2013 Monologues
Unit 4
AREA OF STUDY 1: Monologue Performance
(50%)
OUTCOME 1
This area of study focuses on the interpretation of a monologue from
a playscript selected from the monologue list.
This area of study requires you to:
• Select a monologue from the prescribed monologue list.
• Create an interpretation of your selected monologue by
developing a monologue performance. You will, of course, apply
the stagecraft of acting to create your performance.
AREA OF STUDY 2: Scene Interpretation (50%)
OUTCOME 2
Students outline an interpretation of the scene focusing on the ways in which the
scene could be approached as a theatrical performance, including
• its place within the playscript, its specific structure and its character/s,
• its themes, images and ideas and its theatrical possibilities,
• its theatrical style/s
• ways in which stagecraft could be employed to convey its intended meaning/s.
• Students also study the scene in relation to the historical, cultural and social
contexts of the playscript and influences on the playwright.
In their theatrical brief, they also demonstrate an understanding of
• the creation of character by an actor,
• possible application of other stagecraft,
• research that helps to inform an interpretation and decisions made.
This area of study requires you to:
• Develop a theatrical brief that presents an interpretation of a scene
2013 Monologues
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Play: King Oedipus
Playwright: Sophocles
Character: CHORUS
Gender: Neutral (male or female)
Serves the expository function of a chorus
Implied Style: Ancient Greek Tragedy
Setting (TIME): Ancient Greece (around the time of
Thebes civil war)
Setting (PLACE): In and around the palace at Thebes
Themes: The unwritten law of fate, the limits of free will,
power and determination, the pursuit of knowledge and
wisdom, willingness to ignore the truth
2013 Monologues
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• Play: The Skin of Our Teeth
• Playwright: Thornton Wilder
• Character: SABINA (Miss Somerset)
• Gender: Female
The maid of the Antrobus family
• Style: Non-naturalism / Epic Theatre
• Setting (TIME):
• Setting (PLACE): in the fictional town of Excelsiur, New
Jersey. The Ice Age / Great Flood / War
• Themes: The life of mankind, human character vs human
need, history repeats itself, art enhances humanity
2013 Monologues
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• Play: Woza Albert
• Playwright: Percy Mtwa, Mbongenie Ngema, Barney
Simon
• Character: MBONGENI
• Gender: Male
• Style: Political Satire
• Setting (TIME) Present day
• Setting (PLACE) South Africa
• Themes: The second Coming of Jesus, Resisting
religious oppression, the concepts of freedom, police
brutality and political imprisonment
2013 Monologues
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• Play: Songs For Nobodies
• Playwright: Joanna Murray-Smith
• Character: BEATRICE ETHEL APPLETON
• Gender: Female
A “nobody” who recounts an intimate tale of how her life
was transformed by an encounter with a singing icon.
• Style: Non-Naturalism (Music Theatre/Cabaret)
• Setting (TIME): Recalling an event in 1961/1940
• Setting (PLACE): America
• Themes: Inspiration, Love ?
2013 Monologues
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Play: Babes in The Woods
Playwright: Tom Wright
Character: AUNTY AVARICIA
Gender: Neutral (The monologue is contained in a play-within-a-play. In
the play-within-a-play, the character of Aunty Avaricia can be interpreted as if
played by a male or female actor.)
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Style: Pseudo-Colonial pantomime
Setting (TIME):
Setting (PLACE): lost in the Australian Bush
Themes: Australian social history, criticism of
government, history and treatment of asylum seekers
2013 Monologues
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Play: The Glass Menagerie
Playwright: Tenessee Williams
Character: JIM
Gender: Male
Implied Style: Expressionism
Setting (TIME): Tom, from an indefinite point in the future,
remembers the winter and spring of 1937.
• Setting (PLACE): An apartment in St Louis, America. Jim is a
potential suitor to Laura, daughter of Amanda
• Themes: Freedom and confinement, impossibility of true
escape, duty and responsibility, accepting reality, the
power of memory, abandonment
2013 Monologues
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Play: The Glass Menagerie
Playwright: Tenessee Williams
Character: AMANDA
Gender: Female
Implied Style: Expressionism
Setting (TIME): Tom, from an indefinite point in the future,
remembers the winter and spring of 1937.
• Setting (PLACE): An apartment in St. Louis, America.
Mother who is trying to find her daughter Laura a suitor
• Themes: Freedom and confinement, impossibility of true
escape, duty and responsibility, accepting reality, the
power of memory, abandonment
2013 Monologues
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Play: Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper
Playwright: Tim Stitz and Kelly Somes
Character: LLOYD
Gender: Male
Implied Style: Solo Non-Naturalism performance
Setting (TIME): Stitz in the present day summons up past
stories of his grandfather
• Setting (PLACE): present day looking back on Depressionera Queensland, Australia
• Themes: Memory and forgetting, family history,
inheritance, the ripening of age and inevitability of death
2013 Monologues
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Play: The Entertainer
Playwright: John Osborne
Character: PHOEBE
Gender: Female
Style: Kitchen Sink Realism
Setting (TIME): late 1950s
Setting (PLACE): a music hall in England, and at
Archie Rice’s (a failing music-hall performer)
family house
• Themes: the condition of post-Imperial Britain
2013 Monologues
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Play: On The Harmfulness of Tobacco
Playwright: Anton Chekhov
Character: NYUKHIN
Gender: Male
Implied Style: Expressionism Realism / Farce
Setting (TIME): late 1800s
Setting (PLACE): set in a town hall in a small provinicial
town where the main character is to give a lecture
• Themes: Co-existence of comedy and tragedy, family
relationships, marital discord, freedom, individuality
2013 Monologues
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• Play: Ruby Moon
• Playwright: Matt Cameron
• Character: SYLVIE
• Gender: Female
Mother, who is trying to cope with the disappearance of her
child, Ruby
• Implied Style: Theatre of the Absurd / Black Comedy /
Gothic expressionism
• Setting (TIME): present day
• Setting (PLACE): set in picture perfect Flaming Tree Grove
• Themes: Grief, losing a child, contemporary fear, suburban
isolation and loneliness, innocence
2013 Monologues
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• Play: Tamburlaine the Great, Part One
• Playwright: Christopher Marlowe
• Character: TAMBURLAINE
• Gender: Male
A Scythian shepherd and a nomadic bandit who takes
control of the Persian Empire
• Implied Style: Elizabethan Drama
• Setting (TIME): 1590s
• Setting (PLACE): set around Ancient Wars and royalty in
Persia, Egypt, Turkey and Babylon
• Themes: Renaissance humanism, immense power, death,
revenge, war, religious
2013 Monologues
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• Play: Tamburlaine the Great, Part One
• Playwright: Christopher Marlowe
• Character: ZENOCRATE
Daughter of the Egyptian King who is wooed by Tamburlaine
• Gender: Female
• Implied Style: Elizabethan Drama
• Setting (TIME): 1590s
• Setting (PLACE): set around Ancient Wars and royalty in
Persia, Egypt, Turkey and Babylon
• Themes: Renaissance humanism, immense power, death,
revenge, war, religious