Suggested Acting Scenes 

Always read the entire script before performing a monologue.

20th Century Contemporary

Woody Allen

• Don't Drink the Water
• Play It Again Sam

Maxwell Anderson

• The Bad Seed
• Both Your Houses

Jean Anouilh

• Antigone

Alan Ayckbourn

• Absurd Person Singular
• Bedroom Farce
• Ernie's Incredible Illucinations

James Baldwin

• Amen Corner
• Blues for Miser Charlie

Alan Ball

• Five Women Wearing the Same Dress

Amiri Baraka

• The Dutchman
• A Black Mass

Samuel Beckett

• Waiting for Godot
• Endgame
• Happy Days

Brendan Behan

• The Hostage

Bertolt Brecht

• The Caucasian Chalk Circle
• The Good Person of Szechwan
• Mother Courage and Her Children
• The Threepenny Opera

Alice Childress

• Florence
• Just a Little Simple
• Trouble in Mind
• Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White

Nilo Cruz

• Anna in the Tropics

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Christopher Durang

• Beyond Therapy
• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
• The Actor's Nightmare

Dürrenmatt

• The Visit

Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman

• Stage Door

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Jules Feiffer

• Little Murders
• Feiffer's People

Brian Friel

• Dancing at Lughnasa

Herb Gardner

• A Thousand Clowns

William Gibson

• The Miracle Worker

John Guare

• House of Blue Leaves
• Six Degrees of Separation

Athol Fugard

• "Master Harold" ...and the boys

Lorraine Hansberry

• A Raisin in the Sun

David Hare

• Plenty
• Racing Demon
• Skylight
• Amy's View

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Robert Harling

• ​Steel Magnolias

Lillian Hellman

• The Little Foxes
• The Children's Hour
• Toys in the Attic
• Another Part of the Forest

Beth Henley

• Crimes of the Heart

Israel Horovitz

• The Indian Wants the Bronx​

Langston Hughes

• Black Nativity
• Jerico-Jim Crow

William Inge (Kansas playwright)

• Dark at the Top of the Stairs
• A Loss of Roses
• Bus Stop
• Picnic
• Come Back, Little Sheba

Ionesco

• The Bald Soprano
• Rhinoceros

Kaufman and Hart

• Man Who Came to Dinner
• You Can't Take It With You
• Once in a Lifetime

Quiara Alegría Hudes 

• Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue
• Water by the Spoonful

Adrienne Kennedy

• Funnyhouse of the Negro

Sidney Kingsley

• Detective Story
• Men in White

Arthur Kopit

• Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad
• Indians
• Wings

Tony Kushner

• Angels In America​

David Mamet

• Glengarry Glen Ross
• Speed-the-Plow
• American Buffalo

James McClure

• Laundry and Bourbon

Tarell Alvin McCraney

• Choir Boy
• Head of Passes
• The Brother/Sister Plays
  • ​The Brother Size
  • In the Red and Brown Water
  • Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet

Arthur Miller

• All My Sons
• Death of a Salesman
• The Crucible
• A View from the Bridge

John Ford Noonan

• A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking

Marsah Norman

• 'night Mother

Lynn Nottage

• Ruined
• Sweat

Antoinett Nwandu

• Pass Over
• BREACH: a manifesto on race in America through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate
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Sean O'Casey

• Juno and the Paycock
• Shadow of a Gunman
• The Plough and the Stars

Clifford Odets

• Awake and Sing
• Golden Boy
• Paradise Lost
• Rocket to the Moon
• Waiting for Lefty

Eugene O'Neill

• Anna Christie
• The Iceman Cometh
• Long Day's Journey Into Night
• Moon for the Misbegotten

Suzan-Lori Parks

• Topdog/Underdog
• White Noise

Sybille Pearson

• Sally and Marsha

Tyler Perry

• I know I've Been Changed

John Pielmeier

• Agnes of God

Harold Pinter

• The Homecoming
• The Birthday Party
• The Dumb Waiter

J.B. Priestley

• Time and the Conways​

Murray Schisgal

• Luv

Peter Shafer

• Amadeus
• Equus
• Lettice and Lovage
• Black Comedy

​Ntozake Shange

• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf

John Patrick Shanley

• Danny and the Deep Blue Sea
• Doubt: A Parable
• The Dreamer Examines His Pillow

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Irwin Shaw

• Bury the Dead

Sam Shepard

• Fool for Love
• Lie of the Mind
• Simpatico
• True West

Martin Sherman

• Bent

Neil Simon

• Barefoot in the Park
• The Odd Couple (original and female version)
• Lost in Yonkers
• Biloxi Blues

Bernard Slade

• Romantic Comedy
• Same Time, Next Year

Tom Stoppard

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
• The Real Thing
• The Coast of Utopia
• Shakespeare in Love

JM Synge

• Playboy of the Western World
• Riders to the Sea

Renee Taylor & Joe Bologna

• Lovers and Other Strangers
• It Had To Be You
• Love Allways

Luis Valdez

• Zoot Suit

Wendy Wasserstein

• The Heidi Chronicles
• The Sisters Rosensweig
• Uncommon Women and Others

Peter Weiss

• Marat/Sade

Thorton Wilder

• Our Town
• The Skin of Our Teeth

Tennessee Williams

• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• A Streetcar Names Desire
• The Night of the Iguana

August Wilson

• Fences
• The Piano Lesson
• Two Trains Running
• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
• Jitney
• Seven Guitars
• Radio Golf
• King Hedley II
  
  

Lanford Wilson

• Burn This
• The Mound Builders
• Talley's Folly
• Fifth of July

George C. Wolfe

• The Colored Museum

Classic Plays

Late 19th and early 20th Century 

Chekhov

• Uncle Vanya
• The Three Sisters
• The Cherry Orchard

Ibsen

• Hedda Gabler
• A Doll's House
• Ghosts

Strindberg

• Miss Julie

Pirandello

• Six Characters in Search of an Author

Gorky

• The Lower Depths

George Bernard Shaw

• Pygmalion
• Man and Superman
• Candida

Oscar Wilde

• The Importance of Being Earnest

17th century

Moliere

• Tartuffe
• The School for Wives
• The Imaginary Invalid
• The Miser
• The Doctor Inspire of Himself

Elizabethean Era

Shakespeare

• Hamlet
• King Lear
• Twelfth Night
• A Midsummer Night's Dream

Ancient Greek

Aristophanes

• Lysistrata
• The Frogs
• The Clouds

Sophocles

• Antigone
• Oedipus Rex

Euripides

• Medea
• The Trojan Women

Aeschylus

• Prometheus Bound
• The Oresteia
  • Agamemnon
  • The Libation Bearers
  • Eumenides