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From Dancing at Lughnasa' by Brian Friel

This monologue is from a play called "Bold Girls" by Rhona Munro. It describes a woman's wedding day that is disrupted by a British roadblock. On her wedding day at age 17, she is crying on her doorstep because the roadblock will likely cause her to miss her wedding to Michael Donnelly, the only boy she has ever loved. Her family argues with the British soldiers trying to get through. Finally, the soldiers offer to escort the bride and her family to the church in their armored vehicle, a Saracen tank full of grinning British soldiers, in an attempt to save the wedding. However, the bride is too embarrassed to look at the soldiers and fears her special day is still

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
352 views3 pages

From Dancing at Lughnasa' by Brian Friel

This monologue is from a play called "Bold Girls" by Rhona Munro. It describes a woman's wedding day that is disrupted by a British roadblock. On her wedding day at age 17, she is crying on her doorstep because the roadblock will likely cause her to miss her wedding to Michael Donnelly, the only boy she has ever loved. Her family argues with the British soldiers trying to get through. Finally, the soldiers offer to escort the bride and her family to the church in their armored vehicle, a Saracen tank full of grinning British soldiers, in an attempt to save the wedding. However, the bride is too embarrassed to look at the soldiers and fears her special day is still

Uploaded by

aaa miu miu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Monologues From Plays

From ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ by Brian Friel


When I was sixteen I remembered slipping out one Sunday night. It was this time of year, the
beginning of August - and Bernie and I met at the gate of the workhouse and the pair of us off to dance and
Ardstraw, I was being pestered by fellow called Tim Carlin at the time but it was really Brian McGuinness
that I was that I was keen on. Remember Brian with the white hands on the longest eyelashes you ever
saw? But of course he was crazy about Bernie. Anyhow the two boys took us out on the bars of their bikes
and the four of us headed to Ardstraw fifteen miles each way. If daddy had known may he rest in peace ….
And at the end of the night there was a competition for the best Military Two-Step, and it was down
to three couples the local pair from Ardstraw, wee Timmy and meself, he was up to there on me and Brian
and Bernie. And they were just so beautiful together, so stylish you couldn't take your eyes off them.
People just stop dancing and gazed at them. And when the judges announced the winners- they were
probably blind drunk. Naturally the local couple came first and Timmy myself came second and Brian and
Bernie came third. Poor Bernie was stunned, she couldn't believe it. Couldn't talk, wouldn’t speak to any of
us and the rest of the night, wouldn't even cycle home with us. She was right, they should have won, and
they were just so beautiful together.
And that's the last time I saw Brian McGuinness, remember Brian with…. and the next thing I heard
he'd left for Australia. She was right to be angry Bernie, I know it wasn't fair. I mean they must have been
blind drunk those judges whoever they were.

From ‘Playboy of the Western World’ by J M Synge


Up to the day I killed my father, there wasn't a person in Ireland knew the kind I was, and I there drinking,
waking, eating, sleeping, a quiet, simple poor fellow with no man giving me heed. And I after toiling,
moiling, digging, dodging from the dawn till dusk with never a sight of joy or sport saving only when I'd be
abroad in the dark night poaching rabbits on hills, for I was a devil to poach. I'd be as happy as the sunshine
of St. Martin's Day, watching the light passing the north or the patches of fog, till I'd hear a rabbit starting to
screech and I'd go running in the furze. Then when I'd my full share I'd come walking down where you'd see
the ducks and geese stretched sleeping on the highway of the road, and before I'd pass the dunghill, I'd
hear himself snoring out, a loud lonesome snore he'd be making all times, the while he was sleeping, and he
a man 'd be raging all times, the while he was waking, like a gaudy officer you'd hear cursing and damning
and swearing oaths after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and going out
into the yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visage of the stars till
he'd put the fear of death into the banbhs and the screeching sows. He'd sons and daughters walking all the
great states and territories of the world, and not a one of them, to this day, but would say their seven
curses on him, and they rousing up to let a cough or sneeze, maybe, in the deadness of the night. I'm telling
you, he never gave peace to any, saving when he'd get two months or three, or be locked in the asylums for
battering peelers or assaulting men. It was a bitter life he led me till I did up a Tuesday and halve his skull.
Monologues From Plays
Chatroom by Enda Walsh
I’m six years old and my three brothers are going away with my mother for the weekend ... a treat for
something or other. My dad’s staying behind and my mother says that he’s to look after me. That it would be a
chance for us to bond. So they’re gone and me and my dad are sat at the kitchen table looking at each other. Like
we’re looking at each other for the first time, you know. He asks me what I want to do, and straight away I say I want
to go and see the penguins in the zoo. When I was six
I was going through some mad penguin obsession. I used to dress up as a penguin at dinner times and always
ask for fish fingers ... stuff like that. If it wasn’t penguins it was cowboys. Cowboys were cool. A penguin dressed as a
cowboy was always a step too far, funnily enough! .So we go to the zoo and I wear my cowboy outfit ... get my gun
and holster, my hat and all that. We get the bus and it’s sort of funny to see my dad on the bus and away from the
house. We start to have this chat about when I was born and what a really fat baby I was ... but how after a day or so I
stopped eating any food and everyone was dead worried.
That he was very worried. That he was so happy when I got better and they could take me home. We’re in
the zoo, and I go straight to the penguins. Standing in my cowboy gear ... looking at the penguins ... having such a
great chat to my dad on the bus ... it was a perfect childhood day. He lets go of my hand and says he’ll be back with
my choc-ice. And he goes. He’s gone. I’m happy looking at the penguins, but it’s an hour since he’s left and I go to
look for him. I’m walkin’ about the zoo, and I’m not worried yet.
And I don’t talk to anyone. I leave the zoo and I go to the bus stop we got off at earlier. I get on the bus. I tell
the driver my address. He asks where my parents are and I say they’re at home waiting for me. I stay on the bus in
the seat nearest the driver. After a while we end up at the end of our street and the driver says, ‘So long, cowboy.’
[Laughs a little] He was nice. I get the key from under the mat and open the door and go inside the house. And I’m
alone there and I suppose I still think my dad will be coming back soon. I take off my cowboy clothes and hang up my
hat and holster. It being Saturday night I have a bath and get into my pyjamas because my dad would have liked that.
I have a glass of milk and some biscuits and watch Stars in Their Eyes ‘cause that was his favourite
programme on the telly. [Slight pause] It’s getting dark outside and I start to worry. The house is feeling too big so I
get my quilt and take it into the bathroom and lock the bathroom door and it feels safer with the door locked so I stay
in there. And he’s not coming back. He’s never coming back. I stay there for two days.

‘Thirst’ by Eugene O’Neill

You remember when the crash came? We were all in the salon. You were singing—a Cockney song I think?
You were very beautiful. I remember a woman on my right saying: “How pretty she is! I wonder if she is married.”
Strange how some idiotic remark like that will stick in one’s brain when all else is vague and confused. A tragedy
happens—we are in the midst of it—and one of our clearest remembrances afterwards is a remark that might have
been overheard in any subway train. You were very beautiful. I was looking at you and wondering what kind of a
woman you were. You know I had never met you personally—only seen you in my walks around the deck. Then came
the crash—that horrible dull crash. We were all thrown forward on the floor of the salon; then screams, oaths,
fainting women, the hollow boom of a bulkhead giving way. Then I was on deck fighting in the midst of the crowd.
Somehow I got into a boat—but it was overloaded and was swamped immediately. I swam to another boat.
They beat me off with the oars. That boat too was swamped a moment later. And then the gurgling, choking cries of
the drowning! Something huge rushed by me in the water leaving a gleaming trail of phosphorescence. A woman
near me with a life belt around her gave a cry of agony and disappeared—then I realized—sharks! I became frenzied
with terror. I swam. I beat the water with my hands. The ship had gone down. I swam and swam with but one idea—
to put all that horror behind me. I saw something white on the water before me. I clutched it—climbed on it. It was
this raft. You and he were on it. I fainted. The whole thing is a horrible nightmare in my brain—but I remember clearly
that idiotic remark of the woman in the salon. What pitiful creatures we are!
Monologues From Plays
From ‘Bold Girls’ by Rhona Munro
It was a terrible wet day when I got married. A wet grey day in 1974 and I couldn't get to the church
for the roadblocks. I was standing on my step there with my mammy screaming at me to come in before I
got my good white dress dirty from the rain …. only I was wetter from crying than the clouds could make
me because Michael Donnelly was the only boy I'd ever wanted for myself and me just seventeen, he was
the only boy that I had ever wanted and it was still a miracle to me he wanted me back… but then I’ve
always had to work hardest of believe in miracles, and anyway I knew they could only fall in the laps of the
pure in heart …..now it seems certain to me that a pile of Brits and a roadblock would lose me and Michael
altogether…… for why would he wait an hour or more at the church when he’s that smile on him that made
you feel wicked and glad about it, and that look to him that caught your eye when he was walking down the
streets, just with the way he put his feet down, bold and happy together; and those hands they were so
warm and gentle you hardly worried where he was putting them. And why would a man like that wait two
hours in a cold church for a wee girl in a damp wedding dress?
And my mammy is trying to pull my daddy in ‘cause he’s shouting at the Brits, saying this was the
greatest day of his daughter's life and hadn’t they just spoiled it all together? Then this big Saracen pulls up
and they've all jumped out my mammy’s going to scream when they do not offer us an escort through the
roadblock? So that was my bridal car to the wedding, a big Saracens tank full of Brits all grinning and
offering us fags and as pleased as punch with themselves for the favour they were doing us. I hardly dared
look at them I was certain the big hulk sitting next to me was one of them that had lifted Michael just the
year before. But oh they were as nice as anything.
There were wanted men at my wedding and sure I’d grey hairs even before I was married. And then
I was married and Michael brought me here and the rain stopped it, it even looked like the sun had come
out. And I stared and stared, just standing at the top of the Park in my wee white dress and that's still half
soaked it felt like we’d won through everything, the weather and the roadblocks and the Brits and there
was never going to be bad times again….. because I was never going to be without him again. Well I was just
seventeen after all.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Anne Curtis_ Just Above Dogs
It’s been years since I was home. Since I walked out of Horan’s bar and stood by the shore, the damp sod leaking
through me boots, the rain spitting on my jacket thinking of all the people like me who’d sailed away and the price
we’d paid for that leaving. I thought of the building work in England that wouldn’t happen in Ireland. And do you
know what I thought? ‘I thought that this is mine’.
Understand it isn’t the work on site that’s the hardest, you get used to being cold, tired, aching from back
breaking work. Nor is it waiting at the counter till the landlord decides whether you’ve bought enough stout for him
to cash your pay cheque. Tisn’t picking yourself up from the ground after fellas with too much in them have thrown
punches at you because you’re from Cork and they’re from…. Kerry, Clare, Limerick anywhere that you’re not … I tell
you Frank these things are mine. These are the things that keep me alive, that tell me in the dark of the tunnels and
the cramp of the footings that I come from somewhere that I belong.
It’s the Sunday afternoons that kill you…when the work stops, when there’s no site, no pub, no fellas to talk
to. Just yourself in a room or launderette, listening to time passing, thinking back and wondering what is happening
everywhere else. Working all over but belonging nowhere. Watching as the walls move in and then out again as if
your breathing and theirs are one…just you, the walls and the tick and the tock of the clock. There’s no outside…no
fields…no skies…..no breath of wind …. Nothing that’s yours.
A lot of fellas made the journey to this country and many have done well. You might say that fellas like me
are of a different kind and maybe you’re right. But I’ll tell you one thing. One thing. There’s not a man who walked a
ferryboat gangway who’d lay mortar on bricks to build walls that would imprison a fellow Irishman whose only crime
was his poverty. Don’t forget that Frank? (Mikey exits.)

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