24 Dramatic Monologues For Teenage Females

dramatic-monologues-for-teenage-females-girl-holding-hourglass.

Monologue Collection

SPARK (ALI)SARAH, SARAH (ROCHELLE)
BUG STUDY (JANE)BOY ON BLACK TOP ROAD (DONNA)
IMPENETRABLE (CARI)REALLY REALLY (LEIGH)
EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TROY (CHARLOTTE)OUT OF WATER (CAT)
SHE KILLS MONSTERS (AGNES)ELEEMOSYNARY (ECHO)
A RAISIN IN THE SUN (BENEATHA)RADIUM GIRLS (GRACE)
LOCKDOWN WITH PINKY (BIRDIE)OUR TOWN (EMILY)
PYGMALION (ELIZA)LOVECHILD (BILLIE)
PLAYING WITH GROWN UPS (STELLA)NONE OF THE ABOVE (JAMIE)
LIFE SCIENCE (LEAH)937 (ELISE)
DECK THE STAGE (SHELLEY)FOR OUR MOTHERS & FATHERS (DONYA)
PRETTY THEFT (ALLEGRA)THE LARAMIE PROJECT (ZUBAIDA)
STONE COLD DEAD SERIOUS (SHAYLEE)WHERE’S JULIE? (JULIE)
FROZEN STARS (LISA)PRAYING FOR RAIN (ERIN)

24 Of The Best Dramatic Monologues For Teenage Females From Published Plays

1. PRAYING FOR RAIN 

A monologue from the play by Robert Lewis Vaughan 

ERIN (seventeen) 

Marc, who is mentioned in the monologue, was once a jock and has changed drastically after a severe motorcycle accident.

What’s next, Mom? What does he have to do to make you see that he’s no good? You know he still hangs out with those idiots… with Jim and Chris. 

Maybe there wasn’t a gun and they were just gonna take that kid’s money. But maybe there is a gun and he’d have done it, too. I just know it, and so do you. 

He used to be nice and everything. I guess. He was hard to get to know. It’s kinda like two Marcs: Marc before he got hurt and Marc after he got hurt. 

Before he got hurt, he was okay, and you’d get close enough and you’d deal with it ‘cause we were all on teams, and he was kind of there, but after he got hurt…

I don’t know. I thought it was kind of weird, but … I mean, we all wear our team jackets, you know?

Tony Miller still wears his even though he quit playing football, but Marc always wore his jacket.

He always wore it, like he was just a little more proud of it than anybody else. I noticed that after he came back to school … and he couldn’t play anymore …he never wore his jacket again. 

And …it’s like, since then, I don’t know. I still … I don’t want to have anything to do with him and I think they should have just kicked him out. 

What’s he going to need a diploma for anyway? He’s not going to use it.

Read the play here

2. Sarah, Sarah

A monologue from the play by Daniel Goldfarb

Rochelle is speaking to her future mother-in-law, who doesn’t think Rochelle is good enough for her son, Arthur.

Rochelle (eighteen)

For Godsakes, the buns cost ten cents each, Mrs. Grosberg. I am sorry. I am sorry I am not as rich as you want me to be. I am sorry that my father didn’t leave us with more.

We’ve thought of selling the house, many times. We think about it all the time. Don’t think we haven’t. But it’s complicated. All our memories of my dad are tied up in it. And it’s hard to just walk away from that.

Even if it seems sensible! . . . Look, I want you to like me, Mrs. Grosberg. I do. Because I’m not going anywhere, and life’ll be a lot easier if we can be friends. I love Arthur. I love him.

I love your son. And he loves me. I know I’m not perfect. I know my family seems pretty lousy on paper, and I don’t have the know-how to prove otherwise. I know rich is better than poor.

But I’m just eighteen, Mrs. Grosberg . . . . . . I can do a lot of things, Mrs. Grosberg. But I can’t make myself rich. I can’t make my daddy alive. And I can’t make him more responsible with his money when he was alive.

I can tell you he was great. And I loved him a lot. And I miss him a lot. I can tell you, that, even though he maybe spent too much, he did it out of love. And that he had enormous respect for the right things; for education, for culture.

He came over from the Old Country when he was nine, by himself Mrs. Grosberg, and worked. He worked hard. And I promise you, I work hard too. I don’t need big rings and cashmere sweaters.

If Arthur likes to buy them, if he’s proud, as you say, fine. But my needs and desires aren’t that fancy. I believe in Arthur. I’m going to put school on hold and work to support him while he’s finishing his philosophy degree.

And I know, there aren’t a lot of rich philosophers, Mrs. Grosberg, and that’s OK by me —

Read the play here

3. SPARK

A monologue from the play by Caridad Svich 

Ali (eighteen)

In a small town in North Carolina, 18-year-old Ali lives with her older sister Evelyn in a house that has seen better days. 

Their middle sister Lexie has just returned from a five-year tour of duty in a recent war. In this scene, Ali confronts Evelyn about their shared past.

You go round all high and mighty, but when Lexie shipped out, I remember you prayin’ to all the saints in heaven that she stay there a long time. Wanted her gone. 

Far, far away, ‘cuz you hated she always did better than you. She’d win some prize at school? You’d be all weirded-out. She made a real decision with her life? 

You didn’t know what to do with. ‘Cuz she’s just like Daddy. Lexie is just like Daddy and Daddy was a piece of sh*t. 

Piece of sh*t for leavin’ us, piece of sh*t ‘cuz Momma got sick after he left, piece of sh*t it was his fault she up and died, ‘cuz if he hadn’t left, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place. 

And Lexie got his eyes and Lexie got his spirit and Lexie a soldier too, and that just puts you out like hellfire. But you know what? Lexie’s more than you. 

Come Day of Judgment? Book gonna show she done right. And you, with all the powerful decency you say you got—

Nobody’s gonna remember you. Nobody’s gonna say “Oh that Evelyn, she’s a golden child.” Your name drop in the bucket?

Good riddance. That’s what people will say. Nobody but nobody’s gonna sing at your grave.

Read the play here

4. Boy On Black Top Road

A monologue from the play by Dale Wasserman

Donna is talking to a boy, who may be an imaginary remembrance of her brother.

Donna (eighteen)

All my life I’ve been a coward. There’s reason, I guess . . . plenty reason to be scared. What’s bad is that it makes you cruel. You turn cruel when somebody probes that little nest of fear you hide inside.

You lash out with your claws, and you wound and you hurt whoever sees inside you. You can’t bear that anyone should see that you’re not cocky, you’re afraid. But you are — of so many things. Of being hated . . . or loved.

Of failure . . . and maybe of success. Of growing old. We’re afraid of the dark before the lights come on. Then we’re afraid of the light, what it might show. Afraid to die. Maybe more afraid of living.

But of all the stuff there is to fear, I guess the worst is loneliness. (A pause.) . . . Sure as hell, company doesn’t help. If you want to find real Grade-A blue ribbon loneliness, try a crowd.

Even a crowd of one. I have . . . oh, God, so many times. I’d be alone for a while, until the ache was right up in my throat and I’d be hollering without a sound, saying, “Know me. Discover me.

I’m here, inside — somebody, please.” But they couldn’t hear my silent voice, so after a while I’d be saying, “Make love to me.” They didn’t ask much. They didn’t get much. (She giggles.)

You wouldn’t know about that. The big bad sex-express. “Love me, love me — well, if you can’t love me, OK, f*** me.” It’s like a dance . . . all the moves have been rehearsed, you just follow the music.

(Singing, raucously.) “Circle round and dosey do, All change partners, off we go!” (Quietly again.) And that’s how it goes. Time after time after time. Reach out for love and find you’ve been stuck with sex.

Booby-trapped by your own hormones!

Read the play here

5. Impenetrable

A monologue from the play by Mia McCullough

Cari is tagging along to the Starbucks and the spa with her mom. She’s geeky. She doesn’t have a lot of friends. She’s full of knowledge and excitement which she doesn’t usually get to express.

She is talking to the audience, though this is probably more than she speaks to any of her classmates all day at school.

Cari (Ten)

I want to be a veterinarian at a zoo so that I can touch all the animals, even the large predators, well, ok, especially the large predators.

I mean, I’m pretty sure that when zoo veterinarians perform surgery on tigers and polar bears, they take a few minutes to rub their bellies, tickle their paws, maybe even kiss them on the nose while they’re sedated.

I also want to be a musician, probably the clarinet because you can play all kinds of music with the clarinet: classical, jazz, blues, folk. It doesn’t have genre limitations like the saxophone or the harpsichord.

I would like to go on record as saying that the harpsichord is my favorite instrument.

I think it’s what it would sound like if spiders played music on their webs. I also want to be an astronaut unless they start letting regular people go into space — for way less money, and a trapezist.

The circus performers on trapezes? But really, I should become an inventor because then I wouldn’t be limited to one field.

I could clone tigers so that they would never be extinct, and create musical instruments that you can hear in outer space, and invent an air freshener-type-device that emits a chemical that makes people nicer.

And then have it installed in every classroom in every school in the world. And the Senate. They already make something like that for dogs.

Read the play here

6. Really Really

A monologue from the play by Paul Downs Colaizzo

Leigh

Why now? Tell me you f***. Why now? Four years. Four years I was not good enough for you. And what makes me better than this? I will tell you, Davis. What makes me better than this is my future.

The life that I can have. With Jimmy. With a protector and a provider and a man who can offer me 4 walls and a roof forever. (BEAT) I am choosing not to fall. It is a promise. What happened happened.

It happened, Davis. But my life is waiting. And it is exactly what I want. And you have actually helped me. This whole thing. This whole f***ed up thing – is a blessing. Jimmy can’t save something that doesn’t need to be saved.

Look at me. The poor girl who is almost beautiful. And look what I’m about to have.

Read the play here

7. Everything Will Be Different: A Brief History Of Helen Of Troy

A monologue from the play by Mark Schultz

Charlotte

I am so resolved. I am so ready. There is a world and I will see it. And you won’t stop me. I will have adventures. I will be like an explorer. I will make new friends. I will fall in love.

I will be like Christopher Colombus or Francis Drake or like Magellan or whatever. Because there is a world and I am determined. And when I come back? If I come back? No one will recognize me.

I will be like a movie star or like a famous person and no one will recognize me and I will see through everyone. I will see through everyone. Even you.

I will look right through you and you will look at me, and you’ll think to yourself who the hell is that and I will just smile at you.

I’ll just smile and I’ll mumble something like profound or something really famous like a famous something like what someone famous would say because that’s who I ‘ll be because I’ll know a lot more,

I’ll know a hell of a lot more when I come back. Or maybe I’ll just say, “F*** you” because I can see through you. F*** you. Under my breath. To the wall. To the f***ing wall.

I’ll see through you to the f***ing wall and you won’t even know that you’re nothing to me. And I’ll say f*** you and you’ll think Is she talking to me? And you won’t even know. You are a ghost to me.

And I don’t care. Everyone a f***ing ghost. Everyone. And I’m the only one. I’m the only one who means more than you or anyone else.

Read the play here

8. Out of the Water

A monologue from the play by Brooke Berman

Cat’s father, Graham, has begun a love affair with his step-sister, Polly, with whom he reconnected

at their father’s funeral after not seeing her for many years. Cat is determined to do something about it.

Cat (seventeen)

I work very hard. I get A’s in all of my classes. I am on time for everything. For everything. I work harder than the boys but I don’t get rewarded. I hear there was this thing a long time ago called “The Revolution” but my mom doesn’t seem to know about it.

My mom is always exhausted. Church doesn’t help. My mom is on a lot of committees and medication. I think my mom wants my dad to come home. My dad went to see his exstepsister in New York and he never came back.

I don’t know what he’s doing there. I mean, exstepsister? That’s not even a real relation. Plus, she’s like, she’s not, you know, she’s not a Christian.

I think she must lead a very scandalous and potentially exciting life even if it does not fall under the contract or rubric or whatever of the Church of God. I went on the Internet this morning and looked up this Polly Freed.

I know a lot about her. I am going to get my father back. I am going to bring him home.

Mom’s in the bedroom with the lights out again and everything’s quiet and sometimes, you just have to take matters into your own hands. Do you know what I mean? The Amtrak is an amazing way to travel.

All Aboard. You see the country, really you do. I don’t have my own car, and air travel is expensive and also, lately, uncomfortable and dangerous. But this feels just fine. On the train. In the Club Car.

Meeting people and listening to them talk. I could listen to people talk all day. Really, I could. And they have these stories, and they are. Dying. To talk. To tell you things. Everyone. So this is good.

I arrive tomorrow. And in the meantime, big windows, strangers, the Oreos and seltzer I brought from home, and the way the land keeps changing. This is amazing. The way it changes. Have you ever just watched it change?

Next stop . . . next stop.. next stop . . . And he’ll be waiting for me. My dad. He just needs someone to tell him where he lives.

Read the play here

9. She Kills Monsters

A monologue from the play by Qui Nguyen

Agnes

Do you want to know what my memories of Tilly are? They’re of this little nerdy girl who I never talked to, who I ignored, who I didn’t understand because she didn’t live in the same world as I did.

Her world was filled with evil jello molds and lesbian demon queens and slacker Gods while mine… had George Michaels and leg-warmers.

I didn’t get her. I assumed I would one day- that she’d grow out of all this- that I’d be able to sit around and ask her about normal things like clothes and TV shows and boys…

and as it turns out, I didn’t even know she didn’t even like boys until my DM told me. I didn’t know her, Vera. I remember her as a baby, I remember her as this little toddler I loved picking up and holding, but I don’t remember her as a teen at all.

I’ll never get the chance to know her as an adult. And now all I have left is this stupid piece of paper and this stupid made-up adventure about killing a stupid made-up dragon.

10. ELEEMOSYNARY

A monologue from the play by Lee Blessing

This play examines the delicate relationship of three women: a grandmother, Dorothea, who has sought to

exert her independence through strong willed eccentric behavior, Artie, her daughter, who has run from her overpowering mother,

and Echo, Artie’s daughter, who is incredibly smart and equally sensitive. After Dorothea (who has raised Echo into her teens) suffers a stroke,

Echo is forced to reestablish contact with her mother through extended phone conversations,

during which real issues are skirted and the talk is mostly about the precocious Echo’s unparalleled success in a national spelling bee.

In the end, Artie and Echo come to accept their mutual need  and summon the courage to build a life together,

despite the terror this holds after so many years of estrangement.

Echo

Uncle Bill hardly remembers you, you know that? I asked him what you were like as a little girl, and he couldn’t even say. He remembers Grandma even less.

He didn’t have one interesting thing to say about her – about Grandma. They don’t have a single picture or her, either. Not even in their minds.

To them, she’s just a woman who lived a big, embarrassing life. They all think they’ve saved me just in time. Not just from Grandma – from you, too. (A beat.)

So I started wondering if they weren’t right. Maybe the smartest thing would be to forget you completely. And Grandma. After all, what did I ever get from the two of you, except a good education?

You especially – what were you ever to me, except a voice on the phone now and then? And I looked around the new room where I was staying, and it was real nice and… blank, the way a thing is before you put any time into it.

I thought, I could live a whole new life here. I could invent a whole new me. I could be Barbara if I wanted to, not Echo. I could fit in.

I don’t mean I’d become like Whitney and Beth. I’m not that crazy. But I could become like Robinson Crusoe, and adapt myself to a strange and harsh environment.

I could live in a kind of desert. I could even flourish. Like you have. I could live without the one thing I wanted. But I kept hearing your voice.

That voice on the other end of the phone, hiding behind spelling words, making excuses – or so energetic sometimes, so… wishing.

I don’t even remember what you said, just the sound of it. Just a sound that said, “I love you, and I failed you.” I hate that sound.

And I will never settle for it, because no one failed me. No one ever failed me. Not Grandma and not you. I am a prize among women.

I’m your daughter. That’s what I choose to be. Someone who loves you. Someone who can make you love me. Nearly all the time.

I’m going to stay with you. I’m going to prepare you for me. I’m going to cultivate you. I’m going to tend you.

Read this play here

11. A RAISIN IN THE SUN

A monologue from the play by Lorraine Hansberry

This play focuses on the Youngers, an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play begins, the family is about to receive an insurance check for $10,000 from their deceased father’s life insurance policy.

Each member of the family has an idea as to what this money should be used for. Beneatha tries to convince her brother and mother to use the money for her medical school tuition. 

Beneatha

When I was small… we used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street.

And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day… and it was very dangerous, you know… far too steep…

and sure enough one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us…

And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital and they fixed the broken bones and sewed it all up…

and the next time I saw Rufus he just had a little line down the middle of his face…. I never got over that… What one person could do for another, fix him up – sew up the problem, make him all right again.

That was the most marvelous thing in the world… I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world a human being could do.

Fix up the sick, you know – and make them whole again. This was truly being God… It used to be so important to me. It used to matter. I used to care.

Yes – I think [I stopped]. Because it doesn’t seem deep enough, close enough to what ails mankind! It was a child’s way of seeing things – or an idealist’s.

You are still where I left off. You with all of your talk and dreams about Africa! You still think you can patch up the world. Cure the Great Sore of Colonialism – (loftily, mocking it) with the Penicillin of Independence – !

Independence and then what? What about the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come into power and steal and plunder the same as before – only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new independence – WHAT ABOUT THEM?

Read the play here

12. Radium Girls

A monologue from the play by D.W. Gregory

Grace explains to her mother why she is going to court rather than take a settlement from the radium company. The first two lines are lines of dialogue which can be included as part of the monologue or not.

Grace

I’m goin’ to court, Ma. I want those people to look at me! I want them to look at me and explain how it’s my fault I got sick working in their factory!

Ma. All my life, I’ve done what other people told me to do. I quit school. Because you said I should. I put that brush in my mouth ‘cause Mrs. McNeil said I should.

I never said, please can’t I finish school? I never said, I don’t like the taste of the paint. I never argued. Even though I knew – Ma. I knew somethin’ wasn’t right.

At night, I’d lie in bed, and I’d see my dress. Hanging on the back of the closet door. All aglow. My shoes on the floor. My hairbrush. And comb.

On the dresser. So much light, Ma. So much light! And I never once questioned. I never once asked! Don’t you see?

They knew I wouldn’t. That’s what they were counting on.

Read the play here

13. Lockdown with Pinky

A monologue from the play by C.S. Hanson

Birdie Combs is talking to Pinky Walker, an 18-year-old chunky male dressed as a glamour girl in tight dress and stiletto heels for Halloween.

They are in a sparsely furnished room in a nursing room. Birdie is there to visit her grandmother. When the grandmother called Birdie “a b*tch,” Birdie choked her.

Pinky, an aide, has walked in and called the cops. Pinky and Birdie wait for the cops to arrive.

Birdie (eighteen)

And then she looks right at me and calls me a “b*tch.” I come here every week to visit her and she calls me a—? I mean, it’s just, I didn’t need that.

Don’t go to parties anymore. Go to school every day. And after that I’m working cash register in the grocery store. Counting change for tight a**es who,

I love this, who throw those dumb magazines in their cart at the last minute, sorta cover ‘em up, like they’re too good to read National Enquirer.

Everybody reads crap. You know how I get my kicks? I squeeze lemons and make the sourest lemon-aid I can, so sour it’s hard to drink. But I drink it.

And I put Tabasco sauce in my coffee. Never see my old friends anymore. There’s so much I . . . avoid. And she calls me a b*tch. I think you’re the b*tch.

You’re the high-maintenance b*tch. With your nails and painted face and hair and tight-a** way you dress. I used to dress like you.

Dress like I was having fun. Not anymore.

Read the play here

14. Our Town

A monologue from the play by Thornton Wilder

Emily has just died in childbirth and has been given the chance to go back home to a time she wishes to see. Looking at her mother and father whom she will never see again, she realizes that it was a mistake to have gone back.

Emily

(softly, more in wonder than in grief)

I can’t bear it. They’re so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I’m here. I’m grown up. I love you all, everything.

– I can’t look at everything hard enough. (pause, talking to her mother who does not hear her. She speaks with mounting urgency)

Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama.

I married George Gibbs, Mama. Wally’s dead, too. Mama, his appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it – don’t you remember?

But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one another. (pause, looking desperate because she has received no answer.

She speaks in a loud voice, forcing herself to not look at her mother) I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.

(she breaks down sobbing, she looks around) I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill –  to my grave.

But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners? Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking? and Mama’s sunflowers.

And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths? and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

(she asks abruptly through her tears) Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute? (she sighs) I’m ready to go back.

I should have listened to you. That’s all human beings are! Just blind people.

Read the play here

15. Pygmalion

A monologue from the play by George Bernard Shaw

Eliza

Freddy’s not a fool. And if he’s weak and poor and wants me, maybe he’d make me happier than my betters that bully me and don’t want me.

Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else.

I only want it to be natural. I don’t want you to be infatuated with me. That’s not the sort of feeling I want from you. And don’t you be too sure of yourself or of me.

I could have been a bad girl if I’d liked. I’ve seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough.

And they wish each other dead the next minute. I want a little kindness. I know I’m a common ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I’m not dirt under your feet.

What I done – what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis. I did it because we were pleasant together, and I come – came – to care for you;

not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly-like.

Read the play here

16. LOVECHILD 

A monologue from the play by Joanna Murray-Smith 

BILLIE

You made sure! You! What was it you made sure of, exactly? Where were you? What did you secure for me? You have no idea!

You wouldn’t know the first thing about what was good for me, what I had, or missed, or lost! There are all kinds of liberties I might have had if my parents had been of my blood.

I could have hated them and b*tched about them and left and come back and left, I could have betrayed them and abandoned them and returned and fought – all those privileges of a blood connection.

I could have pushed to be free of them because I would have known that I could never be free. We would have been blood.

Temper or whim or anger – nothing could have budged that one fact. If it’s not a blood tie, nothing’s dependable. All those shifts of feeling are so much more dangerous, because there is nothing to stop you from walking away.

There is nothing … biological … to beckon you back. That’s a big strain to live with. Somewhere good manners came into it.

I couldn’t be a real child, because I might hurt them and frighten them and frighten myself. So don’t tell me you ‘looked into them’.

You didn’t look anywhere. You didn’t know anything.

Read the play here

17. PlayIng With Grown Ups

A monologue from the play by Hannah Patterson 

STELLA 

I find adults fascinating. I could watch them, for hours. Much more than animals at the zoo. They make everything in life so complicated.

Then they say, ‘Uh, if only everything in life wasn’t so complicated.’ But I swear they enjoy it. They create it. To me it all seems so simple.

If you like someone, tell them. If someone is hurt, then help them. Sort out the problem, at the root. Don’t just patch it up, or ignore it.

It’ll only come back, and it’ll hurt more next time. My mum always says to me ‘You don’t understand because you haven’t experienced it yet.

Once you experience it, then you’ll know. Then you’ll feel it. Then you’ll be able to empathize. Life is complicated.’ She talks as if I were an innocent.

A blank canvas. But I’m not. She’s the one that’s forgotten. We aren’t born innocent. We’re just born more obvious, that’s all. With all our needs and desires right out there in front of us, naked, for everyone to see.

And then we learn to hide them. Call them by different names. Make them seem more sophisticated. To complicate it. Don’t we?

Well, that’s how I see it.

Read the play here

18. None of the Above

A monologue from the play by Jenny Lyn Bader 

Jamie

It wasn’t me who broke the vase! OK? I didn’t do it! I didn’t break the vase. Someone else broke it and I took the blame. So please stop trying to fit me into your little theory of entitlement.

Because I do not go smashing up precious antiques; that is not my idea of a fun time. I have never broken anything in my life. It was my boyfriend!

Roger Auerbach. And I knew if I told them that he broke it they would make it a rule for me not to see him and it would be really tricky to violate that because they are like really good friends with the Auerbachs.

And I thought I loved him. So I told them I broke it. That’s when they came up with the unique punishment of no allowance for thirteen years.

…He left me the following week for Sheila Martin. The nonentity who called the other day. The new girl in school. At this point everyone has been at Billington since nursery school and we usually don’t take new people after seventh grade?

So to have a new girl junior year is like a revelation. All of the men just melted. Also, she’s richer than Donald Trump, and she buys him presents, which of course I had to stop doing when my funding was cut off.

I have to discuss every potential purchase I make with my mother. So this cramps my style a little bit. . . . Yeah, and if it weren’t for the dealing I do?

I wouldn’t be able to afford the cabs. I’d be in dangerous neighborhoods. Alone. Dependent on the charity of insane adolescent men.

The business itself is pretty dangerous. No one used to care, but now the mayor is cracking down on small-timers. We’re living in a fascist state.

Read the play here

19. Life Science

A monologue from the play by Anna Zeigler

Leah

I have an iPod Nano.  I have a Dell laptop.  I have a Samsung cell phone.  I have a J. Crew credit card.  I have eleven applications out at eleven schools. 

I have a younger brother and two anxious parents.  I’m not sure who I am and what I’m meant to do.  I’m sorry that I got confused. 

My mom says confusion is just this natural human thing, and unavoidable, but my dad thinks it’s the mark of a weak person and I really don’t want to think of myself that way, as a weak person.  Do you think I’m…?

No, what I’m trying to say is… there are just so many things… My mother was crying last night because what if I don’t get into college, and what if I do? 

And Dylan’s obsessed with the Civil War now and his room is filled with these awful daguerreotypes and you look in these soldiers eyes and just see how they don’t know this is the last picture that they’ll ever have taken of them, that tomorrow they’ll be thrown onto this battlefield and they’ll never come home again.

Um.  What I really mean is… I didn’t mean it when I said I only wanted to go out with you temporarily.  I’m sorry for saying that.  

I think it was a kind of… weak thing to say, or do to you, because I’m realizing more and more that words are acts, or deeds or whatever…

and I wish I could have used mine better, impressed you more by saying the right things.  No.  I wish I could have earned your respect.  So maybe you’ll give me another chance to do that? 

I don’t know.  I mean, it would be great if you called me.  I mean, if you wanted to call me.  But. Okay.  So… Bye.

Read the play here

20. 937

A monologue from the play by Don Zolidis

In 1939, the S.S. St. Louis set sail from Hamburg with 937 Jewish refugees aboard, heading for Cuba. When they arrive, they discover that the Cubans will not allow them to land, and they are forced to return to Germany.

Elise is speaking to a friend about Bach. Aboard the ship. They are still on their way to Cuba.

ELISE (17 years old Jewish refugee)

He’s a German. Just think, if he were alive today, he’d be one of them. A N*zi. All that beauty in his mind like a second skin over the hatred underneath.

You’d almost think they had souls that could feel, consciences that could be roused, hearts that could beat like anyone else’s – I played for Goebbels once.

My father thought it would be a good strategy. I was fourteen, things were already disintegrating, we thought – see we’ll go play for them, we’ll play their music, look at us, we’re capable of beauty… we’re human.

When I play sometimes I try to picture myself in a field. All alone. The sun on my skin, the breeze through the grass, the trees overhead –

I just kept trying to keep that image alive when I was in that room with him, they ate dinner while I played – sucking on cigars and gobbling up meat.

Their eyes like knives. They own that field. They would uproot us, as if we’re the contagion, we’re the blight on their happiness, as if it is somehow our fault that we dare to exist and breathe and think and dream.

My father was arrested two months later. I haven’t heard from him since. So I keep playing their music. Now I imagine that I’ll go back to that room with that man and kill him with my bare hands.

Wrap my fingers around his neck when he’s old and weak and on his deathbed. I will never be done hating them. That’s what they made me.

(short pause) Thank you for standing up to them the other day.

Read the play here

21. Deck the Stage 

A monologue from the play by Lindsay Price

Shelley explains for the first time to her lab partner Ben why she might not be the friendliest girl at school.

SHELLEY

You don’t get off that easy. Sit down! I haven’t even started. Sit down. (She holds out a picture) Ask me who’s in the picture. Ask! That’s my dad.

Pretty handsome guy don’t you think? Ask where he is. Ask where he is! Come on, you wanted to talk; ask where he is. I don’t know. Isn’t that funny?

Isn’t that a scream? I don’t know. Two years ago he went to work on Christmas Eve and he never came home. He stole money from his company and ran away with the boss’ secretary. Merry Christmas!

That’s our nearest guess anyway. No one knows for sure because there hasn’t been one word. Not one. Not a letter. Not a telegram.

Not a postcard. Not an answering machine message. Nothing. He left us with debts up to our ears, and we didn’t even get a goodbye. How’s your dad?

Is he alive? Does he talk to you every day? Well good, ‘cause let me tell you, around here there isn’t much talking.

Around here, we bounce from apartment to apartment and my mom tries to keep working but she’s not very strong. My dad knew that. And he left.

So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m cold, or distant, or pretentious. But my mind’s a little full ‘cause I only got three hours of sleep after working the night shift at the 7­11.

And I could really give a crap about Christmas because all it means is that my father didn’t love my mother and he didn’t love me.

Read the play here

22. For Our Mothers & Fathers

A monologue from the play by Crystal Skillman

Donya, a seemingly confident and cool teenage girl who is learning guitar at an all-girl rock camp in Ohio,

runs into two other teenage girls, Max and Lil, in the middle of the woods. Max and Lil, who were old friends,

are trying to figure out what they’re going to play at the show for their parents that night. Tensions grow,

especially when Lil reveals she will be going to a different college than Max. When Donya innocently mentions that she loves Max’s mom’s songs

(she was a big singer at one point, now teaching at the rock camp despite a clear alcoholic problem), Max explodes in anger.

After her outburst, Donya talks about her relationship with her own mother, breaking the silence.

Donya (fifteen)

They used to call me Rabbit because I used to try to run away all the time. Like since I was five. Just get the f*** out of my sh*t town where everyone looks like me and no one, no one is like me.

When we applied here I was like — this is it. Just turned fifteen. Practically half my life if I died at forty like my cancer-ridden dad so I thought this would be it. Pack for two weeks?

I packed everything. And when I was like zipping up my bag I couldn’t stop crying. My mom, saw me like that, and we barely talked, she was so soft or something and would just do what he said and then when he was gone, she wouldn’t do anything really.

If I was a rabbit, she was a mouse. Small to me. The morning I woke up to get the bus to come here — I saw it there on my empty dresser —

this old black-and-white photo — a girl about fifteen in this skimpy outfit in front of some tent — and there’s like animals in the background and people juggling pins and it’s like clear it’s some kind of circus.

And I know those eyes. It’s my mom. My mom. On the back, in this script — her name and the year. She came in the doorway and told me that’s when she started to run away.

And I was like why didn’t you stay and she smiled this weird smile and I liked that it was soft, quiet, and she said because she met my dad and wanted to have me.

And all that I felt in me made sense. And I knew what it was like to want to stay. Because I do feel like that when I write songs — like a part of me is running away and I want to catch her.

If it’s good I do.

23. Pretty Theft

A monologue from the play by Adam Szymkowicz

Allegra (eighteen)

Allegra is talking to her father who is in the hospital in a coma. Allegra’s friend Suzy was going to come to the hospital with her but instead went to the movies with Allegra’s boyfriend. Allegra knows this.

And I’m working at this like group home with Suzy Harris. We hang out a lot. You know who she is? I think you’d like her. She’s a lot of fun.

She was supposed to come here with me today but . . . she couldn’t make it. Bobby’s good. He works at the garden place in Salem sometimes on the weekends.

He wishes he could be here too. He’s uh . . . a good boyfriend. I think it’ll last for us. One of the great . . . things. F***! It’s just as hard to talk to you now that you can’t talk back.

I can’t ever say the right thing to you. You’re just so . . . not there, aren’t you. You always ignore me. I know even if you can hear me right now, you’re not paying attention.

You never . . . Why don’t I matter to you? What do you want from me?!! Maybe you just want to be left alone. Well, that’s what I’ll do then.

I’m sorry I disturbed your deathbed you selfish f***ing b*stard! You self-centered, egotistical, pompous, f***ing b*stard! I don’t care what you want! I hope you die!

I hope you f***ing die real soon! You can f***ing rot and be eaten by worms! I hope f***ing worms eat you! Worms with big f***ing teeth!

And rats and flies and vultures! I hope vultures dig you up and take you out of the casket and fly away with you! You f***! (Pause.) I miss you.

I’ve always missed you. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to die. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, Christ, I’m so sorry. Please don’t die. You’re so small. Please, Daddy.

Read the play here

24. The Laramie Project

A monologue from the play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theate

Zubaida Ula

And it was so good to be with people who felt like sh*t. I kept feeling like I don’t deserve to feel this bad, you know?

And someone got up there and said to us – he said um, blah blah blah blah blah blah and then he said, I’m saying it wrong, but basically he said, c’mon guys, lets show the world that Laramie is not this kind of town.

But it is that kind of town. If it wasn’t this kind of town, why did this happen here? I mean, you know what I mean, like – that’s a lie.

Because it happened here. So how could it not be a town where this kind of thing happens?

Like, that’s just totally – like, looking at an Escher painting and getting all confused like, it’s totally like circular logic, like how can you even say that?

And we have to mourn this and we have to be sad that we live in a town, a state, a country where sh*t like this happens. I mean, these are people trying to distance themselves from this crime.

And we need to own this crime. I feel. Everyone needs to own it. We are like this. We ARE like this. WE are LIKE this.

Read the play here

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