Shakespeare Comes to Oakland

Audition in Oakland last night at the Community Center held by lovely young Lavera ...I was asked to read Phebe's Monologue from the Bard's "As You Like It."

I gave it my thespian best. Lavera teaches acting, too, and we auditioners picked up a flyer about her program, which offers to take students to Hollywood "to meet with agents/managers" and get headshots...So, one wasn't immediately sure that the audition would be legit, could have been a sales come on for the acting classes...but, it appears to be the real deal. Lavera wants to produce up to eight plays in Oakland in 2010. Found the following at The Monologue Archive. http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_032.html


AS YOU LIKE IT A monologue from the play by William Shakespeare

PHEBE: Think not I love him, though I ask for him;

'Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well.

But what care I for words? Yet words do well

When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

It is a pretty youth; not very pretty;

But sure he's proud; and yet his pride becomes him.

He'll make a proper man. The best thing in him

Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue

Did make offense, his eye did heal it up.

He is not very tall; yet for his year's he's tall.

His leg is but so so; and yet 'tis well.

There was a pretty redness in his lip,

A little riper and more lusty red

Than that mixed in his cheek; 'twas just the difference

Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.

There be some women, Silvius, had they marked him

In parcels as I did, would have gone near

To fall in love with him; but, for my part,

I love him not nor hate him not; and yet

I have more cause to hate him than to love him;

For what had he to do to chide at me?

He said mine eyes were black and my hair black;

And, now I am rememb'red, scorned at me.

I marvel why I answered not again.

But that's all one; omittance is no quittance.

I'll write to him a very taunting letter,

And thou shalt bear it. Wilt thou, Silvius?