The Monologues Casting Is Sick Of
This is the chapter the “10 best monologues” listicles will never write, because most of them are the reason the pieces are overdone in the first place. Here is what casting has genuinely heard too many times — and the myths worth busting along the way.
An overdone monologue isn’t a bad monologue. It is a good one that a panel has heard so often they can no longer meet your choices fresh — they measure you against every version they already know. That is a fight you almost never win. This chapter names the worst offenders honestly and tells you what to do about it.
The number one to avoid
There is a clear winner. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” is the single most overdone audition piece there is. It is the first speech every actor learns and the last one any casting director wants to sit through again. The same goes for a short list of famous Shakespeare that panels can recite from memory: “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I,” “Alas, poor Yorick” and “Speak the speech” from Hamlet; “Is this a dagger which I see before me” and “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” from Macbeth; and Marc Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen.”
On the women’s side, the most-cited overdone classical piece is Portia’s “The quality of mercy is not strained” from The Merchant of Venice. LA casting director Kate McClanaghan’s reaction to it has become a small legend, and it says everything about how a great speech turns into a liability:
Other flagged women’s classical pieces: Phebe’s “Think not I love him” (As You Like It), Helena’s “How happy some o’er other some can be” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Viola’s ring speech, “I left no ring with her” (Twelfth Night). None of these are wrong to love. They are simply crowded.
Myth-buster: no, Juilliard does not publish a banned list
You will see it everywhere: “Juilliard’s banned monologue list.” It does not exist. Juilliard explicitly declines to publish a list of suggested or forbidden monologues. Anyone selling you one is fabricating. The elite conservatories generally do not issue do-not lists — the “overdone” idea comes from casting directors, audition panels and the musical-theatre college-audition world, not from official drama-school policy.
Here is what Juilliard actually says — and it is better advice than any banned list:
In other words: don’t hunt for the obscure just to seem clever. Hunt for the piece you can live inside. The real formal do-not lists that exist are coach-compiled ones from the musical-theatre college-audition scene — authoritative within that culture, but not school policy. Treat them as a useful heads-up, not law.
The overdone-and-copyrighted overlap
Here is a pattern almost nobody points out. Most of the overdone contemporary monologues are also copyrighted — which means we couldn’t legally publish them anyway. LA teacher Paul Barry says he could do without another Blake “always be closing” speech from Glengarry Glen Ross. That piece is by David Mamet: overdone and off-limits. The same double flag hits Denzel Washington’s “King Kong ain’t got shit on me” from Training Day, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the Charles Manson speech from Sondheim’s Assassins, Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild, and “anything by Neil Simon.”
Almost every overdone contemporary warhorse is copyrighted, so our “avoid these” list doubles as the reason our library doesn’t carry them. We publish only public-domain and original material. The legal constraint isn’t a limitation — it’s the exact thing that keeps our catalogue clear of the pieces casting is sickest of.
The counter-view worth keeping
Balance matters. Not every casting person believes “overdone” is fatal. NYC acting coach Denise Simon offers the corrective:
That is the real lesson. A famous piece done with a genuinely personal, active choice can still land — but the bar is punishingly high, because you’re competing with every memorable version the panel has ever seen. Why start a fight uphill when a fresher piece lets you compete on even ground?
What to do instead
If you love an overdone play, stay in it and go one door down. Instead of Portia, try Emilia’s “husbands’ faults” speech from Othello — feminist, active, and far less worn. Instead of “To be or not to be,” reach for Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes?” or Prospero’s “Our revels now are ended.” Instead of the famous Juliet, the same play hands you Mercutio’s virtuosic Queen Mab speech. Our library pairs every famous named-play magnet with fresher alternatives from the same catalogue, so you keep the writing you love and lose the comparison trap.
Then take your shortlist back through Chapter I’s active-vs-passive test. A fresh, active piece that fits your type beats a famous one every single time.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
Reading is one thing. Working 1-on-1 with a working actor who booked Oppenheimer is another.