How to Cut a Monologue Down to Time (Without Losing the Story)

You’ve found the speech. You love it, you’ve read the play, and you can feel the moment it turns. Then you time it out loud and the stopwatch says a minute and a half. The audition notice says one minute.

So you start crossing things out, and every line you cross out seems to take something with it. Cut too little and you’re rushing. Cut too much and the speech stops making sense to anyone who hasn’t read the play, and that may include the people on the panel.

The short version: yes, you can cut, and when a notice sets a time limit, fitting it is your job. Time the speech before you touch it. Find the three things you must keep (the first line, the turn, and the ending), then cut in this order: setup the panel doesn’t need, stage business and other people’s interruptions, and repeated beats that make the same point twice. Never change the words that are left. Then read the cut to someone who doesn’t know the play, and time a full run at performance energy.

Yes, you’re allowed to cut

Actors often worry that editing a playwright’s speech is cheating. Schools’ own audition pages can settle it. Ball State University’s theater department, for example, asks acting applicants for two monologues of one minute maximum, and says that shortening a monologue to fit the limit, or even cutting and pasting a scene together to create one, is acceptable.

The same page draws a firm line. Applicants ask whether they should cut swear words, and the answer is no: “Do not change the words of your monologue.” Cutting is removing. Rewriting is something else.

Time limits vary, so read the notice before you decide how much to cut. A few examples from schools’ own pages, checked in October 2026:

• The UNCSA high school drama program says each of its two monologues may not exceed 90 seconds.
• Studio 58 at Langara College asks acting applicants for Fall 2027 entry for monologues no longer than two minutes each.
• Western Michigan University’s BFA acting page says there will be a timer in the room and not to worry if you’re cut off, and asks for no more than a minute, with 45 seconds ideal.

A timer in the room changes the math. If a panel stops you at the limit, everything after that point is gone, usually including the ending you were building toward. Cutting at home is how you choose what they see.

Time it before you touch it

Before you cut a word, find out how far over you are. A rough estimate takes seconds: paste the speech into our free monologue timer, which divides the word count by three speaking paces (120, 140, and 160 words a minute) and shows whether each fits your limit.

The estimate tells you the size of the job. Forty seconds over means whole sections have to go. Ten seconds over might be one couplet or one sentence. Knowing this first stops you from hacking away at random and then discovering you cut twice what you needed.

Then time a real run, standing up, at full energy, with the pauses you’d actually take. A word count can’t know where you breathe, how long a beat lasts, or how much a big moment slows you down. Use the stopwatch number for the final decision, not the estimate.

Know what you’re protecting

Every cut is easier once you’ve decided what can’t go. Mark three places in the text before you pick up a pencil.

1. The first line. It launches the speech and tells the panel what situation you’re in. If the original opening is slow, you may start a little later, but the first line you say has to make sense as a first line.
2. The turn. The moment the character changes their mind, their tactic, or their plan. A speech without its turn is a speech where nothing happens.
3. The ending. Usually a decision or a realization. It’s the last thing the panel sees, so keep the playwright’s own button if you can.

A trade-press guide to cutting audition monologues adds a fourth check: when you piece a speech together, the character should pursue the same objective throughout the cut. That’s what gives the shorter version a through line. If your cut jumps from wanting one thing to wanting something unrelated, the panel sees two half-speeches.

What to cut first

With those marked, work through the rest in this order. Each step removes material that tends to cost the story least.

1. Setup the panel doesn’t need

Many speeches start by explaining what happened earlier: who said what, which letter arrived, where everyone was standing. In the play, that exposition helps an audience who has been watching for an hour. In a one-minute audition, the panel only needs enough to follow you. An acting guide from StageMilk suggests cutting material that refers to other scenes and starting where the scene gets interesting.

The same trade-press guide warns against speeches crowded with other characters’ names, because the panel can’t keep track of people they’ve never met. Lines that only name or describe offstage people are often the first to go.

2. Stage business and other people’s lines

The StageMilk guide points out that physical business (toasting, lighting a cigarette, standing and sitting) eats time. In an audition you probably won’t have the props anyway, so lines that exist to cover that business can go with it.

If your speech is broken up by another character’s short replies, cutting those replies and joining the pieces is the kind of “cutting and pasting” Ball State allows, where the audition notice allows it (some programs don’t). Check that each joined section still answers something, even if the question now lives only in your head.

3. Repeated beats

Writers repeat on purpose. A character makes a point, then makes it again with a new image, then a third time with a joke. On stage, the repetition builds. In an audition, the second and third versions are often the cheapest place to save time, because the panel already has the idea. StageMilk’s guide lists repetition among the most expendable material in a scene. In a monologue, our advice is to trim the repeats inside a long speech rather than dropping whole sections you need.

The trick is to keep the best version, not the first one. If the second image is the one you love playing, cut the first.

A worked cut: Helena, from 1:29 to under a minute

Here is Helena’s soliloquy from Act 1, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in the public-domain Standard Ebooks edition. Helena is alone. Demetrius, who once swore he loved her, now dotes on her friend Hermia, and Hermia and Lysander have just told her they’re running away together. The full speech is 26 lines and 208 words:

HELENA: How happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere:

For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.

I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
Then to the wood will he tomorrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

At 208 words, the monologue timer estimates 1:44 at a slow pace, 1:29 at an average one, and 1:18 brisk. Too long for a 90-second slot at a slow pace, and far too long for a minute.

This speech has no stage business and no backstory to trim: its opening lines are the problem itself, not setup. So the repeated-beats rule does the work here. First, mark what stays. The first line launches the complaint. The turn is “I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight”, where Helena stops complaining and makes a plan. The ending is her last couplet, where she admits the plan will only feed her pain. Her objective runs through all of it: to make sense of why Demetrius left her, and to get some of his attention back.

Pass one: cut the repeated beat (to 90 seconds)

The speech is in rhyming couplets, so cut in pairs of lines. That keeps every rhyme intact.

The eight lines from “Love looks not with the eyes” to “perjured everywhere” make one point several ways: love is blind, Cupid is painted blind, love has no judgment, love is a child, love breaks its promises like boys at a game. Keep the famous first version (“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”) and its partner line. Cut the next six lines, from “Nor hath Love’s mind” to “perjured everywhere.” That removes 46 words and leaves 20 lines and 162 words: about 1:21 slow, 1:09 average, and 1:01 brisk. That fits a 90-second limit.

Pass two: cut two images that restate (to one minute)

For a one-minute limit, two more couplets go. “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity” says, in abstract terms, what the blind-Cupid lines say more vividly. And “And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, / So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt” extends the image of Demetrius’s oaths after the panel already knows he swore them and left. Here is the cut, 16 lines and 130 words:

HELENA: How happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;

I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
Then to the wood will he tomorrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

The timer now estimates 1:05 slow, 0:56 average, and 0:49 brisk. Notice the slow estimate is still five seconds over a one-minute limit. That’s the point where the stopwatch decides: if your real run lands near a minute, cut one more couplet rather than speed up.

Be honest about the cost. Pass one already cost the “waggish boys” joke, and it moved the “For” that opens Demetrius’s oaths so it now follows the blind-Cupid line instead of the perjury line. That still reads, but check it out loud. Pass two adds the loss of “Things base and vile” and the melting-hail image, which is fun to play. If you have 90 seconds, stop after pass one and keep the hail.

The words that remain are exactly Shakespeare’s, in his order. Nothing was rephrased to bridge a gap. You can read the whole speech with notes in our monologue library, and see how Helena’s part sits in the play on our A Midsummer Night’s Dream page.

Test the cut on someone who doesn’t know the play

You know what you cut, so your brain fills the gaps. The panel can’t. StageMilk’s guide suggests reading the cut aloud with a fellow actor who doesn’t know the original, and warns that applying every cut can leave you with very little. You may even find yourself putting bits back.

Ask your listener three questions afterward. Who was I talking to, or about? What did I want? What changed by the end? If they can answer all three, the cut works. If they can’t say what changed, you’ve probably cut too close to the turn.

Then mark the final version clearly. The trade-press guide recommends retyping your cut or highlighting your lines, so there’s never a moment of doubt about which version you learned.

Cut, don’t rush, and learn the new version

When a speech runs long, the tempting fix is to say it faster. Resist it. A speech that’s rushed to fit sounds rushed, and the moments that make it worth doing (the pause before the turn, the breath before the last line) are the first to vanish. Nerves can speed you up too, and they swallow exactly those moments. Leave a few seconds of margin under the limit.

Now learn the cut, not the original. If you learned the full speech first, the old lines will try to come back, usually at the exact spot you cut. Learn the joins on purpose. Say the line before each cut and the line after it together, until the new seam feels like the only way the speech goes.

Offbook can help with this part. Upload the cut as a TXT file, then hide your lines or switch to first-letter cues, which replace each word with its first few letters, and say the speech out loud from memory on your laptop. Listen mode plays the scene aloud on your phone, so you can hear the cut version on a walk until the new seams sound normal. Our guide to memorizing a monologue has a five-day plan for the rest.

If the cut is for a two-piece audition, time both together with your introduction, and check whether the notice counts it. Our guide to choosing contrasting monologues covers order and transitions, and the monologue self-tape guide covers taping it.

Questions actors ask

Is it okay to edit a monologue for an audition?

Removing lines to meet a time limit is common practice, and Ball State’s audition page says outright that it’s acceptable. Changing the words is not. Keep the remaining text exactly as written, including words you’d rather not say. If a word is a real problem for you, choose a different piece.

How many words is a one-minute monologue?

Our timer assumes 120 to 160 words a minute, so roughly 120 to 160 words. Helena’s cut above is 130 words and estimates between 0:49 and 1:05 depending on pace. Pauses and big moments make a real run longer than the estimate, so time it on your feet.

Can I combine two speeches from the same scene?

Some programs allow it; Ball State’s page accepts cutting and pasting a scene together to create a monologue. Keep the same objective across the join, and check that the second part still answers something. If the notice says nothing, ask the program.

Should I cut from the middle or from the ends?

Wherever the story loses least. Opening setup is often the easiest cut, and the ending is usually worth keeping. Internal cuts of whole sentences or couplets keep the shape better than trimming words from inside lines, especially in verse.

What if the speech still feels long after cutting?

Time a real run. If the stopwatch says it fits but it still feels long, the problem is usually pace or energy, not length. If it doesn’t fit after you’ve cut setup, business, and repeats, the speech may be the wrong length for this audition. A shorter piece will serve you better than an over-cut one.