have to break down the door and she gets her panties in a bunch. One of those cases of hindsight being twenty-twenty. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but then again, we were pretty shit-faced.
-- From Leather Bound Concrete by Tony Yajko
More Monologues by Karen Jeynes
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Now presenting excerpts from I'll Have What She's Having:The Narwaiter, the play's narrator & waiter in Cape Town Mpumi, a sophisticated lawyer who yells at tourists Louis, a salesman romancing his wife of 20 years Devon, trying to placate his girlfriend
New Monologues by Karen Jeynes
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Karen Jeynes is a writer, director, producer and stage manager tending towards comedy. Everybody Else (is Fucking Perfect) is the winner of the PANSA/NLDTF Best Comedy Award 2005. It was published by Junkets Press in 2006.
CATHY:
The thing is, the thing is - I knew. I knew he was gay when I married him. I've always known. The first time I saw him he was with another man. He doesn't know, obviously he doesn't know... I just wanted a husband, and I knew Gavin needed a wife, for appearances, for his family, for his work. Gavin will never have the courage to come out, so he will look after me, and the kids... This way I can stay home while my husband goes to work, the kids can have everything they need: a perfect happy family, you know, two parents, two kids. Everything perfect - except that he's gay. But that doesn't worry me, I mean, I know he'll be safe, and I don't really care if he goes out and has boyfriends, and... I'm happy this way.
JARED:
How can you just fucking sit there and deny everything you are? I'm sorry, I know this is "none of my business" and you and Cathy like your little fantasy world where it's perfectly fucking normal for you to marry her but go out for boys on the side every weekend. But then what, Gavin? What happened to your first marriage, did the lies ever get too much for you, did you ever stop and think that you were killing yourself every fucking day by pretending to be something you're not? And you can't hide in some marriage, and you can't expect everything to be hunky dory and rose coloured.
Laying Blame was first performed at The Playroom in Cape Town in 1999, it has since been at the Grahamstown Festival, the Cape Town Festival, and JakArt Festival in Indonesia.
"ME":
Most of the world's mistakes aren't huge crashing mistakes, they're tiny little ones, that just add up. Like pulling out the last Jenga block and watching the tower crash onto the table in front of you and knowing that you fucked up. And you know what? While you're busy pulling other blocks out, and managing to balance them, miraculously, no one notices. No one cares. Things are going right, so what? But when you pull that last block out, when everything collapses, then everyone notices. Then everyone knows. And the persons who didn't pull out that particular block, who may have played an equal role in the destruction, they can sit by smugly and watch as you pick up the pieces and build your tower again.
