The Speech
Comedy, the panicked best man
- Comedy
- Monologue
- 4 min
- Male role
- Adult
- Intermediate
Casting
14 lines- MOI Male role, Adult your role
Excerpt
(Someone, cue card in hand, rehearses in front of a mirror.)
MOI
Dear all. Dearest all. Dear… deaR. Right. Let me start over.
Good evening. I’m the best man. Well, “the” best man: there are four of us, but I’m the one talking. The others got scared.
I’ve known Thomas for fifteen years. No. Twelve. Fifteen means I’m forgetting three years of his life in front of his whole family.
Let’s start again. I met Thomas at a certain point in our lives. There. That’s true for everyone, it commits me to nothing.
I wanted to tell the story of the trip to Italy. But half the room was there. And the other half must absolutely never find out.
What you can do with it
Original text written for Acto. Read it, print it, work on it in class, perform it at an audition or on a self-tape: that is what it is for, and you need no permission. For a public performance or any commercial use, write to us at contact@acto.re.
In these selections
The same text, elsewhere
Close to this one
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The Nose Speech
Ah no! It’s a bit short, young man! You could have said… oh, Lord!… any number of things… Aggressive: “Sir, if I had such a nose, I’d have it amputated on the spot!”
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The Speech
Right. The big day. My brother’s wedding. I am the best man. Three hundred people in front of me, a microphone, and one mission: not to be that guy. You know the one, the one people still…
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The Chair
I invited the chair to sit down. Out of politeness. It declined. A chair that refuses to sit puts you right back in your place. We’ve lived together for three years. It doesn’t judge me. It…