Short Monologues for Actors

I search my monologue memories, look for something wonderful. Here it is. Ghost Fingers. I will find a thirty second or maybe a one minute monologue from this ten minute play. I think back to my precious, invaluable stepping stones to now. Looking back is not easy, but then nothing worthwhile is easy, is it? Do it anyway. I think that if you don’t look back and treasure the things you find, you discard the best learning tools of your life. Treasure your stepping stones and don’t ever let go. Of course, you don’t know that they are valuable at the time; it is just another day. But when, years later, you need guidance, there they are. Stepping stones to now that make you smile. You realize that you are who you are because you remember that day or that friend and you’ve applied it to your life.

It was at a Scriptwriters/Houston meeting and our speaker was my favorite college Drama Department head. He had been to Chicago, discovering the always exciting plays there, savoring them. His focus for tonight’s presentation was the ten minute play. He said that a good ten minute play must have something wonderful in it. The ten minute play is at the top of my passion-list for plays. I think that like the short story, it is the most difficult to write, the most challenging. I have written many, so remembering this stockpile of fuel, when I need a new monologue from my plays to add to my website, I get my ten minute plays out and search for that special something in each. Today I will write a thirty second, or maybe a one minute monologue from my play, Ghost Fingers. It is a story about a mother who travels a long distance by train to visit her oldest son who is in prison for life. He has killed his brother. I know that I will find that something wonderful in it because I remember its passion. I hope it grieves and wounds the reader as it did me as I wrote it. It digs into and dwells in real life and that is what I think we should write about. The real stuff.

As soon as I finish writing it, I will call or write my drama teacher friend and thank him for his unknowing influence in my life. Stepping stones, like friends we trust, are good. Treasure them.