Straight Plays for Dummies

[Starburst]

Posted: 1/16/06 at 2:27am

As semester draws near, the ever alluding senior year and college auditions draw one step closer for me. A junior, I've already begun looking into colleges, specifically liberal arts colleges with strong drama programs. Wherever I end up, I know I'm going to need auditions monologues, and where are the best places to find monologues? Why, plays, of course!

But the world of straight plays is a daunting place. While I've familarized myself with musicals, I'm overwhelmed and have no idea where to start when it comes to straight plays. Obviously, this makes audition time difficult, as I usually spend hours snooping around the internet to find a monologue, and if I'm lucky, finding the text online.

So my question is what are some good pieces to start out with? Things everyone and their mother should have read and/or seen at some point in their educated lives. Characters with potential audition material would be fabulous, but obviously monologues in the more popular plays will have been overdone to death.

If this has been discussed before, someone kindly link me to the thread; I wasn't quite sure what keywords to search for, and those I tried came up with pages and pages of posts that had nothing to do with my question. Same with if this should be in the student board; it seemed broad enough to be in the main board.

Thanks so much!