Caliban of Sycorax Posted June 15, 2012 Share Posted June 15, 2012 (edited) So, I'm looking at re-evaluating my repertoire of audition pieces, and I'm looking for some advice, I guess. I want to try and have more serious pieces that I can work on as well as some better comedic pieces. Right now I have a great monologue from Angels in America: You know what your problem is, Louis? Your problem is that you are so full of piping hot crap that the mention of your name draws flies. Up in the air, just like that angel, too far off the earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you love. "America" is what Louis loves. Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital; I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy, and mean. I live in America, Louis, that's hard enough. I don't have to love it. You do that. Everybody's got to love something. I also have a piece from The Normal Heart that I had used before: Can't you see that I'm trying to do that? Can't your perverse ego proclaiming its superiority see that I'm trying to be proud? You can only find room to call yourself normal. I'm beginning to think that you and your straight world are our enemy. I am furious with you, and with myself, and with every goddamned doctor who ever told me I'm sick and interfered with my loving a man. I'm trying to understand why nobody wants to hear we're dying, why nobody wants to help, why my own brother doesn't want to help. You still think I'm sick, and I simply cannot allow that any longer. I will not speak to you again until you accept me as your equal. Your healthy equal. Your brother! I'm open to suggestions. I guess if anyone wants to share their audition pieces they're more welcome to, as well. Nothing wrong with actors helping each other out~ Edited June 15, 2012 by Laurence Olivier Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agro Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 I wish I knew enough about theatre to give actual advice. I might just say something silly like "DO TERRY MALLOY'S CONTENDER MONOLOGUE FROM ON THE WATERFRONT" or something instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rewjeo Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 Well, I'm just a high school actor who hasn't even had to come up with his own audition piece yet, but I think having something longer might be helpful as well as something intense that doesn't seem like it would fit you. My theatre teacher, a man, has done Constance's "I am not mad" monologue from King John before, for instance, and I would imagine that doing that monologue well as a man would make you seem like a very good actor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caliban of Sycorax Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 Well, I'm just a high school actor who hasn't even had to come up with his own audition piece yet, but I think having something longer might be helpful as well as something intense that doesn't seem like it would fit you. My theatre teacher, a man, has done Constance's "I am not mad" monologue from King John before, for instance, and I would imagine that doing that monologue well as a man would make you seem like a very good actor. What's funny is that we were just talking about this monologue~ Another monologue I picked is Hamlet's Speak the Speech one. I've done it for a class, and Hamlet's one of my dream roles. For reference: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th' accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celice Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 Do you know the role(s) you'll be auditioning for ahead of time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caliban of Sycorax Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 I won't be auditioning for a few more months, but I just wanted to get some new audition pieces. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Alear Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 From Angels In America (the HBO version anyway) I think my favorite part was Roy Cohn's blurb about not being "gay" because he's a success. Since they did an off broadway show of Jacques Brel's music maybe you should sing one of his tunes! I love em! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caliban of Sycorax Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 It's funny, I've been told by people that I would be best as Prior. Honestly, my two favorites from Angels in America are Prior and Joe. I wouldn't mind being Roy, though. He's so different from other characters I've played that it would be a great challenge. Since they did an off broadway show of Jacques Brel's music maybe you should sing one of his tunes! I love em! I love Jacques Brel, but I haven't been trained to sing and I don't want to do a singing audition until I get trained. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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