David Ives is the master of the short form play in our lifetime.  No one in the short form is as widely produced or as well known even outside the world of theatre people.  His published plays can be found in nearly every drama school library. His writing is light like a souffle, witty, warm and wise.   And yes, he's a Yale MFA grad like Durang perhaps the other darker more emotionally raw short form genius who also holds a Pulitzer.  But this post is about Ives.  If Durang is deep, painful cathartic comedy, Ives is the light brilliant uplifting counterpoint.  In any event, both write comedy, a thing perhaps too little celebrated in a life that is made infinitely better by the presence of laughter.

Alright then, the actual topic of this post, David Ives "The Green Hill."   It' a short play about a man, Jake, who everyday imagines himself if only for a few minutes atop a green hill.  The hill is a place where he is perfectly happy and at peace.  He is obsessed with finding the actual green hill.  He knows it is not just in his mind.  He goes on a journey perhaps leaving the love of his life, Sandy, behind to chase down the hill.  He discovers the hill is real when he finds a picture of it at a travel agency.  He gets the name of the late photographer and asks the photographer's wife, where is this hill?  She doesn't know!  The photographer spent his life taking pictures of green hills and didn't label where any of them were located!  However, there was a lot of everywhere he'd travelled.  So our hero Jake sets out to go to every place this photographer went in search of the hill.   

The peak of dramatic tension and the cathartic moment of realization by Jake that he no longer needs to find the hill.  He is ready to go home.  At that moment when his dream is lost, he discovers the hill.  This is the best suited moment to derive a monologue.  You will have to make some cuts to make it work, but the derived monologue works and gives you a sense of defeat and then elation to play.  And the entire play is short, a ten minute play, so read the entire thing to understand where Jake is emotionally at this moment.

Start the monologue with the line "Hill 16,973.  Every American I meet I ask for Sandy."  Skip right to "I figure Sandy's long married .. " and after "as flat as a starched bedsheet" jump to "Suddenly I can't remember what the hill I'm looking for looks like ... " and after "I'm nowhere inside my head or out of it" jump to "It's time to go home" and then to "Help a guy out?" and continue with text as-is all the way until the final line you'll end on "I've never felt so free in my life."

Get the play ​The Green Hill by David Ives here.  The monologue is derived from pages 198-200. 

Monologue for a young man. Hook opener "I'm Ben. I'm pretty stupid. I'm not going to a fancy college like you. I'm a third-tier kind of person." and closes on "...more than selfish discontent." Romantic comedy monologue of an earnest guy trying to talk his way into a woman's heart.

From page 195-196 of "Shorter Faster Funnier"

Monologue for a man, comedic.  Character is described as "an older man" named Gaston.   The play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" is by Steve Martin.

This monologue gives an actor a nice balance of past and present action to play.  The present action is the character's desire to understand from Picasso what it's like to come up with ideas, to be creative, to have inspiration.  He yearns to know what it must be like to be inspired; an original.  Then he recounts a failed attempt in his own life to come up with an idea to pain something: the shutters on his house.  The story he tells is actually really heart wrenching but comedically so, and the problem of coming up with an idea for the color to paint his shutters gets bigger and bigger until he actually considers taking his own life!  Finally, he decides to paint them green.  All the huge struggle over something so seemingly simple and relatively mundane/inconsequential both gives an actor a great intense journey to play, and because of the absurdity be pretty funny too.  The build of the problem is like Henri Bergson's "Snowball" effect described in his famous essay on comedy "Laughter."   As an actor you get to play all the great angst and struggle and desperation (past action) while using it as a way to convey to Picasso in right now how much you'd like to understand his process (present action).  So you've got both a big emotional ride and a strong want/objective to pursue.

Monologue starts with the line "Well, you're a painter; you're always having to come up with ideas.  What's it like?"  and ends with the line "But then one day I said to myself 'Green' and that was it."  Find it on page 55 of "Picasso at the Lapin Agile and other plays."  Get the play here. 

Monologue for a woman. Comedic. 1 to 2 minutes performed. Character is Paige.

Hook opening line "The invisible guest. No dinner party is complete without one." Paige goes onto explain how she feels Jesus would be a "thrilling dinner guest."

To perform in audition cut the interjections by Lars, Hal, Sian. End on the line "We'd all get indigestion."

Comedic monologue for a woman.  Character is an artist named Wynne.   In this funny monologue from Moira Buffini's play "Dinner" which was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2003.

Attention grabbing opening line "He's never forgiven me for - It was when I put my portrait of his genitals in my exhibition."   If the auditors aren't paying attention after that line, check them for a pulse.   The monologue goes onto detail Wynne's back and forth tete-a-tete.  Each line she recreates for us, enacting both sides of the interaction, is a tactic by herself against him to justify her actions and maintain the upper hand.  The last line she reports, his triumphant victory over her, as he justifies his infidelity based on her cruelty.  So we go from a feeling from Wynne of slight "duping delight" and dominance to crushed, saddened, a little depressed.  Deflated.   Ergo, as an actress you get a few tactics to play, a funny banter to re-enact (chance to play a guy's voice and be silly as you enact his side of the convo), and an emotional journey.  Not bad and it can be done in under 2 minutes.   

​Preview the monologue on google books here.   The monologue starts on page 10 of the play "Dinner" with the line "He's never forgiven me for" and ends with the line "He was triumphant" on the same page.  Get the play here.

Comedic contemporary monologue for a woman from the play "F-Stop" by Olga Humphrey.

The monologue is about an actress named Susanne, who very much wants to play the role of "Tiffany Jones, a voluptuous, kick-boxing, platinum haired CEO, twenty-one years of age, who single handedly takes on the Singapore Mafia when they try to launder money and run drugs through the Fortune 500 company she single handedly started from the ground up."

It's very important to Susanne that she get the role of Tiffany, as she's seldom ever connected so strongly to a role as this one.  Susanne's primary tactic to get the role is to sell herself and her skills as an actor.  She lists off a bizarre array of accomplishments and talents including playing "every one of the Three Sisters," the ability to act in styles including "lyrical realism" and "realistic lyricalism" and her combat training in various martial arts including "Uechiryu Karate" from "the Okinawan school."   Monologue engages the sense of sight with its descriptions of "acne encrusted boys" and the above description of the character Tiffany Jones.  

If you want to play a hyper intelligent, somewhat hyper young woman in her 20's who is both eager to please, full of herself and probably pretty insecure underneath this role might fit the bill.

Find it on page 43 of Humana Festival 2012: The Complete Plays.    To request the play "F-Stop" which this monologue is from contact the author at ​http://www.olgahumphrey.com/contact.html. 

Great monologue for a man. You are playing Picasso! This monologue is in a comedic play but really is a dramatic moment. You get to demonstrate an artist's passion and excitement for his work. There's a feeling of yearning and awe and power. Picasso talks about wanting to be ready for when his great moments of inspiration strike. When he will create the works of art that will influence and shape the 20th century. The moment when his dream of making great art and the action of making great art converge.

​Hook opener to this monologue:
"I could dream it forever and still not do it, but when the time comes for it to be done, God, I want to be ready for it"

This monologue for a a man in his twenties is about a guy (named Grrl) who has a roommate who eats her feelings. When she gets upset and eats her feelings it keeps him from relaxing in his apartment. He's sort of stuck taking care of and managing her toxic emotions. In this monologue he tells us how she progresses through different junk foods based on her level of distress.

This is a very inventive funny monologue. It has to be assembled by removing the various interjections and interactions between the characters. What you're left with is just the character Grrl's lines which are delivered in direct address to the audience. The monologue starts with "I can gauge her mood by what she's eating" and ends with "he's actually been texting me all *** day"

Get this monologue from pages 469 to 471 from the book "Humana Festival 2012: The Complete Plays"

Monologue for a middle aged woman, comedy.  Character, Wanda, is described as "Older professional woman. Warm but not inclined to suffer fools."

Monologue has hook opening "We are living in an insane world" and goes on to explore how Wanda used to have a dream about her "crazy" grandmother, who believed money should not be trusted with banks but kept in false bottom shoes.  In Wanda's dream she'd introduce her grandma to financial journalist Kai Ryssdal of NPRs Marketplace to talk some sense into her about putting her money into banks.  However, post financial crisis with her own home in danger of being taken back by the banks, Wanda still has a dream of her grandma meeting Kai, but now its so she could watch her grandma slap him across his face.   

​You can find the monologue on page 308 of ​Humana Festival 2012: The Complete Plays. 

Monologue for a woman, character Jenni, described as "Smart, hip, young aspiring professional working in the not-for-profit earnest helping professions."  So let's say 20's to early 30's.  Genre is comedy.

This monologue, which opens the play, Jenni sets the stage for how "one day a little billing problem with Ferizon rips your life to shreds and everything you thought you knew about yourself and your world."

Several comic beats includes Jenni losing her train of thought within the first few lines of the monologue, slipping into reverie about the good old days when phone service was as simple as slipping a dime into a pay phone, wondering how something that "comes with a PLAN" can go so horribly wrong and "I thought it was a plan to make my life easier and better - but I was wrong.  Oh my god, I was so wrong."

There's nice variety of tone and rhythm in this piece as well, with Jenni having a mock phone call at one point, catching up with a friend, Jenni waxing philosophical about the big picture of how the world has evolved, and Jenni expressing the emotion of having been through an ordeal.

The monologue does a great job of peaking an audience's interest in the story that is about to unfold.  And it just might peak your auditors' curiosity in you!    Preview the monologue on Lisa Kron's website.  Get this monologue as part of the Humana Festival 2012: The Complete Plays. You'll find it on page 283.