Some Great Suggested Audition Monologues from NIDA

I often think that if you can’t be bothered to seek out good monologues, you don’t deserve a place at drama school anyway.

BUT I realise we no longer live in a culture where kids read plays for fun, well, where anyone really reads plays for fun, like when I was younger (heck, I’m only 32, and I feel old saying that). However, I have to recognise that something has changed and the amount of help out there might have improved, but the average person trying to find a drama school audition monologue probably has no clue where to look. They end up in those semi-dreadful audition speech books, and doing the same old speeches the auditors have heard dozens of times over.

I found a couple of online packs of suggested monologues that are used by applicants to NIDA (Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art) for male and female applicants. They look pretty good. They’re probably not entirely legal on the site (maybe they are, I don’t know) but if you find them useful it could help you. These aren’t just suggestions, they are the whole monologue. You should still attempt to read the entire play if you’re doing the piece for your audition.

The female monologues and the male monologues are from NIDA, all rights are reserved to the playwright and I’m not including any of the material on my own sites for copyright reasons.

I hope these are useful to you. Remember, there’s no such thing as a perfect monologue, just find one that you like and that you understand. That’s half the battle.

Mark