<p>Okay, so I have a monologue that I love from a short, one-act play. The play is published but it is one of those very short, ten-minute type plays. All of my schools ask for monologues from published plays. Is it okay to use this even though it is only a one-act, short play? Or do all your monologues have to come from full length plays?</p>
<p>A monologue from that kind of play is fine.</p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM’s S has gone through the admissions process more recently than my D so things may have changed but that type of monologue was discouraged by many schools back when my D applied. I would check with the schools on your list to be sure it’s okay. Also, ten minutes is very short, even for a one act. I’d be wary that there is enough ‘meat’ to a monologue that is in a play that is 10 minutes long.</p>
<p>It should be fine as long as it’s quality writing, the monologue is active and it has an arc.</p>
<p>I’ve seen advice here by knowledgeable sounding people that one good way to find monologues is to look for short plays by playwrights you like.</p>
<p>None of the school websites we visited during the application process discouraged that kind of monologue. Did you see that on websites in the past, Alwaysamom?</p>
<p>My son just finished directing a play in a festival of one-act plays at his school. I saw twelve of these plays in a row last Thursday. One of the things that struck me about them was that a lot of emotional exposition had to be packed into a short amount of time. It struck me that several contained material that might work well as a monologue – albeit somewhat one-note monologues, because in a short play the characters don’t have time to go through much of a transformation.</p>
<p>I crossposted with Fish. Yeah, the lack of an arc is what I was referring to when I said that some of the monologues in the ten minute plays I saw recently seemed a little bit one-note.</p>
<p>This monologue definitely has an arc, that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. I cut it a lot so that the arc is definite.</p>