If you've been through a drama school audition cycle, you'll be well acquainted with the many hoops you have to jump through for auditions.
One of the most daunting and tedious is finding a monologue. As I only applied to two schools this year I planned to perform the same monologue for both (although as I didn't get through to the acting component of the Mountview audition I didn't perform them a second time). I know that finding a good monologue that hasn't been done to death is a particularly arduous task for girls so I have two pieces of advice for any females auditioning for drama school:
1) don't stress about finding a completely unique Shakespeare monologue, the schools are aware that there aren't a huge amount of female monologues to chose from. That being said, it's probably still best to avoid Juliet's "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?". Also worth bearing in mind is that unless the school has specified Shakespeare, there are a variety of other Elizabethan playwrights to choose from such as Marlowe.
2) read as many published scripts as you possibly can to find something that you enjoy and that suits you for your modern monologue. There are so many fantastic new plays being published with great monologues that there really is no excuse for having a poor modern monologue. French's bookshop and the National Theatre bookshop are two fantastic resources if you're London based and want to browse scripts. If not, investigate what your local library has, and charity shops are often a fantastic resource too.
These pieces of advice are of course applicable to males as well, though you have the benefit of a larger selection of choices.
For further reading about drama school applications, I thoroughly recommend reading "So you want to go to drama school?"by Helen Freeman. Available in both the NT bookshop and French's as well as online, it's a pretty good guide about what you should be doing to prepare yourself for the application cycle.
Hopefully this post will have given you an idea of ways to discover new monologues, I'll cover more about picking an appropriate monologue shortly. Until next time!
Yours faithfully,
the postgrad-app
For further reading about drama school applications, I thoroughly recommend reading "So you want to go to drama school?"by Helen Freeman. Available in both the NT bookshop and French's as well as online, it's a pretty good guide about what you should be doing to prepare yourself for the application cycle.
Hopefully this post will have given you an idea of ways to discover new monologues, I'll cover more about picking an appropriate monologue shortly. Until next time!
Yours faithfully,
the postgrad-app
