20 Of The Best Contemporary Dramatic Monologues For Men From Published Plays
1. The Pillowman
A monologue from the play by Martin McDonagh
Ariel
Oh, really? Well, y’know, I’ll tell you what there is about me. There is an overwhelming, and there is an all-pervading, hatred…a hatred…of people like you.
Of people who lay even the littlest finger…on children. I wake up with it. It wakes me up. It rides on the bus with me to work.
It whispers to me, ‘They will not get away with it’. I come in early. I make sure all the bindings are clean and the electrodes are in the right order so we won’t…waste…time.
I admit it, sometimes I use excessive force. And sometimes I use excessive force on an entirely innocent individual. But I’ll tell you this.
If an entirely innocent individual leaves this room for the outside world, they’re not gonna contemplate even raising their voice to a little kid again,
just in case I hear ‘em and drag ‘em in here for another load of excessive f***ing force.
Now, is this kind of behavior in an officer of the law in some way questionable morally? Of course it f***ing is!
But you know what? I don’t f***ing care! ‘Cos when I’m an old man, you know what?
Little kids are gonna follow me around and they’re gonna know my name and what I stood for, and they’re gonna give me some of their sweets in thanks,
and I’m gonna take those sweets and thank them and tell them to get home safe, and I’m gonna be happy.
Not because of the sweets, I don’t really like sweets…but because I’d know…I’d know in my heart, that if I hadn’t been there, not all of them would have been there.
Because I’m a good policeman. Not necessarily good in the sense of being able to solve lots of stuff, because I’m not,
but good in the sense that I stand for something. I stand for something. I stand on the right side. I may not always be right, but I stand on the right side.
The child’s side. The opposite side to you. And so, naturally, when I hear that a child has been killed in a fashion…in a fashion such as this ‘Little Jesus’ thing…you know what?
I would torture you to death just for writing a story like that, let alone acting it out! So, y’know what?
F*** what your mum and dad did to you and your brother. F*** it. I’d’ve tortured the f*** out of them if I had them here, just like I’m going to torture the f*** out of you now too.
‘Cos two wrongs don’t make a right. Two wrongs do not make a right. So kneel down over here, please, so I can connect you to this battery.
2. Death Tax
A monologue from the play by Lucas Hnath
TODD
I think you think I’m weak. I think you’re used to the type of guys who push people around and I’m not that type of person.
But I think I bore you. I think you miss the other type of guy. I think you don’t want to be with someone like me. I think I embarrass you.
You’d rather be with someone who, I dunno, who wore leather jackets. Yeah, you know what I mean Leather jackets.
Rides a motorcycle. I have cardigans. Polo shirts. Khaki pants. The time when we went out and had dinner, and I saw you looking at the guy at the bar wearing a leather jacket,
I saw you looking at him, and I could see you seeing in your eye that you’d rather be with him. And that was just a week before we decided to take a break.
That was just a week before, but when I saw you seeing him, in his leather jacket, I could tell you were And I wish I were that person.
I wish I were a leather jacket guy, Tina. I try. I want to be that guy. I think that’s why I want to be with you, I think,
I think, because I think that being with you would help maybe make me more the type of guy that I want to be.
But you just don’t have patience for me I guess.
3. Gem Of The Ocean
A monologue from the play by August Wilson
CAESAR WILKS
Here…here go a quarter. I’m gonna see what you do with that. These n*ggers take and throw their money away in the saloon and get mad when it’s gone.
I give one fellow a quarter and he turn around and give it to the candy man. I say he could have did something with that quarter.
It wasn’t much but it was twenty-five cents more than he had. He took and threw it away. He can’t see past his nose.
He can’t see it’s all set up for him to do anything he want. See, he could have took and bought him a can of shoe polish and got him a rag.
If he could see that far he’d look up and find twenty-five dollars in his pocket. Twenty-five dollars buys you an opportunity.
You don’t need but five dollars to get in the crap game. That’s five opportunities he done threw away. The candy man gonna get him a bigger wagon and another five pound of sugar.
He gonna be digging a ditch the rest of his life. I’m gonna see what you do. You turn that twenty-five cents into five dollars and you come and see me and I’ll give you a job.
4. A KID LIKE JAKE
A monologue from the play by Daniel Pearle
Greg (Thirties)
We had a bit of a meltdown. Last week. (Pause) Jake wanted to be Snow White for Halloween. And I had said, you know, we could talk about it.
But Alex felt strongly it was a bad idea.
She’s obviously fine with his wearing anything, you know, around the apartment but she was convinced letting him trick-or-treat like that— in the building . . .
That neighbors might look at him funny. And she’s right that he’s observant. And sensitive.
Anyway, we’d kinda been delaying the conversation and Halloween rolls around and Alex has a pirate outfit and a skeleton costume laid out for him on his bed and he asks, what about Snow White?
And she tells him she doesn’t have a Snow White costume but she has these other costumes, and he says he doesn’t like these other costumes.
And she tries to explain, you know, sometimes you can’t have exactly what you want but that’s why we have to compromise.
And he starts throwing a tantrum. Says he doesn’t want to be a skeleton, that her ideas are lazy, “lazy ideas”—who knows where he— . . .
Eventually she said if he wouldn’t stop behaving this way he wouldn’t be allowed to go trick-or-treating at all and that really sent him over the edge.
Screaming at her. “You lied to me . . . You’re not my boss. Daddy said I could.” And I kept explaining I hadn’t actually said yes but at that point . . .
I mean the two of them were really getting into it. She said he was being a baby, that he didn’t deserve a costume at all.
And he said . . . you know, “You’re the worst mom in the entire world and I wish you were dead . . . ” (He half-laughs, a little embarrassed.)
Alex thinks maybe we give in too much.
He’s got all these interviews happening and they’re obviously not on his terms and she feels like we owe it to him to set clearer boundaries at home.
So he can learn a little more . . . self-control. I don’t know. I do worry that he’s a little—spoiled.
I mean he’s an only child, he’s got Alex around all the time, a lotta kids don’t have that, not to mention, you know, his own playroom.
It used to be an office—that we shared. I never understood why his toys couldn’t just live in his—
Anyway, all I’m saying is he is accustomed to getting what he wants. So . . . maybe she has a point.
Read the play here – Amazon|Dramatists Play Service
5. Brooklyn Boy
A monologue from the play by Donald Margulies
ERIC
My father sold shoes. In a Buster Brown store on Sheepshead Bay Road. He wasn’t a partner, he was an employee.
For thirty-nine years. He gave his life to that store. It wasn’t even his to profit from, yet he still gave everything to that g*ddamn store.
I could never understand what was so attractive about that place, why he chose to spend so much of his days there and not at home.
I remember watching him closely in the morning, trying to uncover the mystery of manhood, the rituals of work.
The shpritz of Aramis, the buff of the Oxfords, the tying of the perfect Windsor knot.
I’d watch him from my window get swallowed up in the sea of Brooklyn fathers all beginning their day.
6. Of The Fields, Lately
A monologue from the play by David French
BEN
He rushed out the door and down to the school-yard, the first game he had ever come to, and my mother put his supper in the oven, for later …
I hadn’t reminded my father of the game. I was afraid he’d show up and embarrass me. Twelve years old and ashamed of my old man.
Ashamed of his dialect, his dirty overalls, his bruised fingers with the fingernails lined with dirt, his teeth yellow as old ivory.
Most of all, his lunch pail, that symbol of the working man. No, I wanted a doctor for a father. A lawyer. At least a fireman.
Not a carpenter. That wasn’t good enough … And at home my mother sat down to darn his socks and watch the oven …
I remember stepping up to bat. The game was tied; it was the last of the ninth, with no one on base. Then I saw him sitting on the bench along third base.
He grinned and waved, and gestured to the man beside him. But I pretended not to see him. I turned to face the pitcher.
And angry at myself, I swung hard on the first pitch, there was a hollow crack, and the ball shot low over the shortstop’s head for a double.
Our next batter bunted and I made third. He was only a few feet away now, my father. But I still refused to acknowledge him.
Instead, I stared hard at the catcher, pretending concentration. And when the next pitch bounced between the catcher’s legs and into home screen, I slid home to win the game.
And there he was, jumping up and down, showing his teeth, excited as hell.
And as the crowd broke up and our team stampeded out of the school-yard, cleats clicking and scraping blue sparks on the sidewalk,
I looked back once through the wire fence and saw my father still sitting on the now-empty bench, alone, slumped over a little, staring at the cinders between his feet, just staring…
I don’t know how long he stayed there, maybe till dark, but I do know he never again came down to see me play.
At home that night he never mentioned the game or being there. He just went to bed unusually early…
7. BASILICA
A monologue from the play by Mando Alvarado
Joe (Late thirties)
Ah babe, I’m not doing so good. I just feel so . . . I wish I could tell you that I got the strength. But, you know I would be bullsh*tting.
You always had a way of seeing through me. I know. Like that time, I came home. You put me on that stupid Weight Watcher’s Diet.
Small portions, no fast food. I was still the same waist size since high school. So I came home. You knew I had a Whataburger.
But I said, “No babe, I had a salad and one of those meals, like 3 points and sh*t.” And you just looked at me.
That night, I was asleep and you came in and jumped on top of me, with the receipt.
Whataburger with double meat, double cheese, bacon, mayo, lettuce, tomato, whatasize fries, and whatasized coke.
Busted. And an apple pie. So busted.
I miss you. Babe. What am I gonna do without you? How did I f*** up babe? My whole life. I tried to do right.
I just don’t get it. I keep thinking I’m gonna wake up and everything’s gonna be fine. Be like it was. Tell me to wake up.
8. A Raisin In The Sun
A monologue from the play by Lorraine Hansberry
ASAGAI
(Shouting over her) I LIVE THE ANSWER! (Pause) In my village at home it is the exceptional man who can even read a newspaper … or who ever sees a book at all.
I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village. But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly.
At times it will seem that nothing changes at all … and then again the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future.
And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred.
But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and I will not wonder long.
And perhaps . . . perhaps I will be a great man … I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course . . .
and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire . . .
9. Dinner With Friends
A monologue from the play by Donald Margulies
GABE
You don’t get it: I cling to Karen; I cling to her. Imagining a life without her doesn’t excite me, it just makes me anxious.
It all goes by so fast, Tom, I know. The hair goes, and the waist. And the stamina; the capacity for staying up late, to read or watch a movie, never mind sex.
Want to hear a shocker? Karen is premenopausal. That’s right: my sweetheart, my lover, that sweet girl I lolled around with on endless Sundays, is getting hot flashes.
It doesn’t seem possible. We spend our youth unconscious, feeling immortal, then we marry and have kids and awaken with a shock to mortality, theirs, ours, that’s all we see.
We worry about them, their safety, our own , air bags, plane crashes, pederasts, and spend our middle years wanting back the dreamy, carefree part, the part we f***ed and pissed away;
now we want that back, ’cause we know how fleeting it all is, now we know, and it just doesn’t seem fair that so much is gone when there’s really so little left.
So, some of us try to regain unconsciousness. Some of us blow up our homes . . . And others of us . . . take up piano; I’m taking piano.
10. The Crucible
A monologue from the play by Arthur Miller
REV. SAMUEL PARRIS
I cannot blink what I saw, Abigail, for my enemies will not blink it. I saw a dress lying in the grass and I thought I saw someone naked running through the trees.
I saw it! Now tell me true, Abigail.
Now my ministry’s at stake; my ministry and perhaps your cousin’s life….Whatever abomination you have done, give me all of it now, for I dare not be taken unaware when I go before them down there.
Abigail, I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me, and now, just now when there must be some good respect for me in the parish, you compromise my very character.
I have given you a home, child, I have put clothes upon your back—now give me upright answer:— your name in the town—–it is entirely white, is it not?
Abigail, is there any other cause than you have told me, for Goody Proctor discharging you?
It has troubled me that you are now seven months out of their house, and in all this time no other family has ever called for your service.
11. What Didn’t Happen
A monologue from the play by Christopher Shinn
PETER
When they were arranging my book tour, I told them I wanted to branch out—develop a bigger audience, so I told them not to send me to Boston and L.A. and Chicago.
The real reason was that I was ashamed of the book. I went to cities like Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor, where I knew no one.
I was also really fat. Well. I am in Minneapolis. I give my reading. Afterwards, a middle-aged woman—
a bit softer than middle-aged actually, but no longer young—this woman—who is black —approaches me. With a big bright nervous face.
And tells me how much my books mean to her. I’m aghast, as I’ve never before been approached by a black reader.
I ask her why she likes my books and she laughs as though it’s a preposterous question. “Because they’re good. They make me cry,” she says.
I want to know more, so I say, “But why?” I’m thinking, What does this woman relate to in my work? My books are about rich white people.
She says, “Same sh*t goes on where I work, people hurting each other, stabbing each other in the back, this one slept with that one,
this one’s treating that one wrong, and everyone’s doing their best but it just falls apart, and it’s left like that, no way to put it back together.”
So I invite her to walk with me to my hotel. She does. I say, “Come to my room and have a cup of tea.” She comes in.
I make tea. We sit at the cheap shiny coffee table. I say, “I’d like to kiss you.” And quite calmly, quite sweetly, not an ounce of condescension in her voice: she says,
“I think you’ll be just fine in a few minutes for not having done that.” And she smiles an extraordinary smile.
As do I. And she is gone. Because. Do you? . . . For so many years I felt. Doubt and. Guilt . Over my work—over my life.
And to see—as I sat there with her—ghost—in the room. I thought of her wisdom. Which so eclipsed mine.
12. Betrayal
A monologue from the play by Harold Pinter
JERRY
Look at the way you’re looking at me. I can’t wait for you, I’m bowled over, I’m totally knocked out, you dazzle me,
you jewel, my jewel, I can’t ever sleep again, no, listen, it’s the truth, I won’t walk, I’ll be a cripple, I’ll descend,
I’ll diminish, into total paralysis, my life is in your hands, that’s what you’re banishing me to, a state of catatonia, do you know the state of catatonia?
do you? do you? the state of…. where the reigning prince is the prince of emptiness, the prince of absence, the prince of desolation.
I love you. Everyone knows. The world knows. It knows. But they’ll never know, they’re in a different world. I adore you.
I’m madly in love with you. I can’t believe that what anyone is at this moment saying has ever happened has never happened.
Nothing has ever happened. Nothing. This is the only thing that has ever happened. Your eyes kill me. I’m lost. You’re wonderful.
13. THE BAD GUYS
A monologue from the play by Alena Smith
JESSE
F***in’ Chris. Thinks he’s so great ’cause he’s going back to school. Well, you know what that means? Debt. More debt.
Chris and April are gonna be in debt for the rest of their lives, and so is their kid. And so are my parents.
I’m the only one with my head above water, and that’s because I sell ganja to children. But of course, that’s a Band-Aid solution.
Ultimately, I’m f***ed too. This whole country’s f***ed, you know that? Thanks to people like Fink.
You know Fink was the one who kept telling my dad to build those sh*tty spec houses! Oh, everyone’s doing it.
Easy money. Get in on the game, Glen. ’Cause houses aren’t for living in anymore. They’re for flipping!
Like burgers. But then the big burger bubble blows up. And who do you think gets bailed out? Not us, nah.
We go broke. Fink and his buddies— they’re the ones getting government cheese. Welfare for Wall Street, that’s what America is all about.
Ain’t that ironic? Dontcha think? ‘Cause America, we hate welfare! Like when I see fat b*tches with babies hanging off their t*ts lining up for a handout—
that just makes me sick. As an American, that just makes me puke a little bit in my mouth. But now Fink and his friends, they’re special.
They’re too big to fail! So these guys, these banksters, what they need from us— what they need from you, America—
is, oh, just a little thing called seven hundred billion dollars. Oh—and that’s just to start. An appetizer—no, an appeteaser.
That’s what they call it at Applebee’s, right? And you know what they call it at KFC. [Beat.] A Double Down. Yup.
That’s what we did here, America. We just doubled the f*** down on this bullsh*t.
14. The Glass Menagerie
A monologue from the play by Tennessee Williams
JIM
[abruptly]: You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is?
That’s what they call it when someone low-rates himself! I understand it because I had it, too. Although my case was not so aggravated as yours seems to be.
I had it until I took up public speaking, developed my voice, and learned that I had an aptitude for science.
Before that time I never thought of myself as being outstanding in any way whatsoever!
Now I’ve never made a regular study of it, but I have a friend who says I can analyse people better than doctors that make a profession of it.
I don’t claim that to be necessarily true, but I can sure guess a person’s psychology, Laura! [Takes out his gum]
Excuse me, Laura. I always take it out when the flavour is gone. I’ll use this scrap of paper to wrap it in. I know how it is to get it stuck on a shoe.
Yep – that’s what I judge to be your principal trouble. A lack of amount of faith in yourself as a person. You don’t have the proper amount of faith in yourself.
I’m basing that fact on a number of your remarks and also on certain observations I’ve made. For instance that clumping you thought was so awful in high school.
You say that you even dreaded to walk into class. You see what you did?
You dropped out of school, you gave up an education because of a clump, which as far as I know was practically non-existent!
A little physical defect is what you have. Hardly noticeable even! Magnified thousands of times by imagination!
You know what my strong advice to you is? Think of yourself as superior in some way!
15. Blacktop Sky
A monologue from the play by Christina Anderson
KLASS
You may not be fully aware of the times we’re livin’ in. The times that they don’t print in our papers or splash across our screens or pump through our radios.
I suggest you might not be aware, because I see you. I watch you.
I see you holding on to what little sanity and security you have left, squeezing it so tight that the color is leaving your fingers, draining from your hands.
The squeezing is causing your muscles to ache. Jaws to clinch. And you think that pain is a sign of sanity? Security?
It’s not, my friends. It’s not. [Pause] There’s a wind blowin’ through you. [Pause] A violent gust of truth. [Pause]
It starts out as a breeze somewhere in here . . . [Points at his heart] . . . and it wakes up all the noise inside of you.
Then that breeze gets in your blood. Travels through every vein. Head to toe. It gathers enough speed to the point where it won’t let you sleep at night.
That breeze becomes a gust and that gust won’t let you be still. Won’t keep your troubles quiet. You sit on stoops, lean against cars, stand under the moon—restless.
You walk to one end of your neighborhood then back to the other end, go sit back on that same stoop, sit under the sun—restless.
The gust is stirring your soul. It’s pulling up memories from way down deep, from the cracks and crevices covered with scabs and scars.
We swallow what we think is liquor, inhale what we think is weed, inject what we think is freedom. We alter our state of reality so we don’t have to participate in it.
So we can’t be responsible, aware, dependable. And what happens when we hear a scream? When we see someone who looks like us, cornered?
Pleading? Hm? [KLASS turns away as if he’s ignoring a weeping soul] We cross the street. We turn the music up a little louder.
We drink, smoke, squeeze . . . but we still hear it. It never goes away. The wind, the noise, that somebody pleading . . . it’s not going away.
And then the next somebody is cornered. [KLASS turns away] And then the next one . . . [He turns away]
And then the next—until it’s you. And then you want to know why no one’s coming to save you, to take you to a safe place?
16. The Doctor’s Dilemma
A monologue from the play by George Bernard Shaw
SIR PATRICK
He’s a clever operator, is Walpole, though he’s only one of your chloroform surgeons.
In my early days, you made your man drunk; and the porters and students held him down; and you had to set your teeth and finish the job fast.
Nowadays you work at your ease; and the pain doesn’t come until afterwards, when you’ve taken your cheque and rolled up your bag and left the house.
I tell you, Colly, chloroform has done a lot of mischief. It’s enabled every fool to be a surgeon. I know your Cutler Walpoles and their like.
They’ve found out that a man’s body is full of bits and scraps of old organs he has no mortal use for.
Thanks to chloroform, you can cut half a dozen of them out without leaving him any the worse, except for the illness and the guineas it costs him.
I knew the Walpoles fifteen years ago.
The father used to snip off the ends of people’s uvulas for fifty guineas, and paint throats with caustic every day for a year at two guineas a time.
His brother-in-law extirpated tonsils for two hundred guineas until he took up women’s cases at double the fees.
Cutler himself worked hard at anatomy to find something fresh to operate on; and at last he got hold of something he calls the nuciform sac, which he’s made quite the fashion.
People pay him five hundred guineas to cut it out. They might as well get their hair cut for all the difference it makes; but I suppose they feel important after it.
You can’t go out to dinner now without your neighbor bragging to you of some useless operation or other.
17. BRONX BOMBERS
A monologue from the play by Eric Simonson
REGGIE
Why?! Why do I gotta do that?! Why do I gotta do anything you tell me? But then I do. I do everything you tell me to.
I ride the bus that I hate, I room with guys who hate me, I play when you say play, and I ride the bench when you say don’t,
even though the fans want to see me and it makes no sense whatsoever. I keep quiet—I keep quiet and I do what I’m told.
And I will continue to do that all year long, and I won’t ask to be traded ’cause that’s what I agree to do,
and thank God Almighty that I am a good, Christian, Man! That’s right. Jesus! Jesus Christ got my mind right! And he hears my suffering!
He hears my prayers! [He drops to his knees] It makes me cry, the way I’m treated on this team. The Yankees are Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle and Gehrig.
I’m a n*gger to you, and I just don’t know how to be no Elston Howard.
I’m making seven hundred thousand dollars a year, I drive a Rolls-Royce, and I got homes on both ends of this great country and you treat me like dirt.
I’ve got an IQ of one hundred sixty, and you can’t mess me because you’ve never seen anything like me, and you sure as hell never had anyone like me on the Yankees.
I won’t fight you, Billy Martin! I’ll do whatever you tell me to do on the field, because that is my contract with you, but you can not make me give up on myself!
You can not make me give up on me! See you at the ballpark.
Read the play here – Amazon|Dramatists Play Service
18. American Hero
A monologue from the play by Bess Wohl
TED
G*ddamn it, these people. These g*ddamn people. The guy won’t even advance me some ham. He was the last of the pre-approved distributors.
Did you know that we are only allowed to use their pre-approved distributors? But do you know what else?
They’re more expensive. They charge you, the franchisee—forty cents extra per pound. And it all goes to a kickback to corporate.
No wonder Bob bolted. The poor guy had no chance. ‘Cause they sold him the franchise, it cost, hello—Over four hundred and fifty thousand dollars!
But what he didn’t know— what you can’t know, unless you read the fine print—is that they can put your store wherever they want—
any crappy, impossible, dead-end location, they can wait up to two years to open it. They set all the prices, they control the supply chain.
It’s all on their terms! They basically have you by the balls. They sell you the store; you give them your balls. How is that fair?
What the hell kind of world do we live in? Where people just . . . People just . . . Take people’s . . . Forget it. I give up. I give up.
19. The Call
A monologue from the play by Tanya Barfield
PETER
. . . One time, I remember, out of nowhere, we got invited to this family’s house for dinner. David made friends with everyone—
and somehow through hand signals, we get invited. But then, we don’t go. We’re both sick, heat stroke, and we’re chugging Pepto-Bismol, so we don’t go.
A couple of days later, we go. The directions are: “Such and such village. The house near Kafele’s house,” but nobody knows who Kafele is!
We wander around calling out, “Kafele? Kafele?” Seems like Kafele isn’t actually important; he’s just some guy.
Eventually, we get there, apologize for not coming when we were supposed to; the wife’s crying. Her eyes are puffy and the husband looks like he’s been crying, too.
And their daughter is so frail, she looks like she hasn’t eaten in weeks.
It turns out—now these people are very poor, they have nothing, their farm is barren—it turns out they slaughtered their last goat for our dinner.
And we didn’t show up. It was. Awful.
But they forgive us; they’re so nice we feel like they’re our long-lost family but nobody really says anything because we don’t speak the same language; we just use hand signals.
We stay until it’s late, then we leave their straw hut, go back to our hotel room, slip into our cozy beds and go to sleep.
After a month —no, actually more—we’re still talking about it, so we decide to buy them a goat. We try to push the goat up the hill but we fail.
Goats are very stubborn. So we hire a goat herder. We finally get there, they are so appreciative, they start to cry.
(Beat, remembering) And . . . their daughter is missing, and . . . we ask where she is. She died.
(Beat. Trying to uplift the mood) Well. That wasn’t a very uplifting . . .
Read the play here – Amazon|Dramatists Play Service
20. BUZZER
A monologue from the play by Tracey Scott Wilson
Don (Twenties)
Drugs are really bad news. Why should you listen to me? Seriously. I wouldn’t listen to me. I came here as a joke.
I mean, Miss Schaffer asked me to come talk to you so I’m here. But I mean who am I? A white guy telling you not to do something.
A super, cool white guy but . . . still . . . (Pause) I know that you guys are going to do what you’re going to do. I can’t stop you.
Nobody can. I can only tell you what I know. It’s fun at first. Great fun. And then suddenly it isn’t. Suddenly it’s just . . . work.
(Beat) I’ve seen some terrible things. I’ve seen some really brilliant people die and destroy themselves. I almost destroyed myself.
But you know, I got a second chance cause my daddy’s rich and he got me out of trouble. A lot. But you guys. You don’t have that advantage.
If any of you guys do half of what I did you will die or be in jail for life. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. I’m lucky.
I know that. But you won’t be so lucky so why mess up your life? It’s not worth it. It’s hard to see now but, trust me on this.
Get high for a few hours a day, then the next, then you wake up and ten years have passed. And you can’t get it back. Ever.
It’s gone. And all you have left is regret.
Read the play here – Amazon|Dramatists Play Service
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