Wolf Trap Opera company offers some guidance to Studio Artist applicants about preparing a one-minute spoken monologue.
… when we briefly remove the vocal [i.e., musical] component, we sometimes have a chance to learn a bit more about the actor in front of us.
One quibble: what’s missing from this list of playwrights?
If you go with a play, you can’t go wrong with the modern master playwrights: Mamet, O’Neill, Labute, Miller, Williams, Shepard, Albee, Wilson, Kushner…
… Wasserstein, Parks, Nottage, Ruhl, Vogel, Hellman, …