Comedic Monologues for Auditions

The best comedic monologues strike the perfect balance of humor, character, and timing. Whether you’re auditioning for a play, a musical, or even a talent showcase, finding the right piece can make all the difference. From classic comedies to modern hits, the shows below provide a variety of options for actors looking to impress with their comedic chops. Get ready to make them laugh with these top comedic monologues for auditions!

Clue Based on the screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, Written by Sandy Rustin, Additional Material by Hunter Foster & Eric Price, Original Music by Michael Holland

Based on the iconic 1985 Paramount movie which was inspired by the classic Hasbro board game, Clue is a hilarious farce-meets-murder mystery. The tale begins at a remote mansion, where six mysterious guests assemble for an unusual dinner party where murder and blackmail are on the menu. When their host turns up dead, they all become suspects. Led by Wadsworth – the butler, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock and Colonel Mustard race to find the killer as the body count stacks up. Clue is the comedy whodunit that will leave both cult-fans and newcomers in stitches as they try to figure out…WHO did it, WHERE, and with WHAT!

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding by Jocelyn Bioh

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding in Harlem is a salon full of funny, whip-smart, talented women ready to make you look and feel nice-nice. On this particularly muggy summer day, Jaja’s rule-following daughter Marie is running the shop while her mother prepares for her courthouse, green-card wedding—to a man no one seems to particularly like. Just like her mother, Dreamer Marie is trying to secure her future; she’s just graduated high school and all she wants to do is go to college. While Marie deals with the customers’ and stylists’ laugh-out-loud drama, news pierces the hearts of the women of the salon, galvanizing their connections and strengthening the community they have longed to make in the United States.

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley

The scene is Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the three Magrath sisters have gathered to await news of the family patriarch, their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital. Lenny, the oldest sister, is unmarried at thirty and facing diminishing marital prospects; Meg, the middle sister, who quickly outgrew Hazlehurst, is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast; while Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach. Their troubles, grave and yet, somehow, hilarious, are highlighted by their priggish cousin, Chick, and by the awkward young lawyer who tries to keep Babe out of jail while helpless not to fall in love with her. In the end the play is the story of how its young characters escape the past to seize the future—but the telling is so true and touching and consistently hilarious that it will linger in the mind long after the curtain has descended.

The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

“The Goat is about a profoundly unsettling subject, which for the record is not bestiality but the irrational, confounding, and convention-thwarting nature of love. Powerful [and] extraordinary…Mr. Albee still asks questions that no other major American dramatist dares to ask.” —The New York Times

Chicken & Biscuits by Douglas Lyons

Can rivaling sisters Baneatta and Beverly bury their father without killing each other? This proves difficult when Beverly shows up to the chapel with her “blessings” on display. Meanwhile, Baneatta’s son brings his neurotic Jewish boyfriend along, knowing Baneatta disapproves, and Beverly’s nosy daughter keeps asking questions no one wants to answer. Baneatta’s pastor husband tries to mediate the family drama, but when a shocking family secret reveals itself at the pulpit, the two sisters are faced with a truth that could either heal or break them.

Shows for Days by Douglas Carter Beane

It’s May 1973 when a young man wanders into a dilapidated community theater in Reading, PA. The company members welcome him—well, only because they need a set painter that day. The young man then proceeds to soak up all the idealism and the craziness that comes with being part of a struggling theater company with big dreams. When a playwright looks back at his beginnings in the theater and decides to chronicle those experiences in a play, all sorts of things can happen. If you’re Douglas Carter Beane, who grew out of his Reading, PA, community theater days to become one of the stage’s master writers, it’s bound to bring a measure of gimlet-eyed reflection, a large dollop of self-deprecation, and a heaping dose of hilarity.

Sylvia by A.R. Gurney

Greg and Kate have moved to Manhattan after twenty-two years of child-raising in the suburbs. Greg’s career as a financial trader is winding down, while Kate’s career, as a public-school English teacher, is beginning to offer her more opportunities. Greg brings home a dog he found in the park—or that has found him—bearing only the name “Sylvia” on her name tag. A street-smart mixture of Lab and poodle, Sylvia becomes a major bone of contention between husband and wife. She offers Greg an escape from the frustrations of his job and the unknowns of middle age. To Kate, Sylvia becomes a rival for affection. And Sylvia thinks Kate just doesn’t understand the relationship between man and dog. The marriage is put in serious jeopardy until, after a series of hilarious and touching complications, Greg and Kate learn to compromise, and Sylvia becomes a valued part of their lives.

The Marriage of Bette and Boo by Christopher Durang

As the play begins Bette and Boo are being united in matrimony, surrounded by their beaming families. But as the further progress of their marriage is chronicled it becomes increasingly clear that things are not working out quite as hoped for. The birth of their son is followed by a succession of stillborns; Boo takes to drink; and their respective families are odd lots to say the least: His father is a sadistic tyrant, who refers to his wife as the dumbest woman in the world; while Bette’s side includes a psychotic sister who endures lifelong agonies over her imagined transgressions and a senile father who mutters in unintelligible gibberish. For solace and counsel they all turn to Father Donnally, a Roman Catholic priest who dodges their questions by impersonating (hilariously) a strip of frying bacon. Conveyed in a series of dazzlingly inventive interconnected scenes, the play moves wickedly on through three decades of divorce, alcoholism, madness and fatal illness—all treated with a farcical brilliance which, through the author’s unique talent, mines the unlikely lodes of irony and humor residing in these ostensibly unhappy events.

Pterodactyls by Nicky Silver

An absurdist black comedy about the downfall of the Duncan family—and perhaps the species. Hypochondriac Emma and her orphaned fiancé, Tommy, announce their engagement to her disapproving mother, Grace, who soon puts Tommy to work as a maid. When Emma’s brother, Todd, returns home with an AIDS diagnosis, chaos erupts. As Tommy falls for Todd, Emma goes deaf, and a disastrous wedding rehearsal ends with Emma shooting herself. Winter arrives: Tommy is dead, Emma is forgotten, and Arthur is cast out. Todd, unchanged, manipulates his mother to her demise. As he embraces Emma’s ghost, the completed dinosaur skeleton looms—a reminder of extinction’s inevitability.

The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told by Paul Rudnick

A stage manager, headset on, cues the creation of the world—either as God or someone who thinks she is. Act One retells the Old Testament with Adam and Steve, and Jane and Mabel, a lesbian couple struggling with procreation. They invent God, face a chaotic Pharaoh, and witness the Nativity. The Flood brings infidelity, heartbreak, and eventual reunion. Act Two jumps to modern Manhattan: Adam and Steve are together, but Steve is HIV positive. On Christmas Eve, Jane, unexpectedly pregnant, plans to marry Mabel, with a Jewish lesbian Rabbi officiating. As Jane gives birth, Steve confesses his grim prognosis, and the friends find solace in love and new life.