Male Monologue Help

prodesse
Fri, 10 Oct 2014 15:26:13 +0000

I’m sure 75% of theater roles are male, but they are mostly NOT written for teenagers. College admission auditions are different from high school auditions in that you are required to choose monologues from plays with roles that are age-appropriate. Quick, think of ten good dramatic (not comedic) roles for teenaged boys. Can’t think of that many? How about five? And that’s your “overdone” list right there.

The serious theater programs state clearly that they want to hear monologues from actual produced plays, not from movies, or ones posted online that were written intentionally as audition monologues, or monologues requiring accents or dialect. Some have mentioned in workshops that they really don’t want to hear a ton of swearing either.

At one audition my son got called out for choosing a monologue for a character who was too old. They had a discussion about it, my son asserting that the character is a college student and at age 18 he was within the range of plausibility. At least it proved he had read the entire play! He did get admitted to that school.