When I studied with Uta Hagen, she insisted that doing monologues was a waste of time! According to her, monologues are “a total evasion of acquiring an acting technique”. As much as I value the things I learned from Uta, I have to remember that she’s a stage actress. And good monologue technique is not always important on the stage.

But I think it’s important to do monologues well on or off the stage. They’re great training for those film close-ups when you’re talking to the camera instead of your partner. They’re also portable—you don’t have to keep a scene partner in your pocket. Because they’re portable, you may be asked to perform one at the drop of a hat at an audition. And, if your monologue performance is terrific, it’s an easy way to show how well-suited you are for a part and nail it. An actor who once auditioned for me instantly knew that he had flubbed his cold reading. I know you’ve been there. I certainly have! But he saved the day by asking me if he could do a monologue that would show the physicality I wanted for the role that I was casting. I was so impressed with his initiative—and with what he did with the monologue—that I called him back. And I’ll never forget his stellar performance!

I encourage actors to work up one comedy and one serious monologue for auditions. But corralling the level of reality you need to successfully pull off a monologue can be as hard as catching wild horses. So here are five fool-proof steps to taming your monologue and making it fabulous:

1. Ask Questions. You work up a monologue the same way do any script. And if you’re doing a monologue as a performance or audition piece, feel free to take it out of the context of the play, film, or any other place where you’ve gotten the words that you’re going to speak.

But whether you use the parameters of the script or digress from them, you’re still an actor approximating reality. So use any acting skills or techniques that you have at your command to create this reality. And ask as many questions as you can to make an unreal situation real for yourself, including:

a. Who am I? Reconstruct the character’s life and make it your own. A valuable tip I learned from Uta is to refer to your character in the first person as “I” instead of “he” or “she” when you talk about them.

When I was acting, I also always found it incredibly useful to prepare a written autobiography so that I could define for myself my character’s education, occupation, income, religion, likes, dislikes, age, weight, height, health, physical handicaps, behavioral characteristics, family life, customs and habits of the era in which s/he lives or the society in which s/he moves. A more physical way to create your autobiography is to take 20 minutes to a few hours to “grow up” your character. Improvise your character from being in the womb through being born. Improvise your character from being in the womb through being born through the important moments in their life (i.e. first day of school, wedding day) until that moment when they enter the space and time of the monologue.

b. What is the present situation? What did the character come here to do . . . what does the character want . . . what is the character’s intention? Portraying a strong intention may be all you need to do to make the character and the situation real for you. It helps to express this intention as a “to . . .” verb. For example, I chose that my character’s intention in Our Town was “to maintain (the status quo)”. You might also want to know your character’s physical condition: tired, hungry, cold, ill. And their mental/emotional condition: aware, confused, angry, calm, drunk.

c. Where am I? Define the environment . . . the place . . . as a force in your monologue: era, year, season, time of day, temperature, humidity, weather. You may also want to substitute an actual place you know, like your bedroom for the character’s bedroom, to help you. You can do this in a snap with sensory work, one of the foundations of Method Acting. Creating all the specifics of the place stimulates your sensorial reality and adds dimension to your monologue.

2. Know who you’re talking to. Even if you’re addressing the audience like I did when I played Mrs. Webb in Our Town, you’re talking to one or more people when you’re acting a monologue. These people may be part of the scene, part of the audience, or totally imaginary. No matter who they are, it’s crucial to create your character’s relationship to them.

There are three major ways you can do this. First, you can use your imagination to bring to life the actual person or persons you’re talking to in the script. Asking yourself questions about this person or persons is a big help here also: What is my history with this person? How do I generally feel about this person? How do I feel about this person at this point in time? What has just happened to influence the way I feel about this person? Who in my life reminds me of this person?

The answer to the last question is a powerful acting technique called “Personalization” and is the second way to create a relationship to who you’re talking to in a monologue. Simply substitute someone you know and have a well-developed relationship with for that person. Marilyn Monroe superimposed Shelley Winter’s face upon the faces of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot to gain the intimacy she needed to relate to those two men dressed in drag.

You can also choose an imaginary person or persons to talk to or add imaginary elements to a personalization to add interesting color and texture to your monologue. When I was a fledgling actress, I did a scene from The Bell Jar. I personalized that my scene partner was an actual off-the-wall person I knew that carried a butcher knife around in her purse for protection. You would think that this personalization was all that was needed to create the paranoia of the crazy girl I was playing. But I added extra dimension to the other character by envisioning her going around stabbing things in the room with her knife. This adjustment brought terror and intensity to the scene. And Peggy Feury, who was my coach at the time, told me that I made much braver choices than her more advanced actors. Choosing a unique way to relate to who you’re talking to, whether in your imagination or with a personalization, can help bring your monologue into the corral.

3. Explore the circumstances of what came before. I’ve seen so many actors start monologues with no clue of why they’re saying what they’re saying. And it shows! They usually hit their stride about halfway through the monologue. By then, they’ve lost me. And also flunked the audition.

Even if the monologue begins a scene, the character has had a life before that point in time. You need to create that life for your character before you say a word. You can go over it in your mind before speaking. Or improvise a beginning before you begin the actual words of the monologue. Do whatever works for you. And, as in all acting, make strong or unusual choices.

One of my actors was doing a monologue from Chasing Amy where he had to come to an epiphany that the sad love story the other character in the scene was telling him was similar to his own. He began the monologue by interrupting the other character to tell his story. And the interruption had to, of course, seem real. He had a really tough time creating that interruption. Then I asked him to visualize the little car at the circus where a thousand clowns come out. He sat there watching the clowns, amused and amazed. Then I had him say “See the clowns!” several times. I then asked him to say the first line of the monologue, “Chasing Amy . . . you’re chasing amy!“ with the same amusement and amazement as he had when he said, “See the clowns!”. It worked! Even though the life of the character had nothing to do with clowns or the circus, creating the reality of what came before helped him with that very difficult beginning to his monologue.

4. Break the monologue into beats and further down into thoughts. Acting is approximating reality. Never forget that. So just think about how you are when you spout off to yourself or others. You think out loud. You mull things over. And sometimes you even argue with yourself. More than reacting to someone else, you’re reacting to your own thoughts. For this reason, I think that monologues are harder to do and take more preparation than scenes.

If you’re being real, you’re responding verbally to thoughts and emotions. You need to slow down and identify these thoughts and emotions and then speed them up to performance level.

I remember Shelley Winters once said when she moderated a session at the Actor’s Studio that she separates the play into beats and finds something personal to relate to in each beat. This is the beauty of Method Acting. It enables you to tap into the goodness of your own experience to powerfully influence a scene.

A beat is a thought change. When you read through your monologue, see where the character changes the subject and mark that place in some way. And then find a reason for the character to change the subject. As Shelley says, find something personal . . . a thought or an experience . . . to relate to. When I played Mrs. Webb, I had a long, emotional monologue where I had to talk about my daughter going out of my house and getting married. I chose to explore the feelings of helplessness I had at the funeral of a friend of mine who was killed in Vietnam. It must have been effective because the LA Times review of the play specifically mentioned that moment as a memorable one. Shelley also said that she memorizes lines using thoughts. When you’re working on a monologue, it’s also crucial to connect thoughts to the lines. They can either be your own or something the character might be thinking at that moment. I used to draw a line down the center of a yellow legal pad and write out my lines on the right-hand side of the page. Then I would write down the corresponding thoughts next to each line on the left. When I started to work, I would say the thought . . . then the line . . . until the thoughts became second-nature. Then I’d just say the lines. Yes, this process does take time, but you’ll be pleased with the results when you get “oooohs” and “aaahhs”.

5. A fabulous monologue demands a fabulous start. This last step is a technical one. When you say the first line of the monologue, be as crisp, bright and definite as you can. Even if you have to force it. And crank up the volume or body language a little bit to grab your listeners’ attention. You want to say, “here I am!”

I’m not telling you to be untrue to your preparation. But I am telling you that a definite beginning will set your monologue off on the right foot. And then all that preparation can take it from there.

If you use these five steps, I guarantee you fabulous monologues! Please keep me posted on your progress at jill@actingintuitive.com.

© Jill Place, The Acting Intuitive, 2003