New comedic/dramatic monologue: "The Best General Tso's" by Tara Meddaugh
My short monologue, The Best General Tso’s is about finding old General Tso’s chicken in the refrigerator during stay-at-home measures. While losses are certainly felt in big moments, I’ve often found that it’s in mundane moments that our pains become acute. Because these moments are day-to-day, they’re also frequent and hard to escape. The Best General Tso's is, on one hand, a comedic moment between Larissa and her almond-bag-buying partner, but it also draws on the complex feelings and experiences underlying a simple mundane moment. Sometimes a leftover is not just a leftover.
Enjoy this new monologue for a female (or male) actor, older teens through adult, which runs about 1.5 minutes long. Check out an excerpt below and click at the end for the full piece.
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LARISSA
Babe—look at…look at what I found…It’s… It’s General Tso’s chicken! It was way in the back, behind the melon and those giant bags of nuts. They were blocking the leftovers. This is from…March…it was a Saturday…let me look at the calendar. March 14…I know it was then because it was a week before the lockdown but we already had, like, 500 cases in the county, so I was really nervous going to a restaurant and I was like, “This is the last time we’re going out.”
(pause)
And now…Babe, the chicken is all moldy. Look…The broccoli too. You don’t wanna see?
(pause)
We could have eaten this if that bag of almonds wasn’t blocking it! Why do you keep buying almonds? No one is eating them!
(pause)
And no, Babe, we can’t just order take-out—END OF EXCERPT
Click below for the complete digital copy of the monologue, The Best General Tso’s by Tara Meddaugh.