A monologue is a moment in the spotlight, a chance to shine. An actor gets few chances to own the stage or screen completely and to speak uninterrupted, yet performing a monologue – or two – as part of an audition is common practice. Choosing the right monologue to perform is essential if you’re going to showcase your talent and leave a positive impression on casting directors. Think of it as selecting the perfect tool for a job – the monologue should align with your abilities and spotlight your strengths while carrying enough impact to make your moment unforgettable.
With that in mind, here’s a list of engaging audition monologues for men. Each monologue has something that makes it powerful, unique, or emotionally impactful. If choosing from this list, find the one that fits your skillset and the character you’re auditioning for. Work on bringing your unique take to the text.
Bear in mind that understanding the entire play is crucial for grasping the context of a monologue and your character’s nature and motivations. It’s standard practice to read the whole script your monologue is from. There’s also a wealth of information online about how to prepare a monologue for an audition. Give yourself the best chance you can by studying it and being ready for your big day.
1. Heaven Sent, Dr Who, Steven Moffat (2015)
Opening monologue, Season 9, Episode 11
Character: The Doctor
Context: The Doctor finds himself imprisoned in a castle, pursued by a malevolent figure. Trapped and scared, he reaches a low point, admitting he is afraid to die. Before that, however, near the start of the episode, the Doctor goes into one of his typically energetic bursts of inspiration, giving rise to this monologue.
Why choose it? This episode is widely considered one of the strongest of the entire Doctor Who franchise, and it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. In a departure from the typical action of Doctor Who episodes, this one features the Doctor almost solely and gives a glimpse into a layer of despair and sadness in him that is not often revealed.
Clara, referred to by the Doctor in this monologue, is his assistant, who has died. The Doctor is disturbed by this death, refusing to accept it. Use that frustration and sadness to inform your performance.
The energy of the first part of the monologue gives way to a little self-awareness and, perhaps, a little fear, at the end, allowing you to transition your energy nicely. The last line has a delicious meta angle to it for an audition, too, so deliver it with a knowing look worthy of a time lord.
DOCTOR: Sorry I'm late. Jumped out of a window. Certain death. Don't you want to know how I survived? Go on. Ask me! No, of course I had to jump! The first rule of being interrogated is that you are the only irreplaceable person in the torture chamber. The room is yours, so work it. If they're going to threaten you with death, show them who's boss. Die faster. And you've seen me do that more often than most. Isn't that right, Clara? Rule one of dying, don't. Rule two, slow down.
You've got the rest of your life. The faster you think, the slower it will pass. Concentrate. Assume you're going to survive. Always assume that. Imagine you've already survived. There's a storm room in your mind. Lock the door and think: This is my storm room. I always imagine that I'm back in my Tardis, showing off, telling you how I escaped, making you laugh. That's what I'm doing right now. I am falling, Clara. I'm dying. And I am going to explain to you how I survived. I can't wait to hear what I say. I'm nothing without an audience.
2. Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas (1954)
Opening monologue
Character: First Voice
Context: Under Milk Wood uses poetic and playful language to describe the dreams and lives of people in a sleepy Welsh seaside town. Although originally written as a radio play, it has since been adapted for the stage and screen, and it has become arguably Dylan Thomas’ most famous work. It uses Thomas’ signature word-bending, ear-pleasing verbal art to great effect, giving an actor plenty to get their tongue around. And if you think this poetic description of a town in the early morning lacks drama or impact for a monologue, take a look at Michael Sheen’s stunning delivery.
Why choose it? A storytelling passage like this can pose more challenges than a typical monologue from a character whose personality is better cemented. But if you have the acting chops, performing this difficult speech will help you stand out from the auditioning crowd.
Think about how you can make the speech physical, and use the beautiful language in an expressive and varied way (as Richard Burton did) to capture attention and even hypnotise your audience.
FIRST VOICE: To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the hunched, courters' and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jolly, rodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the field, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night moving in the street, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.
3. Fences, August Wilson (1985)
Act 2, Scene 4
Character: Cory
Context: In this scene, Cory is returning to the yard after leaving when he saw his father, Troy, drinking there. His father, who stopped him playing football and refused to let him join the army out of fear he’d suffer racism, has alienated his wife and friends and cost Cory several opportunities. The tension has built to this moment, when Cory finally lets out his feelings towards his father.
Why choose it? As monologues for men go, this one is perfect for capturing the difficulty of the father-son relationship and the pain and lack of mutual understanding that can be involved. Troy was never allowed to fulfil his potential as a baseball player because he was Black. This lack of fulfilment ate away at him until he became a bitter old man, cheating on his wife and limiting Cory’s life out of fear that Cory would suffer the same disappointments he had.
This is a powerful and emotional monologue to explore as an actor, but be sure to include variety in your delivery to prevent it being too samey. As well as anger, there is hurt, frustration, and, beneath it all, disappointed love. Remember that Cory is an angry young man, but he’s also a boy who needed a better father.
CORY: I live here too! I ain’t scared of you. I was walking by you to go into the house cause you sitting on the steps drunk, singing to yourself. I ain’t got to say excuse me to you. You don’t count around here any more. Now why don’t you just get out my way. You talking about what you did for me… what’d you ever give me? You ain’t never gave me nothing. You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you.
I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time… what’s Papa gonna say if I do this?... What’s he gonna say if I do that?... What’s he gonna say if I turn on the radio? And Mama, too… she tries… but she’s scared of you. I don’t know how she stand you… after what you did to her. What you gonna do… give me a whupping? You can’t whup me no more. You’re too old. You’re just an old man. You crazy. You know that? You just a crazy old man… talking about I got the devil in me. Come on… put me out. I ain’t scare of you. Come on! Come on, put me out. What’s the matter? You so bad… put me out! Come on! Come on!
4. Hamlet, Shakespeare (1603)
Act 2, Scene 2
Character: Hamlet
Context: Hamlet’s famous despairing speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern comes early in a play full of death and sadness. Hamlet’s uncle has married his mother after the death of Hamlet’s father, but Hamlet’s father’s ghost is now haunting Hamlet, claiming to have been murdered by Hamlet’s uncle and prompting Hamlet to seek revenge.
Why choose it? This monologue offers the opportunity to play a complex character faking madness to find out if there’s any truth in the allegations against his uncle. In this scene, he summons two old friends to show them his (perhaps fake) mental despair. What follows is one of the greatest moments of Western drama.
Think about how you can give a fresh spin to stand out from the crowd. Richard E. Grant gives a gloriously emotional version of the speech at the end of the film Withnail and I, delivered in the rain to a pack of wolves in a zoo. His desperation is an inspiration.
HAMLET: I have of late – but
wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how
express and admirable! In action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the
world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither.
5. Cost of Living, Martyna Majok (2016)
The Prologue
Character: Eddie
Martyna Majok’s play exploring two relationships between able-bodied and disabled people won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Context: The play starts with the poignant stage direction ‘Eddie Torres is a man who understands that pity and moping are privileges for people who, in their lives, have friends and family who unconditionally love them and will listen to their shit.’ This is clear in the monologue, where Eddie repeatedly veers into the sadness of his life before trying to pull himself out of it again with fake jolliness.
Why choose it? This monologue presents an opportunity to express buried emotions. Eddie is desperate not to alienate his listener by letting too much of his sadness out. He has lost the vital relationship he had with his wife after she becomes severely disabled in an accident, and he is struggling with expressing his feelings: sadness, regret, anger, and despair among them. This is what makes him an achingly tragic character. Work with that gap between his feelings and his intentions to draw out the depth and interest in the monologue.
EDDIE: The shit that happens is not to be understood.
That’s from the bible.
That shit that happens to you is Not To Be Understood.
So, see, this fucked me up a little when one day comes this call from Columbia Presbyterian. Is this Mister Torres? There’s been a complication. I’m forty-nine and I’ve done nothin but love the fuck outta this woman for two decades and a year almost. Nothin.
Who deserves that?
And a week from her birthday. Seven days.
We were gonna go to Maine. For her birthday. See the trees.
I leave the lights on now, every room.
Smoke signal: I’m still here.
Holidays are hard.
Christmas next week – that’s gonna be hard.
But listen to me holy shit the GLOOM. Get a drink. On me. Made a promise to myself. A penalty. I start talkin gloom, I get it in the WALLET. Lemme buy you a drink. What do you want? Order what you want, I’m payin. This place is my fuckin SWEAR jar.
Order what you want. Go ahead.
Me myself personally, I’m off it. That first day you wake up to find you are not in a pool of some kinda liquid, my friend? Vomit, say, or piss? That day? That day is a beautiful fuckin gift upon yer life, man. You are grateful for that day. And you are ready.
That day’s the day it’s all gonna change.
Signs are real.
This I know cuz I used to drive trucks. Cross-country. Loved it. Loved every aspect of the job. The scenery. Every aspect. The fuckin scenery. Utah? Jesus H, man. Utah’s gorgeous and no one even knows!
But then I got popped for a DUI. In a car. Blocks from home.
Lost my CDL.
Shit’s Creek.
So I got the memories. And some unemployment.
That life is good for people. I was thankful for every day they ain’t invented the trucker-robots. That life is good. The road.
Sky. The scenery.
Except the loneliness.
Except in the case of all the, y’know, loneliness.
This was what my wife was good for.
Not that this was the only thing.
But everyone what’s married there’s, y’know, the fuuuuck days.
Like, fuuuuck what did I do. What did I actually fuckin do here.
Cuz, y’know, you married a person. And a person’s gonna be a person even if they’re married.
That’s a lesson. That’s a lesson for yer LIFE right there.
But still I
I still
still loved her.
6. Jaws, Steven Spielberg, Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler (1975)
The Indianapolis speech
Character: Quint
Context: The Indianapolis speech is one of the most famous male monologues in film, so it will gain smiles of recognition when used in an audition. It was delivered on the screen by Robert Shaw, who, according to movie legend, produced this version of the speech as a cut from the monologue of nearly 10 pages in the original script.
Why choose it? The sparse language helps create the character, a tough sailor who’s been to hell and back. The whole monologue is about a horrific experience (unfortunately, something that happened in real life), so be sure to home in on the terrible details to make your delivery as impactful as possible. The last line creates a powerful moment that pulls back from the experience in the water to the wider context. Deliver it carefully to maximise the mic-drop effect.
QUINT: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.
Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.
Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.
You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.
At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
7. The Homecoming, Harold Pinter (1965)
Act 1
Character: Lenny
Context: Lenny is an aggressive and assertive man who emasculates his brother by flirting with the brother’s wife, Ruth, in front of him. The play is from 1965, but today Lenny might be called a wide boy – someone who earns money from dishonest or illegal means. By the end of the play, Lenny has submitted to Ruth’s demands, showing that beneath his rough exterior he is really someone who needs affection and lacks human connection.
Why choose it? Auditioning for a macho, hyper-manly, or aggressive character? This monologue should deliver. Use the less dramatic first three-quarters of the monologue to build character through mannerisms, intonation, pace, and tone before giving your all in the revelation of violence in the final part, which is the twist that gives this monologue its impact.
There’s a full-length film version of the play starring Ian Holm and Vivien Merchant available to watch online. This monologue features at 38 minutes. It’s worth watching the whole thing to get the context for the speech, and to pick up on the underlying sense of nastiness and violence in the script.
LENNY: I mean, I am very sensitive to atmosphere, but I tend to get desensitised, if you know what I mean, when people make unreasonable demands on me. For instance, last Christmas I decided to do a bit of snow-clearing for the Borough Council, because we had a heavy snow over here that year in Europe. Well, that morning, while I was having my mid-morning cup of tea in a neighbouring café, the shovel standing by my chair, an old lady approached me and asked if I would give her a hand with her iron mangle.
Her brother-in-law, she said, had left it for her, but he’d left it in the wrong room, he’d left it in the front room. Well, naturally, she wanted it in the back room. It was a present he’d given her, you see, a mangle, to iron out the washing. But he’d left it in the wrong room, he’d left it in the front room, well that was a silly place to leave it, it couldn’t stay there.
So I took time off to give her a hand. She only lived up the road. Well, the only trouble was when I got there I couldn’t move this mangle. It must have weighed about half a tonne. How this brother-in-law got it up there in the first place I can’t even begin to envisage. So there I was, doing a bit of shoulders on with the mangle, risking a rupture, and this old lady just standing there, waving me on, not even lifting a little finger to give me a helping hand. So after a few minutes I said to her, now look here, why don’t you stuff this iron mangle up your arse?
Anyway, I said, they’re out of date, you want to get a spin drier, I had a good mind to give her a workover there and then, but as I was feeling jubilant with the snow-clearing I just gave her a short-arm jab to the belly and jumped on a bus outside.
Whichever monologue you chose, give yourself the best chance at success by preparing thoroughly. Getting feedback from an acting coach, a fellow actor, or even a friend can be helpful as you develop your delivery. It’s also worth recording yourself and watching it back so you can see what’s strong and what could be even stronger. Finally, believe in yourself. You can do this!