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What can monologues be about?
You are encouraged to write about yourself as a woman, your relationships, body image, spirituality, work, religion, personal or sexual exploration, experiences of love, experience of abuse, and of course, your influential heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, platonic and familial relationships and experiences. Think about your experiences of sex education, first or remarkable experiences of menstruation, menopause, first or remarkable experiences of sexuality, rape or abuse, experiences of birth control, experiences of pregnancy, pregnancy loss, abortion, childbirth, motherhood, , experiences of empowerment and endangerment that focus on the female body, etc. NO TOPIC IS OFF-LIMITS OR IRRELEVANT!
Your submission may be as short as a few sentences or up to three typed, double spaced pages in length. Your submission may be edited for length to allow for many different pieces to be included in the production. You may submit more than one piece. Please change the names of any people you describe in your submission.
Don’t be nervous about sharing revealing stores because your submissions will remain completely anonymous. You do not need to include your name with your submission.
Some writing strategies to consider:
To start, think of a powerful experience in your life that may be humorous, exciting, beautiful, painful, inspiring, terrifying, empowering, embarrassing, sad, etc. Share this specific story to capture the complexity of being female by including concrete details
(remember that you can draw on all the senses!) and reflections on how the experience made you feel at the time, and perhaps, now.
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Decide what effect you want to have on your audience (what emotions, details, images do you want to leave them with?)
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Make an experience come alive with details! Show, don’t tell, your story. Think about your Monologue as a scene from a movie.
What do you want us to see, hear, or smell (if your movie was shot with “smellovision”!)
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There are many ways to tell a story: Write a letter/email/facebook entry, or imagine a Twitter thread; get across the emotion of an event by giving us impressions, sounds, words; include other voices (no real names!)
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Short sentences communicate best.
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Cut to the chase! You don’t have much room, so leave in the strongest, most evocative material.
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Sentence starters: o When I was girl, I loved to… o The first time I knew I loved/hated him/her was... o I looked down and thought… o You’ll never believe/understand__________, but I’ll try to explain… o Just the idea of ______ makes me crazy/squirm/joyful/thrilled/hurt…. o For me, it always been ______ that makes me _______... o I felt like a giant/tiny ______ in the middle of all the _____...
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Start with dialogue. “PUT THAT DOWN!” my mother screamed.
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Start with setting. “The mountains turned purple in the mornings.”
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Start with conflict. “We decided to beat up the girls in the seventh grade, even though we were only 8 years old.”
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Start with character. “My sister, often jovial, bubbly, sweet, had been in her room for five days straight.”

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Submissions for the Michiana Monologues may be turned in until 01 November 2015
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Submit them on-line via www.michianamonologues.org.
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Email them to faculty adviser, Professor April Lidinsky (alidinsk@iusb.edu) Feel free to use a free hotmail or yahoo account for extra anonymity if you so desire.
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Slip them under the door at Professor Lidinsky’s office at 2257 Wiekamp Hall on the IU South Bend campus.
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Mail them to Professor Lidinsky, Michiana Monologues, 2257 Wiekamp Hall, Indiana University South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Ave,
PO Box 7111, South Bend, IN 46634-7111
How will selections be made?
Selections will be made by a committee of faculty, staff, and students on campus. Selections will be based on an interest in representing a diversity of voices, and a range of experience described in compelling language. Pieces may be edited by the committee. We cannot include every submission in a two-hour show, regrettably. If yours does not make it into the production, it does not mean it wasn’t a fantastic story. It may appear in a book version of Michiana Monologues 2014, and you can submit it again next year.
Are you interested in performing in the production?
If you are interested in performing, but not writing a monologue, look for our call for performers to audition in December on our website: www.michianamonologues.org. You may submit a monologue AND perform one, but you will not be allowed to perform your own monologue, as preserving the anonymity of the writers is crucial to this process and production.
Please feel free to share this call for monologues. We would like to see stories shared from girls and women of every age group and demographic.
Each of us has stories inside; please consider sharing yours!
***Please note that by donating your story, you are giving it to this fund-raising production, and understand that it may be edited for length, and could be reproduced on paper or as a DVD. Any money raised from your submission will go toward fund-raising for local organizations working to stop violence against women. Our beneficiaries for Michiana Monologues 2014 include: the Family Justice
Center, Saint Margaret’s House, YWCA of St. Joseph County, and other local anti-violence organizations.
Questions or ideas for our production? Would you like to participate in the Michiana Monologues as a support person, creative force, or go-to person? We can always use the help, and you’d find yourself among a diverse and fun group of people who are committed to using writing and art to create a safe, happy, creative community for everyone. Contact April Lidinsky: alidinsk@iusb.edu