A note about these monologues: all characters in Assassins are historical figures, and it would be in the best interest of the actor to know some background on the historical figure they will portray in the audition. Feel free to Google.
No one listens. Are you listening?! No one listens...Well if you're hearing this, I guess you're listening now right? So with all due respect, deferring to your stature in the world of music, classical and semi-classical, I want to offer you a small piece of advice...Hey, I know what you're thinking. Who the hell is Sam Byck with his fat ass and his tongue on rye to give a guy such as yourself advice? Well, Lenny, it's a fact that my unwillingness to compromise my principles and kiss ass like some people I could mention has cost me the so-called good life which others have enjoyed. But Lenny, listen. Listen to one small piece of advice from a true fan...forget the long hair shit and write what you write best. Love songs. They're what we need. What the world needs now is love sweet love! Love makes the world go round! Well, not exactly. Bullshit makes the world go round. You know that all too well, a worldly guy such as yourself. You know the world's a vicious, stinking pit of emptiness and pain. But not for long. I'm gonna change things Lenny.
You see this? (He picks up a glass bottle) You ever ask yourself, how did this come to be? I tell you how. In the factory where I work there is an oven. Inside the oven, there are bottles. Cooking. I stand at the oven door. The door is open. Twelve hundred degrees. I hold my breath. If I breathe in, my insides cook like the bottles. A bell rings and I reach into the oven. I wear gloves. Inside the gloves my hands are rubbed with grease and wrapped in rags. But still each time my hands begin to burn. I take the bottles out. I carry them across the room. Just so. If two bottles touch, they break. The burning pieces fall on me, my hair, my clothes. From this I have this scar - Will never go away. For this I am paid six cents an hour. Six.
I went down to the beach and sat down on the sand and cried. I felt like I was disappearing. Like the whole world was dividing into two parts. Me, and everybody else. And then this guy came down to the beach, this dirty-looking little elf. He stopped in front of me and smiled this twinkly devil smile and said, “Your daddy kicked you out.” He knew! How could he know? My daddy didn't tell him, so who could have? God. God sent this dirty-looking little elf to save a little girl lost on a beach.
Thank you Mr. Czolgosz. Leon. Unfortunately I do not have time to be in love with you. I am speaking tonight in St. Louis and if I miss my train, the cossacks there will have to find somebody else's arm to break. You don't understand. Since you were a little boy of five or six you have permitted yourself to be brutalized and beaten down, brought to the brink of madness by despair and desperation, so that other men, men no worthier than you, might live their lives in ease and comfort. This is what you have done. This is what they have done to you...am I right?
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Last updated: Sun May 11 21:00 2014 EDT