Retire pieces the way you replace a headshot — on the real schedule
This is the single best idea we found about keeping a book, and it arrived with a number that undoes it.
The coach writes that you should “retire” speeches over time in the same way you’ll update headshots every 5-10 years. The instinct is exactly right. Retirement is a scheduled practice, not tidying up. But almost nobody in this industry says five to ten years about a headshot.
Four things that mean a piece is finished, and none of them is age on its own.
How many, honestly
We were going to tell you the floor was two. We checked where that number came from and it does not hold.
Five sources get quoted for this. Four of them are usable. The one that supplies the low figure of two, and the only one that supplies the high figure of ten, is a site whose every article carries the same house byline — monologue advice one day, celebrity costume trivia the next — and the article in question cites nothing at all.
You prepare four. You perform two.
The most-quoted drama school requirement in this whole subject is real, current and slightly misleading, and the misleading part is the useful part.
The requirement is four memorized pieces — two heightened text, two contemporary, each about two minutes. We checked it against the school’s live page rather than the old PDF everybody links. The count has not changed. But the same page adds something the summaries drop.
In the audition itself you present two pieces, one heightened and one contemporary. They ask for a third only if they want to see more.
So the number is not really four performances. It is four prepared to the same standard, of which two get used and two are insurance. That reframes the whole exercise. You are not building a show. You are building the ability to be asked for something else.
Two other details worth having. The school now writes “heightened text” rather than “classical”, which quietly widens what counts. And the video prescreen is not universal — it depends on where you live, and applicants inside the United States are not required to do one. The requirement itself does not change between prescreen and room.
And two answers that surprise people, both published: you may choose a character of any gender identification, and you may choose any character you imaginatively connect with rather than one your own age. Neither of those is a special dispensation. Both are printed in the school’s own guidance.
What British schools actually ask for
Everything above is American. This has been the gap in our monologue research four times running, so we went and read the pages.
Three things have changed here recently and none of them is widely known.
RADA
First roundTwo speeches, up to two minutes each. One classical in English, one contemporary written after 1960.
Later roundsA second self-tape adds a second classical and a song. The final workshop day asks for a brand new speech you have not shown them.
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
First roundFour items, which is more than anywhere else. One classical written before 1700, one contemporary after 1960 and not from film or television, one devised solo piece of thirty to ninety seconds, and a song or poem.
Worth knowingCentral is the British school that says plainly not to take your speeches from audition speech books.
LAMDA
First roundTwo speeches. One from LAMDA’s own prescribed list, one contemporary piece of your choosing.
NoteThe prescribed list means half of your first round is chosen for you, which no American school does.
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
First roundTwo speeches of one to three minutes, plus a personal statement to camera. One contemporary, ideally this century, and one verse piece written between 1550 and 1630.
Mountview
First roundTwo speeches of up to two minutes. One prose written after 2000, one verse written before 1800.
DifferentIn person by default. Self-tape is for international applicants or exceptional circumstances.
ArtsEd
First roundTwo speeches in a single self-tape video. One modern written after 1990, one classical or heightened.
The signature piece and the wild card are not the same thing
These get muddled constantly, and keeping them separate is the most useful distinction in this chapter.
The signature piece is what you are best at. It is the one where you stop performing competence and simply do the thing you can do. That belongs in every book and it is what gets you cast.
The wild card is the opposite. It is the speech you love and would never be cast in — written for another gender or age, needing an accent you do not book, or on a subject too odd to come up. One casting publication makes the case for it plainly: it shakes off the rust when you want to work on something that brings you joy, “and when the right audition comes along to actually use it, the payoff can be huge.”
Two additions to the standard kit. If you sing, keep at least two songs alongside the speeches — one that shows your range and type, and one character song, something like a patter song or simply short and funny. The audition book and the song book are the same discipline. And the genre split is softer than people think. Asked directly whether you need one comedic and one dramatic piece, one school answers “not necessarily”, as long as the characters let you bring different aspects of yourself. That is a better organising idea than comedy and drama. The ask is range in you, not variety in the catalogue.
The hard part was never the finding
One sentence from the same coach whose number we corrected, and this one we are keeping exactly as written.
“Worry about finding the ideal monologue less and rehearse more.”
That is the whole monologue section compressed into nine words. The search feels like work because it is measurable and comfortable and produces the sensation of progress. It produces nothing else. The book is built in rehearsal hours and not in search hours, and everyone who has done this will tell you the same thing from a different direction. It is not about choosing an unusual speech. It is about doing something unusual with an ordinary one.
Two institutions warn against exactly what we sell
This chapter ends by pointing you at our own monologue library. Two of the schools above tell applicants not to do that. We would rather put the two things next to each other than hope you do not notice.
The American school’s guidance says to beware of using monologue books to select your pieces, because you must read the whole play to understand who the character is speaking to and why. Central says the same thing in plainer words: do not take your speeches from audition speech books.
For the classical half of our library, the objection does not apply. The whole play is out of copyright, free and one click away, and we link it. Go and read it. That is the entire reason the classical half is free rather than clever.
For the original pieces, the objection does apply, and there is no play to read. That is a real limitation and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
So do this instead. Write the circumstances yourself before you rehearse a word. Who is this, who are they speaking to, why now, and what happened thirty seconds before the first line. You will end up knowing more about an original piece than most actors know about a famous one, because you had to build it rather than look it up.
The schools’ real complaint is not the book. It is actors arriving with two minutes of text and no idea what surrounds it. An anthology makes that easy. So does a free library. The fix is the same either way and it takes an evening.
Keeping them alive
A book does not go stale all at once. It goes stale one unnoticed piece at a time, and there is a cheap way to catch it.
Maintenance is not re-memorizing. Lines learned as answers to something survive; lines learned by rote collapse under pressure, which is why a piece you can recite can still fall apart in a room. So run the intention, not the words. Once every few weeks, take one piece and do it with a single variable changed — faster, to one person instead of a room, or as somebody who has already lost the argument. Repetition without a variable is decay wearing the clothes of practice.
On what the book physically is: for almost everybody it is now a folder on a phone, not a binder. What matters is that each piece exists in one canonical version with your cuts marked, the same principle as having one true copy of your résumé. The format is temporary. The marked-up text is the thing.
Grading the sources
The single recommendation this chapter was built to deliver arrived with a broken number attached, and one much-loved quote did not survive at all.
One note on our own method. The British requirements above were read off each school’s own current page, and admissions pages change every year without announcement. Treat this table as a map of the shape, not as the rules. Check the school in the year you apply.
Where we differ from the standard account
How often should you retire a piece?
Commonly saidSwap out anything that no longer fits.
What we foundLook once a year and act on a material change. The five-to-ten-year figure attached to this advice is five times too long.
What is the minimum?
Commonly saidTwo will do to start.
What we foundThree is where the credible sources start. Two is our own advice and we will say so.
Do you need comedy and drama?
Commonly saidOne of each, always.
What we foundA school asked directly says not necessarily. The ask is different aspects of you.
Is one classical enough?
Commonly saidOne Shakespeare will cover it.
What we foundTwo heightened pieces at the top American school, and British date windows that disagree with each other.
Is the book worth it in the self-tape era?
Commonly saidIt feels dated.
What we foundEssential for theatre, useful for class and showcases, and rarely asked for by screen casting. Saying so makes the rest credible.
Is finding the right speech the hard part?
Commonly saidIt is what everybody searches for.
What we foundWorry about finding the ideal monologue less and rehearse more. Search hours feel like work and are not.
Should you keep a piece you cannot be cast in?
Commonly saidIt is not useful.
What we foundThe wild card is the only piece with no strategic justification, which is the point of having one.
Are monologue libraries a good source?
Commonly saidThey are convenient.
What we foundTwo schools warn against them, including ours. Read the whole play, or write the circumstances yourself.
Do one thing tonight. Open a calendar, go forward twelve months, and put in a single entry that says look at the book. Then film whatever pieces you currently have, once each, and keep the files dated. Next year you will not have to decide what has gone stale. You will be able to watch it.