How do you choose a good monologue?

Learn what to look for when choosing your monologue for your actor's demo reel.

A good rule of thumb when choosing a monologue is choose something that really appeals to you, which speaks to your heart, which moves your spirit, that you really connect with. It's something to work on; keep it fresh like it's your best friend. It's usually best to have a couple, a theatrical and a comedy if you can find both. You just have to do a lot of reading to find something. There are books of monologues you can buy for starters. For the actor who is just starting out, you can go to dramabookstore.com. They have these great books with thirty pages of monologues for women or monologues for men. It's just a great way to start and get exposed to what a monologue should look like, how long it should be. Maybe there will be something there that speaks to you that you can start working on. The only problem with that is that everyone is probably working on the same monologue. So the idea is to find something that is new and fresh. Sometimes you can find a story in the newspaper that really moves you and you can revamp it a little bit so it sounds like your own.

Written by Ed Wasser -
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