New dramatic/comedic children's monologue: Baby Beet and the Doggie Toy
The amazingly talented (and also adorable!) actor, Riley Bogert, who originated the role of Baby Beet at East Valley Children’s Theater, photography by Emily Penrod.
If you’re looking for a 1-minute dramatic/comedic blend monologue for a young child actor, check out Baby Beet’s monologue, BABY BEET AND THE DOGGIE TOY, from my full-length children’s play, THE UNDERGROUND ADVENTURES OF A CARROT AND POTATO. Yes, Baby Beet is exactly what her name implies: she’s a young purple root vegetable. She’s not quite a baby, but she’s used to playing that role in her beet family and she relishes in it (she’s called out a few times in the play for forgetting her “baby” lisp she puts on only because it’s cute!). Baby Beet is adorable and she knows it!
But Baby Beet has encountered the worst kind of fate when the rest of her beet family has been recently harvested, leaving her all alone in the soil world (don’t worry: she doesn’t stay alone for long! Read the rest of the play to find out what happens!). A group of root vegetables on a journey have just stumbled upon Baby Beet who is busy calling out to a huge (to them) dog. In the monologue, BABY BEET AND THE DOGGIE TOY, Baby Beet explains to the others why she’s alone in this area where the dog wanders: she finds joy in the treasures the dog digs up in the soil and wears them like accessories, and she uses her imagination to picture her family exclaiming over how cute she is with these treasures. She’s waiting for the dog to dig up something now, and hoping it will make her look colorful and bright, because she knows that looking happy on the outside makes her feel a tiny bit less sad on the inside.
BABY BEET AND THE DOGGIE TOY is a monologue about a beet, yes, but it’s also about love, loss, family, coping and trying to find a path forward with some humor and hope. Baby Beet is a super fun role to play! If you read the whole play, you’ll see she’s incredibly charming, very funny, open and honest and lovable, and yes, she is just as adorable as she knows she is!
BABY BEET AND THE DOGGIE TOY runs about 1 minute, and is good for actors ages 4-12 years old or so (you can always go older or younger though, if it works for you). The monologue can be any gender who resonates with the role. It has a great blend of childlike run-on storytelling, along with bits of humor and also true sadness. It’s sweet and short and manageable for a young child. And for an advanced child actor, it gives them a chance to play a character who is sad and lonely, but who is trying to stay positive, while acknowledging and also dismissing the pain.
Check out an excerpt of the monologue below:
BABY BEET
(speaking to the root vegetables who have found Baby Beet. Baby Beet wears a donut shaped hat/dog toy)
I don’t have a beet family anymore. They were all harvested a couple days ago… I’m…on my own now… Wanna know why I’m here?
(The other vegetables nod)
It’s ‘cause I heard the doggie bark, and I followed the bark, ‘cause I wanted to see if it was gonna dig up a treasure or something. Like yesterday, it dug up this hard plastic donut, then chewed it and spit it out! So I grabbed it and put it on my top! See? It looks nice, right? I was pretending that my beet family was still here, and—END OF EXCERPT. For the complete 1-minute monologue, BABY BEET AND THE DOGGIE TOY, click below:
To learn more about Baby Beet, check out the play, The Underground Adventures of a Carrot and Potato. What’s the play about?
Vegetables are only supposed to do two things: grow where they’re planted and keep to their own kind. But when a dancing carrot meets a groove-loving potato, their new forbidden friendship inspires them to embark on a quest to change the rules of their stodgy garden society. Their journey won’t be easy, of course, but luckily, our duo is joined by a ragtag team of vegetables with their own reasons to shake up the norm. Can they work together to overcome hungry bugs out to eat them, a dangerously playful dog and that pesky band of mean carrots on the hunt to stop them?
Click below for the complete play, The Underground Adventures of a Carrot and Potato: