Below, you will find the audition monologues for our upcoming production of The Arabian Nights. The initial auditions will be held after school next Monday, 8/14 (details regarding how to sign up for an audition slot will be provided this week in class) and callbacks will occur in all drama classes in the following days. If you intend to audition for the production, please memorize and prepare the monologue of your choice. All drama classes will meet together this Monday, 8/7, and at that time I will provide you with information about the play, as well as answer any questions about the monologues with regard to context, word pronunciations, etc.
Women
SCHEHEREZADE: My father, why do you look so sad? Know, Father, that as the poet says, “You who are sad, oh be comforted; for nothing endures, and just as every joy vanishes away, so also vanishes every sorrow.” I am filled to the mouth with stories, and I have a plan by which I will save the daughters of the Mussulmen. And Dunyazade will help. Dunyazade, don't cry. We will be together. Father, this is written in my destiny. Now bring me my wedding clothes, and sing me on my way.
PERFECT LOVE: I see, young man, you are struck dumb by my ugliness. My own father, when I was born, took one look and ordered every mirror hidden from me, for pity. So I’ve been spared; I’ve never seen myself. But I know from many repetitions that my face is a hideous thing, a parchment pitted with smallpox, a blind right eye and a bleared left, a stinking mouth with broken teeth, and a pair of cropped ears. They say my skin is scabby, my hair is broken and frayed, and that the invisible horrors of my interior are not to be named.
SYMPATHY THE LEARNED: My lord, I am a freeborn woman of noble birth. I have not always lived like this. This boy you see holding my parasol is my brother. When my father died he left us with an abundant fortune, but my brother squandered our inheritance. He has no brains at all, and no use but to shade me from the sun. Yet I love him; because my hidden heart is foolish, and I will not leave him. Leave my brother his only task; for if you deprive him of it, he may die of shame. I beg you to deny us your great offer, and let us go our way.
Men
SHEIKH AL-ISLAM: She is bearded and flab bellied, she is short of an arm and has a club foot, her left eye is covered with a film, her nose is a mass of oily pimples, her face is one sieve of smallpox, her mouth a cesspit, her teeth a wreck, her interior organs are one mutilation, she is bald and incredibly scabby, she is a horror, an abomination of desolation! If you are determined to persist in this madness, I will give my slow consent. But you must sign a contract before witnesses that you will accept your bride with all her faults, and if you dare divorce her, you will pay a ransom of twenty thousand gold dinars.
MADMAN: Oh, horror of horrors! May you never see such a sight! I saw the most repulsive, the most deformed, the most disgusting, the most repugnant, the most grotesque creature of a nightmare. She was worse than the description which that lovely and wicked girl had given of her. She was a monster of malformation, a rag so full of horror that I should retch if I describe her even now. I had willingly, eagerly, madly married a nauseating compendium of all disgusts which have ever entered into the imagination of the damned!
SHEIKH: Surely my new bride weeps as young girls do, because she has left her mother. Happily, this does not last long. O light of my soul, why do you destroy the beauty of your eyes? Dear girl, if you are crying for your mother, say so, and I will fetch her to you instantly. If you are crying for your father, or one of your sisters, or your nurse, or some pet animal, such as a rooster, a cat, or a gazelle, tell me, and you shall no longer be separated from your desire. Fairest girl on earth, I know what it is; you cry because I am repugnant to you.