The nsavides Podcast is pleased to partner with Laura Cayouette, a New Orleans actress whose credits include Django Unchained, Treme, and Friends. Together we bring you the #KnowMonologues Challenge. Welcome!
Here’s an audio overview and words of encouragement about participating:
Actors, this is your opportunity to share a monologue with us. Our judges will evaluate. Top five monologues get written feedback from Laura and some tender loving care from us.
Winning monologue gets sent to John Schneider from Dukes of Hazzard! These days, John is still acting, but he’s also directing, producing, and working with filmmakers who shoot at his studio. So, make enough of an impression and he might just find a great part for you!
Winner also gets a photo session with a local photographer, a consultation session with Laura and a signed copy of her book, Know Small Parts: An Actor’s Guide to Turning Minutes into Moments and Moments into a Career.
This isn’t just about a shot at a big prize though. It’s a chance to showcase your skills and to inspire the filmmakers, producers, and writers around town and across the nation who might stop by. On that note, our judges are also pretty awesome and worth impressing. Take a look.
The Basics
If you want to participate, pick a monologue tailored to your strengths, practice it until it’s polished, put it on video and upload to YouTube. (We recommend that you save it as an UNLISTED video. Instructions on how to do that are here.)
Then, share the link with us on the submissions page.
Be sure to mention
- your name
- the city where you live
- if you want public feedback on your monologue
- the name of the person who referred you to the challenge (optional, but a nice thing to do)
We would also encourage you to mention the show from which the monologue was taken.
You can pick any monologue you want. Well almost any. You’ll want to keep your monologue to 3:00 min or less. We would prefer that you select monologues with broad appeal that are suitable for viewing at work. If you’re uncertain about what means, we encourage you to view our submission guidelines.
Tips for Success
Put your focus on giving the best performance you can. Everything else is just icing on the cake. That said, here are some other details to keep in mind.
- We’re not looking for anything fancy as far as video quality goes. Even a monologue recorded with an iPhone can do the job if you follow these shooting tips.
- One of the top 5 slots is reserved for our most social actor. That’s determined by two factors: the number of people who leave comments on an actor’s monologue (75% of the score) and the number of times an actor uses our #KnowMonologues hashtag (25% of the score). More details are here.
- You can learn more about Laura’s outlook and acting insights by listening to her episode on The nsavides Podcast. It’s also a chance to get to know me (Nick Savides). I’m the host of the show. I won’t be judging the monologues as far as the top prizes go, but I might leave comments, and I’m open to working with any actor who piques my interest.
- While you’re at it, you might want to read up on our judges.
- This video of Laura’s audition tips to actors might help.
- Doesn’t hurt to watch monologues or auditions from the pros.
- If you still have questions, leave a comment below or send an email.
Got it? OK. Good. Have fun out there, and break a leg.
Update: The challenge is no longer accepting submissions, and our judges have selected our Top 5 Monologues.
See the Top 5 Winning Monologues
Hi Nick!
Quick question regarding the scoring of the comments: Do the comments only count if they are posted on your submission page or if we were to publicly post our monologue on Facebook, would comments posted there count towards our score as well?
Thanks!!
Hi Erin,
I think I answered this for you elsewhere, but I wanted to address it here as well, in case anyone else has a similar question. Comments only count on the submissions page. Each commentator only counts once. That way we’re encouraging you to share your work with others and get exposure as an actor, but not to have one person leave lots of repetitive or spammy comments. Comments from the actor who submitted the monologue don’t count toward his or her final score. Neither do comments from me or the other judges.
Comments on the monologue count for 75% of the most social actor award, and use of our #KnowMonologues hashtag counts for 25% of the score, and you get up to 3 points for hashtag use per day. To count, the #KnowMonologues hashtag has to be used in a public site like Twitter or be set to public on a site like Facebook. This helps us verify the usage. (Any post can be made public on Facebook. Details: https://www.facebook.com/help/120939471321735) Posts to open groups also count. Actors are encouraged to keep track of their total hashtag use and let us know at the end of the challenge. We will keep track as well, but there are a number of accounts and groups out there, and we can’t guarantee that we’ll find all the hashtags on our own.
Let me know if you have questions, and I’ll be glad to elaborate.
Hi there!
I believe you addressed this elsewhere, but I wanted to double check. We are allowed to submit other monologue clips, so long as we specify which one we want to have counted? Thanks so much and glad to be participating in #KnowMonologues!
Best,
Michael David Anderson
Hi Michael,
Yes, you’re welcome to submit more than one, but only one monologue is eligible for the competition. So, if you submit more than one, you’ll need to mention which one you want to enter. Comments from others will only count for the competing monologue.