♫
Kiwanis Music Festival of
Sudbury
SPEECH ARTS AND DRAMA
Entry deadline – January 15
School deadline – January 31
Level: Senior
Memory IS required


Props are NOT PERMITTED except for a single chair if performer prefers to deliver
from a seated position
Selections recommended below are approximately 2 - 3 min. in length.
COMEDY (FEMALE)
SENIOR
Age group
Description
Class Code
Fee
17 year and over
Choose ONE(1) of the following:
SAD-17-CF
$22.00
a) A Woman Of No Importance
By Oscar Wilde
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from A Woman of No Importance. Oscar Wilde.
London: Methuen & Co., 1916.
Mrs. Allonby: The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to
us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He
should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our
whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to
have missions. He should always say much more than he means,
and always mean much more than he says. He should never run
down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or
make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice
about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him. If we
ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all
about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever
qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite
pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never
dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the
use of useful things. That would be unforgivable. But he should
shower on us everything we don't want. He should persistently
compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when
we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a
perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become
miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to
overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes,
and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave
www.kiwanisclubofsudbury.ca ~ [email protected]
♫
Kiwanis Music Festival of
Sudbury
Entry deadline – January 15
School deadline – January 31
us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for
dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last
time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given
one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to
write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly brokenhearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes
every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the
club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And
after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about
everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely
lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the
evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable,
and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to
admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has
admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can
do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.
Senior Female Comedy (SAD-17-CF)
b) Lady Windermere’s Fan
By Oscar Wilde
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Lady Windermere’s Fan. Oscar Wilde.
London, Elkin Mathews, 1893.
Duchess of Berwick: Ah, what indeed, dear? That is the point.
He goes to see her continually, and stops for hours at a time, and
while he is there she is not at home to any one. Not that many
ladies call on her, dear, but she has a great many disreputable men
friends--my own brother particularly, as I told you--and that is
what makes it so dreadful about Windermere. We looked upon him
as being such a model husband, but I am afraid there is no doubt
about it. My dear nieces--you know the Saville girls, don't you?-such nice domestic creatures--plain, dreadfully plain,--but so
good--well, they're always at the window doing fancy work, and
making ugly things for the poor, which I think so useful of them in
these dreadful socialistic days, and this terrible woman has taken a
house in Curzon Street, right opposite them--such a respectable
street, too! I don't know what we're coming to! And they tell me
www.kiwanisclubofsudbury.ca ~ [email protected]
♫
Kiwanis Music Festival of
Sudbury
Entry deadline – January 15
School deadline – January 31
that Windermere goes there four and five times a week--they
see him. They can't help it--and although they never talk scandal,
they--well, of course--they remark on it to every one. And the
worst of it all is that I have been told that this woman has got a
great deal of money out of somebody, for it seems that she came to
London six months ago without anything at all to speak of, and
now she has this charming house in Mayfair, drives her ponies in
the Park every afternoon and all--well, all--since she has known
poor dear Windermere. It's quite true, my dear. The whole of
London knows about it. That is why I felt it was better to come
and talk to you, and advise you to take Windermere away at once
to Homburg or to Aix, where he'll have something to amuse him,
and where you can watch him all day long. I assure you, my dear,
that on several occasions after I was first married, I had to pretend
to be very ill, and was obliged to drink the most unpleasant
mineral waters, merely to get Berwick out of town. He was so
extremely susceptible. Though I am bound to say he never gave
away any large sums of money to anybody. He is far too highprincipled for that!
Senior Female Comedic (SAD-17-CF)
c) The Diaries of Adam and Eve
By Mark Twain
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Eve’s Diary. Mark Twain. New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1906.
Eve: When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was
beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now
it is lost, and I shall not see it any more. The Garden is lost, but I
have found HIM, and am content. He loves me as well as he can; I
love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, and this, I
think, is proper to my youth and sex. If I ask myself why I love
him, I find I do not know, and do not really much care to know; so
I suppose that this kind of love is not a product of reasoning and
statistics, like one's love for other reptiles and animals. I think that
this must be so. I love certain birds because of their song; but I do
not love Adam on account of his singing--no, it is not that; the
www.kiwanisclubofsudbury.ca ~ [email protected]
♫
Kiwanis Music Festival of
Sudbury
Entry deadline – January 15
School deadline – January 31
more he sings the more I do not get reconciled to it. Yet I ask him
to sing, because I wish to learn to like everything he is interested
in. I am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand it, but
now I can. It sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; I can get used to
that kind of milk. It is not on account of his brightness that I love
him--no, it is not that. He is not to blame for his brightness, such
as it is, for he did not make it himself; he is as God made him, and
that is sufficient. There was a wise purpose in it, THAT I know. In
time it will develop, though I think it will not be sudden. It is not
on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his delicacy
that I love him. No, he has lacks in this regard, but he is well
enough just so, and is improving. It is not on account of his
industry that I love him. I think he has it in him, and I do not know
why he conceals it from me, but I will put it out of my mind; it
shall not trouble my happiness, which is otherwise full to
overflowing. It is not on account of his education that I love him.
He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things,
but they are not so. It is not on account of his chivalry that I love
him--no, it is not that. He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is
a peculiarity of sex, I think, and he did not make his sex. Of course
I would not have told on him, I would have perished first; but that
is a peculiarity of sex, too, and I do not take credit for it, for I did
not make my sex. Then why is it that I love him? He is strong and
handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him and am proud
of him, but I could love him without those qualities. If he were
plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love him;
and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him,
and watch by his bedside until I died. I think I love him merely
because he is MINE. There is no other reason, I suppose. And so I
think it is as I first said: that this kind of love is not a product of
reasonings and statistics. It just COMES--none knows whence-and cannot explain itself. And doesn't need to. That is what I think.
But I am only a girl, the first that has examined this matter, and it
may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not got
it right.
www.kiwanisclubofsudbury.ca ~ [email protected]
♫
Kiwanis Music Festival of
Sudbury
Entry deadline – January 15
School deadline – January 31
Senior Female Comedy – (SAD-17-CF)
d) SUN DRIED
by Edna Ferber. Adapted for the stage by Walter Wykes
Mary Louise: I don’t know. I don’t know what the problem is.
I’ve been trying to write about the city, you know, my experiences
here. Then I decided to write a love story, but that’s not working
out either. My hero sounds more like a clothing store dummy than
a real live human being, and, from what I hear, editors aren’t fond
of black-mustachioed figures nowadays. I’ve been fighting with
him for a week now, the stubborn mule. He won’t make love to
my heroine. He refuses. I’ve tried to put red blood in his veins,
but the two of them just won’t get together—they’re as far apart as
they were the day I sat down to write. I’m at my wit’s end. I’ve
bitten off nearly half of my fingernails—look—see? There’s
nothing wrong with my heroine—I’m sure of that. She’s a
fascinating, mysterious, graceful creature, full of wit and passion
and adventure, but not once has he clasped her to him fiercely or
pressed his lips to her hair, her eyes, her cheeks. He hasn’t even
had the guts to “devour her with his gaze” as we writers like to
say. This morning I thought he might be showing some signs of
life. He was developing possibilities. But nothing came of it. He
wimped out. That’s why I decided to wash my hair and come out
here—to get away from him for a little while. Back home? I
taught school—and hated it. But I kept on teaching until I'd saved
five hundred dollars. All the other girls teach until they’ve saved
five hundred dollars—then they pack two suit-cases and go to
Europe for the summer. But I saved my five hundred for New
York . I've been here six months now, and the five hundred has
shrunk to almost nothing, and if I don't break into the magazines
pretty soon ... Then, I'll have to go back and teach thirty-seven
young devils that six times five is thirty, put down the naught and
carry six, that a rhetorical question requires no answer, and that the
French are a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines. But I'll
scrimp on everything from hairpins to shoes, and back again until
I've saved up another five hundred, and then I'll try it all over
again, because I—can—write. I’m going to make it! I'm going to
www.kiwanisclubofsudbury.ca ~ [email protected]
♫
Kiwanis Music Festival of
Sudbury
Entry deadline – January 15
School deadline – January 31
make this town count me in as the four million and oneth!
Sometimes I get so tired of being nobody at all, with not even
enough cleverness to wrest a living from this big city, that I want
to stand out at the edge of the curb and just scream! Take off my
hat, and wave, and shout, “Hey, you four million self-absorbed,
uncaring people, I'm Mary Louise Moss, from Escanaba ,
Michigan , and I like your town, and I want to stay here! Won't
you please pay some attention to me! Just a little bit!” No one
even knows I'm here except … well … myself and the rent
collector.
www.kiwanisclubofsudbury.ca ~ [email protected]