Drama Scholarship

[Sam902]

Hi everyone,

I’m new here and needed some help please 🤗

Has anyone been through the application for a Drama Scholarship at 11+ stage?

We are looking at applying for the Emanuel scholarship and they ask for a monologue from a ‘published play’.

We’ve through fair few published plays and most of them don’t have a long enough monologue.

I was wondering if anyone who has been through the process can let me know what piece they chose?

It cannot be a monologue that is written specifically for LAMDA exams.

Thank you so much

I don't know specifically but how long does it have to be? There are plenty of long speeches in Shakespeare! They are not all horrifically difficult in text terms either.

Or something like a one-woman play - Shirley Valentine is just one long monologue in effect (I've not read it lately so I guess the language may be a bit colourful! but there must be others).

Or could you ask the school for suggestions? Or say "we are thinking of xyz - is it OK?"

What about Veruca Salt's monologue from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory play when she's interviewed after finding the golden ticket? Good range of emotions while very funny as well. It is hard to find kid-friendly monologues (Shakespeare might be a bit much at that age!)

Would she like something serious or funny, modern or traditional.

Dd did a piece from St Joan, others include Violet Beauregard, Swallow from Whistle down the Wind, Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion, the little match girl, Rosie from My Mother Says or The Little Princess

There's

Mabel's "Tommy has proposed to me again" speech from An Ideal Husband

Joan has two longish monologues in The Lark by jean anouilh - "The first time I heard the voices" is probably more suited to 11+

Lydia's letter to Kitty in Pride & Preudice

Lots of good passages in Anne Frank's diary or Midsummer Night's dream

@Londonmummy66 I was thinking of Midsummer Night's Dream - I don't think Puck's introduction to himself I am that merry wanderer of the night is beyond an eloquent 11yo.

Some other great suggestions here too tho some of these are novels rather than plays!

How about Viola's monologue from Twelfth Night?

@clary - I hadn't thought of puck but "over hill over dale" would also be good as would Helena s "Oh Spite Oh Hell"which is very reminiscent of the playground....

@Sam902 this is a good resource for monologues from shakespeare https://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/womens

Ariel good as well - the I boarded the ship one

There are some great suggestions on here! While I’m sure some 10/11 year olds can do Shakespeare very well, the difficulty of the language can make it hard for them to know what they’re saying and how to act accordingly (at least from our experience). Given that this is an audition and that you can choose the piece, I’d personally be inclined to do something more modern and perhaps less stressful for her to memorise.

I remember digging around, when I used to have to hunt out monologues, and there are published play adaptions of most of the books like Charlie ATCF, Pride and Predj, and Little Princess so you can game the rules a bit!

Named changed for this as it's very outing.

Differs a little for us as DD has a performing arts scholarship so she had to do a shorter monologue along with a song from a musical and a dance.

But there are tons of monologues online if you google. I remember us scrolling websites with lots of scripts/suggestions. Also a lot of YouTube.

It's a bit rubbish it's limiting you to a play as there wouldn't be anything wrong with using a book or film.

I always think age appropriate is best though.

Both my children have drama scholarships.

You can form your own monologue by cutting lines spoken by others, if it still makes sense IYSWIM. So if there are a few chunky bits with just one or two lines interjecting then you can just whip them out.

It is extremely important that your child knows the whole play though and thinks a lot about the character they are portraying.

I was just going to suggest the same thing, a longish passage with short retorts by other characters can work very nicely as a monologue. I did speech and drama lessons at school for a while, I recall learning a bit of Lady Bracknell from The Importance of Being Earnest once when I was about 13.

Hi Everyone,

Thank you so much for all your suggestions! I’ve been looking up the ones that I hadn’t come across before.

DD likes modern plays and adapted ones that she’s read at school (like ‘Skelling’) which helps as she needs to talk about the character in the context of the play (but many lack a long monologue).

It needs to be 2 minutes so I really appreciate the suggestion of taking out some short retorts to make a longer piece 🙏🏻

She really enjoyed ‘Boy at the back of the class’ adapted play which had a few longer monologues, but there’s no script available for it…

Thank you again!

Jumping on here as i have a DD interested in drama as well - is the "drama portfolio" digital or just cut out put together in a notebook? I would really appreciate advice on how to exactly create a drama portfolio. Thanks so much in advance