Monologue Madness championship tournament, Sunday, March 29

While this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament has so far been brutal for our area teams—with Georgetown, Maryland and Virginia all being ousted in the second round, there’s another bracket that people in the region can get excited about.

The Fifth Annual Monologue Madness will see 32 actors square off at the Miracle Theatre on March 29, in a night full of some of the area’s most talented up and coming artists doing what they do best.

The event is the brainchild of actor Edward Daniels, who wanted to create something for actors that rivaled the frenzy that basketball fans exhibited this time of year.

“I’ve been working as an actor in DC for 12 years and I’m also an athlete; I play tennis, and I’m a big fan of sports,” he says. “I remember in 2010 all the hype in our area around the NCAA Tournament so I had this idea to put actors in a bracket and name each round a different genre of acting. The next year, Monologue Madness was born.”

Similar to the Manhattan Monologue Slam and the 1 Minute Monologue Contest in Los Angeles, Monologue Madness pits 32 actors against each other in the same fashion, but with more of a tournament feel around it.

“In a nutshell, Monologue Madness holds its ‘Selection Sunday,’ an open call audition for about 150 actors who have two minutes to do whatever they want to become part of the 32-seed bracket,” Daniels says. “Those actors are seeded from 1-32 and the top battle the lower for the tournament rounds. Ever since our first one, it has been a hit among actors, actresses, directors and audience members.”

On Championship Sunday, the first round will see actors competing with a comic monologue and those who move on will tackle drama in the second round. The eight winners will next go one on one with a classical monologue.

“It’s all live and no one knows who is going to advance. Two actors take the stage, a light hits one, and the next actor, and they walk off, the judges tabulate and we announce who moves on to the next round.”

The final four actors will compete with a cold reading of a monologue they have never seen before, and have only five minutes to prepare. The final two will then face the judges, who will inform them of what they want to see from those still standing.

In year’s past, the judges have asked the finalists to make adjustments to a previous monologue or just go completely out of the box. No one knows for sure what will happen until the final two hit the stage.

“In 2013, the judge told them to strip away the acting and make it as real as possible,” Daniels says. “It was two girls, and one did a monologue about Hurricane Katrina and the other did one about finding out she was diagnosed with cancer. They were asked to tell the story as if they were talking to one person. It was a very emotional last round.”

This year’s top seeds are Tim Torre (who finished in the top 4 last year), Mandy Nicole Moore and Jay Saunders.

 

Here’s how they’re lining up in this year’s starting brackets.

A complete list of rankings.

Each actor receives an array of career-enhancing gifts and the competition winner walks away with $1,000.

“We have had casting directors from every major DC theater sit on the panel to judge, plus directors from New York have come out to be a part of it,” Daniels says. “We had the Gossip Girl casting director come out last year, Kimberly Skyrme from House of Cards has been out. The interest has been great because it’s a chance to see actors in a different way than how they are traditionally cast.”

That, in its essence, is why the event has been so successful, Daniels says.

“The best part is you are watching something you never get to see; an actor’s audition,” he says. “It’s a very fast-paced show and it all happens in 90 minutes. You do your best in your minute and the audience is on the edge of their seats.”