DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE *The contestant must be in appropriate costume based on the character in the piece.

Criteria for judging: Interpretation (Expression, Characterization, Gestures) - 50% Delivery (voice, stress and accent,
enunciation, diction, mastery) – 40% Stage Presence (personality, poise) - 10% TOTAL - 100%

NEW YORKER IN TONDO

By Marcelino Agana Jr.
Kikay: Oh, hello, hello… you darling, darling people! I just arrived from New York
and I have the worst jetlag, ever!... What?... You want me to tell you about New
York???... Ooooohhh… Marvelous, darling!... Ah, New York, New York!... I stayed
there for 10 months, 4 days, 7 hours and 21 minutes and I feel as if I were still
there, as though I had never left it, as though I had lived there all my life. But I look
around me and realize that no, no, I’m not there, I’m not in New York… I’m here,
here in Tondo. I’m home, they tell me. Home! But which is home for me? This
cannot be home, because here my heart aches with homesickness. I feel myself to
be an exile… yes, a spiritual exile! My spirit aches for its true home across the sea!
Ah, New York! My own dear New York! Listen… oh, listen! Now, in New York, it’s
springtime… It’s spring in New York! The daisies are just appearing in Central Park
and out in Staten Island the grass is green again. Oh, we have a funny custom in
New York… an old, old and very dear custom. When spring comes around each
year, we New Yorkers, we make a sort of pilgrimage to an old tree growing down
by the Battery. Oh, it’s an old tree, it’s been growing there ever since New York
was New York. And we New Yorkers, we call it “Our Tree”. Every spring we go
down there to say hello to it, and to watch its fine green leaves coming out. In a
way, that tree is our symbol for New York… undying, immortal, forever growing,
and forever green. No, you can’t understand this emotion I feel for our dear old
tree over there in New York… But please, please forgive me! Here I am going
sentimental and just mooning away over things you have no idea about. Ah, New
York, New York. Not to have lived in New York is not to have lived at all!!! I am
tired, darlings!... Talking about New York has made me melancholic… May I retire
now to my room? Good bye for now, darlings… I shall now dream of New York and
my dear old tree.