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Monologues For Queer Actors
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queer monologues
In this article, we will be gearing all our suggestions from plays towards
monologues for queer actors. Until the last century, LQBTQ+ artists and stories
were by-and-large hidden, silenced and outlawed within the wider theatre
community. Considering many great writers from Tennessee Williams to Lorraine
Hansberry to Oscar Wilde to even Shakespeare would today characterize
themselves as a part of the queer community, the influence LGTBQ+ voices have
had on the history of storytelling is clear and vital. The early 20th century in
America saw the beginning of inclusion with works like The Drag by Mae West,
though opposed by authorities, playing to great success among NY audiences.
Since that time, many plays centering around queer narratives have cemented
themselves as pillars of the American Theatre.
We’ve selected some monologues for queer actors from some of these plays, in the
hopes that you can use them in an audition room. They are strong, beautiful and
complicated pieces and we recommend preparing them in detail before using
them. So start today, and when you nail one of these pieces, you’ll be sure that the
audition room won’t forget you.
MONOLOGUES FOR QUEER ACTORS
ANGELS IN AMERICA
In this monologue, Joe begs his wife, Harper, to stay with him even though she
knows he is attracted to men. They are both Mormons. Age Range: 25-35
JOE: Stay. We can fix it. I pray for that. I pray for God to crush me, break me up into
little pieces and start all over again…I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid.
There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the
angel. I don’t really remember the story, or why the wrestling—just the picture.
Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is . . . a beautiful man, with golden hair
and wings, of course. I still dream about it. Many nights. I’m . . . It’s me. In that
struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so
how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It’s not just. Losing
means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God’s. But you
can’t not lose.
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ANGELS IN AMERICA
In this monologue, Louis refuses to believe that his lover, Joe, works for nefarious
Lawyer, Roy Cohn. His friend, Belize, has shared this info. He also confides his
regret over leaving his sick partner, Prior. Age Range: 25-35
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Ford of Boerne
LOUIS: You have always hated me. Because you are in love with Prior and you were
when I met him and he fell in love with me, and so now you cook up this . . . I mean
how do you know this? That Joe and Roy Cohn are— I don’t believe you. Not . . .
Roy Cohn. Joe wouldn’t—Not Roy Cohn. He’s, he’s like the polestar of human evil,
he’s like the worst human being who ever lived, the, the damage he’s done, the
years and years of, of . . . criminality, that whole era, that— Give me fucking credit
for something, please, some little moral shred of, of, of something, OK sure I
fucked up, I fucked up everything, I didn’t want to, to face what I needed to face,
what life was insisting I face but I don’t know, I’ve always, I’ve always felt you had
to, to take action, not sit, not to be, to be trapped, um, stuck, paralyzed by— Even
if it’s hard, or really terrifying, or even if it does damage, you have to keep moving,
um, forward, instead of— I can’t just, you know, sit around feeling shit, or feeling
like shit, I . . . cry way too easily, I fall apart, I’m no good unless I, I strike out at—
Which is easy because I’m so fucking furious at my— So I fucked up spectacularly,
totally, I’ve ruined my life, and his life, I’ve hurt him so badly but but still, even I,
even I am not so utterly lost inside myself that I— I wouldn’t, um, ever, like, sleep
with someone who . . . someone who’s Roy Cohn’s . . . Oh no.
Download This Monologue
ANGELS IN AMERICA
In this monologue, Prior defends the future of humanity and his own life against
the proposition of the angels that the world is coming to an inevitably depressing
end. Age Range: 25-35
PRIOR
We can’t just stop. We’re not rocks. Progress, migration, motion is . . . modernity.
It’s animate, it’s what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness,
it’s still desire for. (On “for” he makes a motion with his hand: starting one place,
moving forward) Even if we go faster than we should. We can’t wait. And wait for
what? God— God—He isn’t coming back. And even if He did . . .If He ever did come
back, if He ever dared to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden
again. If after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible
century He returned to see . . . how much su"ering His abandonment had created,
if all He has to o"er is death . . .You should sue the bastard. That’s my only
contribution to all this Theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He. He
oughta pay…I want more life. I can’t help myself. I do. I’ve lived through such
terrible times, and there are people who live through much much worse, but . .
.You see them living anyway. When they’re more spirit than body, more sores than
skin, when they’re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the
eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don’t know if
that’s just the animal. I don’t know if it’s not braver to die. But I recognize the
habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere,
that’s it, that’s the best I can do. It’s so much not enough, so inadequate but . . .
Bless me anyway. I want more life.
Download This Monologue
ANGELS IN AMERICA
In this monologue, Belize responds to Louis’ fanatic breakdown and picks apart
his thin ideology. Age Range: 25-35
BELIZE
You know what your problem is, Louis? Your problem is that you are so full of
piping hot crap that the mention of your name draws flies. You don’t even know
Thing One about this guy, do you? Uh-huh. Well ain’t that pathetic. Just so the
record’s straight: I love Prior but I was never in love with him. I have a man,
uptown, and I have since long before I first laid my eyes on the sorry-ass sight of
you—No ’cause you never bothered to ask. Up in the air, just like that angel, too far
o" the earth to pick out the details. Louis and his Big Ideas. Big Ideas are all you
love. “America” is what Louis loves. Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country.
It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white
cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word
“free” to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth
sounds less like freedom to me. You come with me to room 1013 over at the
hospital, I’ll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, Louis,
that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s got to love
something.
Download This Monologue Here
THE NORMAL HEART
In this monologue, Tommy memorializes his friend Nick after he dies of AIDS. Age
Range: 30s-40s
TOMMY: I have this tradition. It’s something I do now when a friend dies. I save
his Rolodex card. What am I supposed to do, throw it away in the trash can? I won’t
do that. No, I won’t. It’s too final. Last year I had five cards. Now I have fifty. A
collection of cardboard tombstones bound together with a rubber band. I hate
these fucking funerals, I really do.
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In store In store In store In store
Ford of Boerne
And you know what else I hate? I hate the memorials. That’s our social life now,
going to these things. Nick was a choreographer; not many of you knew that. He
was just starting out, he didn’t tell a lot of people. He was waiting to invite you to
his big debut at Carnegie Hall or some shit so we could all be proud of him. But he
was so good. He had such promise.
We’re losing an entire generation. Young men, at the beginning, just gone.
Choreographers, playwrights, dancers, actors. All those plays that won’t get
written now. All those dances, never to be danced. In closing, I’m just gonna say
I’m mad. I’m fucking mad. I keep screaming inside, “why are they letting us die?
Why is no one helping us?” And here’s the truth, here’s the answer: They just
don’t like us.
Download This Monologue Here
THE INHERITANCE
In this monologue, Eric bemoans the transactional and thinning support of the
modern gay community. Age Range: Late 20s – Early 30s
ERIC: Our culture is being co-opted. I mean, sure it’s great Sean Penn won an
Oscar for playing Harvey Milk but American students are still taught nothing about
queer history. It feels like we’re getting stripped for parts and the inside is
hollowing out. It feels like the community that I came up in is slowly fading away.
When was the last time any of us actually hung out at a gay bar? (Pause) My point
exactly! Gay bars used to be safe spaces for people like us to be ourselves and to
find others like us. Now everyone just goes on to Grindr. But what about thr
twenty-year-old kid who’s not looking for sex, but rather for community, for a
connection with something that helps him understand himself? Or the sixty-year-
old man who’s looking for the same? What happens to that shared culture? If
being gay only describes who we love and who we fuck but not also how we
encounter the world, then gay culture and gay community would start to
disappear. And we still need that community. Because this country is still filled
with people who hate us with vengeful, murderous fanaticism.
Download This Monologue Here
THE INHERITANCE
In this monologue, Toby takes down his boyfriend, Eric, for living a life of
privilege.Age Range: Late 20s – Early 30s
TOBY
That is bullshit, Eric. What you ‘gave’ me? You didn’t give me anything. I built my
life from the ground up. I didn’t get to do it from the comfortable middle-class
perch that you did. Oh fuck o"! I am so sick of your holier-than-thou, thoughtful,
sweet and kind fucking bullshit. You act like you’re above the fray, can’t be
touched, fucking Yale, fucking Fieldston, fucking save the world by strongly
worded Facebook post, when secretly you’re just as manipulative and as self-
involved and as frightened as the rest of us. But you slap on this veneer of middle-
class perfection and you think that protects you from having to be a real person.
But real people are ugly, Eric. Real people are compromised. Real people
disappoint each other. Because the world is ugly and compromised and
disappointing. And I’m sorry I can’t be perfect like you. I was never given that
option. I have no choice but to be a real person.
Download This Monologue Here
THE INHERITANCE
In this monologue, Eric picks apart his boyfriend, Toby, for hiding his personal
truth behind art. Age Range: Late 20s – Early 30s
ERIC
You’ve become so good at spinning people you think you can spin me, too. But I
know that your book was a fraud from start to finish and your play was even worse.
Not without talent, of course. God forbid anyone should accuse you of that. But
worse: without truth. Toby, you are so afraid of actually being known – of really
looking at yourself – that you have spent the last decade of your life constructing
this elaborate narrative that has nothing to do with the truth. What happened to
you as a child was unconscionable and it hurts me every single day to know that it
did. But that was not the great tragedy of your life, Toby. No, the great tragedy of
your life was denying that it was your life, and insisting on another at the expense
of the truth. I know who you are, Toby. And I know who you aren’t. You aren’t
Elan. And you aren’t Adam. It’s why you gave him the job and it’s why you want to
fuck him so badly. Because he is everything you will never be. I couldn’t even look
at you after I saw your play. Because it was a betrayal of the frightened little boy
you once were. And soon all of New York is going to see it and I will be the only one
who’ll remember who you really are. And that’s why you want to get as far away
from me as possible: because I would remind you every day of what a fraud you are
and what wasted potential your life has become. And that’s what you’re too much
of a coward to say.
Download This Monologue Here
THE INHERITANCE
In this monologue, Toby leaves a scathing message for his cheating lover and lead
actor in his play, Adam. Age Range: Late 20s – Early 30s
In store In store In store
Ford of Boerne
TOBY: You would be nothing without me, do you understand? You would be
nothing without this part. I gave you this chance, I’m the one who made it happen.
Me. It wasn’t Tom and his magical fifty-year-old Viagra dick, which by now I’m
sure has given you herpes. I will never speak to you again, I don’t ever even want to
look at you again. And when you win the Tony for this role, which you will, it will
be because of me and the part that I’ve written. So if you don’t thank me in your
acceptance speech – and I mean, like really lick my ass – I will make sure that
everyone knows how you betrayed me and what a back-stabbing, malicious, cock-
teasing little Eve Harrington you are. And just for the record: Timothée Chalamet,
Ben Platt and Lucas Hedges all passed on this part before we o"ered it to you. So
you should probably thank them in your Tony speech, too. So in conclusion: fuck
you, Adam. I wish I’d never met you.
Download This Monologue Here
COCK
In this monologue, John speaks to his female and male lovers, uncertain of who is
supposed to be when he is attracted to both. Age Range: 30 -35
JOHN: I’m sorry I’m not speaking, I’m sorry, I know it’s weird but I’m trying to
work out how to handle this who to be because I’m two di"erent people with the
two of you when you’re separate and now I’m in the middle and no one.
I have absolutely no idea who I am. Everyone else seems to have a personality, a
character but I’ve never, I’ve never – I used to do voices, I remember this, and I
don’t think anyone can really understand it when I say it but I remember one
moment when I couldn’t think what was my own voice, I’d been doing high voices
and northern voices and men’s voices and impressions of the teachers and my dad,
and people on the telly and everyone was laughing and I tried to go back to my own
voice but I couldn’t remember what it is.
And I always stand in front of the mirror for ages, every day I never know what to
wear, when I go shopping for clothes I bring him and he says it’s up to you, what
do you like, and I think I don’t know I don’t have a fucking clue just choose
something that isn’t too strange, that means I don’t look like a fucking idiot.
Download This Monologue Here
In store In store In store In store
In store In store In store In store
Ford of Boerne
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