What You Should Know About Comedy Monologues

Comedy monologues are a very popular type of monologue. As the name suggests, this is a more light and humorous type that is often performed by comic performers.

If you are auditioning for a serious role, this is probably not the best to choose; however, for a lighter, funny role, it may be just the thing.

A Quick Dive Into History

For the past hundred years, comedy monologues have been becoming increasingly popular. Music halls and a variety of other shows in Britain and the United States led to their popularity. Over time these monologues have become a regular feature of television comedy as well as stand up comedy.

Usually various television programs and stand up comedy programs have an opening comedy monologue that is intended to entertain and amuse. Often they become a regular feature of shows like the Jay Leno Show or the Tonight Show. Most of the shows that feature these monologues are one person shows, or solo shows that bring together drama and comedy.

Popular Comic Monologists

Believe it or not, there are quite a few people who are famous for their comic monologues. One of the older comic monologists that you are probably familiar with is Bob Hope. There are many others that you may have heard of as well, including Dave Chapelle, Billy Connolly, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld, and Johnny Carson.

Where to Find Them

If you want to audition with a comic monologue, first you will need to find one. There are many places to find these monologues, but one of the best places to find one is on the internet.

There are many sites available to actors that offer a variety of comic monologues for you to choose from. If you can’t find one that you feel is suited to you, then you may want to consider actually writing your own.

Writing Your Own

Writing your own comedy monologue can be a great idea if you can’t find other great material, but it is going to take a bit of work on your part.

First of all, you need to come up with your character, and make the character someone who is amusing and funny. You’ll also need a situation to put that character in that will lead to hilarity throughout the piece.

Make sure that you learn to actually become the character and then work on varying the moods that the character experiences, since one mood will become dull and cease to be funny. This type of a monologue must have a lot of energy in it, and remember, you need to use more than just your words and voice to be funny. Physical humor is important as well if you really want to sell the part.

Acting Exercises

If you are taking an acting class, you may find that your instructors often use acting exercises to help you learn. There are a variety of great exercises out there that can be used to teach you about various types of acting.

Whether you are wondering what types of exercises are out there or you are interested in finding some exercises that you can enjoy on your own or with some actor friends, here are several fun and top quality exercises to try.

Using Props Exercise

The using props exercise is one of the best acting exercises for you if you need to work better with props. What you do is have one person take a certain prop, whatever you choose, and then come up with 15-20 different positions or poses that can be done using that prop. It teaches innovation and helps you learn more about how you can effectively work with the props that you are using when acting.

Miming Emotions Exercise

Another of the many great acting exercises is the miming emotions exercise. Each person participating should be given a piece of paper that gives a certain emotion, such as anger, sadness, happiness, love, or hatred. Then they have to take their emotion that they have been given and mime it to the other participants. They then have to try and figure out what emotion the person is trying to mime. Each person should be given a chance to mime an emotion.

Finding Scene Locations Exercise Finding scene locations is a wonderful exercise to try out as well for actors. Essentially each person in the class reads the same script through. Then suggestions should be given for locations where the various scenes throughout the script should take place. If you are able to, visiting the locations to see if they will really work is a great idea.

Casting Exercise

Last of all, when it comes to acting exercises, a casting exercise can be helpful and educational as well. Essentially the people participating are divided into two groups. There is a group that is the casting crew and the group that are the applicants. Give both groups a certain role that they are trying to fill. They should think of things to have the candidates do to figure out what their abilities are. On the other hand, the applicants will also know what type of role they are going to need to fill. They should work to act in such a way that they land the role. This is a wonderful way to get acting students used to going through auditions and it gives them an inside look at what casting directors are looking for as well.