Goin' Out To Cally – Part 11, Wet, Rinse, Repeat

A monologue, in acting speak, is a solo performance piece most commonly used by actors for auditions. Monologues are usually pulled directly out of plays, however they can also be original works or compiled from other sources.

The most successful monologue I ever used was one I pieced together from a fictional article Howie Mandel wrote for Inside Sports magazine about a child's annual trek to a shuffleboard camp. I titled it When The Lemonade Tastes Funny and used that monologue to get into the fine arts college, to place in the southeast regional Irene Ryan theater competition, as one of my exit monologues from the college prior to graduation and to get numerous professional gigs. When you've struck monologue gold, you mine that baby as many times as possible!

During our extended drive to Dallas, Sunday began rehearsing a monologue for an important audition scheduled upon her return from our road trip. It's really hard to practice a monologue silently. After all, a monologue is spoken and you're not only training your mind to remember the lines and create a logical thought process in your head, but you’re also training your mouth to speak all of those words correctly. During this process it’s not uncommon for an actor to uncover, within a monologue, a localized brain fart… that place where the logic of the author is not readily apparent to the actor and in the same place, every time, the logic in your head fails and the next few words evaporate into thin air. For the actor, this is a trial and error process that will continue until you’re able to build a thought process bridge over the jagged rocks of indecision.

For the rest of us in the car, it meant having to hear Sunday stop at the same line of her monologue over and over and over and over again. Sunday worked through the sixty-second monologue repeatedly, "...What makes you so certain! What gives you the right? I've lived my whole life under your roof, dampened by the weight of your broken dreams! You look at my life and see your... your-" and she'd pause, flip her head slightly, messing her hair, study the script, then continue on, "...your missed opportunities, your failures." And the monologue would continue until the end, then she’d start again, always pausing at "You look at my life and see your..." pause, flip, hair, script, "missed opportunities, your failures."

As we neared the Mississippi River, Sunday’s work on her monologue had reached the level of the absurd for the rest of us. "You look at my life and see your..." and without a beat, Tim and Beth, who had never studied acting, chimed in with lifeless tones "missed opportunities, your failures,” because by this time we all knew the monologue better than she did. Unfortunately, no amount of sheer force of will on our part could build that mental bridge for her. So the rehearsing and pausing and hair flipping proceeded with unceasing consistency until our skulls were ready to implode.

I felt her pain, though. I had been there, unable to make that connection between one word and another. I just never realized how excruciating that process could be for everyone else around me. Being forced to use the interior of a car as her rehearsal space was difficult on us all, for when you’re stuck in a car for hours with the same people everyday, it tends to amplify any character flaws and mute resistance, patience and sanity.

To our delight, the monological monotony was effectively broken by a sight few people had ever seen.

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Goin' Out To Cally - Part 11, (Text, Audio) Wet, Rinse, Repeat
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 10, (Text, Audio) Divine Misdirection
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 09, (Text, Audio) Getting Nowhere Fast
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 08, (Text, Audio) The Cock Crows Nine
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 07, (Text, Audio) Is Jackass A Sign?
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 06, (Text, Audio) Leftovers
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 05, (Text, Audio) The Kiss Of Friendship
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 04, (Text, Audio) Scholastic Intimacy
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 03, (Text, Audio) Space Invaders
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 02, (Text, Audio) The Fourth Wheel
Goin' Out To Cally - Part 01, (Text, Audio) The Seed Planted