Rather Be A Man

Kim is so fed up with men approaching her with their one liners. In this comedy
monologue, she talks to one of her good friends about the annoying men she
randomly tolerates.

KIM: I don’t know what it is with me lately but I just get so UGH! when guys
come up to me, with their cheesy lines, (imitating guy) “Hey, you have such a
beautiful smile” or “Can I just tell you that you are so beautiful”. Ugh! It
disgusts me. I mean, who the hell does this guy or that guy think he is to give
me such compliments? What gives him the right? I don’t do anything to give
off any kind of interest whatsoever, I completely look the other way when I see
eye contact happening and they STILL come over thinking they’re so suave and
it’s simply repulsive. You know what I’m saying??

What does a girl have to do these days? Maybe if I just vomited on myself the
guy would walk the other way but I bet even then, I’d get, “The way you vomit
on yourself is just so, so delightful.”

…All I want is to be left alone. I have a man, I love my man and I do my best
to be polite but the irritation and the cheesy lines are getting to be too much.
Guys are blind, they really are, OBLIVIOUS to when a girl is not interested.
There are days when I’d rather be a man.
First Move,

In this teen female monologue, First Move, Susan is trying to figure out whether
or not she should ask out the guy she likes.

SUSAN: I told Jackie it was okay, but I don’t know why I said it was okay.
I’ve liked Vic for so long. He’s never asked me out and I guess I can’t wait
forever. I’m not gonna ask him out, not like Jackie.

Jackie is so aggressive. I can’t believe she’s going to ask him out…

It makes me so mad. Maybe, I should have been the one to make the first move.
I don’t know.

And I bet he’s gonna say yes to Jackie and they’re gonna start dating and I have
to live with regret that I didn’t do anything.

Why couldn’t he just ask me out? I feel that he likes me. Makes no sense.

No, you know what? I’m gonna talk to him. I’m gonna get to him before
Jackie and I don’t care what I told Jackie because I liked him first and I want to
date him and that’s that. Right?

…I don’t know…I’m confused. What do you think I should do?

Second Look
September 28, 2022 Joseph Arnone

In dramatic monologue Second Look, CHER is talking to her close friend about
how she may not be as attractive to men as she once was.
CHER: It hasn’t happened for quite some time. I was thinking about this all
day and it must have been years since I’ve ever felt that feeling…you know?
When a man looks at you, looks away and then takes that second look. It’s the
second look that validates something for me as a woman. I’m not trying to say
that I need a man to salivate over me or anything like that…it’s only that I
haven’t gotten that second look in quite awhile and I’m beginning to feel a bit
inadequate.

Even on a lousy looking day I used to catch a second look, nowadays I’m lucky
I even get a first look.

Hmmm. Can I asked you something? (beat) Have my looks, changed? (beat)
Am I not as attractive as I used to be? Wait! Don’t answer me, don’t answer
my question! It’s all just too much, really.

(she stands up abruptly and grabs her drink)

I’m alright. I just don’t know. I’m not looking for comfort or consolation.
(nervous chuckle) I just want to know if I still appeal to men. Is that so wrong?
Not in the sense in a, in a, in an intellectual way but more in an attractive way,
you know…that would be nice, to know, if I can still turn a man on. If, in fact,
if a man is actually still interested in me that way.

That’s all…
Attention
May 17, 2023 Joseph Arnone

In Attention, Michelle confronts her sister about how she is always the cause of
drama in their family and how she wants it to stop.

MICHELLE: That’s all you want, isn’t it? That’s what you do, it’s why you
always create drama in this family. For the attention of it all! You’re just never
happy, are you? Unless the world is talking about you. You can’t live without
creating some kind of drama so everyone can be thinking about you and that
makes you happy and I’m getting sick of this because you are doing a number
on us all, I don’t know what you are going through but it’s got to come to an
end.

Why are you so sick in the head? Why can’t you just be normal and not be so
crazy?

There are better things you could do for people to think of you. Do some good
stuff once in a while and I bet you will not only get everyone thinking about you
in a positive way, but you will also feel good about yourself.

Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to feel good about yourself?

Food For Thought

December 23, 2022 Joseph Arnone
In Food For Thought, Kelly talks to her friend Paula about how she believes her
other friend Tiffany is stealing her creative story ideas.

KELLY: It’s more than that. She’s tapping into my ideas. I shared a story with
her about a woman who is in love with a humanoid and now she’s writing a
story about a woman who is in love with a humanoid.

I almost feel like she’s competing with me. I get this strange vibe from her, like
she’s using me for data and then going at it alone to generate similar concepts
with her own imagination and it’s irritating me. I haven’t been able to write for
weeks and I am so frustrated cause I feel like a traitor to myself for sharing my
ideas with her and the best part of it all is that she’s spitting back her own story
concepts at me as if they are her own and it’s like rubbing crap in my face. It
stinks so bad and I want to call her out on it but if I do it’s gonna make me look
like I’m crazy because how do you prove that someone is stealing your story
ideas and passing them off as their own?! (beat) I need a break…from her. I
can’t have these weekly get togethers about her writing progress because it’s
draining me, clearly it’s bringing me down and she’s off floating around like a
butterfly and everything’s bright and happy and now I’m the miserable one. It’s
like we’ve changed places.

There Was A Time

February 11, 2023 Joseph Arnone

In There Was A Time, Chuckie talks to his wife about why he keeps taking
chances with their money because he desperately wants to get ahead.
CHUCKIE: …I’m sorry I keep messing things up…it’s my impatience of it all,
Kansas. I’m—I want us to get where we wish to go as fast as possible and when
I take these short cuts, they wind up being long cuts and things go back to zero
again and it’s all my fault.

Blame it on my desires is what it is…I’m anxious, so damn anxious to get to the

destination, that I don’t see what’s right in front of me.

I’m gonna do it, though. You can bet your bottom dollar, I won’t ever try to take
a shot like I been taking.

Let me get us back on track. I promise you, I will get the money back and get us
on the right road again.

I’ve had a good month. There’s been a heap of tractors from old Moses that
need repair. A whole bunch of ’em, and my name is written on every single one
of ’em. Already repaired two and I get the feeling that old Moses is gonna put
me under contract for the rest. There’s dozens and dozens all lined up on his
property. He showed me and it was like seeing sparkling gold.

This deal goes through, well, we’ll recover what I lost and be back on the road
to a home of our own and our very first child.

That sound good to you?

Deep Down
February 20, 2023 Joseph Arnone

In Deep Down, Beth and her boyfriend Daniel are both reaching the realization
that it is most probably best that they break up to find true happiness.

BETH: You need to understand that it’s two lives, not one, that will go in vain.

You owe it to yourself to rise above your problems and find happiness inside
yourself and I deserve to be with someone who will give me all that I desire in
this life.

We need to stop wasting our time. I much rather go at it alone with the hope of
finding someone who can fulfill my needs than be with a man who will forever
be burdened with his past and not accept his true nature.

Life won’t wait for us, Daniel. It continues on and doesn’t care what role we
play in it. Only I know what role I wish to play and this isn’t it. I won’t be made
to feel guilty for leaving you because I didn’t realize it until this very moment
that this is what I have to do…for both of us.

Negative Energy
February 6, 2023 Joseph Arnone

In Negative Energy, Rose is completely against having her roommate’s sister

Meagan live with them temporarily which sparks this monologue.

ROSE: THIS, it’s always something. Whenever I come home from work you
have some sort of issue going on and I can’t deal with it. I need my space and I
need my peace. You make everything such a big deal and it’s becoming too
much. It overwhelms me and I end up feeling depressed and angry and I don’t
want to feel that way. I’m not that way. I’m more chilled and optimistic and you
drag me down to the pits of hell and whenever I try to bring you some light you
wrestle with me for hours, until finally, finally you are in a better mood but by
then I’m exhausted and have no strength to do anything for myself that pleases
me. I have to work up the positive energy inside myself to get out of whatever
crappy state of mind you put me in to begin with. I don’t want to do this
anymore.

Renee Zellwegger, Down With Love

"I’m not gonna storm out of here, Catch. And I’m not gonna admit that
you got Barbara Novak to fall in love, because I’m not Barbara Novak.
There is no Barbara Novak... And I didn’t fall in love with Zip Martin. I
fell in love with Catcher Block. And that was a year ago, when for three
and a half weeks, I worked as your secretary. I don’t expect you to
remember me. I wasn’t a blonde then. But you did ask me out. And it
broke my heart to say no, but I loved you too much. I couldn’t bear to
become just another notch in your bedpost. With your dating habits, I
knew that even if I was lucky enough to get a regular spot on your
rotating schedule, I would never have your undivided attention long
enough for you to fall in love with me. I knew I had to do something to
set myself apart. I knew I had to quit my job as your secretary and write
an international best-seller, controversial enough to get the attention of a
New York publisher as well as Know magazine. But insignificant enough
that as long as I went unseen, Know magazine’s star journalist would
refuse to do a cover story about it. I knew that every time we were
supposed to meet, you would get distracted by one of your many
girlfriends and stand me up, and this would give me a reason to fight
with you over the phone and declare that I wouldn’t meet with you for a
hundred years.

"And then all I would have to do was be patient and wait the two or three
weeks it would take for everyone in the world to buy a copy of my
best-seller – and then I would begin to get the publicity I would need for
you, to, one, see what I look like, and, two, see me denounce you in
public as the worst kind of man. I knew that this would make you wanna
get even by writing one of your exposés. And in order to do that, you
would have to go undercover, assume a false identity and pretend to be
the kind of man who would make the kind of girl I was pretending to be
fall in love.

"And I knew that since I was pretending to be a girl who would have sex
on the first date you would have to pretend to be a man who wouldn’t
have sex for several dates. And in doing so, we would go out on lots of
dates to all the best places and all the hit shows, until finally, one night,
you would take me back to your place – that you were pretending was
someone else’s – in order to get the evidence you needed to write your
exposé, by seducing me until I said, ‘I love you.’
"But saying ‘I love you’ was also my plan. I just wanted to tell you the
truth so that when you heard me say, ‘I love you’ you would know that I
knew who you were, and you would know who I was. Then you, the great
Catcher Block, would know that you’d been beaten at your own game by
me, Nancy Brown, your former secretary. And I would have, once and for
all, set myself apart from all the other girls you’ve known. All those other
girls that you never really cared about, by making myself someone like
the one person you really love and admire above all others: you! Then,
when you realised that you had finally met your match, I would have, at
last, gained the respect that would make you wanna marry me first and
seduce me later. I just wanted you to hear all this from me before you
heard it from your private eye."

Saoirse Ronan, Little Women

"If I was a girl in a book this would all be so easy. Just give up the world
happily. I've always been quite content with my family, I don't
understand it. Perhaps I was too quick in turning him down, Laurie. If he
asked me again I think I would say yes. Do you think he'll ask me again?
I care more to be loved, I want to be loved. I just feel like women, they
have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts. And they've got
ambition and talent as well as just beauty, and I'm so sick of people
saying love is all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it, but I'm so lonely."
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
"Cool girl. Men always use that, don’t they? As their defining
compliment. She’s a cool girl. Cool girl is hot. Cool girl is game. Cool girl
is fun. Cool girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrin
loving manner and then presents her mouth for f***ing. She like what he
likes. So, evidently, he’s a vinyl hipster who loves fetish monger. If he
likes girls gone wild, she’s a mall babe who talks football and endures
buffalo wings at Hooters.

"When I met Nick Dunne, I knew he wanted a cool girl and for him, I’ll
admit, I was willing to try. I wax stripped my pussy raw. I drank canned
beer watching Adam Sandler movies. I ate cold pizza and remained a size
2. I blew him… semi regularly. I lived in the moment. I was fucking
game. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy some of it… Nick teased out in my things I
didn’t know existed. A lightness, a humour, an ease.

"But I made him smarter, sharper, I inspired him to rise to my level. I

forged the man of my dreams. We were happy pretending to be other
people. We were the happiest people we knew. And what’s the point of
being together if you’re not the happiest. But Nick got lazy. He became
someone I did not agree to marry. He actually expected me to love him
unconditionally then he dragged me, penniless, to the naval of this great
country and found himself a newer, younger, bouncier cool girl.

You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No
fucking way. He doesn’t get to win. My cute, charming, salt of the earth
misery guy. He needed to learn. Grown ups work for things. Grown ups
pay. Grown ups suffer consequences."

Michelle Williams, Manchester By The Sea

"Could we ever have lunch? Because I said a lot of terrible things to you. I
know you never... Maybe you don't want to talk to me. However my heart
was broken. It's always going to be broken. I know yours is broken too.
But I don't have to carry it. I said things that I should f***ing burn in hell
for to you. I'm sorry. I love you. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Honey I see
you walking around here and I just want to tell you. I don't want to
torture you, but I just want to tell you that I was wrong."

Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada

"This 'stuff'? Oh, ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You
go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue
sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take
yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what
you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s
not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.

"You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta
did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St
Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then
cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers.
Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on
down into some tragic 'casual corner' where you, no doubt, fished it out
of some clearance bin.

"However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and
so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that
exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the
sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile
of 'stuff'."

Taraji P. Henson, Hidden Figures

"There’s no bathroom for me here. There is no bathroom. There are no
coloured bathrooms in this building. Or any building outside the West
Campus, which is half a mile away. Did you know that? I have to walk to
Timbuktu just to relieve myself. And I can’t use one of the handy bikes.
Picture that, Mr. Harrison. My uniform. Skirt below my knees, my heels,
and a simple string of pearls. Well, I don’t own pearls. Lord knows you
don’t pay coloured enough to afford pearls! And I work like a dog, day
and night, living off of coffee from a pot none of you wanna touch. So,
excuse me if I have to go to the restroom a few times a day."

Reese Witherspoon, Legally Blonde

"On our very first day at Harvard, a very wise Professor quoted Aristotle:
'The law is reason free from passion.' Well, no offence to Aristotle, but in
my three years at Harvard I have come to find that passion is a key
ingredient to the study and practice of law - and of life. It is with passion,
courage of conviction, and strong sense of self that we take our next steps
into the world, remembering that first impressions are not always
correct. You must always have faith in people. And most importantly,
you must always have faith in yourself."

Julia Roberts, Erin Brokovich

"Oh, see, now that pisses me off. First of all since the demur, we now
have more than four hundred plaintiffs and let’s be honest, we all know
there’s more out there. Now, they may not be the most sophisticated
people, but they do know how to divide, and twenty million dollars isn’t
shit when it’s split between them. And second of all, these people don’t
dream about being rich. They dream about being able to watch their kids
swim in a pool without worrying they’ll have to have a hysterectomy at
age 20, like Rosa Diaz, a client of ours, or have their spine deteriorate
like Stan Bloom, another client of ours.

"So before you come back here with another lame ass offer, I want you to
think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Buda, or what you’d
expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Ms. Sanchez, then you take
out your calculator and multiply that number by a hundred. Anything
less than that is a waste of our time."

Viola Davis, Fences

"I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life
too. I gave several years of my life to stand in the same spot with you.
Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had
dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don’t you think
it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay
up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted
someone to make me laugh so I could feel good?

"You not the only one who’s got wants and needs. But I held on to you,
Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams…and I
buried them inside you. I planted a seed and waited and prayed over it. I
planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn’t take me no
eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn’t never
gonna bloom.

"But I held on to you, Troy, I held you tighter. You was my husband. I
owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And
upstairs in that room…with the darkness falling in on me…I gave
everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn’t the finest
man in the world, and wherever you was going…I wanted to be there
with you. Cause you was my husband. Cause that’s the only way I was
gonna survive as your wife. You always talking about what you give…and
what you don’t have to give. But you take too. You take…and don’t even
know nobody’s giving."

Jennifer Grey, Dirty Dancing

"I told you I was telling the truth Daddy. I’m sorry I lied to you. But you
lied too. You told me everyone was alike and deserved a fair break. But
you meant everyone who was like you. You told me you wanted me to
change the world, make it better. But you meant by becoming a lawyer or
an economist and marrying someone from Harvard. I’m not proud of
myself, but I’m in this family too and you can’t keep giving me the silent
treatment. There are a lot of things about me that aren’t what you
thought. But if you love me, you have to love all the things about me. And
I love you, and I’m sorry I let you down, I’m so sorry Daddy. But you let
me down too."