krayola33

I'm auditioning for probably UArts, Cincinnatti Conservatory and Montclair in Musical Theatre, and I was looking through monologues when I realised there's a lot of cursing going on! Is that sort of thing frowned upon, or does it not matter at all?

Also, in some of the monologues, there are breaks where someone else would have spoken. Will the audition people care if I just take those lines out?

soozievt

Do a forum search....this has been discussed on the MT Forum before.

gustof777

@ UArts you'll be fine. I said all kinds of **** in my monologue

NotMamaRose

I honestly am not sure why any student would want to choose a monologue with a lot of cursing in it, at least for college auditions. As has been said in other threads and posts on this forum and others, why take a chance of offending someone? Also, anger (which often comes along with cursing) is said to be the easiest emotion for most young actors to play, so it's not challenging.

gustof777

well I don't see any problem if the monologue is good and calls for it. If it shows you off to your best ability than I wouldn't see any reason why you wouldn't do it. I can only speak from my experience but I didn't have any person whom I auditioned for (out of the ten schools) get offended by the material, which had a fair amount of F bombs and had me dropping the "N" word a lot as well. I had an african american man for one school and that was probably the only time that I almost picked my other monologue but then I decided not to because the monologue meant so much to me and I felt was the absolute best thing for me. He ended up complimenting me on my courage to do the monologue and he was not the only one. I'm certainly not saying LOOK for monologues with cursing in them or that they will be impressed. I just don't think that it should stop any student if they feel very drawn to a certain monologue.

MTLover124

I would not worry about it. I attended the summer program and one of my monologues has cursing in it and my instructor that I had for an Acting Audition workshop said not to worry about it. What's more important is how you present the emotion in your monologue.

MichaelNKat

Cursing in of itself is not going to cause auditors at UArts to look askew at you. However, if you are choosing a monologue with cursing as opposed to one without, make sure you have good reasons for your choice. Keep in mind that you are not auditioning for a specific role in which a scene with cursing adds to the evaluation of whether you are appropriate for that role. What you don't want is for the cursing to end up as a distraction, for either you or the auditors, from the rest of your performance.

Remember that a 1 or 2 minute monologue is a very brief moment in the span of the play from which it comes. It is an isolated snapshot. With that in mind, ask yourself: is the cursing contextually appropriate, does it add to understanding the character, does it add an important element to understanding what is happening in the scene and to conveying the slice of the story you are telling at that moment, is the monologue such a small slice of the story and your character that the cursing appears out of context of the bigger "picture" and therefore could appear gratuitous and finally, are you comfortable enough with it that it doesn't become something that you fixate on but instead can perform naturally as part of the character. If after thinking through these kinds of things you feel the monologue is a good one for you and enables you to demonstrate your abilities well, then go for it. But think about these things; you may be asked why you chose that monologue or to discuss what is going on with your character.

JeffB

Well said.