The Power of Monologue at this Unique Moment in History

When I decided to launch a nationwide monologue initiative I hoped that writers would be inspired by the call to take the lemons of pandemic shutdown and make some serious lemonade. I hoped. Maybe I'd say I even suspected that the 'Me & My Masks' prompt we used in our call for submissions to the 'Hear Me Out' New American Monologue Competition would inspire writers to write and send us their pieces.

Well... more than 350 submissions (from 43 U.S. States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia and New Zealand) later, the verdict is in. Writers everywhere are ready willing and able to take hold of this unique historical moment and forge a viable path forward for making exciting theatre happen again, one talking head at a time.

And naturally, the infrastructure of this competition has been challenged by the overwhelming flood of entries. [Recently, I shared about the frustrations of having to say "no" to last-minute requests for "a few more minutes" past entry deadline.] Although I'd spent months inviting a hand-picked collection of seasoned actors, directors and writers from both stage and screen to serve on our National Circle of Judges, the circle was not going to be big enough to evaluate so many entries.

So I did what I've done since the beginning of this initiative. I reached out to some trusted leaders in the field, people like Gary Garrison, Kate Snodgrass, Faye Sholiton, Vicky Pittman, John Wooten, Paul Outlaw, Jeremy Dobrish, and Teresa Coleman Wash. And boy have they delivered!

Over the past 24 hours I've heard from actors, directors and writers from all across the country offering to assist with fulfilling the commitment I made to every writer who entered this contest. It's a simple commitment: that each monologue will be read by not one, but at least two seasoned professionals with years (sometimes decades) experience reading and imagining new scripts. And it gives me great joy to now know that we will keep that promise. And moreso. In cases where there's a wide gap between two judges' evaluations of one entry, we'll call on a third judge from our circle to break the stalemate.

When the 12 finalists are presented at the Labor Day Festival (on Zoom) and their brilliant work is given its first public presentation, we'll all know that everyone who wanted a shot, got a shot. A real shot.

I hope you'll join us Monday night September 7th for this live event at which top prizes will be awarded but most importantly, 12 bright imaginative voices will be heard, one monologue at a time. 

$5 tickets go toward the $5,000 total in cash prizes awarded directly to the top winning writers.
This project is supported by a generous grant from the August van der Becq Family Foundation.