There is a local dinner theater that I plan on auditioning for, but I’ve never had to pick a monologue in my life. I’ve been in musicals in my community theater for a few years now, last year I played Laurey in "Oklahoma!", this year Hope in "Anything Goes". So I do have some acting experience, but for those auditions we always used the actual show material and we didn’t have to find our own monologue. The singing I should be fine with because I am a vocal major in college. But I need to find a monologue. Any advice? Any additional advice for auditioning for a dinner theater in general? Thanks for any input!
I would go for something comedic or at least not overly gut-wrenching. This is not written in stone and some people may disagree with me.
Dinner theatres do not try to tackle the heavy stuff for the most part. So maybe look at Beth Henley, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Christopher Durang, maybe a segment from Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Something in that mold.
Or cut a monologue from a character you’ve done in a show.
Make sure it is exactly within the requested time limit, and good luck.
Most musicals will not require a monologue. If it’s a musical, they’ll ask you to sing first then dance. If there are call-backs, you will beasked to read scenes from the show to see how you look and sound beside others in contention for other parts opposite you. If it’s a comedy, you might want to find a short — SHORT! — monologue from something like Odd Couple.
References :
I have some experience with dinner theatre.
1) Be really good at improv I can’t stress that enough you are going to be interacting with audience members and often have to think on your feet (they can never get the upper hand)
2) Dinner theatre scripts can be anything from a simple character analysis and a set of circumstances to an actual script, but you gotta be campy funny and very over the top, and usually you need ot do a variery of stock accents the more you can do the better off you are. (british, Cockney, Irish, New york, Southern) One show I did every character had a unique accent (rehearsals were VERY Interesting)
3) I would recommend doing a contemporary comic monologue (nothing too high brow) go for something simple like Neil Simon.
4) Have fun! It is a crazy genre filled with crazy people trying to out ham one another!
References :
I would go for something comedic or at least not overly gut-wrenching. This is not written in stone and some people may disagree with me.
Dinner theatres do not try to tackle the heavy stuff for the most part. So maybe look at Beth Henley, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Christopher Durang, maybe a segment from Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. Something in that mold.
Or cut a monologue from a character you’ve done in a show.
Make sure it is exactly within the requested time limit, and good luck.
References :