If you’re looking for a short dramatic monologue, running about 30 seconds to 1 minute, check out MUCH LESS ROOM. This monologue is from my dark comedy/dramatic play about grief, THE VISITOR IN THE DOORWAY. In the play, Clare has experienced more deep loss than anyone should have to go through, and she knows Grief all too well. After an unimaginable death in her family, Clare runs off to her family cabin in the woods, isolating herself from everyone who might reach out to her. The only visitor she has is the lingering, hovering, persistent, annoying Being outside her cabin who just. won’t. leave: Grief himself, personified. Clare allows him one foot in her doorway, and he works hard to convince her to let him all the way in. The play is a dark comedy, as Grief struggles to do his job; and it’s a drama, as Clare begins to process her pain and loss. The humor and gravity are a necessary team—to relieve and relax us, and then to hit us with the poignancy of tragic reality, as well. For the complete play, THE VISITOR IN THE DOORWAY, click here.

To set the scene for the monologue, MUCH LESS ROOM. Personified Grief has been allowed one foot in Clare’s family cabin doorway, but she is not happy he’s there. After Grief and Clare confront each about other the recent loss, Grief lays out the hard truths that Clare needs to start eating and accepting help and letting people (and him) into her life again or she will die also. Clare retorts, “So?”, and shaken by this, Grief, implores Clare not to die. Feeling great empathy for her, in this monologue, Grief tries to give Clare a bit of Hope that the intensity he brings will not last forever, that Hope will come again, and that he will eventually, take up much less space in her life.