Tone: Escalating negotiation
Suggested performers: Adults and young adults; any gender
Length: 178 words; approximately 60–90 seconds
Format: one speaker addressing a silent listener
Timing is a starting estimate, not a guaranteed audition length. Time your own delivery with pauses. This is an original standalone piece, not an extract from a published play.
The Roommate Agreement: full monologue
I've made a roommate agreement. Nothing formal. There are no witnesses. Unless you count the cat, and we both know whose side she's on.
Rule one: communal surfaces must remain communal. A kitchen counter is not a personal museum of receipts. Yes, those are my receipts. They're there for reference. I may need to remember buying a lime.
Rule two: no naming an object to avoid throwing it away. Your broken fan is not 'Gerald.' Gerald has exposed wiring. Gerald is a liability.
The chair is different. The chair isn't broken. It has a job. Clean clothes on the left, questionable clothes on the right, formalwear balanced on the back. It's a filing system you can sit on in an emergency.
Fine. I can see how banning your stuff while giving mine a career looks unfair. We could each choose one exception. You keep Gerald. I keep the chair.
We put it in writing, shake hands, and never discuss this again. Unless your exception is the cat. In that case I would like to withdraw all previous statements.
What is happening in this scene?
A roommate presents a new household agreement, then discovers that their own belongings break every rule.
You are speaking to: The roommate sitting across the kitchen table, looking at your printed agreement.
You want: Secure agreement to a tidier home without surrendering your own favorite habits.
The change to explore: A reasonable rule about shared space reaches the chair you have claimed for laundry.
Acting choices to try
- When do you realize your roommate has a good argument?
- Who currently has more power in the home?
- What makes the final possibility genuinely alarming?
Choose one object in the room to stand for the laundry chair. Defend it as something you value, then make the offer to compromise directly to your listener. Avoid treating each household detail as a separate joke.
These are starting points. Try a different intention or pace, and let the response you imagine from your listener affect your next thought. You do not need to copy the recorded delivery.
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Prepare it for an audition or class
Check whether the brief permits original standalone material. Learn the shifts in thought as well as the wording, then time a full take at performance pace. If you need a shorter cut, make the cut before memorizing it; the free demo always rehearses the complete text above.
Use the monologue preparation plan for a short deadline, or try the recall exercises in How to Memorize Lines.
More comedic monologues to explore
- Self-Checkout Needs a Manager — A shopper asks an employee to settle a disagreement with a self-checkout machine.
- The Sourdough Custody Hearing — As a roommate moves out, two amateur bakers dispute who should keep their shared sourdough starter.
- The Worst Presentation Ever — an existing teen comedy from the library.
Browse comedic monologues → · Explore the complete monologue library →
Try a scene with two characters
A monologue gives you one character to rehearse. To hear CueRoom read a scene partner, try The Last Train. Choose Maya or Jules and let the recorded reader play the other role.
Explore this gender-flexible piece alongside roles written as women in Monologues for Women, with playing-age guidance and contrasting audition pairs.
Explore this open-casting piece alongside named male characters in Monologues for Men, with playing-age guidance and contrasting rehearsal pairs.
Ready to rehearse your own scripts?
Keep practicing this original piece free. When you want to bring your own permitted material, choose reader voices and keep a personal script library, explore the full CueRoom app.
Choosing for a limited performance slot? Compare this 178-word piece with the other short monologue selections, then time your own complete take with the pauses you need.
Compare this original with the other contemporary monologue selections, with comic and dramatic situations and guidance on audition source requirements.