FEMALE MONOLOGUE AUDITION PIECE

Okay, I don’t know whether this is a bit of shameless self promotion, or genuine act of benevolence on my part, but I’ve decided to offer a monologue from my play The Emotional Life of Furniture to the Internet as a potential audition monologue for female actors with a casting age around 23. If this is useful to you, I hope it brings you success. If not, well, there’ll be another blog tomorrow :o)

The Emotional Life of Furniture by Mark Westbrook

The part of Katie was first performed by Ceejay Watt at the Tron Theatre in October 2008.

Katie is talking to David, another patient in the psychiatric unit about how she ended up in the hospital. 

KATIE:

The Greeks invented psychiatric medicine.

Did you know that? Smart bastards.

They prescribed three things: Quiet. Occupation and Herbal Purging. I like the sound of the first two. The last one’s a bit like doing a shit.

I’ve been ill before, before this time I mean. Well, actually I was ill twice before this. But this once, this one time, I got quite sick. I couldn’t do much for myself. I had to remind myself to get in the shower. I had to have a shower at the beginning of the day. I had to start my day with a shower or there was no shower. And then there was a smell. There were sores and then there was the smell of the sores. It smelled like erm…. vagina for want of a better smell, sweaty skin and wet hair, but…more disgusting. Not that there’s anything disgusting about vaginas….They’re quite lovely and everything. I’m not into vaginas though. Well, that’s not true, I quite like my own, which is quite odd for a girl.

I was numb. I was distant from others. People said I was distant. And the smell usually kept people away I was distant from myself mostly. Mainly from myself. That was the main thing. I didn’t do much. But it was quiet And no one bothered me. I had to ask myself – What was so terrible about this? So what if I was a bit mental? I liked it, it was….quiet. But I couldn’t read and eventually the sick pay ran out and I had to go back to work.

It was fine for the first day, there was no one there

But on the second day everyone was there. But no one spoke to me. And I was clean and everything. No smell, I’d been showering for weeks and going to the gym and showering there too. Actually I was feeling much better by then but no one spoke to me. No one. They went for lunch, went for coffee, went for tea. But no one spoke to me. And they gave me stupid crap to do, like you’d give a work experience girl. Then one day, this guy Dr Tony, one of the lecturers, he asked if I’d go down to Physical Resources and ask them to sort me out a long weight in one of the lecture rooms. I was like fine..No problem. I waited for four fucking hours. Four Hours. A very long wait. One day, I waited for them to go for coffee, then I did a shit on their desks. It was really hard to do three big shits like that one after the other – but I managed it.

They asked me to go after that, I’d been there five years. They had a party when I left. I wasn’t invited.