Friday, October 23, 2015

This Is Our Youth -- Kenneth Lonergan

HI.
IT’S SHANNON.

You know that monologue you have that’s your fallback? That piece that you could probably do backwards because it’s been through like 40 auditions with you and you keep using it even though you tell yourself “I really need to get a new one” of these? (Which is probably why you’re on this site, let’s be honest) You know that one? This one’s mine. Which is kind of cheating but it’s a great young-adult contemporary female monologue which are few and far between, so… fuck it? Let’s go.

THIS IS OUR YOUTH
by Kenneth Lonergan

The play is about Warren Straub, an Upper West Side white kid struggling to figure out how to struggle against a system that has given him everything… in 1982. At the opening of the play, Warren buzzes his way into Dennis ‘Too-Cool-For-You-And-School’ Ziegler’s apartment. He’s just stolen $20,000 from his dad, packed up his prized toy collection, and made a run for it. Dennis convinces him to loan him a large part of the money for a drug-dealing scheme involving several thousand dollars worth of cocaine (it is the 80s, after all) and a night of high living for himself, Warren, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s friend Jessica, who Warren’s been crushing on. He and Dennis argue, smoke up (marijuana), and await the girls’ arrival. Before the girls get there, Dennis leaves to go buy the cocaine needed for their scheme. While he’s gone, Jessica arrives, without Valerie and edgy about being set up with Warren. She and Warren start to talk, bond over Warren’s antique toy collection, and Warren proposes that they make a night of it -- go to a fancy hotel, get some room service, and have sex until the sun rises. Jessica agrees, and they leave. End Act One. Act Two starts up the next day with Dennis pouncing down Warren’s throat for leaving, and then Jessica arrives, senses that Dennis knows about what happened between her and Warren the night previous, and confronts Warren about it as soon as Dennis leaves. He admits to telling Dennis, and Jessica is upset. To make it up to her he offers a gift and she asks for his most prized possession: his grandfather’s baseball cap. He consents (sort of to spite her “just kidding” response), she returns it, and leaves. He spills the cocaine Dennis had bought the previous night, and Dennis comes back in, not even upset about the cocaine because a man named Stuey, who had been living their same lifestyle, had died of a drug overdose and he’s in shock.

And that’s the end of the play. It’s very colloquial, everyone is very articulate and talks very fast and has a lot of opinions about everything that happens. Warren is awkward (played by Michael Cera in the recent Broadway production, for example), Dennis is domineering, and Jessica is high-strung.

We’re looking at
JESSICA

In this scene, Jessica has returned to see Warren: it’s the morning after they had sex, and she’s feeling insecure about it. When she arrives, Dennis lets on that he knows something, and as soon as he leaves, Jessica freaks out on Warren and confronts him for telling Dennis about their night together. She’s perturbed because she told Valerie that they hadn’t had sex and doesn’t want to lose her tenuous friendship.


WARREN: No! Will you just let me finish my-
JESSICA: (on ‘let’) But honestly, Warren? I don’t really care who you told, or what you told them, because peope are gonna think whatever they’re gonna think and you know what? There’s nothing I can do about it.
WARREN: What people? What are you talking about?
JESSICA: I don’t know, but whatever it is I must be wrong because of the way you’re yelling.
WARREN: You’re not anything!
JESSICA: Well, it really -- I should just really learn to listen to my instincts, you know? Because your instincts are never wrong. And it was totally against my instinct to come over here last night, and it was definitely against my instinct to sleep with you, but I did and now it’s too late. And now my Mom is totally furious with me, I probably ruined my friendship with Valerie, and now like Dennis Ziegler thinks I’m, like, easy pickins, or something --!
WARREN: Nobody thinks anything --
JESSICA: And it’s not like I even care what he thinks, okay? Because I don’t actually know him. Or you. Or Valerie for that matter! So it doesn’t really matter! I’ve made new friends before and I can make more new friends now if I have to. So let’s just forget that the whole thing ever happened, you can chalk one up in your book or whatever --
WARREN: I don’t have a book.
JESSICA: -- and I’ll just know better next time! Hopefully. OK? (pause)


There you have it! Short, sweet, and to the point, and easy to pin an objective to -- a little different from the four-minute tirades we’ve been doing a lot of recently.

Remember to read the play and post a video of YOUR monologue if you end up choosing this piece! I highly recommend it -- it’s great to put you in that ‘teen’ spot, and has gotten me cast time and time again.

Once again, this has been
SOMEONE MONO-BLOGGING

and
I’M SHANNON.
ENJOY!

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