Over the next few weeks 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:
Kate Cortesi, author of I Love Parties (winner of the Golden Ear for long form monologues and the Most Memorable Character Award)
Here's what Kate had to say about the 2021 Festival Theme: Borders.
The Hear Me Out invitation to think dramatically and expansively about "borders" was one of my favorite things: a call to write. I used the prompt the way I use most rules: as something to subvert.
What comes to mind easily when we hear the word 'border'? You bet that's the very thing I'm going to avoid. There are borders we cross, border-crossing as an identity or a formative experience. I found my mind wandering to those borders that call to us, that we don't cross.
I submitted a piece about an elderly woman who is assumed to be harmless, and even vulnerable, who then turns out to be the potentially dangerous transgressor. Her decision not to transgress - to preserve a border - ends up being the definitive action of my short monologue play. The ultimate action is one of restraint, that forgoes gratification in the name of love.
To the writers who submit to the upcoming Hear Me Out competition, may the prompt inspire and unleash you. And if it doesn't, throw it away and see what comes of it.
Watch Cortesi's winning monologue as performed by Marnie Andrews at the 2021 Hear Me Out Labor Day Festival & Awards Ceremony.
The Call for Entries for the 2022 Hear Me Out New American Monologue Competition will be made public on Mother's Day, Sunday May 8, 2022. To be sure you don't miss this and other opportunities, join the Roland Tec Inner Circle here.
