Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.
Today, we hear from:
Patrick Mulcahey, author of "A Good Turn" (winner of the 2020 Golden Ear)
After I quit my job in November of 2019, I wanted to begin writing for stage performance again, after a hiatus of decades. My connections to theaters and theater professionals had lapsed, so I had to start over, find a new way in. A friend had turned me on to the NYCPlaywrights mailing list, where I saw contests posted. Those looked like a possible portal for a writer without contacts or referrals or an agent, so I proceeded to submit nine plays, each written to the sponsoring theaters' rules and specifications.
I had not one response from any of them. The pandemic may account for productions being canceled, but email hasn’t been canceled, courtesy hasn’t been canceled. So no more of that, I decided. I won a small award for a prose non-fiction piece, which had me wondering if I should change course. Maybe I was too late to write for the stage again. Maybe the world and the theater were too shut down for any door to open to me.
Then August 13th I saw the posting for the “Hear Me Out” New American Monologue Competition. The deadline for submissions was the day after tomorrow and I had nothing suitable tucked away. Still, the prize money was serious; an online production was promised, even scheduled; the theme and the word-count limit allowed for invention and individuality. But what I found most motivating was that the contest description understood what a monologue is: “The person speaking is speaking for a reason beyond the simple telling of a story.” Most monologues I'd ever read or seen performed were just lively storytelling, works of narrative, not of drama. Here was a someone, a group of someones, who knew the difference. Maybe this wouldn’t be like those other contests that swallowed my work like so many dead letters.
2021 Hear Me Out Monologue Competition Submission Deadline: July 22
