Ties by Marsh Cassady
This monologue isn’t one I would audition with, but you may find some use for it, so I decided to post it anyway.
Boris:
Hi, my name is Boris Aradopolos. I'm the author of Ties, a play about humanness and love and people learning to live with one another. It’s about how families are united against interference. Yet they bicker and fight with each other because they can’t seem to help it. [pause] To fill you in: My mother, Lucinda, was a countess, my father a first-generation American. His name was Menolaus, although he later took the name of Melvin which he much preferred. My paternal grandparents, Nikkos and Alexandria Aradopolos, had immigrated from Greece to New England. Extremely proud of their new country, as only naturalized citizens can be, they nevertheless were determined that Dad would have the advantages of travel and and a European education. He spent several years studying abroad at whatever university struck his fancy. When he was twenty-nine, a friend introduced him to my mother. Against the wishes of my maternal grandparents, the married. Two days later that marriage was at an end. Possibly as some form of self-punishment, Mother stayed on at the same hotel in Leipzig where she and Dad had been honeymooning. [pause] When I was but five months old, she left me in the care of a maid at that hotel while she went across the street to have her hair done. On the way back she was struck by a car. She died instantly. [pause] My maternal grandparents wanted to have nothing to do with me. So Dad, who had never seen me before, flew to Germany to pick me up and take me home with him. Home was Southern California where he’d recently started to teach. He didn’t have a Ph.D. yet, so he was at the instructor’s level. That meant there was little money coming in. For the next three years a neighbor woman cared for me while he was at school. [pause] Even though Dad was sometimes too wrapped up in his work to take much time to be with me, I have wonderful memories of my childhood.
[he opens a photo album and looks at it]
That’s why this old photo album means so much to me. Dad kept a great record of my early years and of people he thought I’d be curious about. See, here’s my mother. Isn’t she beautiful?
[he holds the album so the audience can see the photos inside]
Here are her parents, my grandparents.
[he shows the audience other photos as he talks]
And here are Grandma and Grandpa Aradopolos. He was a surgeon, and Grandma was a concert pianist. But she never wanted to leave Grandpa to go on tour. Grandpa died when I was eight and Grandma two years later. She fell and broke her hip and just gave up. [pause] This is a picture of one of the times Dad and Dennis and I went on a picnic to Torrey Pines. We went all sorts of places together - to films and the zoo and art galleries. Especially to art galleries.
[he closes the album and tucks it under his arm]
Despite the good times we had, my clearest and sharpest early memory isn’t a happy one. I was about seven, I think, and was walking home from school. A couple of older boys - they must have been ten or eleven - began taunting me about not having a mother. I tried to pretend I didn’t hear them, but I told Dad about it later.
This monologue isn’t one I would audition with, but you may find some use for it, so I decided to post it anyway.
Boris:
Hi, my name is Boris Aradopolos. I'm the author of Ties, a play about humanness and love and people learning to live with one another. It’s about how families are united against interference. Yet they bicker and fight with each other because they can’t seem to help it. [pause] To fill you in: My mother, Lucinda, was a countess, my father a first-generation American. His name was Menolaus, although he later took the name of Melvin which he much preferred. My paternal grandparents, Nikkos and Alexandria Aradopolos, had immigrated from Greece to New England. Extremely proud of their new country, as only naturalized citizens can be, they nevertheless were determined that Dad would have the advantages of travel and and a European education. He spent several years studying abroad at whatever university struck his fancy. When he was twenty-nine, a friend introduced him to my mother. Against the wishes of my maternal grandparents, the married. Two days later that marriage was at an end. Possibly as some form of self-punishment, Mother stayed on at the same hotel in Leipzig where she and Dad had been honeymooning. [pause] When I was but five months old, she left me in the care of a maid at that hotel while she went across the street to have her hair done. On the way back she was struck by a car. She died instantly. [pause] My maternal grandparents wanted to have nothing to do with me. So Dad, who had never seen me before, flew to Germany to pick me up and take me home with him. Home was Southern California where he’d recently started to teach. He didn’t have a Ph.D. yet, so he was at the instructor’s level. That meant there was little money coming in. For the next three years a neighbor woman cared for me while he was at school. [pause] Even though Dad was sometimes too wrapped up in his work to take much time to be with me, I have wonderful memories of my childhood.
[he opens a photo album and looks at it]
That’s why this old photo album means so much to me. Dad kept a great record of my early years and of people he thought I’d be curious about. See, here’s my mother. Isn’t she beautiful?
[he holds the album so the audience can see the photos inside]
Here are her parents, my grandparents.
[he shows the audience other photos as he talks]
And here are Grandma and Grandpa Aradopolos. He was a surgeon, and Grandma was a concert pianist. But she never wanted to leave Grandpa to go on tour. Grandpa died when I was eight and Grandma two years later. She fell and broke her hip and just gave up. [pause] This is a picture of one of the times Dad and Dennis and I went on a picnic to Torrey Pines. We went all sorts of places together - to films and the zoo and art galleries. Especially to art galleries.
[he closes the album and tucks it under his arm]
Despite the good times we had, my clearest and sharpest early memory isn’t a happy one. I was about seven, I think, and was walking home from school. A couple of older boys - they must have been ten or eleven - began taunting me about not having a mother. I tried to pretend I didn’t hear them, but I told Dad about it later.
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