CAWTHRA PARK SECONDARY SCHOOL
REGIONAL ARTS PROGRAM - DRAMA
MONOLOGUE PACKAGE
Read over the five monologues provided in the package. Select the one that interests you the
most; the one you can “see” yourself performing. Mermorize it exactly. Line security is
important. Check the pronunciation of any words unfamiliar to you. Practice saying the
monologue aloud, suggesting the personality of the character you are portraying through your
tone of voice and body language. Costumes and props are not required.
BILLY BISHOP GOES TO WAR
by John Gray & Eric Peterson
It was a grim situation. But we didn’t know how grim it could get until we saw the RE-7 ... the
Reconnaissance Experimental Number Seven. Our new plane. What you saw was this mound of
cables and wires, with a thousand pounds of equipment hanging off it. Four machine guns, a
five-hundred pound bomb, for goodness sake. Reconnaissance equipment, cameras ... Roger
Neville – that’s my pilot – he and I are ordered into the thing to take it up. Of course, it doesn’t
get off the ground. Anyone could see that. We thought, fine, good riddance. But the officers go
into a huddle.
(Imitating the Officers) Mmmmm? What do you think we should do? Take the bomb off? Take
the bomb off!
So we take the bomb off and try it again. This time, the thing sort of flops down the runway like
a crippled duck. Finally, by taking everything off but one machine gun, the thing sort of flopped
itself into the air and chugged along. It was a pig! We were all scared stiff of it. So they put us
on active duty ... as bombers! They gave us twobombs each, told us to fly over Hunland and
drop them on somebody, but in order to accommodate for the weight of the bombs, they took
our machine guns away!
(As if writing or reciting a letter) Dearest Margaret. We are dropping bombs on the enemy from
unarmed machines. It is exciting work. It’s hard to keep your confidence in a war when you
don’t have a gun. Somehow we get back in one piece and we start joking around and inspecting
the machine for bullet and shrapnel damage. You’re so thankful not to be dead. Then I go back
to the barracks and lie down. A kind of terrible loneliness comes over me. It’s like waiting for a
firing squad. It makes you want to cry, you feel so frightened and so alone. I think all of us who
aren’t dead think these things. Thinking of you constantly, I remain ...
YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
by Clark Gesner
I think lunch time is about the worst time of the day for me. Always having to sit here alone. Of
course, sometimes mornings aren’t so pleasant, either—waking up and wondering if anyone
would really miss me if I never got out of bed. Then there’s the night, too—lying there and
thinking about those stupid things I’ve done during the day. And all those hours in between—
when I do all those stupid things. Well, lunch time is among the worst time of the day for me.
Well, I guess I’d better see what I’ve got. Peanut butter. Some psychiatrists say that people who
eat peanut butter sandwiches are lonely. I guess they’re right. And if you’re really lonely, the
peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth. Boy, the PTA sure did a good job of painting
these benches. There’s that cute little redheaded girl eating her lunch over there. I wonder
what she’d do if I went over and asked her if I could sit and have lunch with her. She’s probably
laugh right in my face. It’s hard on a face when it get laughed in. There’s any empty place next
to her on the bench. There’s no reason why I couldn’t just go over and sit there. I could do that
right now. All I have to do is stand up. I’m standing up. I’m sitting down. I’m a coward. I’m so
much of a coward she wouldn’t even think of looking at me. Why shouldn’t she look at me? Is
she so great and am I so small that she couldn’t spare one little moment just to... She’s looking
at me. She’s looking at me.
THE FIGHTING DAYS
by Wendy Lill
My name is Nellie McClung and I’m a disturber. Disturbers are never popular. Nobody likes an
alarm clock in action, no matter how grateful they are later for its services! But I’ve decided
that I’m going to keep on being a disturber. I’m not going to pull through life like a thread that
has no knot. I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some
word that will shine in a dark place. And I want that word to be ... DEMOCRACY! Democracy for
Women. Because I’m a firm believer in Women who set the standards for the world and it is up
to us, the Women of Canada, to set the standards ... HIGH! Maybe I’m sort of a dreamer, maybe
I sort of of naive ... but I look at my little girls and boys and I think I want a different world for
them than the one I was born into. I look at them and my heart cries out when I see them
slowly turn towards the roles the world has carved for them: my girls, a life of cooking and
sewing and services the needs of men; and the boys, scrapping and competing in the
playground, then right up into the corridors of government, or even worse, the battlefields. I
want them to have a choice about their lives. We mothers are going to fight for the rights of our
little girls to think and dream and speak out. We’re going to refuse to bear and rear sons to be
shot at on faraway battlefields. Women need the vote to bring about a better, more quitable,
peaceful society, and we’re going to get it!
THE GLASS MENAGERIE
by Tennessee Williams
Listen! You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You think I’m in love with the Continental
Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that—celotex interior!
With—fluorescent tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my
brains—than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that “Rise and Shine!”
“Rise and Shine!” I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are!” But I get up. I go! For sixty-five
dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self—self’s all I
ever think of. Why. Listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I’d be where he is—gone! As far
as the system of transportation reaches! Don’t grab at me, Mother!
I’m going to the movies!
I’m going to opium dens! Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminals’ hangouts, Mother. I’ve
joined the Hogan gang, I’m a hired assassin, I carry a tommy-gun in a violin case! They call me
Killer, Killer Wingfield, I’m leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by
night a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother.
I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table! I wear a patch over one eye
and a false mustache, sometimes I put on green whiskers. On those occasions they call me—El
Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this
place. They’re going to blow us all sky-high some night! I’ll be glad, very happy, and so will you!
You’ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You
ugly—babbling old—witch....
RATTLE IN THE DASH
by Peter Anderson
I ever tell you about the time my old man ran into our house? I was five or six and I was upstairs
in bed and my mother was reading me this bedtime story when we hear this crash, sounds like
thunder only it come from downstairs. My mother tells me to stay in bed and goes down to see
what’s up. She doesn’t come back for a while so I tiptoe down the stairs and right there in the
living room is the old man’s Thunderbird. It’s half inside and half outside and there’s bricks all
over and this perfect half-circle knocked out of the wall. And there’s the T-bird sitting in the
middle of the living room with the stars shining through. And this big crowd of neighbours in
pajamas and housecoats standing around outside staring into our house. Nobody was talking.
They were staring in at me and my mom and the T-bird in the living room. My old man was
sitting there behind the steering wheel with this stunned kind of look on his face like he
couldn’t believe it. I thought it was the most terrific thing he’d ever done.