Andrey, from Three Sisters

From Three Sisters (1900) by Anton Chekhov (as translated by Elisaveta Fen):

ACT FOUR

[Andrey laments to a fellow Council Member]

Oh, where has all my past life gone to? – the time when I was young and gay and clever, when I used to have fine dreams and great thoughts, and the present and the future were bright with hope? Why do we become so dull and commonplace and uninteresting almost before we’ve begun to live? Why do we get lazy, indifferent, useless, unhappy?… This town’s been in existence for two hundred years; a hundred thousand people live in it, but there’s not one who’s any different from all the others! There’s never been a scholar or an artist or a saint in this place, never a single man sufficiently outstanding to make you feel passionately that you wanted to emulate him. People here do nothing but eat, drink and sleep… Then they die and some more take their places, and they eat, drink and sleep, too, – and just to introduce a bit of variety into their lives, so as to avoid getting completely stupid with boredom, they indulge in their disgusting gossip and vodka and gambling and law-suits. The wives deceive their husbands, and the husbands lie to their wives, and pretend they don’t see anything and don’t hear anything … and all this overwhelming vulgarity and pettiness crushes the children and puts out any spark they might have in them, so that they, too, become miserable half-dead creatures, just like one another and just like their parents!

*Andrey is traditionally cast as ‘male’. They begins the play as an aspiring academic, but ends up marrying, having children, and working for the Town Council. Here they openly laments to a fellow council member, who is hearing impaired.

Monologue curated by Classical Monologue Dramaturg, Rory Starkman.

DRAMATURG NOTES (from all three pieces):

Though all three of these characters are traditionally cast as ‘male’, nothing in these monologues indicate that they need to be male. Each monologue reads as a philosophical soliloquy, and though traditionally it has always been males who were thought to philosophize (and even still there is a disparity within university philosophy departments, which tend to be overrun with people assigned male at birth), the ability to think out loud and express one’s thoughts and emotions is not a gendered aspect of living. In de-gendering/un-gendering these monologues from 1900, the idea of philosophical thought in performance can move further out of the male realm and into a more non-binary theatrical space.

Vershinin, from Three Sisters

From Three Sisters (1900) by Anton Chekhov (as translated by Elisaveta Fen):

ACT THREE

[An excerpt of the monologue delivered by Vershinin*]

And when my little girls were standing in the doorway with nothing on but their night clothes, and the street was red with the glow of fire and full of terrifying noises, it struck me that the same sort of thing used to happen years ago, when armies used to make sudden raids on towns, and plunder them and set them on fire… Anyway, is there any essential difference between things as they were and as they are now? And before very long, say, in another two or three hundred years, people may be looking at our present life just as we look at the past now, with horror and scorn. Our own times may seem uncouth to them, boring and frightfully uncomfortable and strange… Oh, what a great life it’ll be then, what a life! [Laughs.] Forgive me, I’m philosophizing my head off again… But may I go on, please? I’m bursting to philosophize just at the moment. I’m in the mood for it. [A pause.] You seem as if you’ve all gone to sleep. As I was saying: what a great life it will be in the future! Just try to imagine it… At the present time there are only three people of your intellectual calibre in the whole of this town, but future generations will be more productive of people like you. They’ll go on producing more and more of the same sort until at last the time will come when everything will be just as you’d wish it yourselves. People will live their lives in your way, and then even you may be outmoded, and a new lot will come along who will be even better than you are… [Laughs.] I’m in quite a special mood to-day. I feel full of a tremendous urge to live… [Sings.] “To Love all ages are in fee, the passion’s good for you and me” … [Laughs.]

*Vershinin is traditionally cast as ‘male’. This moment happens as Vershinin arrives at the house of the Three Sisters after helping to put out a fire in their town. Though married to someone else, Vershinin is in love with one of the sisters, Masha. In the play, she is present for this moment.

Monologue curated by Classical Monologue Dramaturg, Rory Starkman.

DRAMATURG NOTES (from all three pieces):

Though all three of these characters are traditionally cast as ‘male’, nothing in these monologues indicate that they need to be male. Each monologue reads as a philosophical soliloquy, and though traditionally it has always been males who were thought to philosophize (and even still there is a disparity within university philosophy departments, which tend to be overrun with people assigned male at birth), the ability to think out loud and express one’s thoughts and emotions is not a gendered aspect of living. In de-gendering/un-gendering these monologues from 1900, the idea of philosophical thought in performance can move further out of the male realm and into a more non-binary theatrical space.

 

53, by Ray Rea

53.

Yes, 53. What comes into your head when I say that? Probably a lot of things, a lot of assumptions. The weirdest thing about being over 50 is having to deal with younger people’s assumptions of what that means. This is as true in the gender non-normative crowd as it is elsewhere. The assumptions about age are all there in the trans* world.

Last night I sat through a college production of the musical Grease. I’m not really familiar with it, but I remember that I used to be around a big crowd of second wave Butch/Femmers who loved Grease. The movie with Olivia Newton John and John Travolta was released in 1978, when they were in high school, and so it was both nostalgic and romanticized for them. The film’s policed versions of gender informed their own takes on it.

That group was a few years younger than me.

In 1978 I was listening to the Sex Pistols, Tom Verlaine, Brian Eno and 801. Grease was of no interest to me. In 1981 I was bartending in a seedy punk bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. At the time I thought I was a straight girl.

The “straight” crowd that I lived in was bent. I had more bandwidth around how I performed gender in that punk/ new wave scene than I had years later in the B/F scene of the queer 1990s.

Now, 2013, I’ve heard every possible assumption about what my background is. The funniest by far was when a young FTM guessed that I had been a lesbian feminist separatist. I have never been separatist in my life, a lesbian only for a bit.

I’m not saying that I am an “elder”. That word connotes wisdom, and I still make a lot of mistakes.

Making an assumption about what an older queer type has been through in earlier life is also a mistake, just as the same is true for younger queers. We had a lot of different lives. We are still having a lot of different lives.

Want to go to the movies? Anything but Grease.

Context: This piece is from a play that is currently in development.

More information: prodcoor (at) gmail (dot) com

Quinn, by Asher Wyndham

QUINN (non-binary, gender-fluid, trans) Yeah, it’s me, I’m back. Hellooo. I’m not waiting anymore in my car. I’ve eaten I don’t know how many tangerines. Let me see my grandpa. Please. It’s been almost an hour and I know he doesn’t take this long to get ready in the morning. Have you sponge-bathed him? Is he dressed in his purple suit?  Is he ready or not?! Why are you giving me the silent treatment, pretending that you’re on the phone… Today is our day, you know that. It’s the one day of the month he gets to see the sailboats and eat a BBQ-pork sandwich. He’s leaving with me in five minutes, and I don’t care if his dentures are yucky. Can you buzz me in? Stop buffin’ with that emery board and press that button. Ahh! It’s like Fort Knox here! Why, why are you looking at me like that? “Like whatttt?” If I had a mirror… Yeah, I got an attitude. You and everyone here at this Senior Citizen Home, you’re..not pleasant. No, you’re– I’m biting my tongue. *My pierced tongue.

 

(Sticks out pierced tongue.)

 

Let me through. When I need to see my grandpa, you shouldn’t make something up, like, “He’s not ready.” I know what you’re up to. And I’m not being paranoid. Look, it’s me, his grandkid. Yeah, yeah, I’m a bit different from the last time you saw me. Got some color. But I’m still his grandkid. He’s seen me like this before. My mother showed him photos on his phone. He’s from another generation, but he can handle it, unlike some people… For a Christian place, you lack hospitality! Ask yourself this, would Jesus buzz that buzzer? He would. He would get off that cross right above you, and he’d carry me like a baby to my grandpa’s room. Ahh! I’m helping my mom pay for his residence! So buzz the fuckin’ buzzer! Nowww!

 

*If the actor doesn’t have a pierced tongue then remove this line.

 

Context: This monologue was written for this website. Let me know when you use this for audition by emailing me at asherwyndham@yahoo.com. Thanks!

 

Slade, from Fabulous Monsters, by Diana Burbano

SLADE. (they/them) I’ve read a ton of books describing the whole Punk scene, ya know? But, the ones writing the history are the poser assholes who made it out alive. And it’s like, a mandate, to slagpeople off. ‘specially women like Patti and Debbie. Jesus, when don’t you read that Debbie “got fat?” Everyone “got fat,” man. We had no money to buy food, what money we had we spent on drugs, and one show burnt about a million calories. Start acting like a norm, and the weight piles on pretty fast. I recently saw a dude I knew walking outside what used to be Ed’s in DTLA. He lived in a loft, but not one of those yuppified Toy District lofts, he lived in a flophouse on the edge of Chinatown. The place was CRAMMED with junk. Clothes in piles to the ceiling. Cat shit everywhere. He had 3 gold records covered in dust and God knows what. He spends most of his time in bed playing Call of Duty. Fat. We’re all fat and poor now, man. We signed away every right we had. This shit just fizzles out. You’re young, you play your guts out. You spark, someone wants to record you! You tour, you cut an album. Path diverges: You burn out and go back to school. Or you die of an overdose. Or you tour some more. Path diverges. Touring sucks so you quit. You kill yourself. Or you cut another album. No one buys it. You quit and go do something else. Or you kill yourself. Ad infinitum. It’s either death or normality. If you are the one-half of the one percent who keeps going it’s ‘cause you’re fucking crazy.

Context: Slade (formerly Sally Rodriguez) is a hard living, seen it all punk rocker from the 70’s, alive, sober and cynical as hell. In this monologue, Slade is speaking to a young girl who is in love with them. This is close to the end of the play.

More info: http://dianaburbano.com/index.html