Contrasting Combinations: Contemporary Monologues with Contrasting Types

Written by Ashleigh Gardner

February 27, 2019

Looking high and low for contrasting monologues for your next audition or competition? We’ve gathered five pairs for women and five pairs for men to get you started! These contemporary monologue pairs focus on character differences: in love and out of love, zany and level-headed, tragically injured and heroically optimistic.

Monologues for Women

Hypocrites & Strippers by Kim Yaged and Catholic School Girls by Casey Kurtti

Hypocrites & Strippers by Kim Yaged
New Jersey, Los Angeles, and lots of places in between. Jyl, 30ish, an overachiever who didn’t quite blossom into fruition. She’s ready to make something of her life, but her romantic proclivities keep getting in the way.

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Catholic School Girls by Casey Kurtti
It is a Monday in Sister Mary Lucille’s second-grade class. Her students completed their First Communion the Saturday prior and she is beginning class with announcements and tasks but is distracted by a few students and their childish habits. In this monologue, she reprimands them (and their parents) with intrusive and presumptuous remarks and commands. Sister Mary Lucille has a wicked tongue and epitomizes the caricature of Catholic school teacher.

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Mad Millie by Olivia Briggs and Eggs On Ice by Kristine M. Reyes

Mad Millie by Olivia Briggs
A darkly satirical one-woman play, “Mad Millie” features Mrs. Singleton, a self-professed perfect, American housewife with some pretty high ideals. Now imprisoned for the murder of a “rebellious” young woman who moved into her gated community, Mrs. Singleton spends her days recounting what she told the police on her final day of freedom. Fed up with the police officer’s accusations, Mrs. Singleton decides to let him have it.

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Eggs On Ice by Kristine M. Reyes
Denise, the top sales rep at the premier egg freezing clinic, Eggs on Ice, hosts a fabulous promotional party in hopes of enticing young, professional women to freeze and store their eggs with the clinic. She can do this sales pitch in her sleep, and truly believes that she’s helping the current generation of working women “have it all”.

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The Kindness Of Enemies by Glenn Alterman and Water Down by Debbie Lamedman

The Kindness Of Enemies by Glenn Alterman
After SHE meets HE at Happy Hour at a bar, they go back to his place and have sex. She is absolutely sure that HE is the right man for her. She excitedly shares her feelings of what she believes their new life together will be like.

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Water Down by Debbie Lamedman
Tess and Max have been friends since they were little children.  They talk to each other about everything. It is strictly a platonic friendship and always has been.  Now Tess, thinking she may be in love with another girl, looks to Max for his advice and opinion.

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The Scream by DT Arcieri and The Fainting Couch by Jill Elaine Hughes

The Scream by DT Arcieri
Fern, briefly described as “artsy”, is pretty, dressed in black and very animately speaking to the audience about her optimism and her job as the curator of an art gallery in the West Village.

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The Fainting Couch by Jill Elaine Hughes
Julia, a poor, depressed young woman without health insurance seeks free help under the care of Dr. Nukulye, an Anglo-Kenyan psychiatry resident seeking certification in the U.S.  This isn’t Julia’s first round in therapy, but to this point nothing seems to have worked. Her past dysfunctional sexual relationships haunt her through the guise of an “Everyman Lover” who lives mostly in Julia’s mind.  Unfortunately, Dr. Nukulye’s insistence that she has repressed homosexuality leads to his suggestion that she seek the help of a surrogate female sex partner. What Julia doesn’t know is that Dr. Nukulye has a hidden agenda driven by his own deviant sexual fetishes that have gotten him into trouble in the professional world. JULIA describes how depression feels to the audience.

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Futurama by Samantha Charlip and Pensacola by David-Matthew Barnes

Futurama by Samantha Charlip
April, 22, a disgruntled employee of the hokey theme park Futurama, is in the futuristic model house with Brian, 44, a life coach and public speaker who has taken a liking to April. As Brian tries to get April to open up to him, he tells her to ask him the most nagging question she’s got on her mind. She asks, “How do you stop time?”, a veiled reference to her relationship with her now deceased ex-boyfriend Reggie. She wishes she could go back to an earlier time when Reggie was still alive.

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Pensacola by David-Matthew Barnes
Known for changing her career plans at least once a week, eighteen-year-old Marie tells her date about a new strategy she has. Marie is very Southern and full of energy and charm.

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Monologues for Men

Solitaire by Rosary O’Neill and Milk Like Sugar by Kirsten Greenidge

Solitaire by Rosary O’Neill
The Mississippi Gulf Coast estate of Irene Dubbonet is an unforgettable place to visit, but who would want to live there? All of her relatives, who hope to inherit it! This is a play about manipulation and what happens to family members’ dreams when the odds are stacked against them. A cloud of doom hangs over Serenity Manor, until at last, virtue triumphs. Irene’s son, the artist, Rooster, deeply anxious to prove himself, connives a scheme to help his “down and out” brother-in-law seize the estate. Funny situations sparked by witty lines bring the audience into an intriguing overview of topsy-turvy privileged life today. Rooster defies his mother for humiliating him for being an artist.

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Milk Like Sugar by Kirsten Greenidge
Annie has gotten a tattoo under the influence of her posse for her 16th Birthday. She has now gone back to enlarge the tattoo to cross her stomach. The artist, ANTWOINE, begins to warn her of the damages it may do. With entrance, he continues to explain how rare the occasion is and delves into the power of being an artist and the effect it has on people’s lives.

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Future Anxiety by Laurel Haines and The Christmas Present by Guy Picot

Future Anxiety by Laurel Haines
This scene is called, “Wesley Makes a Video.” Wesley is a sickly but cheerful young man. He is sitting in a chair in front of a camera. He is preparing his dating video. He coughs from time to time.

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The Christmas Present by Guy Picot
Colin is disappointed with the call-girl who has turned up at his hotel, while she is in the bathroom his mind wanders to the fantasy he had been looking forward to. He is honest and open with “Salome”, the beautiful girl who hangs on his every word and likes him for what he is.

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Watson: The Last Great Tale Of The Legendary Sherlock Holmes by Jaime Robledo and A List Of Some Shit I’ve Killed by Matt Barbot

Watson: The Last Great Tale Of The Legendary Sherlock Holmes by Jaime Robledo
On the Cliffs of Dover, Professor Moriarty confronts his paranoid and drugged out stalker Sherlock Holmes who has accused him of a rash of crimes throughout London. Holmes picks up on the scent of Moriarty’s tobacco and through the powers of deduction places Moriarty at the scene of an assassination attempt, putting the lie to his alibi.

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A List Of Some Shit I’ve Killed by Matt Barbot
HERACLES, perfect and whole, stands on a hill, holding his bow. Cocky and unappreciative, he shows off his prize from the gods – a prize he’s obtained after killing hundreds and hundreds of people and mythological creatures.

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New by Crystal Skillman and The Ghost Moments by Randy Wyatt

New by Crystal Skillman
In this melodramatic monologue, MARCUS, the lead in the high school play, has just re-appeared from the school parking lot with an icepack on his head. He has not slept since the dress rehearsal the night before. He is dazed and slightly crazed after walking all night. Marcus is a student actor who is delving hard into the Stanislavsky method; his emotions are amplified by his sleeplessness and his statements are bold and extravagant. He philosophizes about his place in the world and how the theatre has changed his sense of self.

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The Ghost Moments by Randy Wyatt
We all have ghosts that haunt us. Do we run from them or hunt them down? The characters in The Ghost Moments—some young, some not-so-young, each from a very different walk of life—exist in their own worlds, all of them hunting or being hunted. Some of their ghosts are literal: Matty tries to rid his sister’s apartment of a spirit that may or may not be there, Zachary prepares his bunker for the zombie apocalypse. Others are metaphorical: Marianne’s absent father, Bethany’s lost innocence, Caroline’s memories of water, Michael’s lost afternoons of love, Carver’s secret powers. As we witness hauntings and exorcisms through a series of monologues, this group of characters and their loves, longings, joy and pain, will haunt us long after the curtain falls. Matty, 20ish, has promised to try to exorcise a spirit from his sister’s apartment.

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Born And Raised by Kristine M. Reyes and Hangman by Pete Barry

Born And Raised by Kristine M. Reyes
Paul, a senior in high school in the Midwest, is taping the video portion of his college application to UCLA. He’s slightly awkward and nervous, but very enthusiastic because he gets to talk about how his dad is his biggest inspiration. Paul was adopted by a white couple as a baby boy, but he’s never felt weird about being adopted, or questioned his identity, thanks to his dad. He has grown up thinking he’s Chinese. Soon after in the play, he’ll find out he’s not.

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Hangman by Pete Barry
Five boys sit in an empty Boarding School classroom in the middle of the night. All but one are high on various substances– Tetwilliger has remained sober to observe and monitor the rest. Two are playing a confusing game of hangman, one can’t keep food down and another, Jones, is lying unconscious. Tetwillger believes he is experiencing enlightenment and wishes desperately Jones would share his experience with him because, as we find out, he is severely jealous of not having taken a drug. This is his frustrating and philosophical monologue to the unconscious boy on the floor.

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Ashleigh Gardner received her AA in Theatre/Drama/Dramatic Arts from Valencia College and her Bachelors Degree in English Literature and Masters Degree in Literary, Cultural, and Textual Studies from the University of Central Florida. She is a playwright and an actor.
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