To Be (Updated)
ActorLab Original
GenderMale
ToneDramatic
StyleElevated
MediumStage
Words158
Duration1m 20s
classicalmodernexistentialdecisionShakespeare
Context
A modern re-imagining of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy. A young man in a college dorm room, 3 AM, staring at a laptop screen, trying to decide whether to drop out.
Character Analysis
The Shakespearean cadence should be felt but not performed. This is a modern kid using old questions. The intellectual distance is his defense mechanism — when it cracks on "the dream of being enough," that is the real Hamlet.
To stay or to go. That's the question, isn't it?
Whether it's braver to sit through another semester of lectures that sound like someone reading a PDF out loud—or to quit, and face the catastrophic disappointment of two people who refinanced their house so I could be here.
Because that's the rub. The guilt. The mortgage-shaped guilt that follows you into every class you hate.
And I keep thinking: what if I leave and it turns out I was wrong? What if the purpose was in the next chapter, the next professor, the next unbearable group project?
But then—what if I stay and spend four years becoming excellent at something I never wanted?
My grandfather dropped out. Built a business. Built a life.
My mother stayed. Finished. Excelled. And cries in the car on Sundays.
So which failure am I choosing?
To stay, and risk becoming someone I don't recognize—or to go, and risk becoming no one at all.
The dream of being enough. That's what keeps us in the chair.
This monologue is an ActorLab Original — free to use for auditions, class, and practice.
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