And so it begins...

With any new story, there calls for some exposition.

Kristi and I met at Hope College in 2004, both as theatre majors. After braving 3 years now in the real world of theatre, music, and all things performing arts, we have both been lucky enough to land jobs and roles in our field...but not without a hefty serving of anxiety, procrastination, self-doubt, and a load of "Thank you" (AKA. Thanks, but no thanks.). After all, for every "yes", there are 1000 "no"s. Right?

After lamenting together about how difficult it was, not only to find solid audition pieces, but to really *own* them and feel confident about them, we decided to start a challenge of sorts. A challenge that will hopefully make future auditions (ours and yours) less stressful, allowing our talents (not our nerves) to stand out. I'll let Kristi post about how the idea was born later.

So what is this challenge we speak of, you ask? Here are the major bullet points:

-Find 50 solid audition pieces. We may find more and post them, but overall we'll weed out the best ones for a final list. After all, you need failures to recognize success (thank you, John Tammi!)

-These 50 audition pieces will *not* all be from plays. In fact, we're challenging ourselves to find monologues in poetry, journaling, news articles, songs, conversations, blogs, spoken word, etc., etc., etc.

-The final 50 must be found and edited/cut by Memorial Day 2011 (May 30). That leaves 295 days from today. Sounds doable...we hope.

-After the project is finished, we may attempt to publish the 50. Or perform them in a town near you. Or keep finding more. Who knows-suggestions are welcome!

We also want to encourage you to submit your favorite pieces and/or your *original* work. Submissions may be made to monologuemania@gmail.com. We'll review it, and if we post your submission, we'll give you credit, we promise! Just make sure to site the author or the original work and where it came from (song, play, etc.)

And in the spirit of theatre family, we want you to feel free to use what we find as well. Just please, remember to slate with the appropriate author and source during your audition. Its only proper.

Have a great time reading, and let the Mania begin!!

-Whit