monologue

I need a monologue to audition for an acting class, a beginning acting class.

Ok, search online. If nothing fits, try the dramatists’ bookshop.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, just something with a little feeling that fits me more or less.

Why am I so resistant, so stressed?

Maybe I don’t really want to do this:

fear of failure, fear of success, fear of competing?

Competing: what the hell does that have to do with art?

Art? You want to be an artist?

Go get a paintbrush and a bucket of bullshit. No. I already have that. 

Get back on track, for Pete’s sake. Just get a friggin’ monologue. Jeez. I’ve got to go and make the simplest things complicated.

I want to write my own.

Who the hell do I think I am the incarnation of Arthur Miller?

Yeah, where’s Marilyn? with Joe DiMaggio?

Do I want to act or write?

Can’t ever make up my mind, chocolate or mint chip fudge?

Can’t even say ‘vanilla.’

Just too boring.

No... just too normal.

So go take a playwriting class.

I don’t need an acting class.

I need a friggin’ shot of Thorazine.

Calm down. Breathe.

Yeah, you think I haven’t been fucking breathing all along.

Asshole!

Look who’s talking.

Look in the freekin’ mirror.

Split personality: two identical jerks.

So much for self esteem.

Does my ego need to be attached to everything?

That’s no way to start out.

Give it up.

No! I want to do this.

Why, because I failed at everything else?

Do I have that incredibly naïve belief that acting is easy, that anyone, any idiot can do it?

First, I didn’t fail at everything.

I am just mediocre at everything.

What’s the difference?

Geez! Talk about cognitive distortions!

Mediocre with a trail of burnt bridges and bad feelings all around, no friends, no job, no sex life.  I’d say that’s a failure. Well yeah there were some small mediocre successes after all those years of therapy...

Why bother?

Don’t I see?

I’ll learn the basic acting techniques and if I work really, really hard for a few years I’ll get to where I am with everything else! Poof... I’ll be a mediocre actor.

Can’t I just enjoy the process?

Gee, what an original idea.

 Guess I’ll head over to the bookshop and on the way over I’ll

mull it over... in the bar across the street.