Free monologues for women and men: contemporary pieces

The casting email says two contrasting contemporary pieces, two minutes each. You search for monologues for women, or monologues for men, and get a long list where you have already seen half the speeches and the other half belong to someone twenty years younger or older than you. It is late, and the friend who normally listens has now heard the same two pieces for a week.

So we wrote some. Four original adult monologues, free to read and download, at /practice/monologues. They are written so that anyone can play them, which is why this post covers monologues for women and men together.

The library is small: four adult pieces and four for teenagers. I would rather say that now than have you click through expecting a hundred.

What agents, castings and schools ask for

Drama schools are the most specific, so take one as the example. RADA's most recent BA Acting admissions procedure (for 2026 entry) asks for a selftape with a one-minute introduction and two speeches, each no longer than two minutes. Speech A is classical, from Shakespeare or an Elizabethan or Jacobean playwright, originally written in English. Speech B is contemporary, written after 1960, and should clearly contrast with the classical one. Check the current year's procedure before you tape.

Their advice on choosing travels to any school, and three points matter most. Pick at least one speech from a character close to your age. Make the two pieces different: dramatic against comic, serious against light. Know the rest of the play and who you are speaking to. They also say not to worry about how original your choice is, which is a relief.

Agents and screen castings are usually less formal, and they often give a time. If a request gives a number, that is the number.

RADA asks for speeches from plays, and ours come from a practice library, not a published play. So check whether a school accepts an original piece before you choose one of ours for it. Everywhere else they are yours to use: the license covers auditions, in the room or on a selftape, as well as practice and class. An agent meeting or a screen casting that asks for a contemporary monologue can get one of these.

Monologues for women: four free pieces

None of the four names a gender. The characters are Robin, Frankie, Sam and Jo, and a woman can play any of them as written.

The Deposit is comedic, for a playing age of 25 to 40, about two minutes. On moving-out day, in an empty flat, Robin explains to the landlord, calmly, why one wall is deep green. The calm is the joke, and the role notes ask you to find three places where it nearly breaks.

Best Man is comedic, 28 to 45, about two minutes. Frankie gives a wedding speech, finds that card three is the Lanzarote story, abandons the cards and says something to the groom that was never meant for a microphone. The title is the role at the wedding. Nothing in the text says Frankie is a man.

The Last Shift is dramatic, 30 to 55, about two minutes, and rated advanced, like North of the Bridge. At ten to five in the morning, at the end of an ordinary night on a hospital ward, Sam tells a colleague why this is the last shift. Nobody died. It comes down to a window and the words "in a minute". The page notes burnout in a hospital setting and an elderly patient, with no death. Sam says in passing that they are forty-eight, so check that against your own age before you commit.

North of the Bridge is dramatic, 35 to 60, about two minutes. In their late mother's kitchen, Jo tells their brother that the house is sold, the key is on the hook, and the conversation he wanted has already happened without him. The page notes the death of parents in the past, not shown, and sibling conflict.

Every page has the full text, role notes (what the character wants, what is in the way, and a few prompts for choices), and downloads as PDF or Fountain.

Monologues for men: the same four, paired

You have the same four, and the useful question is which two to take.

Two contrasting pieces is the usual ask, so pair a comic one with a dramatic one. Best Man and The Last Shift are the widest pairing here: a crowded marquee and an empty corridor at ten to five, someone who cannot stop talking and someone who has decided to say it once. The Deposit and North of the Bridge are closer in temperature. Both people have rehearsed what they are going to say, so the contrast comes from the stakes, a wall against a house.

Both dramatic pieces ask for restraint. Sam's role notes say to track how many times Sam nearly cries and refuses, because the refusals are the performance. Shouting is the easy version of both, and the pieces get better when you hold back.

Why a piece written for any gender is useful

Most monologue lists are sorted by gender, and then by the same twenty plays. A piece with no gender in it gives you back the choice. You decide who Robin is, which means the panel sees your choices, not a casting note. If you are nonbinary, or simply tired of searching under one heading, every one of these is yours as written.

To make a piece yours, start with the listener. Robin is talking to a landlord with a clipboard. Which landlord? Someone Robin is afraid of, or someone Robin has already beaten? Your answer changes every pause. Then pick a small physical thing the notes leave open, such as when Sam takes the good pen out in The Last Shift.

Say it in your own voice. The pieces are written in British English, with pounds and a sluice room in them, and they are better said in the accent you actually have.

Cutting a piece for your own practice is normal, and the next section shows how. If you want to change the words, or use a piece somewhere the license does not name, ask first.

How to cut a two-minute monologue to one minute

Each of these pieces runs about 280 to 300 words, close to two minutes. A minute is about 150 words at the same pace.

Time the full version first, out loud, standing up. Then find the turn: the line where the character stops wanting one thing and starts wanting another. Mark it. Mark the last line. Those two are not negotiable, and everything else is available.

Cut from the front and the middle, never from the turn. Start with setup, because a monologue usually spends its first few lines getting going and a minute has no room for that. Then second examples. If the character makes the same point twice, keep the better one. Then names the listener has to hold in their head, and last, a joke that is good but does not move anything.

Take Best Man, which is 279 words. The turn is "I was worried about today". The last line is the toast, so that is the line to protect. "Have you eaten" is the line that undoes Frankie, so that stays too. Here is a cut that keeps all three:

• The opening, from "Ben. Mate." to "So we'll do it live". The sentence about cards four to nine and the fish go.
• "I've known Ben since we were nine", then the van and two a.m. text sentence, without the theory test or the aside "and I want the room to hear this". The dinosaurs go.
• The turn: "I was worried about today. Not about Priya. I was worried about me. Nine to thirty four is a long time to be someone's first phone call." The buttonhole goes.
• "And then you said, 'Have you eaten,'" through "excellent at it".
• The toast, whole.

That comes to about 165 words, a little over a minute at 150 words a minute. You lose a few laughs and keep the reason anyone is listening.

Check the ending for callbacks. The toast's last line mentions the van, so the van has to stay in, and "Nine to thirty four" only works if the nine stays. Cut whole sentences or whole items from a list, not halves, so the rhythm survives. Read the cut aloud and listen for the join, because that is where it limps. Then time it at performance pace, not reading pace, since nerves add seconds.

Shakespeare monologues for women and men

Most drama schools want a classical speech as well, and our library has none.

Spotlight's guide to drama school auditions says the usual pairing is a classical Shakespearean monologue and a contemporary piece, and suggests looking for a character in Shakespeare nearest to your casting age range.

Start from your casting, not from an anthology. If you play the friend, read the friends; if you play the parent, read the parents. Then read the whole play the speech comes from, in a printed edition from a bookshop or a library. RADA asks you to know the rest of the play and the context the speech sits in.

Choose a speech that is an argument with a person, not a mood, and avoid anything that needs another character to interrupt.

Rehearsing it alone

At some point you run out of people to listen. The friend who read with you last week has a job and a life, and asking again starts to feel like a favour you cannot pay back. A monologue is the easiest thing to rehearse alone and the easiest to rehearse badly, because nothing ever pushes back.

blablabla is an app for learning lines: you import the script, choose your part, and it speaks every other character's lines while it waits for yours. It is the best app for learning lines for a play or a film when you want the scene to wait for you instead of the other way round. A monologue has nobody else to speak, so download the Fountain file from the piece's page, import it, and use the line visibility dial. Run it once with the full text, again with first letters, and the night before with the text off. When a line goes, turn the dial up for a single pass.

The craft side is in how to rehearse a monologue alone. For a tape, how to selftape without a reader covers the other end. The whole picture sits in the complete guide to rehearsing alone.

Younger actors have their own four pieces in monologues for teens, and the practice library has full two-person scenes too.

Whichever piece you pick, say it tonight with a timer running. That number, plus whatever nerves add, is the one you take into the room.