Monologues for auditions

Most UK conservatoires open with two contrasting speeches. Classical usually means pre-1800, which in practice means verse and often Shakespeare. Contemporary usually means a modern published play. RADA, LAMDA, Guildhall, Mountview and Bristol Old Vic each publish their own rules, and the details move from year to year. Download the pack for the year you are applying and follow that, not what a friend was told three intakes ago.

• Contrast is the brief. Two speeches that both rage tell a panel one thing about you. Put verse next to modern prose, someone winning next to someone losing, someone charming next to someone cornered.
• Two minutes means two minutes. Time it out loud at the speed you will really talk in a room where you are nervous, which is faster than you rehearse. Every card here shows the word count and the spoken length, so you can choose a speech that already fits instead of cutting one to pieces.
• Read the play. The question after the speech is usually about the play, the character, or why you chose that piece. Each page here names the act and scene and links the rest of the scene.
• Your own voice. Panels are listening to how you handle the text, not to an accent borrowed for the morning. If a school wants something else, the pack says so.
• Know it cold enough to be redirected. First rounds often ask for the same speech again, differently, on the spot. That only works when the words are secure and the situation is clear.

Where this library can honestly help: the classical half. These texts are free to publish because their authors died more than seventy years ago, so you get the full speech, the act and scene, the situation, and the spoken length. Contemporary plays are in copyright and we do not reproduce them. Buy the playtext, which is what the panel will want to talk about anyway.

Then rehearse the scene the classical speech sits in, not the speech alone. Every monologue page here opens the surrounding scene in qbuddy with the other characters voiced: you hear the line that provokes the speech, and cue mode waits until you have spoken before it plays the next one, so your first line arrives as a reply. For the contemporary piece, scan the pages of the playtext you bought into a PDF and upload that; you get the same thing with your own text. Learning it is still your work, in passes, out loud.

A monologue in a play is an answer. Hamlet has just watched an actor cry for Hecuba; Viola has just been handed a ring she never gave. Learn the speech on its own and it comes out as recitation. Every monologue page here opens in qbuddy with the surrounding lines voiced, so you hear the cue that makes the speech necessary, and the first line arrives as a reply. Pick your role, press play, and the other characters talk to you.

Learning it fast is a separate skill. See how actors learn their lines.