I need a monologue for an audition. I could do something from "The Music Man," which was my big starring role when I was 17. Perhaps a little too light-hearted? Yes. So I'll do this poem from "Baal," by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht.
I need this written down so I can memorize it.
(the character is imagining what it would be like to watch himself die)
Is your toothless mouth choking with pus?
How's the rest of you--can you still tell?
Must you die so slowly and with so much fuss?
We've just had your horse chopped into steak for us.
Hurry up! They're waiting down in hell.
Then the forest roared above their heads
And they watched him clasp a tree and stagger
and they heard his screams and what he said.
Each man felt an overwhelming dread
Clenched his fist or, trembling, drew his dagger
So like them and yet so nearly dead
"You're foul, useless, mad, you mangy bear!
You're a sore, a chancre, filthy creature!
Selfish beast, you're breathing up our air!"
So they said. And he, the cancer there:
Let me live! Your sun was never sweeter.
Ride off in the light without a care.
That's what none of them could understand.
How the horror numbed and made them shiver.
There's the earth holding his naked hand
In the breeze from sea to sea lies land:
Here I lie in solitude forever.
Yes, mere life, with its abundant weight
Pinned him so that even half-decayed
He pressed his dead body even deeper.
At dawn he fell dead in the grassy shade.
Numb with shock, they buried him, and cold with hate
Covered him with undergrowth and creeper.
Comments