Ties: Boris

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.

In White America: Jourdon Anderson

In White America by Marin B. Duberman

This monologue isn’t one that I’d normally use for auditions, but I’m putting it up here in case someone else finds a use for it. This monologue is a letter, written by a former black slave to his former master.

Jourdon Anderson:
To My Old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee.
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I am glad you are still living.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, - the folks call her Mrs. Anderson, - and the children - Milly, Jane and Grundy - go to school and are learning well.  The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated.
Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served your. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy for twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adam’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq. Dayton, Ohio.
Say howdy to George Carder, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdan Anderson

Titus Andronicus: Titus

Titus Andronicus (Act 3 Scene 1) by Shakespeare

Titus:
If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes:
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow?
If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, 
Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow!
She is the weeping welkin, I the earth:
Then must my sea be moved with her sighs; 
Then must my earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflow'd and drown'd;
For why my bowels cannot hide her woes,
But like a drunkard must I vomit them.
Then give me leave, for losers will have leave 
To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.

Antigone: Antigone

Antigone by Sophocles

In this scene, King Creon has just learned that Antigone has defied his laws by providing a proper burial for her disgraced brother. Antigone defies King Creon because she believes in a higher morality, that of the gods. She contends that the laws of Heaven overrule the laws of man.

ANTIGONE:
Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus,
And she who sits enthroned with gods below,
Justice, enacted not these human laws.
Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,
Could’st by a breath annul and override
The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.
They were not born today nor yesterday;
They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang.
I was not like, who feared no mortal’s frown,
To disobey these laws and so provoke
The wrath of Heaven. I knew that I must die,
E’en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and if death
Is thereby hastened, I shall count it gain.
For death is gain to him whose life, like mine,
Is full of misery. Thus my lot appears
Not sad, but blissful; for had I endured

To leave my mother’s son unburied there,
I should have grieved with reason, but not now.
And if in this thou judgest me a fool,
Methinks the judge of folly’s not acquit.

Antigone: Antigone

Antigone by Sophocles

In this monologue, Antigone is about to be entombed in a cavern. Although she believes she goes to her death, she contends that she was justified in offering her brother his funeral rites. Yet, because of her punishment, she is uncertain about the ultimate goal of the gods above. Still, she trusts that in the afterlife, if she is at fault, she will learn of her sins. However, if Creon is at fault, the fates will surely inflict revenge upon him.

ANTIGONE: Tomb, bridal chamber, eternal prison in the caverned rock, whither I go to find mine own, those many who have perished, and whom Persephone hath received among the dead! Last of all shall I pass thither, and far most miserably of all, before the term of my life is spent. But I cherish good hope that my coming will be welcome to my father, and pleasant to thee, my mother, and welcome, brother, to thee; for, when you died, with mine own hands I washed and dressed you, and poured drink-offerings at your graves; and now, Polyneices, ’tis for tending thy corpse that I win such recompense as this. And yet I honored thee, as the wise will deem, rightly. Never had I been a mother of children, or if a husband had been moldering in death, would I have taken this task upon me in the city’s despite.

What law, ye ask, is my warrant for that word? The husband lost, another might have been found, and child from another, to replace the first-born; but, father and mother hidden with Hades, no brother’s life could ever bloom for me again. Such was the law whereby I held thee first in honor; but Creon deemed me guilty of error therein, and of outrage, ah brother mine! And now he leads me thus, a captive in his hands; no bridal bed, no bridal song hath been mine, no joy of marriage, no portion in the nurture of children; but thus, forlorn of friends, unhappy one, I go living to the vaults of death. And what law of Heaven have I transgressed?

Why, hapless one, should I look to the gods any more–what ally should I invoke–when by piety I have earned the name of impious? Nay, then, if these things are pleasing to the gods, when I have suffered my doom, I shall come to know my sin; but if the sin is with my judges, I could wish them no fuller measure of evil than they, on their part, mete wrongfully to me.

Hamlet: Hamlet

Hamlet (Act 1 Scene 2) by William Shakespeare

Hamlet: 

Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this.
But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr. So loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.—Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on ’t. Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears. Why she, even she—
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer!—married with my uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

No Fear Shakespeare version of Hamlet: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_26.html

The Miser: Frosine

The Miser - Act ii Scene v- Moliere
Frosine:

Young men are not worthy of a woman's love.
They're nothing but pretentious bumpkins
who strut about with woefully exaggeration notions of their irresistibility.
How could such young fops be classified as men?
How any woman could derive pleasure from such company,
I am at a loss to explain.
They are either mad or devoid of common sense.
How could a woman seek any form of attachment with such base creatures?