How to Choose the Right Audition Monologue (A Working Actor's Guide)

Choosing your audition monologue is the single highest-leverage decision in your prep. The piece carries half your read before you've spoken a word — it signals what kind of actor you think you are, what roles you see yourself in, and whether you understand the work. Casting directors have heard the famous ones thousands of times. Here is the framework I use to pick pieces that land.

Start with the brief, not the piece

The most common audition mistake is picking a monologue you love and trying to make it fit any audition. Read the brief carefully. Most modern briefs specify three things: length (60 or 90 seconds for film/TV; up to 2 minutes for theatre/MFA), era (contemporary or classical or both), and sometimes tone (comedic or dramatic). If a piece does not match the brief on those three counts, do not use it for that audition. Period.

Length: respect the cap religiously

Going over time is one of the fastest ways to lose a casting director. They are working through dozens of submissions and they cap viewing deliberately. A two-minute brief is two minutes — not two minutes thirty seconds. A 60-second brief is 60 seconds. Time yourself out loud, at the pace you would actually perform, not your private reading pace. Bringing a piece that respects the time signals professionalism before you say a word.

Tone: match the audition's genre

If you are auditioning for a half-hour comedy, do not bring a Tennessee Williams piece. If you are auditioning for a Shakespeare festival, do not bring Will Eno. Casting directors are not testing whether you can do range in this room — they are testing whether you can do this specific kind of work. Pick something that is in the same emotional family as the role you are reading for.

Originality: avoid the famous ones

To Be or Not To Be. Out, damned spot. The Glass Menagerie's "I'm getting a divorce." Casting directors have heard these so often they tune out. The piece becomes background noise and you are competing against a hundred other actors' versions of the same speech.

This does not mean you need to dig up something nobody has ever heard. It means: pick something from the same playwright that lets the casting director feel like they discovered something. Edmund's soliloquies in King Lear instead of Hamlet's. Beatrice in Much Ado instead of Juliet. The Glass Menagerie has six good speeches before you get to the famous one.

The four questions before you commit

Before you spend three weeks rehearsing a piece, ask yourself:

Rehearse with someone reading the cue lines

A monologue performed in vacuum almost always sounds like a monologue. Performed in conversation — even with a recorded scene partner — it sounds like a real moment. This is exactly what Run Lines Online was built for: paste your script, pick your character, and one of our AI scene partner voices reads any other characters in the scene back to you. Working that way for even one rehearsal will reveal moments where you are skipping over connections that should land.

Once you have your piece, the work is repetition with specificity. Pick something you can stand behind, do the work, and bring it.