Essential Questions to Prep Your Monologue: Who Am I Talking To?

All this month, we are exploring some essential questions to ask your character when preparing for a monologue audition. Join me this spring to explore monologue prep in more depth at the Acting Foundations and Acting Essentials Workshops. Find your next best monologue at the Actors’ Script Circle. Register today! Space is limited and registration closes two weeks prior to the date of the workshop.

Check out previous installments: What Do I Want? Do I Get What I Want?

Because I know you’ve read the whole play, answering the question “Who am I talking to?” is super easy, right? Right?! It might be one person, a couple of people, or many people.

But what to do if your monologue is a soliloquy, a monologue within the play when the character is speaking onstage to themselves/the audience/the universe? 

Choose the Big Who:

  1. Is the character speaking their inner monologue? Is the person to whom they speak themselves? 
  2. Is the character pleading with a higher entity, such as the Universe or God?
  3. Is the character continuing to talk to the person who just left the room?
  4. Is the character talking to the audience, breaking the fourth wall?

In each case, you will need to know who you are speaking to in order to answer the question “Do I get what I want?”

Once you know who this monologue is addressed to, then you have another decision to make. Tune in next week!

Do you want help learning how to prepare a monologue? Check out my upcoming workshops for high school actors to prepare for monologue auditions.